Webinar: Routes to Scale for Participatory Learning and Action (PLA)

For most good and services, there are only two kinds of “institutions” that can meet the twin tests of delivering services sustainably and at scale - governments and commercial markets.

NGOs, social enterprises, community- based organizations, universities, most philanthropies and other civil society groups play important roles in fostering new solutions, responding to emergencies, and meeting the needs of modest-sized populations, but rarely can they deliver and/or finance services to large populations over extended periods without engaging markets and/or governments.

Scale up, in this context, usually means helping to promote adoption of improved practices by government agencies and/or by private providers, and persuading governments or citizens to pay for those services.

In this webinar we explored examples of both of these routes to scale. Rajkumar Gope, Team Leader at Ekjut, presented Ekjut’s experiences of scaling PLA through the public health system across a population of 25 million people in Jharkhand, India. Joanna Drazdzewska, Head of Programmes at Women and Children First, presented WCF’s work pilot testing a social market-based route to scale, in collaboration with Marie Stopes Reproductive Choices in Amhara, Ethiopia.