Dear colleagues,
In this 36th newsletter, we are delighted to offer you, our 5,000+ members, the latest news about SCoP activities and the exciting scaling news that you have shared with us.
This newsletter covers the following topics:
- Changes in our Senior Leadership Team
- A new Scaling Projects Database
- An update on our collaboration with the CGIAR Scaling Coalition
- The SCoP Ambassador Program
- News from members, including six new blogs
As always, we would like to hear from you. In particular, please let us know if you are interested in participating in or supporting the Scaling Campaign.
With many thanks for your participation in the SCoP,
Arshad Sayed and Charlotte Coogan
The Scaling Community of Practice
Click here to read more
SCoP News and Updates
Newsletter 35 provided updates on work conducted from October 2025 to March 2026. Below, we provide an update on work from April to June 2026.
Changes in Leadership
As of July 1, Johannes Linn and Larry Cooley have stepped back from their roles as Co-Chairs to become Senior Advisors. Todd Kirkbride and Richard Kohl have also transitioned to Senior Advisor roles, from Managing Director of Strategy and Partnership and Director of Strategic Learning and Partnership respectively. They join Karin Kemper and Koldo Echebarría, who continue as Senior Advisors to the SCoP.
Charlotte Coogan has been promoted to Director of the SCoP and will join Arshad Sayed, Co-Chair of the SCoP since March, in leading the organization forward.
These changes complete the leadership transition, which has occurred over the last several months at the SCoP. Operations will continue as usual within the Community, and we hope to continue and deepen our engagement with you, our members. You can learn more about the people guiding the SCoP on our Senior Leadership Team page.
Mainstreaming Scaling in Funder Organizations
Although the three-year Mainstreaming Scaling in Funder Organizations Initiative has formally concluded, its outputs continue to grow. The Initiative was recently recognized with an Innovation Team Best Practices 2026 Award, presented by the Sorbonne School of Management and the Paris Club of Innovation Directors for exemplary innovation projects serving individuals and society. Since the last edition, Richard Kohl published a new case study on Lever for Change, which examines the organization’s efforts to scale and how open competitions can scale high-impact solutions. It joins two new summary reports that draw out the Initiative’s findings for specific audiences, Innovation Funders and Private Foundations. Summary reports targeting official funders and international non-governmental organizations will be published in the coming weeks.
The Initiative’s lessons are now shaping wider policy debate. Johannes Linn’s Rethinking Development Co-operation contributes SCoP thinking to the OECD’s Review of the Development Assistance Committee, building on the DAC Guidance on Scaling Development Outcomes. Members can also revisit the recent webinar on Foundations’ Approaches to Scaling. These resources now anchor the Scaling Campaign 2026–2030.
New Scaling Projects Database
We are pleased to announce the launch of a new Scaling Projects Database. It was built using Claude Opus 4.7, drawing on the projects featured in past newsletters and the SCoP’s Mainstreaming Case Studies. The model was given detailed instructions to extract information for specific fields in each summary and, wherever possible, to pull direct quotes from underlying reports. It paraphrased quotes in a later step.
The database is primarily intended to help members find example projects, which you can explore further by referencing linked work. Because the data was extracted by AI, it is best used to identify sources to read in full. The information should not be acted on without verification. You can also use it to map the landscape, identify gaps, and find potential partners. We strongly encourage using the filters rather than the search bar, as the filters support more exploration and the search functionality is limited.
Please contact us at info@scalingcop.org if you would like to request a change to any entry or to have your entry removed. If you would like your project added to the database, please submit it through our newsletter and it will be included automatically.
Collaboration with the CGIAR’s Scaling Coalition
At the Annual Forum, the SCoP’s Agriculture, Rural Development and Social Enterprises Working Group (ARDSE) hosted a “Meet the Scaling Coalition”, introducing the Coalition. Founded in 2025 by CGIAR, FAO, the Gates Foundation, GIZ, and the World Bank Group, the Scaling Coalition is an action space where organizations facing a shared scaling problem come together to solve it. It is not another community of practice, and it does not fund projects. Instead, it works through time-bound Solution Groups, each tackling a specific cross-organizational challenge over a roughly six-month cycle. The first two Solution Groups focus on data interoperability and capacity sharing.
The SCoP’s ARDSE Working Group serves as a reservoir of potential Solution Group members, with the Coalition having a co-chair on the ARDSE Working Group to support coordination. Members can join an existing Solution Group or propose a new one. The Coalition’s work will feature again at CGIAR’s Scaling Week, from 22 to 24 September 2026 in Nairobi.
SCoP Ambassador Program
The SCoP’s Ambassador Program offers members flexible pathways for members to get involved with the SCoP and advance transformational scaling in development and climate solutions. Participants choose how to engage based on their interests and availability. Each pathway involves practical contributions such as creating content, sharing knowledge, convening peers, or helping to shape the community’s direction, supported by light guidance and promotion from the SCoP Secretariat. In recognition of their contributions, participants receive a verified Scaling Ambassador digital credential, issued through Certifier, that can be shared on LinkedIn and other professional platforms to showcase their role in strengthening scaling practice worldwide.
Member News
General
CARE, Mercy Corps, and Save the Children
We are uniting to change the future of aid. – The launch of the Impact Alliance – bringing together CARE, Mercy Corps, and Save the Children – reflects a growing recognition that the humanitarian sector must adapt to a stark new reality: needs are rising sharply even as available funding contracts. Rather than responding in isolation, the three organizations are experimenting with how deep collaboration can enable a more streamlined, efficient, and impactful response. Early efforts span several fronts, including shared services models to reduce duplication and free up resources for frontline delivery; deeper collaboration with governments and local partners to strengthen how proven approaches are scaled and sustained; and new ways of engaging communities that move beyond extractive feedback toward ongoing dialogue that can shape programs and priorities. Together, these shifts signal a move away from organization-centric delivery toward a more integrated model that works through systems, partnerships, and communities themselves. For INGOs, this also implies a change in role, from implementing standalone programs to enabling the conditions under which effective solutions can spread and endure. While still early, the Alliance represents a concrete effort to work toward a more collaborative, system-oriented model that aims to better align how organizations navigate the scale and complexity of today’s challenges.
Tjada D’Oyen McKenna, Michelle Nunn, Janti Soeripto
CASE at Duke
A path through AI overwhelm. – AI is quickly becoming a boardroom issue across the social sector, but many impact leaders still feel caught between urgency and uncertainty. Where should organizations begin? How do they separate meaningful opportunity from hype?
In a new article for Stanford Social Innovation Review, CASE and the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation propose four foundational questions to help leaders open more strategic conversations about AI. Drawing on examples from organizations such as Jacaranda Health, Apollo Agriculture, Generation.org, and others, the article explores how leaders can align AI exploration with mission bottlenecks, organizational readiness, responsible AI principles, and the pace required to build trust and protect impact.
Kimberly Langsam, Jacqui Watts, Erin Worsham
Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA)
The Scaling Ingredients Framework. – Many programs that show strong results in small pilot studies never reach the people they were meant to serve. IPA’s Scaling Ingredients Framework was developed to help close this gap. By breaking the scaling process into six essential ingredients, it gives researchers, funders, governments, and implementers a practical tool to assess readiness, identify gaps, and take concrete steps toward sustainable impact at scale.
To complement the framework, IPA has also developed a guide offering a concise checklist for designing impact evaluations that generate evidence useful for large-scale policy and program decisions, with practical steps and real-world examples from programs in Ghana, Liberia, and beyond.
Karla Petersen, Mercedes Sidders
San Miguel Forum
The San Miguel Forum: Uniting philanthropy, business, and government to achieve impact at scale. – The SCoP is collaborating with Spring Impact, Hispanics in Philanthropy, the US-Mexico Border Philanthropy Partnership, and Mexico’s Council on Philanthropy (Cemefi) to convene a global conference in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico from October 7-9 focusing on Uniting Philanthropy with the Private and Public Sectors to Meet Societal Needs at Scale. The event, the San Miguel Forum, follows global convenings by the SCoP in Washington, Paris, Seville, Nairobi, and Abidjan focused on the dissemination and discussion of the findings of the SCoP’s 3-year applied research study on the policies and practices of 28 funders of international development and climate outcomes. The San Miguel event is structured as an invitation-only, Davos-style, off-the-record event, combining philanthropists with implementers and government officials seeking to scale meaningful interventions in six areas critical to Mexico’s future: water and watersheds, dropout prevention, youth employment, girls’ empowerment, palliative care, and community cohesion.
The San Miguel Forum Team
Agriculture, Rural Development, and Social Enterprise
CARE
Agroecology will not scale through science alone. – Agroecological approaches can support healthier, more resilient and more sustainable food systems. But too often, they remain stuck in pilots. This is not because the ideas lack promise, but because the systems around them are not ready. Farmers need more than recommendations. They need advisory services, trained providers, finance, markets, policy support, local evidence, and knowledge systems that make agroecology practical in real-world conditions. That is where scaling begins and a key message from a new CGIAR-supported paper for Communications Sustainability.
For CGIAR’s Scaling for Impact Program, the paper reinforces a central lesson: innovations do not spread simply because they work. They scale when science is connected to the institutions, incentives, partnerships and delivery systems that allow people to use it. Agroecology’s future depends not only on better evidence, but on building the service ecosystems that turn evidence into action.
Register now for CGIAR Scaling Week 2026. – Registration is now open for CGIAR Scaling Week 2026, taking place in Nairobi from 22–24 September. Convened by the CGIAR Scaling for Impact Program, the event will bring together scaling champions from CGIAR, governments, international financial institutions, philanthropy, delivery partners, the private sector and farmer groups to sharpen skills, stress-test real projects, forge partnerships and build practical pathways from innovation to investment, adoption and impact. Participants are also invited to help shape the agenda by sharing the big questions, practical skills, difficult debates and bold ideas they want the global scaling community to explore.
Scaling adoption is one thing. Changing systems is another. – Scaling innovation for food, land, and water systems must move beyond simply increasing adoption of promising technologies to changing the systems that allow innovations to deliver lasting impact. At a recent CGIAR Science of Scaling webinar, speakers emphasized that successful scaling depends on asking better questions about what is being scaled, for whom, through which mechanisms and in what context; understanding demand and system readiness; and building the partnerships, incentives, delivery models and finance needed to sustain impact beyond project cycles. Examples from mechanization in Southern Africa and CGIAR’s Innovation Packaging and Scaling Readiness approaches showed that farmers adopt systems, not isolated technologies. In addition, examples showed that responsible scaling must consider equity, resilience, environmental outcomes and the capacity to adapt over time.
Clearinghouse connects CGIAR to AfDB investments. – The Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT) Clearinghouse, now being integrated into CGIAR’s Scaling for Impact Program, is helping connect CGIAR science to large-scale African Development Bank-backed agricultural investments across Africa. Designed as more than a catalogue, the Clearinghouse validates technologies, packages them for investment, and brokers partnerships with governments, IFIs and delivery systems so innovations can move from research into national programs. Through this model, CGIAR innovations are being linked to a USD$1.5 billion portfolio of national investments in Nigeria, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with the potential to reach 3.4 million farmers in 2026. Examples from heat-tolerant wheat, virus-free cassava planting material, and rice-sector investments show how the Clearinghouse is turning science-backed innovations into investable opportunities, stronger delivery systems and impact at scale.
Agriculture, Rural Development, and Social Enterprise Working Group
Working Group Updates. – The SCoP is pleased to announce that Todd Kirkbride has joined Anamika Priyadarshini, Esther Kihoro, and Mukhaye Muchimuti as co-chairs of the Agriculture, Rural Development, and Social Enterprise Working Group as he transitions from Managing Director of Strategy and Partnerships to a Senior Advisor role. With an expanded co-chair team, ARDSE is inviting members to complete a short poll by 31 July 2026 to help ensure the group’s priorities reflect the interests of the SCoP community and support deeper engagement with members’ organizations around priority topics.
The ARDSE Working Group
Fund for the Promotion of Innovation in Agriculture (i4Ag)
Transformation of agricultural and food systems. – Are you looking for a structured pathway from pilot to impact at scale? Fit4Scale is a practice-oriented online learning programme to help you build scaling capabilities and prepare for innovation scaling. Throughout the programme, participants deepen their understanding of key scaling concepts, strengthen their skills through hands-on case work, and directly apply learnings to their specific context or innovation. Whether you are advising innovation teams or are yourself implementing an innovation, with enhanced capabilities and fresh insights, you will be better prepared to operationalise an innovation’s path to scale and engage the right partners for lasting impact.
The next cohort will run from September to December 2026. Full details and registration at: learning.giz
Michael Duerr
ICARDA
Scaling market-based solutions for last-mile agricultural access in Planting the seeds of scale: Lessons from Tunisia’s dual entry point experiment. – In Tunisia, the SWC@Scale project offers a compelling, replicable, community-based, and self-sustained solution to challenging scaling dynamics. Led by ICARDA, the project operates within the context of semi-arid regions, where soil degradation, water scarcity, and limited institutional support impede the activities of millions of smallholder farmers in Tunisia. The project applied a dual entry point framework (i.e. a packaging of innovations that considers both short term needs of farmers and long term requirements for soil fertility improvement) that addresses the trade-offs inherent in system transformation. The experiment was pursued over a period of 18 months. The resulting transformations demonstrated:
- That impact does not require extended timeframes, but does require a socially grounded approach
- Local institutions are a crucial but underutilized resource
- The dual entry point framework was successful and may be applicable to other countries
Aymen Frija, Zied Idoudi, Hassen Ouerghemmi
Kellogg School of Management & VIFF
Scaling market-based solutions for last-mile agricultural access in West Africa. – The Village Input Fair Fund (VIFF) is transforming last-mile agricultural access in West Africa through a market-making model. Farmers typically have liquidity immediately following the harvest, yet they are often forced to wait until the planting season, when cash is scarce, to purchase seeds and fertilizers. Simultaneously, private agro-dealers view remote villages as risky, high-cost environments, lacking the reliable demand signaling necessary to justify the journey. Grounded in rigorous randomized controlled trials across Mali, Ghana, and Côte d’Ivoire, the innovation addresses structural timing mismatches by facilitating 10% deposit-backed pre-orders immediately after harvest. As we transition from research-led pilots to large-scale regional operations, we have gathered analytical insights into the mechanics of scaling market-driven solutions.
Nicolò Tomaselli & Andrew Dillon
CALL FOR PARTNERS: Kultwano Holdings
Kultwano Holdings seeks partners for scaling ethical edge AI in African food systems. – Through IDIA’s Million Lives Collective, Kultwano Holdings is seeking a European research institution, university, AI lab, agricultural research institute, or agri-tech SME to join a research and impact consortium focused on scaling ethical edge AI across African food systems. Kultwano is a South African digital transformation and agri-tech company working to reduce post-harvest losses and connect the country’s 2.3 million smallholders to institutional markets through voice-first AI platforms. The proposed consortium would use Kultwano’s AI-driven Agrifresh marketplace to design, test, and scale a replicable model for responsible AI integration across rural smallholder and urban township food systems.
The opportunity may be of interest to partners with expertise in agricultural AI, precision agriculture, edge computing in low-resource settings, voice AI for low-literacy users, responsible AI, Living Lab methods, or EU-Africa cooperation. Partners may participate either as an Associated Partner or as a Standard Beneficiary, with potential funding of up to $100,000.
Jake Ireland
Childhood Development
Catholic Relief Services (CRS)
Sisters supporting Sisters: Scaling community-led Care for children and families. – Across Kenya, Ghana, Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia, the Strengthening the Capacity of Women Religious in Early Childhood Development (SCORE) project (funded by Hilton Foundation from 2025-2028) is demonstrating what it looks like to create lasting change at scale by bringing together community leadership, government systems strengthening, and direct service delivery. At its core, SCORE invests in Catholic Sisters who are trusted, locally rooted leaders that live and work alongside the communities they serve. Through these relationships, the project connects vulnerable families to essential social services while strengthening the broader systems that support child development, health, and well-being. What makes this approach stand out is its ability to link local faith actors with formal government social systems. As a result, what starts at the community level can influence care reform policy and extend far beyond individual programs.
Rudy Blackwell
Climate CHange
The Policy Practice
Governing national climate action through Country Platforms – How can diverse climate finance and projects achieve more transformational impacts at that national level? Country platforms have been proposed as a potential approach to bring more strategic coherence to climate action at scale. However, the inclusiveness and effectiveness of country platforms is influenced by numerous non-technical factors that are not always fully taken into account. Developing and implementing country platforms through a systematic, coalition-based and politically-aware approach can enable stronger governance of climate finance, policies and programs. This paper sets out an approach to understanding, navigating, and shifting the systemic political economy and governance that shape the inclusiveness and effectiveness of these platforms. A more intentional systems approach can enable national actors and international supporters to leverage CPs for more transformational climate impact at national scale.
Brendan Halloran
Asivikelane
Advancing service delivery at scale in South Africa’s informal settlements – What does it take to scale public services in communities that governments have long neglected? Launched in 2020 during the COVID pandemic, the Asivikelane campaign has contributed to thousands of service delivery improvements reaching millions of informal settlement residents across South Africa’s eight largest cities, while evolving and deepening its scaling approach over time. From an initial focus on informal settlement communities generating and sharing information about service delivery gaps, Asivikelane has shifted to sustained engagement with a focus on joint problem solving through a network of service delivery ‘hubs’. The coalition’s approach has involved data, organizing, analysis, negotiation and collaborative problem solving across multiple cities, enabling both broadening and deepening of the scale of Asivikelane’s engagement and impacts.
Brendan Halloran
Education
African Early Childhood Network
Multidimensional assessment of preschool quality and learning outcomes in Guinea. – Early learning Assessment provides opportunity to strengthen foundational learning and overall education ecosystem. However, like many West African countries, assessment of early learning outcomes and the quality of learning environment in Guinea have suffered a lack of standardized and contextually appropriate tools. As part of national efforts to address the gap, the Ministry of Pre-University Education and Literacy (MEPU-A) partnered with African Early Childhood Network (AfECN), African Population and Health Research Center, and UNICEF West and Central Africa Regional Office APHRC to contextualize and test two internationally recognized standardized instruments: Measuring Early Learning Quality and Outcomes (MELQO) and Early Learning Assessment (ELA). Partners adjusted the their indicators to local cultural, linguistic, and socioeconomic specificities. This ensures that analysis of testing outcomes not only provides information on the application of the two tools as levers for rigorous evaluation and continuous quality improvement in the specific context of Guinean preschool education but also advances the potential impact of such an application on the overall educational policy ecosystem.
Dr. Ablam Amouzou
Curious Learning
Millions of children are learning to read on the phones already in their parents’ pockets. – Curious Learning’s free, open-source Curious Reader app teaches children ages 5–8 to read in their mother tongue across 60+ languages. It has already reached over 6 million learners. After a decade of rigorous testing, one insight stands above the rest: facilitation matters. When a trusted person helps a family get started, children actually use the app, and learn.
Backed by a World Bank DIME randomized evaluation in northern Nigeria and active pilots across six countries, Curious Learning is partnering with organizations that already have community trust and reach. Because the app is free, works fully offline, and spreads device-to-device, partners have marginal cost and simply leverage the community relationships they already have. If your organization is already reaching parents, we can help you offer them something powerful: the ability to help their own children learn to read. We would love to co-design a pilot tailored to your context, your communities, and your goals.
Curious Learning
Sabre Education
Scaling within the system: what can be learnt from Ghana’s early years transformation.— Ghana is nationally scaling play-based learning through the Early Childhood Education Scale Programme, marking a major step in the country’s efforts to strengthen quality early learning through the public education system. Led by the Government of Ghana, through the Ministry of Education and Ghana Education Service, and supported by technical assistance partners Sabre Education, Right To Play, Lively Minds and Innovations for Poverty Action, the programme is training over 30,000 public kindergarten teachers across the country. Alongside teacher training, the programme also includes wider system-strengthening activities such as coaching and monitoring, as well as parental engagement. These activities recognize that quality early childhood education depends on support from classrooms, schools, communities and government. Once fully implemented, the programme is expected to reach approximately 1.2 million learners annually, helping to embed active, inclusive, and child-centred teaching within Ghana’s early education system. The rollout builds on years of evidence generation, implementation learning, and government-partner collaboration around play-based kindergarten teacher training, offering important lessons that can be applied to other contexts across Sub- Saharan Africa.
Tony Dzidzinyo Kwesi Dogbe
Equimundo: Center for Masculinities and Social Justice
Going beyond gender stereotypes in schools: Scaling pathways. – The Beyond Gender Stereotypes (BGS) programme is a school-based initiative that supports educators and children aged 7–11 to challenge restrictive gender norms. Developed by Equimundo and The Children’s Society, the programme has been implemented in more than 35 UK schools and was evaluated in 2026. The mixed-methods, quasi-experimental evaluation found that BGS increased educators’ awareness of unconscious bias, reduced agreement with restrictive stereotypes among both pupils and educators. It expanded classroom discussions to include topics such as emotions, friendships, and healthy boyhood. To scale the programme, the team has adopted three strategies, developed collaboratively through consultations with scaling experts:
- Accreditation of the BGS teacher training course, completed by the Continuing Professional Development Certification Service in 2026
- Submission of the curriculum for review by the PSHE (Personal, Social, Health, and Economic education) Association for accreditation
- Creation of the teacher training and pupil curriculum so that it is open-source and free.
One and two align BGS with professional standards, making it easier for school leaders, local authorities, and multi-academy trusts to adopt and integrate the programme into existing education frameworks. Three should facilitate wider and easy adoption for schools.
Isha Bhatnagar, Rachel Katz, Kirsty Ruthven
Jacob’s Foundation
Partnerships in focus: Highlights from events, visits, and our Annual Report. – The Jacobs Foundation 2025 Annual Report highlights major milestones in the organization’s story, from surpassing 1 billion Swiss Francs in cumulative giving to launching its System Change Architecture for Learning Excellence (SCALE) initiative in Ghana. In 2025, the Foundation reaffirmed its commitment to strengthening the evidence, partnerships, and systems in service of its mission of improving development and learning outcomes for children and young people worldwide.
Through an innovative co-funding mechanism, SCALE has mobilized $118.8 million in additional financing from a consortium of funders, comprising the Jacobs Foundation, Fondation Botnar, UBS Optimus Foundation, and 10 leading cocoa and chocolate companies, matched by another $40 million from the Global Partnership for Education (GPE), along with further contributions from the GPE Systems Transformation Grant and the Early Learning Partnership Multi-Donor Trust Fund. The initiative supports the national scale up of play-based kindergarten and the scale-up of differentiated learning to more than 15,000 public schools, reaching approximately 2 million children. SCALE also strengthens localized leadership through the Communities of Excellence program, which empowers districts to assess local challenges, set goals, and implement tailored, evidence-based practices to improve learning; and the assistance supports the establishment of a Ghana Education Evidence and Data Lab (GEEDLab), housed within the Ministry of Education, to enhance the generation, dissemination, and application of education research, supporting evidence-based decision-making and informing national policy.
Samuel Kembou
Health
ExpandNet/Partners in Expanding Health Quality and Access
Scale-up Learning Center rolling launch to begin this August. – ExpandNet’s open-access, digital Scale-up Learning Center (SLC) curriculum and collaboration platform is expected to launch soon, following a participatory development process among ExpandNet’s Secretariat, Advisory Council, and other ExpandNet members. SLC participants can choose from among three learning pathways: the Self-Guided, Certificate, and Team Tracks. Most learners are encouraged to join the Certificate Track, which offers greater access to SLC resources and collaborative spaces.
In the coming weeks, the first three – of five total – SLC modules will be shared for beta review with approximately 100 ExpandNet members. The beta review will be followed by a phased, rolling launch of the English-language version beginning in August, with the French version very soon thereafter, and then Spanish, and Portuguese expected later in the coming year. If you would like to participate in the beta review, please email secretariat@expandnet.net
Laura Ghiron
Insight Health Advisors
From innovation push to government pull. –Public sector scaling work across the fourteen counties of Kenya’s Lake Region Economic Bloc, implemented in partnership with Insight Health Advisors, is generating practical lessons on government-led scaling of health innovations. Using the Mountain Model framework , counties first articulated priority health system challenges including newborn care, maternal health, emergency referral systems, and workforce constraints, before identifying and assessing innovations aligned to these priorities.
A key lesson emerging from this experience is that successful scaling depends not only on government ownership, but also on the presence of ecosystem actors who can facilitate, coordinate, and provide technical assistance to support public sector adoption of new approaches. These experiences reinforce an important scaling lesson: innovations are most likely to achieve lasting impact when they respond to clearly defined public sector priorities, are supported by effective ecosystem facilitation, and become embedded within existing government systems rather than operating as stand-alone projects.
Insight Health Advisors
Rotary: United to End Cervical Cancer in Egypt
The UECCE model of scaling cervical cancer prevention in Egypt – The United to End Cervical Cancer in Egypt (UECCE) program has demonstrated a scalable model for cervical cancer prevention in Egypt through its adaptive implementation approach, strong multi-sectoral partnerships, and successful demand generation strategies. The program showed that community-based delivery through youth centers, combined with culturally sensitive messaging, trusted community influencers, and active parental engagement, can achieve high acceptance of HPV vaccination and screening services. The model benefits from strong technical capacity, government engagement, and established partnerships among the Ministry of Health and Population, Ministry of Youth and Sports, the Egyptian College of Critical Care Physiicians, Rotary, and civil society organizations.
Screening and awareness activities are well positioned for national expansion because they are increasingly embedded within existing health systems and community structures. However, scaling HPV vaccination nationally will require addressing key barriers, including the absence of sustainable financing mechanisms, lack of inclusion of HPV vaccine in the national immunization schedule, limited evidence on cost-effectiveness, and vaccine hesitancy. To enable national scale-up, Egypt should prioritize generating economic evidence, expanding implementation pilots beyond Greater Cairo, systematically studying non-acceptors, and advocating for policy integration and long-term vaccine procurement. Experience from other countries in the middle east and northern Africa further highlights that successful scale depends not only on delivery platforms but also on sustained demand creation, regional adaptation, strong partnerships, and government ownership. The UECCE experience provides a proven foundation upon which a nationally sustainable cervical cancer prevention program can be built.
Dr. Amal El-Sisi
Mainstreaming
CGIAR
Evaluation of Scaling Efforts in CGIAR. – CGIAR has maintained a long-standing commitment to scaling the public benefits of its innovations and has recently reinforced this priority. This renewed emphasis has generated an increasing need for the systematic evaluation of scaling efforts. This Technical Note provides guidance to evaluators on approaches for assessing scaling efforts, with a focus on assessing CGIAR’s scaling efforts. It builds on established evaluation theory and practice and clarifies the ways in which the evaluation of scaling differs from conventional program evaluation. The Note proposes a structured framework that organizes key evaluation questions around criteria and principles. Recognizing that the evaluation of scaling remains an evolving area of practice, this Note is conceived as a living document. It will be tested, refined, and periodically updated as CGIAR accumulates experience and learning from implementation.
Ibtissem Jouini
Monitoring & Evaluation
Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC)
FID-SDC Partnership. – The Fund for Innovation in Development (FID) and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) have established a new partnership to accelerate evidence-based innovation in low- and middle-income countries, with a clear focus on scaling solutions that demonstrate transformative impact. SDC is committing €10 million to FID over the 2026–2028 period to support high-impact solutions and strengthen their pathways to scale, improving the living conditions of the most vulnerable populations. By joining forces, FID and SDC aim to enhance the effectiveness of their efforts, with a clear priority: sustainably reducing poverty and inequalities.
Manuela Bärtschi
Nutrition
HarvestPlus
From Zero to 41 Percent: Scaling iron bean in Zimbabwe –Zimbabwe faces a significant burden of micronutrient deficiencies, particularly iron deficiency. Approximately 72 percent of children aged 6–59 months and 61 percent of women of reproductive age are affected by iron deficiency. Recognizing the need for sustainable, food-based approaches, the Government of Zimbabwe adopted biofortification as one of its key strategies to improve nutritional outcomes.
As part of efforts to address these challenges, Zimbabwe’s Crop Breeding Institute (CBI) released its first iron-biofortified bean variety—NUA45—in 2010. This large, red-mottled bean differed from the cream-colored conventional sugar beans that dominated local markets. Initially, farmers were uncertain and consumers were hesitant. The variety entered a market with deeply entrenched consumer preferences and faced considerable resistance. However, as a result of coordinated efforts by HarvestPlus and its partners, NUA45 became the most widely grown common bean variety in Zimbabwe, accounting for an estimated 41 percent of the country’s total common bean cultivation area by 2025. The efforts focused on building partnerships with public and private sector, promoting strong value proposition, strengthening seed systems, creating demand, and coordinating stakeholders across the value chain.
Sakile Kudita, Bho Mudyahoto, Washington Mubvekeri
