In the first of a series of capacity development workshops, GDS has partnered in northern Ghana with RAINS, the Regional Advisory Information and Network Systems, to improve community livelihood and resilience through strengthening planning skills including risks associated with field-based development projects, and the design of measurable mitigation strategies.
Formed in 1993, RAINS has a long history of work to improve the lives of deprived communities. In conjunction with communities, government agencies and civil society groups, the organization pioneered interactions in advancing girl child education, tackling child labor, and the empowerment of women and girls.
GDS is also experimenting with an Applied Knowledge and Intervention Network (AKIN) that will grow along with partner NGOs to enable knowledge sharing on tools and techniques in strategic project management, program implementation, impact assessment, and project communication.
The risk analysis workshop series is the first under the project management section of the workshop series and learning sessions that GDS has organized. The new program began in February 2023 with RAINS (Ghana) and the Africa Relief Response and Development Organization–ARRDO (Gambia).
Lessons from Practice: Assessing Scalability. A GDS project headed by Prof. Susan Holcombe, Ph.D. and commissioned by the Agriculture and Rural Development Department, the World Bank. The summary of the report states: Attempts at innovation promise to demonstrate viable approaches that can be widely expanded or replicated to increase agricultural and rural incomes and well-being. Innovations are also risky; not only may they fail, but they also consume scarce resources and the energies of communities involved. Initial tests of innovations are usually small, but they need to provide guidance to implementers and funders on whether or not to go to scale, and how. The report builds upon a literature review, desk studies of 22 World Bank Development Marketplace innovative projects, field studies of three promising innovations and surveys of selected stakeholders in the innovations. It identifies simple sets of questions and tools for designing and then quickly judging which innovations should be encouraged to scale up, and how. It concludes, in brief, that innovations should be simple, strategic and readily monitored. Scaling up needs local legitimacy and ownership, leadership, and an implementing organization with capacity to learn and grow. It needs time to prove the effectiveness of the implementation and build the conditions for scaling. It needs a champion who can put the innovation on the agenda of key stakeholders in scaling up and play a role in bridging actors and eliminating roadblocks. It needs to be moving toward financial viability, either by being cost covering, moving to private sector adoption, or accepted as a public good. There need to be incentives for scaling up. Finally the decision to scale needs to be revisited again and again during implementation. Read the final report
