Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #117945

Ngozi Iwere, MA, Community Life Project, PO Box 159, Apapa, Lagos, Nigeria, 234 803 404 7007, iwerengozi@yahoo.com and Richard D. Kohl, PhD, Management Systems International, 600 Water Street SW, Washington, DC 20024.

This paper summarizes the lessons learned in applying the MSI scaling up framework to the Community Life Project (CLP) based in three grass-roots communities in Lagos, Nigeria. CLP demonstrated from 1992-2000 that a participatory, community-based, demand-driven approach could successfully provide reproductive health and HIV/AIDs education and promote family and community development. MSI partnered with CLP after scaling up efforts had already begun, and helped it successfully transfer its approach to other NGOs and to federal, state and local governments in Nigeria; beginning with Catholic church schools and Federal community development officers in six states. Among the key lessons learned for scaling up (reproductive health) pilot projects were: (1) Certain capabilities and capacity are key for scaling up: documentation, planning, budgeting, evaluation, marketing, advocacy, and a transfer methodology/capacity; (2) NGOs which run pilot projects are often missing these capabilities, as well as adequate capacity and the financial resources to go to scale, even when that is only transferring their model to larger institutions which do have that capacity, e.g. government; and (3) scaling up a model is particularly challenging when the model is participation and process-intensive (as opposed to technological in nature). A major lesson is that providing technical assistance and capacity building in areas where these are lacking can be instrumental in successfully transferring a model i.e. scaling up, but to be effective must often be combined with additional financial resources for scaling up itself.

Learning Objectives:

• Participants will learn specific challenges to scaling up a process intensive (reproductive) health education project in a low income African country (Nigeria) and successful solutions and tools used to meet those challenges.

Keywords: Management and Sustainability, Community Development

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.