The Hunger Project’s Executive VP, John Coonrod, has moved from New York City to Washington, DC to strengthen THP’s seat at the table of international development. Each week, John sends us insight into issues of health, policy, human rights and more by way of the Washington Weekly.
Discussing Best Practices
IFPRI: Lessons from Scale-up
On June 28, The International Food Policy Research Institute launched the 19th in their series of “Vision 2020” policy briefs on “Scaling Up in Agriculture, Rural Development and Nutrition” edited by Johannes F. Linn of the Brookings Institute. Linn is widely considered the chief expert on the challenge of scale up, and has developed a five-point framework for analyzing the challenge.
- Actors: Who are the stakeholders who need to be on board to scale the program up? Multi-stakeholder alliances are key, and scale-up virtually always requires that government be in the driver’s seat from “before the beginning.”
- Dimensions: Projects generally scale up horizontally, but almost always run into policy obstacles. Successful projects work in the vertical dimension as well, enrolling government in the process.
- Process and pathways: As we’ve learned in THP, scale-up requires a long-term, patient, step-by-step commitment over many years.
- Drivers:Who are the champions who drive it forward? What incentives get staff to break out of the box of “project” thinking and tackle the mindset change required for scale-up?
- Spaces: Scale-up requires a positive environment – the institutions, policies, financial resources, political support, partnerships, culture and “learning spaces” within which it can proceed.
Ag and Food Security: THP signs on to Roadmap 2.0
The monthly meeting of the InterAction AG and Food Security Working Group addressed numerous topics, including the preparation of a formal response to the G8 “New Alliance” initiative. One key new piece of work is the group’s alignment on a new “Roadmap 2.0” for communicating to Congress and policy makers what’s required to end hunger. THP is an active participant in developing this piece.
Upcoming events
- July 11: Family Planning Summit. The UK Government and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation with UNFPA and other partners will host a groundbreaking summit that will mobilize global policy, financing, commodity, and service delivery commitments to support the rights of an additional 120 million women and girls in the world’s poorest countries to use contraceptive information, services and supplies, without coercion or discrimination, by 2020.
- July/August (TBD): Hunger Summit hosted by David Cameron in London.
