Beyond full-country programs: Scaling literacy and girls' education programming at Room to Read

• In Event: Programmatic and operational strategies to scale effective school-level programming

Abstract

Cory Heyman will describe Room to Read’s current efforts to scale its literacy and gender-based programming. With respect to its content, Room to Read is culling the best of its program activities from 10 countries and 15 years of experience to develop worldwide implementation packages. These are being created with four criteria in mind: impact, scalability, sustainability, and cost-effectiveness. Staff are now beginning to re-contextualize the packages to be linguistically, culturally, and administratively relevant for the countries in which Room to Read works. Through simple but detailed packages, in which staff are integrating video and other technology, as appropriate, it will be easier to implement effective programming systematically and with comprehensive monitoring and evaluation strategies to determine which parts of the programming are more universally applicable and which parts are more context specific. In addition, moving from highly decentralized programming to the use of worldwide implementation packages requires a well-organized knowledge- and skill-sharing strategy. The intended curriculum needs to be rolled out from the worldwide team to country program designers and then to field and school support staff in a way that maintains the key elements of the program model. This requires a carefully designed training-of-trainer strategy anchored in clear competencies and credentialing as well as effective monitoring of workshops and site-based coaching. This presentation will describe Room to Read’s early experiences in developing this new approach, including initial successes and challenges.

Author

• Cory Heyman, Room to Read