In a nutshell
Yes, it is potentially scalable. Here are some examples:
One way of scaling up is to expand the approach to include larger and larger geographic units. For example, you could move from an individual community or group of communities to a municipal district or province, inviting different agencies and the government to join you in supporting a community-led approaches. This would need to be accompanied by significant capacity building to ensure that different partners have the skills needed to use this approach and that government stakeholders are supportive. After several districts have done this, helping you to learn some key lessons, you could move over the next few years to the regional or national level.
If significant numbers of international and national NGOs are already working in your area, you could also scale up could by encouraging them adopt to a community-led approach.
Of course communities, too, can help to take the approach to scale. In countries such as Sierra Leone and Kenya, communities that used a community-led approach told other neighboring communities about their experience, and this sparked a demand to also learn from and use this process.
These and other possibilities do still need to be tested more fully, possibly using an implementation research approach.
Go Deeper:
How links to formal mechanisms can help with scaling up
Because communities cannot address the full spectrum of child protection issues themselves, one of the principles of community-led work is to have good collaboration between community actions and government services. This can involve referral mechanisms connecting communities to government social services at district or provincial level. These alliances will also help when taking community-led approaches to scale. District or provincial authorities are also generally more interested in collaborating with groups of communities than with single communities.
How communities can help each other scale up efforts
Communities working together is an excellent way of enabling action on a wider scale. In some settings, communities spontaneously identify and use linkages with higher level stakeholders that can help to achieve wider scale. In India, for example, communities connected with each other and also with panchayat-level stakeholders.
Brokering work between government and communities
Facilitating a formal or informal agreement between communities and wider child protection systems can help lay the essential groundwork for taking an action to scale. For governments, one attraction of community-led approaches is that, if designed well, they can increase people's willingness to use government services.
