Describe the critical need your solution addresses.

Seed-Scale addresses core challenges to international development and conservation: 1) how to sustain and evolve appropriate local solutions, 2) how to scale up local successes across regions and nations, 3) how to reach the poorest 20 percent of humanity that has been excluded from conventional development approaches.

Explain your initiative in more depth and its stage of development.

In 1992, at the behest of UNICEF, Future Generations conducted a disciplined review of how communities change. This research drew on evidence over the last century and focused on cases of community-based, large-scale change. These included China’s Model Counties project, which scaled up primary health care to 100 counties reaching 400 million people, and Adirondack State Park, the largest example of integrated conservation and development in the United States. Core principles and patterns emerged; these form the basis of Seed-Scale.

Seed is the process of activating empowerment at the community level and inventing local solutions. Scale is the expansion of this activity, both in geographic coverage and across development sectors.

Future Generations goal is to facilitate and network with 100 global examples of the Seed-Scale process to demonstrate a proven, alternative path to international development and conservation. Toward this end, the organization has used Seed-Scale to create dramatic impacts in four countries (Afghanistan, China, India, and Peru). The Future Generations Graduate School teaches Seed-Scale through its Master’s Degree in Applied Community Change and Conservation, which has trained community and government leaders from 22 countries.

How does your strategy and approach respond creatively and comprehensively to key issues?

Seed-Scale has been used by communities and governments to create large nature preserves (as in Tibet, China), rapid social change (as in India), extend health services (as in Peru), or help countries rebound from conflict (as in Afghanistan).

For example, in Afghanistan, communities in Hazarajat, one of the country’s poorest regions, used Seed-Scale to organize more than 500 literacy classes teaching approximately 15,000 women in local homes and mosques. Communities used locally available assets to create a low-cost and culturally appropriate solution to increase women’s literacy. A parallel health training program reduced child mortality by 46 percent.

In Peru, Future Generations used Seed-Scale to guide the Ministry of Health in creating a community-based health system. Today, 2,158 communities co-managed health care facilities. This approach is self-sustaining because health center revenues are reinvested back into local health programs. Quality expands through regional centers of action learning and demonstration.

Four principles underlie the Seed-Scale process. When communities and governments employ these principles, solutions evolve to fit local circumstances.

1) Build from Success: Strengthen what is working
2) Create Three-way Partnerships: among communities, government, and outside change agents
3) Make decisions based on evidence, not opinions
4) Seek behavior change as the primary outcome

Using these principles, communities determine their own priorities and focus on practical solutions through the implementation of simple, one-page workplans.

Successful communities become regional centers for action learning and experimentation that can rapidly train others. Successful communities in this second wave become extension sites themselves, and so on, creating an exponential expansion of iterative change.