After identifying a number of key strategic partners and fleshing out our theory of change in our inaugural year, we are gearing up for a number of exciting projects in 2007. Child slavery is an issue near and dear to the hearts of Jadhav, Anand, and Global Gain's Executive Director, Nathan Cryder, so we have chosen as our first project to spread Child Friendly Villages throughout India.

Our pilot project to demonstrate and carefully document proof of concept for adaptive blueprinting involves working with Indian NGOs to eliminate child labor and achieve 100% school enrollment for children village by village. Our goal is train enough child-focused NGOs in the implementation of the Child Friendly blueprint to increase the number of Indian villages adopting it from 150 to over 1,000 by the end of 2007.

If we succeed, Global Gain will have helped to establish a network of like-minded NGOs working at the grassroots directly with village Panchayats (governing bodies), which can then be utilized again and again towards new initiatives addressing serious social problems in the villages-- problems related to ill-health, access to water, innovative irrigation techniques, microfinance, and others. While the NGOs carrying out the work and adopting new blueprints may of course change, the process will still be significantly streamlined as a result our network's prior well-established relationships with local Panchayat leaders.