February 2008

At the start of the new year, Global Gain officially teamed up with Bal Ashram Trust to replicate Child-Friendly Villages throughout some of India’s poorest rural areas. A Child-Friendly Village is one in which exploitative child labor has been eradicated and 100% of children are enrolled full-time in school. The program began in 2001 when Bal Ashram Trust created the first Child-Friendly Village in Rajasthan. Since then, the model has been replicated in 211 other villages in several of India’s poorest states.

Due to the remarkable success Bal Ashram Trust has had with CFVs over the past seven years, Global Gain has determined that the program-model is replicable, adaptable, and ripe for replication using the Adaptive Blueprinting process. This process resembles business franchising but is designed specificallly for social sector organizations.  Some of the specific action steps Global Gain and Bal Ashram Trust will take include:

1. Creating a thorough Child-Friendly Village Implementation Guide. This guide will be like a manual or handbook for organizations wishing to implement the Child-Friendly Village model.
2. Identifying and conducing intensive outreach to 100 or more NGOs, government or UN agencies, and academic or other educational institutions interested in incorporating Child-Friendly Villages into their existing work.
3. Conducting three to six workshops with newly selected partners who would work together to adapt and improve the Child-Friendly Village model as implement them locally.
   
4. Creating the decision-making and feedback systems to implement and consult about the new partners’ experiences with the Child-Friendly Village model.
5. Creating a Child-Friendly Village Training Institute and Child-Friendly Village certification process through the participation of partner agencies.
   

Global Gain would like to thank the Bridgeway Foundation for making this project possible.