Last September, Global Gain conducted its first Adaptive Blueprinting workshop for a group of Ashoka Fellows and staff in New Delhi. Ashoka is a global association of the world’s leading social entrepreneurs. Global Gain’s Executive Director, Nathan Cryder, and Director of Partnerships, Rochelle Arms, led the two-day workshop.

“Our main goal was to provide this group of social entrepreneurs with the tools and know-how to effectively scale-out their organizations’ impact through partnerships”, said Cryder. “Having two full days enabled us to cover all 5 steps of the AB process. However, scaling-out can be quite complex, so we also provided all participants with a thorough AB “Blueprint Guide”, which was essentially a workbook designed to make the AB process as practical and user-friendly as possible. Based on some of the feedback we received from participants, we think we succeeded-- though we know we still have much work to do to continuously improve both the workshops and the Guide.”

During 2008 and 2009, Global Gain looks forward to working with Ashoka to not only expand the number of workshops but to continue to refine them. To do so, Global Gain hopes to create a train-the-trainer program to enable organizations outside of Global Gain to offer AB workshops. In addition, Ms. Arms will be interviewing Fellows to get a clearer understanding of their needs and the specific challenges they face.

The next AB workshops are set to take place in April. Global Gain will conduct a mini-workshop for a group of approximately 90 newly-selected Ashoka Fellows from South Asia followed a few weeks later by another two-day workshop. Locations are yet to be confirmed.