Our Approach
G-FISH applies the SCALE® approach to support and achieve its goals of sustainable fisheries and aquaculture. SCALE combines best practices from various disciplines to catalyze and support concurrent and sustainable collaborative action toward common goals by as many stakeholders in the system as possible ¾ individuals, groups, organizations, businesses, institutions, partnerships, and coalitions. The SCALE approach (see accompanying graphic below) provides stakeholders with a common road map to initiate, implement, and evaluate system-wide collaborative actions for large-scale impact. The end result is that stakeholders become committed to implementing action plans created together and sharing resources, thus translating ownership of the issue into local leadership structures while ensuring strategic and efficient support from the program team.
The steps in the process can be divided into two phases to allow for adjustment of USAID’s support of specific activities:
Phase I
- Map the Context: The G-FISH team begins by collaborating with local stakeholders to develop a thorough understanding of the context within which the issue sits, both nationally and within the targeted geographical regions. This includes identifying economic, environmental, governmental, and social components linked to the issue that are essential for enhancing livelihoods and biodiversity. Mapping the Context also includes identifying the key champions in the system linked to each issue and engaging them in determining the scope of the system and stakeholders that are most relevant. Finally, as a participatory assessment, this step also involves gathering factual data on each of the issues highlighted through interviews with members of each sector, as well as USAID and the G-FISH partners. This step takes between four and six months to complete.
- Catalyze Coalitions and Partnerships: Through the process of mapping the context, the G-FISH team creates a Working Group of representatives from each of the four sectors: economic, environment, government, and social. This Working Group leads the process for a Whole System in the Room (WSR) event, bringing representatives from all sectors (actors in global, regional, and national enabling environments and all along the value chain) into one room to find common ground, determine shared goals, and commit to collaborative actions. By the end of a three-day workshop facilitated by the G-FISH team, stakeholders form issue-specific task forces with clear leadership and agreed-upon next steps. More specifically, a stakeholder-owned process emerges to promote sustainable fisheries and aquaculture practices. Preparation of the WSR occurs during the Mapping the Context step. The WSR itself is a three-day event.
- Create Collaborative, Sustainable Solutions: Following the WSR, the G-FISH team strengthens coalitions and partnerships established during the workshop to ground truth actions agreed upon. Through Stakeholder Engagement Meetings, the G-FISH team broadens the stakeholder group from those several representatives invited to the WSR to all possible representatives to validate commitments, clarify actions and determine how best to work with other stakeholders to realize large-scale impact. Specifically, these stakeholder meetings will:
- Generate options that address sustainable fisheries policy, structural, technological, economic, and social aspects of the issue;
- Generate and analyze a variety of options and their implications;
- Negotiate and prioritize collaborative solutions;
- Identify specific opportunities to work towards together; and
- Define objectives and indicators of success.
This step allows the G-FISH to distinguish between actions that will be carried out by stakeholder groups on their own and actions that will be supported by the G-FISH project. Based on identified solutions, the G-FISH team collaborates with USAID to design the next phase of the program. This third step requires approximately two-three months.
Phase II
- Facilitate System Integration (Act): The G-FISH team facilitates connectivity, cooperation and information exchanges among key stakeholders through integrated communications channels and strategic outreach efforts. The team will use social change methodologies in an integrated and coordinated strategy to engage stakeholders, keep them focused on the needs of the system and their collective goals, and act on their commitments. G-FISH seeks to empower people to become the drivers of their own development process by strengthening their capacity for informed decision making and sustainable, collaborative action. Among these methodologies include mass communication, advocacy, social marketing, education, organization development, and conflict resolution.
- Monitor and Evaluate (Value): Indicators of collaboration—sharing resources, loaning equipment, volunteering on a task force, or integrating action plans—demonstrate the existence of social capital within a system or around an issue and signify a healthy, integrated system. The G-FISH team helps stakeholders place a higher value on collaboration. It also helps stakeholders value other stakeholders’ perspectives, roles, and contributions. Finally, this is the moment in the process to value what is working and what can be improved—as well as to evaluate impact. The team will encourage the use of participatory monitoring and evaluation as a means to foster collaborative problem solving.
