The TEAM Formula for Scale: Growing from 1 to 10 Countries in 1 Year
Summary:
If you want 'hockey stick growth', you need a hockey team. That is the guiding principle behind Wanji Games on the 3-2-1 Service, a collaborative project that brings together multiple 'players' who each offer a unique skill, occupy a specific position, communicate around a coherent strategy, and most importantly - are in it to win it. This TEAM approach has enabled Wanji Games - an audio adventure game that uses interactive narratives to teach and entertain - to scale from 1 to 10 countries and grow its audience from 150,000 to 1.5 million unique users over the last year, reaching last mile populations with edutainment content on everything from condom use to climate change. The success of the platform and the engine behind this extraordinary growth is its partnership model: at its core, Wanji Games is the brainchild of two organizations: Peripheral Vision International, who provides the creative leadership, and Viamo, who drives its business and technology backbone. These 'team captains' galvanize a whole host of other players to execute on Wanji's vision and meet its potential to drive positive change. Content expertise is provided by local clients, often INGOs who are thematic experts but need PVI's media skills and Viamo's platform to reach their target populations, and research organizations round out the line-up to ensure continual learning and improvements. This presentation will offer a candid discussion of the opportunities and challenges of working in a cross-organizational collaboration to sustainably scale an intervention.
Background/Objectives:
Wanji provides learning opportunities for people left behind by a growing digital divide, ensuring that critical information reaches people at the last mile. With Wanji, people can effectively use the tools at their disposal, basic mobile phones, to learn. Users dial a toll-free number and can play interactive audio stories in their local language on Viamo's nationally available 3-2-1 Service. First prototyped in 2015, Wanji formally launched in 2017, and has grown dramatically since then, thanks to the strength of the partnerships that make it a success.
Description of Intervention and/or Methods/Design:
Wanji narratives are designed as 'choose your own adventure' interactive stories, placing listeners in the position of decision-maker. Callers listen to pre-recorded audio scenarios and use their keypads to make choices that determine the next pathway within the story's decision tree. The beauty of Wanji - and key to its ability to scale - is that it's designed to capitalize on the strengths of a core set of partnerships. The concept and scripts come from PVI, an award winning media organization with SBCC expertise. PVI works closely with content experts, often INGOs, to develop narratives that augment and amplify their existing interventions. The entire system is hosted by Viamo, a social enterprise that negotiates agreements with mobile network operators necessary to make content available to subscribers at no or very low cost. Research partnerships with firms and scholars provide the evidence base on which Wanji continues to innovate and improve.
Results/Lessons Learned:
An SBCC campaign begins with socially beneficial messaging but must translate the technical details of this messaging into engaging content, drawing on the expertise of the media world - production, distribution, and evaluation - for success to be achieved and measured. To accomplish this at scale, our experience indicates that a TEAM approach works best, in which the organizations occupying at least four specific roles come together to achieve impact: Technology (the partner that is able to deliver messaging) Evaluation (the partner that is able to measure messaging) Artistry (the partner that is able to create messaging) Mission (the partner with a message to send) When the right partners and structures are in place, the TEAM Formula allows for nimble SBCC campaigns that are rolled out in a timely fashion. Put another way, the TEAM Formula is: Structure + Specialization = Scale.
Discussion/Implications for the Field:
When organizations collaborate, it is too often in a coalition model that brings together similar organizations working on similar issues in similar ways. We suggest that strength lies in a TEAM based approach, where partners are not only different, but actually unable to do one another's job. This prevents a structure systemic to coalitions wherein every step can get embroiled in death by committee. Collaborative partnerships that allow organizations to play to their key strengths, rather than separately maintain multiple in-house capacities, create the conditions for sustainable, cost-effective growth with impact at scale.
Abstract submitted by:
Paul Falzone - Peripheral Vision International (PVI)
Leah Newman - Viamo
If you want 'hockey stick growth', you need a hockey team. That is the guiding principle behind Wanji Games on the 3-2-1 Service, a collaborative project that brings together multiple 'players' who each offer a unique skill, occupy a specific position, communicate around a coherent strategy, and most importantly - are in it to win it. This TEAM approach has enabled Wanji Games - an audio adventure game that uses interactive narratives to teach and entertain - to scale from 1 to 10 countries and grow its audience from 150,000 to 1.5 million unique users over the last year, reaching last mile populations with edutainment content on everything from condom use to climate change. The success of the platform and the engine behind this extraordinary growth is its partnership model: at its core, Wanji Games is the brainchild of two organizations: Peripheral Vision International, who provides the creative leadership, and Viamo, who drives its business and technology backbone. These 'team captains' galvanize a whole host of other players to execute on Wanji's vision and meet its potential to drive positive change. Content expertise is provided by local clients, often INGOs who are thematic experts but need PVI's media skills and Viamo's platform to reach their target populations, and research organizations round out the line-up to ensure continual learning and improvements. This presentation will offer a candid discussion of the opportunities and challenges of working in a cross-organizational collaboration to sustainably scale an intervention.
Background/Objectives:
Wanji provides learning opportunities for people left behind by a growing digital divide, ensuring that critical information reaches people at the last mile. With Wanji, people can effectively use the tools at their disposal, basic mobile phones, to learn. Users dial a toll-free number and can play interactive audio stories in their local language on Viamo's nationally available 3-2-1 Service. First prototyped in 2015, Wanji formally launched in 2017, and has grown dramatically since then, thanks to the strength of the partnerships that make it a success.
Description of Intervention and/or Methods/Design:
Wanji narratives are designed as 'choose your own adventure' interactive stories, placing listeners in the position of decision-maker. Callers listen to pre-recorded audio scenarios and use their keypads to make choices that determine the next pathway within the story's decision tree. The beauty of Wanji - and key to its ability to scale - is that it's designed to capitalize on the strengths of a core set of partnerships. The concept and scripts come from PVI, an award winning media organization with SBCC expertise. PVI works closely with content experts, often INGOs, to develop narratives that augment and amplify their existing interventions. The entire system is hosted by Viamo, a social enterprise that negotiates agreements with mobile network operators necessary to make content available to subscribers at no or very low cost. Research partnerships with firms and scholars provide the evidence base on which Wanji continues to innovate and improve.
Results/Lessons Learned:
An SBCC campaign begins with socially beneficial messaging but must translate the technical details of this messaging into engaging content, drawing on the expertise of the media world - production, distribution, and evaluation - for success to be achieved and measured. To accomplish this at scale, our experience indicates that a TEAM approach works best, in which the organizations occupying at least four specific roles come together to achieve impact: Technology (the partner that is able to deliver messaging) Evaluation (the partner that is able to measure messaging) Artistry (the partner that is able to create messaging) Mission (the partner with a message to send) When the right partners and structures are in place, the TEAM Formula allows for nimble SBCC campaigns that are rolled out in a timely fashion. Put another way, the TEAM Formula is: Structure + Specialization = Scale.
Discussion/Implications for the Field:
When organizations collaborate, it is too often in a coalition model that brings together similar organizations working on similar issues in similar ways. We suggest that strength lies in a TEAM based approach, where partners are not only different, but actually unable to do one another's job. This prevents a structure systemic to coalitions wherein every step can get embroiled in death by committee. Collaborative partnerships that allow organizations to play to their key strengths, rather than separately maintain multiple in-house capacities, create the conditions for sustainable, cost-effective growth with impact at scale.
Abstract submitted by:
Paul Falzone - Peripheral Vision International (PVI)
Leah Newman - Viamo
Source
Approved abstract for the postponed 2020 SBCC Summit in Marrakech, Morocco. Provided by the International Steering Committee for the Summit. Image credit: PVI