UP-SCALE Building Skills, Capacities and Learning for Civil Society
UP-SCALE: Building Skills, Capacities and Learning for Civil Society
ACCESS coalition 
overview
Introduction
UP-SCALE is the knowledge and capacity building arm of the ACCESS Coalition and acts as an energy access knowledge aggregator of best practices and expert advice, while providing technical support to civil society operating in the rapidly evolving energy space. UP-SCALE participation comes from expert organizations with decades of experience on energy access that are based in both the global North and South.
Why
Involvement of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) – including community-based organizations, research institutions, and social entrepreneurs - on issues about energy access has increased alongside the growing global attention and action with the adoption of the 2030 Agenda and the development of SDGs. In particular, UP-SCALE builds on the expert member organizations to increase the impact in the delivery of both advocacy and implementation efforts, ultimately aiming to accelerate the delivery of SDG7 and in turn, enhance the pace of achieving other SDGs.
CSOs need to have ability to access external knowledge while also gaining timely, specific support on proven processes, technologies, and methodologies for providing energy services to the poor. Typically, there is limited capacity of internal teams to provide suitable solutions and successful energy access processes and a lack of available tailored resources for this. The initiative will provide a light-touch and tailored approach to help close the gaps and equip CSOs with effective resources making their operations more effective and ultimately increasing their impact.
Current Status
The steps to develop this initiative are shown in the following flow diagram. It displays the steps from the initial creation of UP-SCALE up to the current progress of the initiative, which is listed Step 4.
Flow chart
Step 1
- Initial interviews of 10 CSOs
- Interviews of networks
- Confirming the need for the learning group
Step 2
- Explore potential solutions to the need
- Incorporate UP-SCALE as a work stream of the ACCESS Coalition
Step 3
- Develop a Concept Note
- Identification of core guidance group
Step 4
- Gathering current knowledge through creation of online portals
- Identification of knowledge gaps
- Final consultation process with ACCESS CSOs and networks - consisting of 12 core members contacted and an additional 40 ACCESS members consulted
The ACCESS Coalition is composed of 64 members, 40 of which are CSOs from the Global South. The participants of UP-SCALE to date are composed of networks and international institutions, NGOs from the Global South, and International NGOs. The distribution of ACCESS and the UP-SCALE collaborators are graphically displayed in the following pie charts.
Pie charts
Do you want to learn more about UP-SCALE? See the brief brochure of the initiative here.
More Information
More resources regarding UP-SCALE can be found at the following links, which include a concept note of the initiative (6 pages), a summary of the initiative (1 page), and the meeting minutes from the most recent call (3 pages).
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