Consultancy - Mapping of Community Engagement and Empowerment Platforms and Development... Tender

UNITED NATIONS CHILDREN'S FUND has floated a tender for Consultancy - Mapping of Community Engagement and Empowerment Platforms and Development of Evidence Based Approaches and Methodological Guidelines. The project location is Malawi and the tender is closing on 21 Jul 2018. The tender notice number is , while the TOT Ref Number is 24800508. Bidders can have further information about the Tender and can request the complete Tender document by Registering on the site.

Expired Tender

Procurement Summary

Country : Malawi

Summary : Consultancy - Mapping of Community Engagement and Empowerment Platforms and Development of Evidence Based Approaches and Methodological Guidelines

Deadline : 21 Jul 2018

Other Information

Notice Type : Tender

TOT Ref.No.: 24800508

Document Ref. No. :

Competition : NCB

Financier : United Nations Secretariat

Purchaser Ownership : -

Tender Value : Refer Document

Purchaser's Detail

Purchaser : UNITED NATIONS CHILDREN'S FUND
Airtel Complex Area 40/31 Lilongwe 3 Tel: +265-770770 / 770556 / 770660 Fax: +265-773163
Malawi
Email :lilongwe@unicef.org
URL :http://www.unicef.org/

Tender Details

Tenders are invited for Consultancy - Mapping of Community Engagement and Empowerment Platforms and Development of Evidence Based Approaches and Methodological Guidelines.

UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential.

Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone.

And we never give up.

For every child, a safe home

The overall goal of the UNICEF Malawi Country Programme of Cooperation, 2019-2023 is to contribute to the Government of Malawi's efforts to implement and decentralize policies related to children, focusing on the most disadvantaged and deprived, to have their rights progressively respected and fulfilled so they can survive, grow and develop to their full potential in an inclusive and protective society.

The pillar on Child-Friendly, Inclusive and Resilient Communities is envisaged as being delivered as an integrated approach based on the socio-ecological model which provides children the support of an enabling environment and systems for them to grow and have equitable life chances to realize their rights. The programme interventions cover a broad range of areas and cut across all sectors and selected change strategies. Programme interventions will be implemented nationally and in selected districts, building on existing decentralized delivery platforms (both formal and informal), with outreach to communities. While some strategic interventions will be at scale, the country programme will predominantly concentrate on the convergence and integration of strategic interventions around the interrelated pillars in a core set of districts, identified through evidence-based selection criteria.

The focus will be on the following four areas to achieve the desired results. However, most of these areas address structural issues which will require medium to longer term solutions and need to be sustained beyond the period of the country programme.

· Social accountability

· Social norms, behaviours and practices

· Resilience of households and communities

· National and decentralized administrative system

Child friendly communities: Strong community-based and community-led systems are essential for delivery and uptake of quality interventions. Communities are a rich resource and when effectively supported are best placed to identify, prioritize and support systems to address their needs. UNICEF's extensive work with communities emphasizes the need to strengthen community-level engagement that leverages cross-sectoral synergies to overcome barriers to realizing children's rights and addressing emerging challenges.

Resilient communities: Continuous, on-going engagement with affected communities throughout the development and humanitarian nexus is crucial to an accountable and well-informed response. Facilitating the participation of affected communities, through systematic use of feedback and complaints mechanisms and other innovative ways of capturing views and perspectives on the quality of assistance and their relationship with providers, is imperative to shaping priorities, decision-making and program design and to ensuring that the humanitarian assistance is relevant and adapted to needs. To this end, responsibilities must be clear and it is crucial for all actors to listen to, analyze and use feedback from communities to inform response planning and to close the feedback loop by reporting to affected communities on corrective actions.

With this in mind, UNICEF Malawi CO would like to design and develop approaches, guideline and tools for community engagement and empowerment with knowledge and skills to practice and adopt positive social norms and behaviours to realize the children's right on survival and growth, protection, development and participation at household, community and district levels. Through rational utilization of development arms of local government, traditional and religious institutions and media delivery platforms, effective communication and community engagement with vulnerable, at risk and crisis-affected populations can assist communities in exercising their rights and preserve their dignity, while effectively meeting their needs and aspirations.

How can you make a difference?

The objective of the consultancy is to

· Identify and map out existing and functioning local architectures (content and context, linkages with local government structures) serving communities through various community based platforms such as frontline workers, committees (Village Health Committee, Mothers Group, Youth Clubs, etc), volunteers and other organized groups, including FBOs and CBOs

· Develop evidence based approaches, theory informed methodological guidelines and tools to engage and empower communities through identified and mapped out community based-led platforms, structures and mechanisms, particularly government, traditional and religious institutions.

· Develop and finalize integrated framework to utilize community based platforms to:

· deliver integrated quality of services, increase social accountability and community resilience, and to promote positive social norms and practices to achieve child friendly and inclusive communities.

· improve and strengthen local governance and accountability structures and partnership to support social communication networks and forums to facilitate communities to express their views on issues or propose solutions.

Objectives and Methodology

The work will largely comprise quantitative and qualitative field work on representative sampling of community based platforms at community level, and qualitative assessment and analysis of existing approaches and methods being designed and implemented by various institutions and organizations in the communities in Malawi. Therefore, it is expected that before undertaking this significant responsibility, the consultant will have understood and explored the literature on community based platforms, including those affiliated with traditional and religious institutions with major focus on community engagement, empowerment, ownership. It is also expected to engage with the current team of C4D experts with government, NGOs, media and academia in data collection and analysis process. The consultant will work closely with and under the supervision of the C4D Manager supported by C4D team with UNICEF Malawi. Â

The consultant will, in the final report, comprehensive recommendations on how evidence based approaches, theory informed methodological guidelines and tools will be utilized to engage and empower communities through community based-led platforms, structures and mechanisms, particularly government, traditional and religious institutions to delivery integrated quality of services, increase social accountability and community resilience, and to promote positive social norms and practices to achieve child friendly and inclusive communities. Therefore, technical proposal will have to respond to the following questions:

Key research questions:

· Community based platforms, methodological approaches, guidelines and tools:

· What has worked in utilization of those platforms, approaches and tools? If worked, how it was managed to address the deep rooted socio-cultural issues, affecting realization of children's rights on survival and growth, protection, development and participation, in particular on ECD, adolescents and young people?

· What was the tipping point to make the shift?

· What type of community engagement and empowerment platforms, approaches and tools were used to make the shift?

· Were these approaches effective, efficient, relevant and applicable? How can it be sustained and scaled up?

· What did not work? Why?

Specific research questions:

· To identify to the relations and inter-relation of community engagement platforms with local governance structures and extent to which people take part in the decision-making process informing design and planning of government policy/programme documents affecting the realization of children's right at community level.

· To identify the extent to which people from marginalized and/or disadvantaged groups are involved or participate in community engagement and empowerment platforms being utilized by government, traditional and religious institutions and media.Â

· To establish with concrete examples on utilization of community engagement and empowerment platforms, approaches to alleviate and or strengthen the existing barriers and motivators that influence practices and key behaviours affecting high impact interventions, in particular on ECD (parenting), adolescents and young people (child marriages, keeping girls in schools) and community resilience at household and community level.

· Identify the most popular and effective and efficient community engagement and empowerment platforms, approaches and tools used by various categories noted above and propose how the use of these approaches and tools can be enhanced to promote both behaviour change and improved practices at household and community levels.

· Describe costs (time, effort, money) associated with community based platforms for community engagement and empowerment.

· What are the costs the interventions?

· Are/were the costs effective and efficient?

· Value for money?

· To identify impact of the community engagement and empowerment interventions in the areas listed below. Select just those that are provided with evidences and relevant to the intervention. Add new as relevant.

· Engagement of CSOs/CBOs increased and new networks created;

· Capacity of service providers and community members increased;

· Social accountability of duty bearers increased, with improv

Documents

 Tender Notice