TERMS OF REFERENCE

1******. About the Aga Khan Development Network******

The Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) is a network of private, non-denominational development agencies that share a mission to improve the living conditions and opportunities for marginalized communities across 30 countries in Africa and Asia. Through innovative, community-driven solutions that span social, economic, and cultural dimensions, AKDN agencies aim to holistically improve quality of life.
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AKDN’s education goal is to ensure all girls. boys, women, and men, are equipped with the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values to help them interact effectively with the world and be contributing members of a pluralistic society. AKDN assumes a holistic and systems approach to education programming ensuring all interventions are globally informed, locally rooted, are embedded in government and community interests and structures, and work to promote social inclusion, equity, and pluralism. AKDN invests in all sectors of the formal education systems, from pre-primary to tertiary, as well as in other formal and informal life-long learning opportunities, including teacher professional development. AKDN education agencies operating in East Africa are the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF) and its affiliate, the Madrasa Early Childhood Programme (MECP), Aga Khan University (AKU), Aga Khan Academies (AKA), and Aga Khan Education Services (AKES).

1. About the Aga Khan Foundation

AKF seeks sustainable solutions to long-term problems of poverty, hunger, illiteracy, and ill-health, with special emphasis on the needs of rural communities in mountainous, coastal, and other resource-poor areas. In East Africa, AKF responds to local and regional priorities by developing and implementing effective programming, measuring, and documenting results and sharing lessons with governments, donors, and development actors to influence policy and practice. AKF operates a multi-sectoral portfolio that includes programming in Education, Economic Inclusion, Civil Society, Health and Early Childhood Development. Gender Equality is a cross cutting theme in the portfolio. AKF will be the primary interlocutor for this assignment but engaging all AKDN education agencies in the process will be critical.

1. About Foundations for Learning

Foundations for Learning (F4L) is a five-year (2020-2025) project co-funded by Global Affairs Canada and AKF and implemented by AKDN education agencies, that will improve the educational systems at the pre-primary and primary level, in addition to strengthening women’s empowerment, and gender equality in three countries: Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. F4L will strengthen the delivery of quality, gender-responsive, and inclusive pre-primary and primary education, and other social development services and reduce gender and social barriers to the utilization and uptake of education and other sustainable development services. Together, F4L’s interventions will address the gender, social, cultural, and economic barriers that women and girls face in accessing education, making life decisions, and improving their equitable learning outcomes as key steps to exercise their basic human rights.

Critical to F4L is building a gender responsive Social Behavior Change Strategy (SBC) to inform the approach AKDN agencies assume to enable individuals and communities to identify negative attitudes and behaviors and adapt these to promote inclusion, gender equity, and pluralism within themselves and their behaviors and across society. The SBC will inform all interventions, materials, and communications to proactively address negative social norms and behaviors that entrench and perpetuate the exclusion of girls and women from accessing education services and equity of learning. The strategy is also expected to contribute to creating a long-term approach to changing gender norms and creating more gender transformative interventions.

F4L will reach over 1 million educators, learners, their families, and the broader education ecosystem in the following geographies:

• Kenya: Kilifi and Kwale Counties
• Tanzania: Lindi Rural, Lindi Urban, and Ruangwa Districts
• Uganda: Arua and Yumbe Districts

1. Purpose and Objectives of the Assessment

F4L has been designed on evidence-based and proven education and learning approaches that promote the effective integration of innovations and engenders long-term transformative change in policy and practice. As a critical component of the success is the design and implementation of a gender transformative SBC strategy informed by the realities and lived experiences of communities, girls, boys, women, and men living in the target geographies. The SBC strategy will be a critical document which will inform all interventions, initiatives, and communications through the lifetime of F4L. AKDN will deliver F4L and all behavior change initiatives through a strengths-based approach and seek to enable education ecosystem actors, including children, parents, teachers, and schools, as principal drivers of change internally to address barriers of female inclusion in learning and decision making.

AKDN aims to engage a consultant to develop the SBC strategy which will be informed by the results of the Situational Analysis, which was undertaken to understand the everyday lived experiences of communities, parents, boys, girls, women, and men and other critical education stakeholders within the project geographies. The SBC strategy will provide solutions on addressing the deep insights and motivations (attitudes, beliefs), norms (perceived social cultural, gender, religious norms), ability to act (skills, self-efficacy, access), information (knowledge) and barriers hindering the uptake of education services among the targeted beneficiaries of the project. The strategy will also provide solutions on addressing the complex interplay between individuals (self), relationship (interpersonal-partners, family, peers), community (services, organisations) and enabling environment (policies, economy, religion, technology).

Specifically, the consultant will:

• Undertake a comprehensive desk review of data generated through the situation analysis alongside relevant published and unpublished data, national and county strategies, guidelines, policies, best practices, materials, and messages to identify gaps and recommendations
• Based on the desk review design a draft SBC strategy and message themes for each key targeted group.
• Facilitate a consultative workshop to get inputs from key stakeholders on key problems, desired behaviors, barriers, facilitators, key audience segmentation, and strategic approaches among other issues. This includes field testing the strategy with the target groups in each geography
• Revise the draft SBC strategy after obtaining feedback from the stakeholders
• Design and facilitate a workshop involving the core team to harmonize and collate feedback to the draft strategy
• Finalise the SBC Strategy based on feedback from the second stakeholders’ workshop.

1. Key deliverables

The deliverables of this consultant will include the following:

1. Inception meeting and brief report: The inception report should detail the consultants’ understanding of what is being developed and why, showing how each objective will be addressed by way of proposed sources of data, work plan, and budget.
2. GRSBC Workshop and Field Testing of the Strategy – Conducted with the AKDN technical team and other stakeholders as advised by the consultant/organization to review the recommendations and approaches as well field test the SBC strategy.
3. Final GRSBC Strategy: This will be submitted to AKF having incorporated input from the team. The final will be developed in a manner that is engaging, designed, and effectively communicates the findings to a broad audience of internal and external stakeholders. Thinking on length of documents, specific areas of focus, and design will be needed. AKF expects the document to include the following:
   • Introduction
   • Goals and Objectives of the Strategy
   • Behavioral Analysis, including a behavior change framework (for Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda)
   • Audience Analysis (for Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda)
   • Strategic Approaches (for Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda)
   • Suggested Communication Materials
   • Monitoring and Evaluation of the Strategy
4. Work Plan

Activity

Deadline

Inception Meeting and Brief Report

25th July 2022

SBC Workshop

To be completed by applicant

Draft SBC Strategy

To be completed by applicant

Consultative Workshop

To be completed by applicant

Final strategy and associated documents

15th November 2022

6**. Criteria for selection**

All submissions will be assessed on the following criteria:

• Technical proposal 40%
• Technical experience 30%
• Value for Money 30%