Profiling Human Centred Design Processes and Developing Communications Materials Samples for ‘Playbox Pilot’ in Yumbe-WestNile At Aga Khan Foundation

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 (ECD). AKF will be the primary interlocutor for this assignment but engaging all AKDN education agencies in the process will be critical. For interventions in Early Childhood Development, the Foundation works through its affiliate, the Madrasa Early Childhood Program which specializes supporting work for creating locally owned early childhood development canters in Uganda

2. About the interventions

Critical to delivery of improved integrated ECD care and services in Bidibidi refugee settlement of Yumbe district, AKF and MECP are supporting parents, ECD Caregivers, government, and community structures to pilot human centered designs (HCD) for adaptation of responsive caregiving play based approaches using two innovations including: The play box and Make a Toy workshops.’

The Playbox: this is being adapted from India where the play box was developed and received well by parents and children. We wish to try this approach in Yumbe to give parents and care givers resources to support learning through play at home with their children ages 3-6years. To develop a playbox that is appropriate for the local context, various ECD stakeholders at the local government and community level will be engaged in brainstorming to identify possible items to include in the box. Boxes with different contents/resources will be developed and these will be distributed to 500 households. We wish to follow up in the households and see what items are well received by the children and parents, gathering this important feedback will be critical in informing us about what resources are best for the local context and which ones are less so. The learnings will inform future play-based learning interventions.

Make a Toy workshops: Given our work in vulnerable communities where resources are limited, MECP has developed an approach to enable parents/care givers to develop toys for children using locally available materials. The team from MECP will deliver training to caregivers from all the 8 ECD centers in zone 4, Bidi Bidi settlement and provide them to the Make a Toy toolkit which manual is being translated into the local languages of Kakwa and Arabic. The care givers will then go into the community and facilitate similar make a toy workshop in the community, engaging parents and children through this playful learning activity.

3. Purpose and Objectives of this assignment

We believe in an evidence-based approach and would like to document and learn from these interventions over the course of 4 months (November 2021 – February 2022) before project close. As such, the playbox pilot and documentation of the make a toy workshop will provide lessons learnt about what works and what does not, thus informing adaptations for future programming.

To achieve this, AKF seeks applications from a highly experienced communications consultant to:

i. Conduct an immersive profiling of key lessons learnt from the two core activities implemented in Yumbe. The lessons will be derived especially from primary beneficiaries including children, parents and care givers

ii. Document lived experiences of children aged 3-6 at home and in the communities including current practices and beliefs of their caregivers and other critical stakeholders (Critical to this is: How are parents supporting their children’s learning and do they think that play based learning is important? Using such anecdotal evidence, documentation should profile value proposition for introduction of the Playbox and the lessons emerging from ongoing make a toy activity. Such experiences should be from the communities’ own perspectives)

iii. Document engagement of the children or parents with the materials/resources provided, which ones got the most positive reception what did the kids play with most, which activities encouraged more playtime with the parents and child? These lessons will inform the contents of other playboxes and the design of the make a toy manuals.

iv. Profile any emerging recommendations for adjustments that may arise/identified during key implementation strategies: this will also involve incorporating any additional context specific ideas generated by community beneficiaries

v. Develop sample communications materials that depict core examples of good practices emerging from the pilot that can easily be presented in form of flyers and other recommended comic materials

All tools and methodologies used to collect data must engage multiple and diverse respondents particularly care givers and other ECD stakeholders– and allow for accurate representation of these diverse perspectives. Issues of gender equity, Child protection and child participation must be at the forefront of the deliverables.

4. Key deliverables

The deliverables under this assignment will include the following:

i. Inception meeting and brief report: The inception report should detail consultant understanding of what success looks like for this assignment, showing how each objective will be addressed by way of proposed methods, proposed sources of data, tools for data collection, data collection procedures, data analysis, work plan. (Workplan will also be linked to AKF and MECP ongoing planning processes)

ii. Meetings and field work report – Completed after attending both online and face-face meeting, a short report to demonstrate how key emerging observations are derived from the communities’ own voices and experiences.

iii. Draft Profiling report: This will be submitted to AKF for review by the technical team, whose inputs will be incorporated by the consultant.

iv. Final Profiling Report: 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.

v. Sample Communications Material Designs: All the data collected, including voice recordings, transcripts, photographs, video clips, and dataset in the relevant formats to be determined during inception. The materials in addition to the reports in i, ii, iii and iv above will inform recommendation of the sample communication materials to be generated. Consultant’s role is only to develop samples with printing of these being the role of AKF

The successful consultant will undertake the assignment under supervision of the AKF Programme Manager and commit to complying to AKF’s reporting requirements during the contract period. Interested candidates are expected to:

• Develop a technical proposal (Not more than 3 pages) including budget for undertaking the assignment. The proposal should include key activities and necessary processes for delivering the intended results. Please also highlight the data collection methods that are responsive to the current COVID 19 safety requirements
• Share individual or company profile indicating similar assignments handled for other like-minded organisations that implement similar education and girls’ empowerment work (Please also include 3 contacts for reference)
• Propose core team with ideal professional background to deliver the proposed activities including sharing of CVs of the proposed personal and previous similar engagements undertaken
• Following an initial meeting upon selection, provide a detailed inception report outlining how the processes will successfully be delivered and provide refinements to the original proposal.
• The consultant will ensure all products are co-developed with AKF and informed by a selection of diverse community representatives to ensure quality, relevance of languages and content to the targeted project audience and is responding to the cultural context of Yumbe

Qualifications of Consultants

• Demonstrate relevant experience and expertise for having developed high impact communications activities for reputable likeminded organisations in Uganda. Previous experience of working within emergency and refugee contexts being an added advantage
• Experience delivering communications work focused on gender, education and early childhood development in Uganda
• Commitment to respect safeguarding of vulnerable populations including children, women, the elderly, and people living with disabilities. Interested organisations must have a safeguarding policy and be ready to submit to AKF on demand
• Evidence of high quality written, technical, and presented work**Criteria for selection**

All submissions will be assessed on the following criteria

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