Futures Employment Soft Skills Consultancy At Friends-International

TERMS OF REFERENCE

INTRODUCTION

Friends-International (Friends) is an award-winning NGO founded in Cambodia in 1994 to save lives and build futures for the most vulnerable children and families. Today, Friends works in Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand, and with a network of partners around the world, to provide comprehensive services to marginalized urban children, youth and their families, reaching over 79,000 beneficiaries in 2022 alone.

Friends launched Futures in 2016, responding to the long-term needs of marginalized youth and caregivers and building on two decades of experience providing vocational training and job placement services.

Futures is a comprehensive employment support program that helps youth and caregivers to transition into the job market designed to address the specific barriers beneficiaries from marginalized backgrounds often face.

Futures provides a holistic range of job readiness services (soft skills, hard skills, life skills, general education, English, digital literacy, etc.) and access to psychosocial support (healthcare, emergency support, legal documents, housing, transportation, counselling, etc.). This ensures that beneficiaries are able to secure and maintain safe and decent employment through which they can achieve improved financial security and support their families and children. This assistance is tailored to the individual needs of each beneficiary, their circumstances, level of skill etc. Ultimately, the beneficiary is supported with employment placement into a job or for self-employment.

OBJECTIVE

The objective of this assignment is for the contractor to review and adapt/update/upgrade Friends-International existing soft skills training curriculum and materials for Futures students. This includes creating new training content and materials adapted to each student target audience and training delivery formats/modes.

Soft skills training is currently delivered in-person either in a classroom or in the community, and/or online. We would like to scale up our online training by using an e-learning platform with a Learning Management System (LMS), like Thinkific.

Futures student target audiences are:

• Friends core beneficiaries target group: marginalized youth and caregivers in need of employment support
• High School, University, TVET, NGO partner’s students
• Employees

Training delivery format areIn-person and Online on

1. Core beneficiaries in Friends’ centres
2. Core beneficiaries in the communities
3. High School, University, TVET, NGO partner’s students
4. Employees

SCOPE OF WORK

The consultant will work closely with the Friends’ HQ Futures team and Friends Alliance key implementing staff.

PHASE 1

1.1 Content selection:

• Complete a review and analyze the existing training content and materials. Previously completed external and internal research documents will be available. The existing training materials consist of 6 curricula for Friends core beneficiaries target group, high school, university, TVET and NGO partner’s students
• Define together with Friend’s teams the learning plans (modularized training curriculum, outlines and outcomes) adapted to each student target audience and identify which parts of existing materials can be used

1.2 Content development (in English):

• Based on the agreed learning plans, adapt and create new training content and materials adapted to each student target audience and training delivery formats (in-person and online)
• Develop one training course and test the selected e-learning platform (incl. uploading course pilot, and testing functionality of user journey using the platform)

1.3 Initial Pilot Testing

• Conduct pilot testing with a small group to identify any content-related issues and make necessary improvements
• Make adjustments based on pilot results

PHASE 2

• Finalization of all course contents and action adjustments
• Finalize all training course contents and materials based on learning plans from Phase 1, including translations and piloting all new content. Translation into local languages will be conducted by Friends’ teams

PHASE 3

Support the launch of the new Soft Skills training curriculum:

Work together with the Friends’ Futures HQ team

• to create Training of Trainers (toT) training plans for the local implementing teams to roll out the new training
• to set up a monitoring system to track the training impacts

DELIVERABLES

Deliverables are soft skills complete functional learning plans (modularized training curriculum, outlines and outcomes) and engaging interactive learning materials adapted to each student target audience and training delivery format replicable in all Friends Alliance programs.

TIMEFRAME

The work is expected to be completed by end of the first quarter of 2024 at the latest. The precise timeframe may be agreed upon through discussion.