Call for Expression of Interest (EOI) for Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) to support vulnerable communities in target areas in Kenya.

About Aga Khan Foundation
The Aga Khan Foundation (AKF), an agency of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), was established by His Highness the Aga Khan in 1967. AKF is a private, not-for-profit international development agency that seeks to provide long-term solutions to society’s problems. AKF has a special focus on investing in human potential, expanding opportunity, and improving the overall quality of life, especially for women and girls. AKF works closely with civil society groups in programme levels in all its thematic areas, with a range of synergistic initiatives that both support civil society actors and benefit from their reach and experience. AKF’s primary areas of focus are; Education; Early Childhood Development (ECD); Health and Nutrition; Civil Society; Agriculture and Food Security; and Economic Inclusion.

Project Description

The Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) Eastern Africa COVID-19 Response Programme is funded by the European Union and Aga Khan Foundation with the overall goal of improving systemic, gender-sensitive responses to overcome health, economic and social vulnerabilities caused by COVID-19 pandemic in East Africa. The programme has adopted a three-pronged, systemic approach to overcome vulnerabilities among target communities, enhancing their capacity to cope with the impact of COVID-19, improving health delivery systems, and increasing access to adolescent and youth friendly health services, life skills, and livelihood opportunities.

The Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) and partners will support deployment of relevant digital platforms to support local Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) with an interest in supporting sustainable community resilience to the COVID-19 pandemic, in identifying community priority needs, co-design appropriate response strategies, and allocate resources through the CSOs who are at the centre of community interventions. Additionally, local CSOs will be supported in gathering and disseminating accurate information about COVID-19 that promotes preventive measures, minimizes falsehoods, myths, and beliefs that could escalate infections or perpetuate abuses particularly against women, girls, and children. This action will complement government messaging through production of high quality, contextualized, and culturally relevant multi-media content addressing COVID-19 mitigation and prevention measures, reaching vulnerable and misinformed communities, enhancing coping strategies post-crisis recovery, while reducing infection rates at the community level.

In Kenya,18 CSOs will be selected to gather information about emerging needs in vulnerable communities including stories of community response to challenges. Through this activity, AKF will support a total of 4,000 (60% female) individuals in Mombasa, Kilifi, Kwale, Lamu, Nakuru and Kisii counties. The selected CSO partners from the pool of 18 will then access subgrants to deliver the proposed interventions to the targeted vulnerable members of the community. Vulnerabilities that will be considered in identifying beneficiaries will include widows, orphans and other at risks groups, such as survivors of SGBV, and People with Disabilities (PWDs). The RRF Initiative will be implemented within a period of 18 Months of the Programme implementation phase with several rounds of engagements of various CSOs within the created pool. CSOs will be expected to implement the subgrants within duration of three months.

Overall programme objective

The overall objective of the programme is to improve systemic gender-sensitive response to overcome health, economic and social vulnerabilities caused by COVID-19 pandemic across four countries: Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and Mozambique. It is anticipated that 140,000 individuals will be directly supported.

Specific programme objectives

1. To strengthen coping strategies to the COVID-19 pandemic for vulnerable men, women, and youth.
2. To strengthen the health care delivery system for effective management of COVID-19 pandemic in target communities.
3. To increase access to adolescent and youth friendly health services, life skills, and livelihood opportunities.

Purpose of the Expression of Interest.

The purpose of this Call for Expression of Interest (EOI) is to identify eligible Civil Society Organisations for prospective partnership with AKF Kenya Office. This call focusses on CSOs that have the capacity to partner with AKF to support strategies to the COVID- 19 pandemic for vulnerable men, women, and youth (specific objective I above). In this regard, AKF is seeking partnership with local CSOs to respond to targeted community emerging needs while strengthening community coping strategies to the COVID-19 pandemic through rapid response funds. These efforts will complement the current government (both County and National) and other stakeholder efforts in mitigating the effects of the Pandemic to the Kenyan People.

Scope of work

The CSOs organization will undertake the following tasks to achieve the above-mentioned objectives:

1. In-close collaboration with the county stakeholders in particular, the county government and the communities, identify COVID 19 emerging needs and the extent of the needs,
2. Conduct a rapid needs analysis, and resource mapping to better understand the different needs, priorities, and resources available for the identified needs.
3. Disseminate messages on prevention and protection of members of vulnerable communities.
4. Ideate with key stakeholders to identify the priority and appropriate interventions.
5. Review various county and project documents to design appropriate methodology to undertake the interventions.
6. Develop a methodology of undertaking the interventions for review and approval by AKF.
7. Prepare a community response report.

   The above tasks are illustrative and each of the CSOs will be expected to build on these as needed based on the context, the community, and available resources to ensure the assignment is completed to the expected standards.

Deliverables

• The key deliverables expected from the CSOs are:
• Detailed workplan with timelines
• Detailed process of beneficiaries’ enrolment into the intervention
• Case management plans describing appropriate services per needs categories.
• Monitoring and assessment framework.
• Progress and financial Reporting plans

Rapid Response Funds Terms

• AKF will provide several sub-grants to different CSOs partners based on the community emerging needs through the rapid response funds.
• The amount that will be allocated for individual disbursements per need will depend upon the magnitude and nature of the identified need.
• Grants issued will be implemented within 6 months. Further engagement after the first 6 months will be based on evaluation and assessment of CSO performance, emerging needs and CSO capacity to respond to the identified needs.
• The project will be implemented in Mombasa, Kilifi, Kwale, Lamu, Nakuru, and Kisii counties in Kenya between September 2021 and March 2023

Instructions for the EOI Concept note

Please submit an EOI concept note detailing the following information. Maximum three (3) written pages will be reviewed.

• Organization particulars (½ a page)
• Address, locations, and point of contact information; including the specific location of operations and how they relate to target areas.
• Ownership / Type of Entity
• Description of the organization and its main activities (history of operation, milestones)
• Management Team – brief on key staff
• Targeted geography (ies)
• Analysis of the County context and emerging community needs (1page)
• Proposed methodology and approaches to rapidly respond to community emerging needs (This should include activities, methodologies, and time frame) (1page)
• Explain potential methodologies, approaches, current infrastructure, stakeholders, and actors, that could be leveraged.
• Evidence on why the proposed strategy will be successful.

Requirements and competencies

Organizations wishing to apply should meet the following requirements and competencies:

1. Be a registered non-profit organization.
2. Proven experience on: Youth empowerment, gender equality, mitigation and response of violence against women and girls, drugs and substance abuse, disability inclusion, access to justice, sexual and reproductive health and rights/adolescent sexual reproductive health, gender related legal reform, strong understanding of gender equality and women empowerment principles, Social protection, food security, water sanitation and hygiene programmes, Education programmes, advocacy and community mobilization and engagement for social norms change etc
3. Have working experience on specific gender equality issue/s, particularly experience working with minorities, youth, and women.
4. Previous and/or current interventions in the target areas of the initiative is an advantage.
5. For coalition, have valid evidence of formation of the CSOs/NGOs/CBOs coalition (i.e., signed MoU among CSOs/NGOs/CBOs under the coalition).

Evaluation criteria:

• Proposal relevance, quality, and coherence (60%)
• Institutional capacity and sustainability (40%)