REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL (RFP)-Consultancy support for service partnerships mapping and implementation

REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL (RFP)

Consultancy support for service partnerships mapping and implementation

India, November 2022

Who We Are

Girl Effect is an international non-profit that builds media that girls want, trust, and need. From chatbots to chat shows, and TV dramas to tech, our content helps adolescent girls in Africa and Asia make choices and changes in their lives. We create safe spaces for girls, sharing facts and answering questions about health, nutrition, education, and relationships, empowering girls with the skills to negotiate and redefine what they are told is possible “for a girl”.

Our reach is 50 million and counting. And we’re using technology to reach girls at scale so every girl can choose to be in control of her body, her health, her learning, and her livelihood.

Because when a girl unlocks her power to make different choices that change her life, it inspires others to do so too. She starts a ripple effect that impacts her family, community, and country.

That’s the Girl Effect.

Chhaa Jaa (Go Forth and Shine) – a powerful youth brand co-designed with girls in India

In June 2019, Girl Effect launched Chhaa Jaa (छा जा) –an online youth brand inspiring, entertaining, and empowering girls with the right skills and confidence to navigate adolescence, from accessing information about sexual and reproductive health to preparing them to enter the workforce.

Chhaa Jaa’s product portfolio is aimed at girls aged 16-22 across urban and peri-urban centers in the Hindi-speaking belt of India comprising 11 states and union territories, and accessible online via mobile –

• Digital media content that girls can access on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram that is both entertaining and informative. Characters and storylines have been developed with girls and are designed to reflect their lives and the challenges they might face;
• An online, moderated peer-to-peer community (Bak Bak Gang) that acts as a safe space for girls 16 and above years of age to discuss sexual and reproductive health concerns, interact closely with Chhaa Jaa’s content, explore the themes and topics that are relevant for them, and apply what they’ve learned to their own lives;
• A chatbot (Bol Behen) that offers a private way for girls to ask questions about the themes and topics raised by Chhaa Jaa content and safely get information.
• A website (www.chhaajaa.com ) that is being built into a youth-friendly service directory for easy access to services and products – both online and offline – to help girls improve their sexual and reproductive health (SRH) from getting the right information about their bodies, booking doctor consultations, to name a few.

Creating a new normal where girls are empowered to write their own story

Through Chhaa Jaa, we want to create a generation of girls in India that can take control of their future, find meaningful work and manage their sexual and reproductive health. This way, not only will they fulfil their potential, but they will help others do the same and become contributors to the development of the Indian economy.

Chhaa Jaa’s focus from launch until now has been to launch the brand, launch the suite of products, find our audience and understand their appetite to interact and engage with the portfolio of products. Addressing girls’ sexual and reproductive health needs focuses on menstruation, contraception, and finding agency within their relationships. We also created programming that speaks to her aspirations and friendships and urged her to keep pushing and dreaming.

This has come to life through 3 seasons with close to 500 pieces of content, including 5 content formats from sketch comedy, and face-to-camera listicles, to a stories-led weekly Instagram ‘takeover’ series, etc. (available on the Youtube channel), each dealing with specific themes and with objectives ranging from growing viewership to nudging girls to talk to doctors and access services like telemedicine, helplines, etc.

Chhaa Jaa has reached 13.5 million girls, engaged 2 million girls, seen 100K girls start conversations with our chatbot (Bol Behen), with 3K+ girl members of the closed community, and has contributed to significant shifts in knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors among our target audience – all within 3 years of launch.

The Objective

Core to Chhaa Jaa’s approach is generating demand for Sexual Reproductive Health (SRH) + other services among adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) that they need to make better decisions and ‘write their own story’ – these could be health services like clinics and pharmacies, education and skilling services and/or job readiness services such as career counselling, mentorship, and job intermediaries. By building their confidence and giving them the right information they need, we build up AGYW’s intention to access such services, and by connecting them to relevant services online or on-ground at the right moment, we hope to facilitate and enable this access so that they can do so as easily as possible.

Towards this, we are looking to identify a set of online and on-ground services we can partner with to provide youth-friendly services to our audience. We plan to work closely with these partners to craft a meaningful offering for AGYW – designed with them for them and with provisions to track uptake so that we can measure the partnership’s success.

This will help us generate further evidence of our business model towards setting up Chhaa Jaa for sustainability in the longer term.

The Scope

We are looking for a consultant who will co-design and manage the lifecycle of these service provider partnerships from identification to reporting, along with Girl Effect. The key tasks involved would be to –

• Map out the service provider landscape in India in the space of sexual and reproductive health
• Finalize criteria for selecting partners and evaluate the mapped services against these
• Make (with the support of the Girl Effect team) relevant connections in these organizations
• Provide support in partner conversations, and craft the partnership model with at least 2 partner services ( online and on-ground services)
• Manage the due diligence process, safeguarding processes, and contracting for the finalized partnerships
• Monitor and track progress by setting up regular status calls with onboarded service partners

Deliverables

• 01 – Landscape analysis of the existing services in India – including a list of extensively vetted potential service partners and providers
• 02 – Framework for selection criteria for engagement by Girl Effect and process for finalizing initiatives and partnership
• 03 – Leading the partnership and ensuring integration of at least one service provider within the chatbot

Who You Are

You are ideally someone who has

• 3-5 years of experience in managing strategic partnerships from end to end, especially in the digital space
• Strong knowledge of healthcare, public health, and social impact sector (public, pharmaceuticals, digital health, etc.) with a corresponding network in these areas
• Worked with young people from vulnerable backgrounds and understood their challenges and needs
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills
• Experience in conducting secondary research, including analysis, reviewing, and summarizing qualitative information

Expected Commitment

The consultant will work closely alongside the Chhaa Jaa team to identify and implement these service partnerships full-time over 6 months. Specifics and design of the activity to be detailed once they come on board.

Intended Timelines

• Terms of reference published: 24th November 2022
• Questions/Clarification Deadline: 6th January 2023
• Deadline for responses: 14th January 2023
• Supplier selection, contracting, and briefing: End of January 2023
• Project commencement: February 2023

Reporting

This engagement will be managed by the India Country Director and their team, who will work with the successful individual to ensure its timely and thorough execution.

Proposal Submission

Your proposal, should you be interested, should cover

• Your understanding of the brief and why you feel you are well-placed to advise us on this
• Credentials – Please showcase any previous work that you consider relevant to what we are trying to achieve, how we approach our work, and the audience we cater to. Describe the qualifications, experience, and capabilities of the firm or consultant in providing the requested services.
• Breakdown of Costs- with applicable taxes and other charges clearly identified. Consultants should provide their daily or hourly billing rate or their proposed fixed fee for the requested deliverables. Please break your cost per deliverable as outlined in the RFP.
• Timelines/Work-plan – Starting date, Key milestones, and Reporting milestones
• Approach – Share how you would think about this task and 3-5 examples of partnerships that you feel could be relevant to what we are looking for and why.
• **Reference-**Provide at least three references for similar contracts with a description of the service provided, the value of the contract, and the contract periods of performance.

In their technical proposal, the bidder must demonstrate an understanding of the requirements described in the RFP and demonstrate how the bidder will meet the requirements of the evaluation criteria. The technical proposal must not exceed ten pages.

Technical and Financial proposals will need to be submitted as separate documents. Financial bids will not be opened until completed technical evaluations are shared, only for those proposals deemed qualified and responsive.

Evaluation Criteria

The criteria against which proposals will be evaluated are listed below:

• Technical Evaluation

  • Previous experience working on related digital partnerships – 15%
  • Demonstrated experience working with young people (preferably in India) – 10%
  • Client testimonials (At least 3 references) – 10%
  • Knowledge of the healthcare sector in India – 20%

• Ability to achieve project goals, i.e. does the proposal clearly strong feasibility to move forward the key deliverables on schedule?-15%

• Financial Evaluation

  • Value for money/proposed budget breakdown – 30%

Girl Effect (and its associated entities) is not liable for any cost incurred during the award/contract preparation, submission, or negotiation of the award/contract. All submitted documentation and/or materials shall become and remain the property of Girl Effect.

VALIDITY of the proposal shall be for 90 days from the date of bid closure.

Tax

When developing their proposals, applicants are advised to ensure that they clearly understand their tax position regarding local jurisdiction tax legislation provisions.

Disclaimer

Girl Effect reserves the right to determine the structure of the process, the number of short-listed participants, the right to withdraw from the proposal process, the right to change this timetable at any time without notice, and reserves the right to withdraw this tender at any time, without prior notice and without liability to compensate and/or reimburse any party. Girl Effect shall inform ONLY successful applicant(s). The process of negotiation and signing of the contract with the successful applicant(s) will follow.

Safeguarding

You may be required to undertake safeguarding checks. Shortlisted consultants will be assessed on our organizational values at the interview stage. The successful consultant will be expected to adhere to our safeguarding policy. We encourage you to read and understand our safeguarding policy, the executive summary of which can be found Here. We have zero tolerance for all forms of violence against children, beneficiaries, and staff.

Equal Opportunities

Girl Effect Services is committed to equal opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, gender, gender identity or expression. We are proud to be an equal-opportunity workplace.

We are committed to building an organization that is increasingly representative of and works extensively with the communities that we serve. To this end, due regard will be paid to procuring consultancy service organizations and individuals with diverse professional, academic and cultural backgrounds.

APPENDIX

A snapshot of Chhaa Jaa’s audience

Our core audience (called Sangeeta) is adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) aged 16-22. We design for an underserved audience of Socio-Economic Class C & D in the 11 Hindi-speaking states and union territories (Delhi NCR, Rajasthan, Chandigarh, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Bihar, Jharkhand, Himachal Pradesh) called the Hindi belt of India. When trying to reach our audience, we broadly talk to all girls in the Hindi belt with some sort of digital access.

This audience has come online for the first time in the last 2-3 years with the boom in Jio and cheap data. Their entry point into the internet is usually Whatsapp, followed by Facebook and Google as their only place to ask questions. Our research shows that around 75% of this audience access the internet through a shared device (mother, brother, etc.).

She is likely to be the first one in the family to successfully complete secondary education before marriage, but the pressures to get married are very high, especially with the onset of the pandemic and the disruption in education that has resulted in, as well as, the drastically negative impact on livelihoods that has occurred over the last 2 years.

A Pen-Portrait:

Imagine 19-year-old Sangeeta in Lucknow, who is the first girl in her family to be in tertiary education – she dreams of becoming a teacher one day, daunting and impossible as it seems to her. She wanted to become a dancer, but her family didn’t encourage that, and she isn’t one to rebel against them beyond a point. Girls in her community don’t just take off and do what they want – you have to take your family and community along.

She won the argument to be able to wear jeans 2 years ago but is often told off for not wearing a stole with her jeans and top – both by her aunt and her boyfriend! Her every day is about spending time on her phone, talking to friends, helping with chores at home, and heading off to college/mall/park for some time away from the intense scrutiny of home and the mohalla.

This is a tad bit more restricted since the advent of Covid, the pressures of economic instability, and the corresponding redoubling of the pressure to get married and get ‘settled’.

How to apply

How to Apply

Please submit proposals, as described above, to [email protected] by 14th January 2023, 5:00 pm IST latest. Please clearly mark your email with the subject ‘Service partnerships consultancy RFP India.”

Questions/Clarifications should be sent to [email protected] by 6th January 2023, 5:00 pm IST latest.