RFP – Baseline Study for Going Beyond – Partnering for a Youth-Led Future

DOT seeks a consultancy team to conduct a baseline study for our Going Beyond – Partnering for a Youth-Led Future project, a multi-country project operational in Côte d’Ivoire, Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia.

Organization – Digital Opportunity Trust (DOT), Ottawa, Canada

Assignment – Baseline Study

Project Name – Going Beyond – Partnering for a Youth-Led Future

Project Location – Côte d’Ivoire, Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia

Assignment Timeline – September 5, 2023 – November 15, 2023

Assignment Budget – $120,000 USD

Deadline to Apply – August 28, 2023, 5pm EDT

Digital Opportunity Trust (DOT) is a Canadian-based not-for-profit organization headquartered in Ottawa, Canada and was established in 2002. DOT has locally managed offices in Africa, the Middle East; Tanzania, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Kenya, and Lebanon and Jordan; Canada and the UK, and we operate in Ghana, Uganda, Malawi and Zambia through partner networks. DOT’s mission is to mobilize and inspire all underserved and disadvantaged young people with digital literacy, 21st-century skills and the self-confidence that will enable them to thrive in an inclusive digital economy.

Project Background

Going Beyond – Partnering for a Youth-led Future is a five year project that places young people at the center of community development, unlocking their potential and tapping into their creativity, energy, and passion for making a difference. Using a peer-to-peer model and working exclusively through local youth-serving and youth-led organizations, the project will equip young women and men in Côte D’Ivoire, Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia with the digital and business skills, confidence, and leadership skills, needed to create and sustain dignified and fulfilling work. The project has three pillars: 1) strengthening the capacity of youth-led and youth-serving organizations to deliver high-quality digital livelihoods programming; 2) training and supporting young people as digital business coaches and facilitators to deliver programs to their peers; and 3) training disadvantaged youth in nascent Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in digital and entrepreneurship skills.

The project will identify 40 youth-serving and youth-led organizations in the selected African countries and DOT’s Regional technical teams will strengthen their capacity to deliver youth-led, high-quality, gender-responsive, digital livelihoods programming at scale. These same organizations will recruit and train 4,000 under and unemployed university graduates to serve as Youth Leaders, who will participate in DOT’s 8-month Youth Leadership Program and gain ongoing career development support coaching. Finally, Youth Leaders will cascade locally appropriate and culturally relevant digital inclusion and enterprise growth programs to 300,000 peers with nascent MSMEs (70% young women) and provide ongoing coaching and supportive supervision, including linkages to ecosystems partners for Business Development Support, sectoral expertise, access to finance, and networking events.

The project’s impact extends beyond youth in work to advance youth leadership, digital skills, gender equality, and women’s empowerment. Through this approach, the project will foster a network ecosystem of support for young leaders and increase the quality of life, resilience, agency, and voice of African youth. Importantly, the project will also create a sustainable model for long-term transformational change at scale by fostering a community of practice for ongoing learning among partners and the broader ecosystem, forging partnerships with local organizations, government, and the private sector.

Project Outcomes

The project’s goal and strategic outcomes are listed below. The full Theory of Change and KPIs will be shared at the start of the baseline study assignment.

Goal: Increased quality of life, resilience, agency and voice of African youth in four countries.

Strategic Outcomes:

1. Increased scale of a youth-led, peer-to-peer approach for youth economic empowerment programming
2. Enhanced agency and work opportunities for young women and men to participate in the socio-economic development of their communities
3. Improved enterprise performance and dignified and fulfilling work for youth

Scope of Work

The focus of this request for consultancy support is to develop contextually relevant data collection and analysis methodologies that will enable DOT to gather data against which to measure progress against defined indicators in each of our Going Beyond countries. In collaboration with DOT, the consultants will be required to update and develop tools for data collection. The consultancy firm is required to translate the data collection tools into the local languages (with guidance from DOT).

The consultants will lead on developing the appropriate analysis frameworks for quantitative and qualitative data of the baseline study, executing quantitative and qualitative data collection and data analysis, and developing a baseline report that incorporates findings from both the quantitative and qualitative data. The final baseline report should be a comprehensive and well written document that is tied to the project’s Theory of Change and provides a contextual and holistic understanding of the project’s starting point for change, at both the micro and macro level (country level and pan-African context).

Please note, DOT’s MERL team in Ottawa will supervise this assignment and will assist with project information gathering, developing tools, and identifying appropriate research participants. Since these are new countries of operation for DOT, it will be a joint effort between DOT and the consultancy firm to find the appropriate youth to participate in this study.

Qualifications

The consultancy should be an evaluation firm, composed of a diverse team that includes the following competencies:

Required Qualifications

• Excellent English language verbal communication and report writing skills (final deliverable will be in English, requiring strong English writing skills).
• Core team should include at least one team member with fluency in French in order to provide oversight to research activities in Côte D’Ivoire and ensure quality assurance.
• Proficiency in French to oversee project management of data collection teams in Côte d’Ivoire and provide quality assurance to data collection tools and processes.
• Significant experience and/or a presence in the project’s core countries of Côte d’Ivoire, Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia.
• Access to high quality and reliable enumerators and/or research associates in the project countries of operation.
• Experience designing and leading complex baseline or other project studies, particularly those focusing on or related to thematic areas of youth empowerment, digital literacy/digital inclusion, entrepreneurship/ livelihoods, and gender equality.
• Strong technical and analytical capabilities and demonstrated ability to collect, analyze and interpret both qualitative and quantitative data.
• Excellent statistical skills and data analysis skills.
• Strong experience with and/or knowledge of youth empowerment, digital inclusion and the digital economy, entrepreneurship and livelihood development programs.
• Demonstrated ability to apply a youth-friendly, gender-sensitive, inclusive approach.
• Safeguarding policies and procedures and adherence to ethical M&E practices.
• Excellent interpersonal skills and sensitivity to cross-cultural collaboration.
• The team leader has conducted at least three baseline studies or similar project based research studies in the relevant field in the last five years.

Asset Qualifications

• Strong preference will be given to African based firms, particularly those with staff or existing consultants in the countries of operation.
• Specialization in measuring youth empowerment, youth leadership, and women’s empowerment, as well as changes in resilience, agency, voice.
• Specialization in conducting baseline studies for projects focused on soft skills (e.g. leadership, empowerment, mindset shift) and youth-led approaches.
• Experience with youth-led and/or participatory monitoring and evaluation approaches
• Experience with virtual data collection methods and virtual collaboration tools.