Request for Proposal for Communication and Content Consultant, Aga Khan Foundation

Terms of Reference

Background

The Madrasa Early Childhood Programme, an affiliate of the Aga Khan Foundation, was established in Mombasa in 1986 to improve access and quality of Early Childhood care and services in marginalized communities on the Coast of Kenya. Evidence-based success and growing interest across East Africa led to MECP being established in Zanzibar in 1990 and Uganda in 1993. Over the last 35 years, more than 8,000 teachers have graduated from MECP professional development courses and over 1 million children reached through the programming. MECP is seeking to better bring this experience, expertise, and learning and create impact and influence at scale. Evaluations have demonstrated the positive impact MECP has had on access and quality of pre-primary education and on the educational outcomes of boys and girls. Recently MECP’s approach to supporting preschools and teachers at scale was recognized as the most effective when impact and cost were accounted for.

Guide to this RFP

Our expectation is that this document will convey our vision but is not to convey that we have all the answers in developing content and communication materials. The preferred vendor will bring their own ideas and vision based on their industry expertise, guiding us to incorporate our goals into that vision.

Project Overview

The aim of the RFP is to engage a partner organization to collaborate with MECP and AKF to develop content and communication materials for MECP.

Consultant scope of work

The consultant or organization will be required to work in-person and remotely and in close collaboration with diverse teams across Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, regionally, and globally. The consultant/organization will be working in very close collaboration with the Regional Education and ECD Advisor, Regional Communications Officer, and the MECP Programme Directors to:

• Collate MECP content from across communication, project documents, and research and learning papers from across East Africa
• Critically engage with the materials to cross learning, replicable trends, etc. to develop a synopsis of MECP’s learning journey over the past decade, history over the past 40 years, etc.
• Engage with MECP’s programming and personnel to develop a clear communication on MECP’s contribution to ECD over the past 40 years
• Drawing on all the above, develop clear, concise, and targeted content for communication products with a clear purpose, audience (including internal), and channel of communication.

Key deliverables

While the exact quantity on the below are yet to be determined, the deliverable will include:

• Collated library of MECP content
• Synopsis of a decade of research and learning
• MECP’s education 40-year history and impact journey
• Targeted content to communicate research, learning, journey, and contemporary programming of MECP

N.B. It is NOT expected for this consultant to be a graphic design expert or produce the final product in high design

Work Plan

It is expected for this scope of work to require approximately 60 days of time. Exact timelines on deliverables will be finalized during inception. AKF and MECP fully expect to be working with the consultant/organization to the end of 2022.

Criteria for selection

It is expected that the successful consultant/organization will:

• Experience working in the education sector and evidence of writing education content
• Evidence of excellent English language writing skills
• Evidence of developing content for diverse audiences
• Experience in communication, public affairs, and/or journalism
• Proven analytical skills
• Ability to work within diverse and remote teams
• Ability to work under tight timelines