Consultancy to conduct Outcome Assessment of Media Engagement for Housing Behaviour Change- Habitat for Humanity International

Introduction

Habitat for Humanity International (Habitat for Humanity) is anchored on a fundamental vision of a world where everyone has a decent place to live. This vision is the driving force in all of HFHI’s actions and activities that have seen more than 29 million people around the world supported to build or improve the place they call home.

To further fulfil this vision, Habitat for Humanity established the Terwilliger Center for Innovation in Shelter (The Terwilliger Centre) to build and expand inclusive housing markets by supporting firms to innovate and expand client-responsive services and products. The Terwilliger Centre understands that the role of local markets is critical in closing adequate housing gaps among the low-income and incremental market segment.

Among The Terwilliger Centre’s efforts over the past five years in Kenya include, engaging stakeholders in the affordable housing market system to facilitate efforts to drive housing quality up and housing costs down, while taking cognizance of contextual realities in the country. The aim is to stimulate inclusive housing markets while generating expanded benefits to low-income households in a sustainable manner. The thrust of our interventions is the market system development approach that focuses on systemic change aimed at stimulating the low-cost housing market system to innovate, replicate and scale promising practices on a sustainable basis.

Background

The affordable housing challenge for low-income families and Incremental home builders is exacerbated by limited capacity and information to navigate the complex housing environment – a challenge evidenced in all our programming work in Kenya. Low-income families and Incremental home builders largely rely on unskilled labors aka fundis for their entire construction or house improvement process since professional services are unaffordable. This option of relying on fundis for information and advice comes with various challenges for the households, including not being in control of the end results due to information gaps, difficulties in sourcing and choosing appropriate materials/construction technologies, cash flow, ballooning costs and general challenges in managing fundis. The list is endless!

Habitat for Humanity’s Terwilliger Center for Innovation in Shelter, appreciating these challenges, developed a Behaviour Change Programme that in part facilitated working with media to the design and implement a housing edutainment programme with the aim of addressing information constraints and shifting perceptions within the affordable housing sector.

In April to June 2020, Habitat for Humanity in partnership with a leading media house in Kenya leveraged an existing television programme to feature 2-minute segments on housing construction labour sector in Kenya. These features reached a total viewership of 984,641 on television and 496,641 on social media. Participating partners, reported improved publicity, inquiries, and awareness as a result of featuring on the show.

Notably, affordable housing content even with its potential for high impact was new to mainstream media. Demand for this kind of programming was triggered and needed further catalyzing and thinking beyond the 2-minute segments. Riding on the success, learnings, and insights from the inaugural project, Habitat for Humanity, further supported the media house to pilot a full season of an edutainment programme. The programme was dedicated at showcasing different construction best practices and affordable housing solutions available in Kenya, targeting the households and housing eco-system via television. The programme sought to bring about change in behaviour relating to supply, access, demand, and adoption of available and emerging, affordable housing solutions (products and services).

Purpose of the Outcome Assessment

The Terwilliger Centre seeks to conduct an outcome assessment to evaluate the results of the media intervention with respect to the intended objectives, outcomes and impact on households, housing eco-system, and media at large.

This level of assessment will aid in evaluating the systemic and sector changes in line with the programmatic objectives of the Behaviour Change Programme.

Some of the evaluation questions we seek to answer include:

1. To what extent the programme-built awareness, expanded knowledge, shifted attitudes, and motivated uptake of housing solutions by low-income households,
2. How and to what extent the media engagement influenced attitudes or shifted opinions and motivated change in behaviour among market actors? i.e., allocation of resources on information-sharing strategies and platforms, understanding information needs of primary market.
3. What impact has the programme had on the media landscape to create content on affordable housing solutions. Assess if other media companies been influenced to create content on affordable housing solutions and what the influencing factors were for this. In addition to capturing the types of content being developed and how, if any, they have impacted low-income households.
4. An analysis of emerging opportunities for more engagement with media by households, market actors and other media platforms.
5. What enabling factors (finance, policy, legal, etc.) are important to support scaling up of media interventions to drive systemic change in the Kenyan housing market,
6. An assessment of the appropriateness of the intervention to meet the intended outcomes. Do the stakeholders involved have recommendations for how this can be improved if scaled up? is the content developed appropriate to aid households in making better decisions about affordable housing solutions?

Scope of the Work

This assessment will measure impact of the media intervention as designed at the three levels of the intervention logic and assumptions made as below:

At household level

1. Households, fundis and contractors procure/purchase affordable housing solutions featured in the media programme.
2. Households, fundis and contractors use affordable Housing solutions featured in the media programme.
3. Households live in decent and affordable homes.

At sector level

1. Relevant sector actors are convinced of affordable housing programme business case and advertise their housing solutions through the media house
2. Sector advertisers are willing to use/invest on mainstream media as a channel of communication
3. Sector advertisers understand edutainment format and see value in disseminating information through this format.
4. Commercial advertisers continuously develop content that target households, fundis and contractors.
5. The demand stimulated by this media intervention will be attractive and lead to crowding in by other media houses and sector actors.

The consultant will interrogate these assumptions and provide an analysis and evidence indicating to what extent the assumptions held true or not.

Expected Deliverables

The consultant will lead the research and will be responsible for ensuring integrity of the data and its completion within the agreed upon timeframe and following ethical guidelines for data collection and reporting. Key expected deliverables include:

1. An inception report elaborating the study methodology and data collection tools,
2. A draft report on key findings with their interpretations,
3. A validation session of key findings with key stakeholders,
4. A detailed final report incorporating feedback from the validation session. The report shall have a full version and abridged version
5. An electronic version of the raw data collected from the field survey/assessment

Consultancy Management

The main contact for this assignment will be the Behaviour Change Programme lead, the project logic and other programmatic information will be shared with the successful consultant the assignment manager will be available for discussions and questions throughout the consultancy and will be responsible for reviewing the drafts deliverables.

Eligibility

The selected consultant(s) will have:

1. Demonstrated experience in conducting studies and assessment on media programmes, exposure to and experience working with housing programs and conducting evaluations is an added advantage
2. Understanding of the media environment in Kenya especially with regards to development of edutainment content
3. Understanding of market-based approaches and Behavior Change Communication
4. Demonstrated experience facilitating qualitative data collection approaches.
5. Safeguarding and Data Protection

Safeguarding: HFHI requires that all employees take seriously their ethical responsibilities to safeguarding our intended beneficiaries, their communities, and all those with whom we work. Managers at all levels have responsibilities to support and develop systems that create and maintain an environment that prevents harassment, sexual exploitation and abuse, safeguards the rights of beneficiaries and community members (especially children), and promotes the implementation of Habitat for Humanity’s code of conduct.

Data Protection: The contractor will be required to abide by Habitat for Humanity International’s data protection and security policy during the assignment period.

Shortlisting Criteria

Proposals will be shortlisted and weighted based on the following specifications:

1. Understanding of the assignment and suitability of the proposed approach – 30 points
2. Team experience to meet the deliverables – 10 points
3. Experience in reviews, research, and evaluation of Private Sector Development Projects, including media and/or affordable housing – 20 points
4. Quality assurance plan indication systems and processes for quality assuring the evaluation processes and deliverables, including approach to safeguarding, and logistical and management planning, quality control by supervisors (if any), data cleaning and editing before any analysis – 15 points
5. Geographical experience – 10 points
6. Budget suitability – 15 points