Request for Proposal For the Provision of a Contractor to support adolescent girl’s empowerment approaches to prevent violence against women and girl in the Caribbean

RE-lLAUNCH UNTIL JUNE 16, 2023

PART I – PURPOSE OF THIS REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS FOR SERVICES

Latin American and Caribbean Regional Office

 

For the Provision of a Contractor to support adolescent girl’s empowerment approaches to prevent violence against women and girl in the Caribbean

 

1.   Background

 

The European Union and the United Nations have launched the Spotlight Initiative (SI),a multi-year programme aimed at addressing all forms of gender-based violence against women and girls (VAWG), and harmful practices.  In line with the principles of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (SDG), the Initiative will follow a human rights-based approach and take into consideration the specific needs of women and girls who experience multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination and uphold the principle of “leave no one behind.

The EU-UN Spotlight Initiative in the Caribbean, focussed on gendered forms of family violence, provides an appropriate platform to bring together regional partners in the Caribbean around VAWG and Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5 on gender equality.

 

The SI Caribbean Regional Programme prioritizes the development of a comprehensive primary prevention approach to advance the values of gender equality and non-violence and seek to transform socialization across the life course through institutions that are influential in transmitting and reproducing social norms. These activities are part of the Regional SI Pillar 3 that focuses on establishing comprehensive and evidence-based prevention programmes aimed at changing social norms and gender stereotypes.

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UNICEF is one of four United Nations Recipient Agencies (RUNO) within the SI Caribbean Regional Programme, co-leading Pillar 3 with UNFPA. UNICEF’s commitment to gender equality, women’s and girls’ empowerment is evidenced through its Gender Policy and Gender Action Plan (GAP), both entering a new cycle of implementation as of 2022. GAP priorities include GBV prevention and response, transforming harmful gender norms  and adolescent girls’ empowerment.  Adolescent empowerment is fundamental to achieving results articulated across all five Goal Areas of UNICEF’s new Strategic Plan; adolescent girls’ empowerment continues to be a core focus of UNICEF’s Gender Action Plan 2022-2025.

 

UNICEF promotes the rights and welfare of all children and adolescents in everything we do. Together with our allies, we work in 190 countries and territories to transform this commitment into practical actions that benefit all children, especially focusing our efforts on reaching the most vulnerable and excluded, worldwide. The UNICEF Latin America and Caribbean Regional Office is based in Panama, operating in 36 territories, including 24 country offices. UNICEF works to put the rights and well-being of the most disadvantaged children at the heart of the social, political, and economic agenda, in line with our equity focus, working across our organization and with our partners in government, civil society and the private sector to support shifts in public policy, fuel social engagement, and increase investment for children. For more information about UNICEF and its work. (www.unicef.org/lac).

 

II.  Background on Girls’ Empowerment as a VAWG prevention strategy

 

Preventing and ending VAWG requires more than the passage and enforcement of laws and reorienting systems and services with a view to reducing the risk of harm to adolescent girls. More importantly, adolescent girls must be empowered with the knowledge, skills, resources and options they need to reach their potential and serve as their own advocates. In order to navigate the social, economic, environmental and political challenges and opportunities, adolescent girls must have the right and be able to actively examine, question, and influence changes in discriminatory attitudes, norms, and laws/policies that disempower, including gender norms and racial and ethnic discrimination. For adolescent girls to make increasingly complex decisions about their lives and to influence matters that concern them, they must journey from a place of less power to a place of greater power. While there is dearth of information on women’s empowerment, particularly at the global level, there is little to none on girl’s empowerment, especially as a key VAWG prevention strategy. Empowerment is generally used in the context of issues related to political participation, education, and economic empowerment. Adolescent-focused approaches as a means of preventing VAWG are an important area for intervention and research .

 

Empowerment is a multi-dimensional construct shared by many disciplines, including human rights, gender, education, and health.  Based on a summary of the extensive literature, empowerment is defined as the process of strengthening knowledge and capacities to enjoy the power, freedom, information and support to make informed decisions and act upon them.   As a starting point, UNICEF has developed a framework for adolescent empowerment to better understand adolescents’ unique journey to empowerment,  but we still have much to understand about empowerment from adolescent girls’ point of view, and how it can serve as a key strategy to overcoming gender inequalities and to prevent VAWG. Moreover, indices focus on women’s empowerment are not without limitations. None seek to include indicators/scales or an index of girl’s empowerment in domains defined by girls or their own pathways to empowerment. In addition to survey-based information, understanding a complex and contextually nuanced construct like empowerment could be better understood by including a qualitative component that allows for the collection of data that is unencumbered by predetermined tick boxes. This can allow researchers to generate deeper information that describes empowerment from the standpoint of the adolescent girl and their experiences.

 

Purpose and Objectives

 

UNICEF is looking to partner with an Institution working primarily with and for adolescent girls, with experience in the English, French and Dutch-speaking Caribbean, to support a girl-led methodology around girls’ empowerment as a GBV prevention strategy.

 

The purpose of this assignment is to support the identification of promising practices and lessons learnt from across the Caribbean and develop change strategies by youth and girl-led groups as a key VAWG prevention strategy so that relevant regional institutions are able to advocate for women and girls’ empowerment in policies and strategies on ending VAWG, including family violence.

 

More specifically to:

Highlight the unique perspective and contributions on adolescent girl’s empowerment from across the Caribbean through promising practices/lessons learnt;

 

Determine change strategies required to achieve girls’ empowerment as defined by girls;

 

Provide recommendations by youth and girl-led groups for those directly engaging with adolescents in their VAWG prevention interventions, i.e., for practitioners, researchers, etc.;

 

Include approaches for measuring and monitoring progress towards girl’s empowerment, using mixed-methods, multi-dimensional index, to comprehensively and accurately measure adolescent empowerment in their VAWG interventions, particularly across different settings and contexts.

 

2.   Solicitation

 

2.1 The purpose of this Request for Proposals for Services (“RFPS”) is to invite proposals  " For the Provision of a Contractor to support adolescent girl’s empowerment approaches to prevent violence against women and girl in the Caribbean detailed in the Terms of Reference/Statement of Work attached at Annex B.

 

2.2 This RFPS document is comprised of the following:

 

·This document

·The UNICEF General Terms and Conditions of Contract (Services) which are attached as Annex A

·The full Terms of Reference/Statement of work attached at Annex B

·MDM Vendor Template Annex C

·Online registration to UNGM -United Nations Global Market – link: https://www.ungm.org/Account/Registration

. Instruction to bidders

 

2.3  This RFPS is an invitation to treat and shall not be construed as an offer capable of being accepted or as creating any contractual, other legal or restitution rights.  No binding contract, including a process contract or other understanding or arrangement, will exist between the Proposer and UNICEF and nothing in or in connection with this RFPS shall give rise to any liability on the part of UNICEF unless and until a contract is signed by UNICEF and the successful Proposer.

 

PART II – PROPOSAL SUBMISSION PROCESS

 

1.   Proposal Submission Schedule

 

CONTRACTUAL PROCESS

 

The schedule of the contractual process is as follows:

ACTIVITIES SCHEDULE:

1.Send Proposal: 26.05.2023

2.Questions and Answer if necessary: Until June 07th, 2023 before 23:59 (Panama Time)

3.Consolidates Q & A posted in UNGM: June 09th, 2023.

4.Deadline for Proposals: June 16th, 2023, before 23:59 (Panama Time)

5.Proposals Review: June 17th –22nd, 2023, approximately

6.Award Notice sent and posted in UNGM: June 26th,2023, approximately

7.Contract begins July 01st, 2023,  approximately.

 

1.1  Acknowledgement of receipt of RFPS.  Proposers are requested to inform UNICEF as soon as possible send it through UNGM platform and if you prefer you can also send by email to at lacro-ops@unicef.org .

 

IMPORTANT: PROPOSALS ARE NOT TO BE SENT TO THE EMAIL ADDRESS STATED ABOVE – ANY PROPOSALS SENT TO THE ABOVE EMAIL ADDRESS WILL BE DISQUALIFIED.

 

1.2  Questions from Proposers.  Proposers are required to submit any questions in respect of this RFPS by UNGM platform. And if you prefer you can also send by email at LACRO-OPS@UNICEF.ORG

 

1.3  The deadline for receipt of any questions is 07th June 2023, BEFORE 23:59 PANAMA TIME.

 

IMPORTANT: PROPOSALS ARE NOT TO BE SENT TO THE EMAIL ADDRESS STATED ABOVE – ANY PROPOSALS SENT TO THE ABOVE EMAIL ADDRESS WILL BE DISQUALIFIED.

 

Proposers are required to keep all questions as clear and concise as possible.

Proposers are also expected to immediately notify UNICEF in writing of any ambiguities, errors, omissions, discrepancies, inconsistencies or other faults in any part of the RFPS, providing full details. Proposers will not benefit from such ambiguities, errors, omissions, discrepancies, inconsistencies or other faults.

 

UNICEF will compile the questions received. UNICEF may, at its discretion, at once copy any anonymized question and its reply to all other invited Proposers and/or post these on the UNICEF website and/or respond to the question at a bid conference. After any such bid conference, a Questions and Answers document may be prepared and posted on the UNICEF website.

 

1.4  Amendments to RFPS Documents.  At any time prior to the Submission Deadline, UNICEF may, for any reason, whether at its own initiative or in response to a clarification requested by a prospective Proposer, modify the RFPS documents by amendment. If the RFPS was available publicly online, amendments will also be posted publicly online. Further, all prospective Proposers that have received the RFPS documents directly from UNICEF will be notified in writing of all amendments to the RFPS documents. In order to afford prospective Proposers reasonable time in which to take the amendment into account in preparing their Proposals, UNICEF may, at its sole discretion, extend the Submission Deadline.

 

1.5  Bid conference.  A bid conference will NOT be held.

 

1.6 Submission Deadline.  The deadline for submission of proposals is as follows:

No later than 23:59 Panama time of June 16th, 2023. Send it through the UNGM platform, see attached e-submitions instruction to bidders. And if you prefer you can also send by email at LACROBIDS@UNICEF.ORG. With reference LRPS-2023-9182258.

 

Any proposals received by UNICEF after the Submission Deadline will be rejected.