Women’s Economic Empowerment – Increasing Entrepreneurship Skills for Out of School Adolescent Girls in Sustainable Energy UN Joint Programme for Empowering Adolescent Girls (2017-2020)

UN Women (UNW), grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, works for the elimination of discrimination against women and girls; the empowerment of women; and the achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security. Placing women’s rights at the center of all its efforts, UN Women leads and coordinates United Nations system efforts to ensure that commitments on gender equality are translated into action throughout the world. It provides strong and coherent leadership in support of Member States’ priorities and efforts while building effective partnerships with civil society and other relevant actors.

Under its mandate to support Member States to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) gender-related targets in general and in particular SDG 5 with a focus on addressing gender-based inequalities to increase economic opportunities and access to productive resources for women of all ages; UN Women Tanzania is pleased to announce a Call for Proposals for Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) with innovative and high impact programmes on the advancement of gender equality, and the promotion of women’s economic rights with a focus on addressing the skills and information barriers that can contribute to the economic empowerment of out of school adolescent girls, teenage mothers and young women in the sustainable energy value chains at the informal and micro-levels in selected districts of Tanzania Mainland and Zanzibar.

Globally, about 1.3 billion people lack access to electricity and nearly 3 billion use solid biomass for cooking, lighting and heating homes. For Tanzania, available information suggests that for the past decade about 90 percent of total energy supply was derived from biomass, consumed mainly in the form of fuelwood and charcoal. The use of modern sources of energy for cooking (for example electricity or gas) is very uncommon and in rural areas about 99% of the households use either firewood (81%) or charcoal (18%) for cooking and only about 10% of households use electricity for lighting. Use of wood based fuels for cooking predominate for two main reasons: the lack or limited availability of modern cooking and lighting energy alternatives and inability of the majority of low to middle income households to afford the cost of the available alternative cooking and lighting energy sources, which is relatively higher than the cost of wood and charcoal.

While women make up more than 50% of those owning or operating informal, micro, small, and medium enterprises in Tanzania, women are disproportionately represented in the informal and micro levels. This disproportionate representation in the lower levels of the economic activity is due to the combined effects of women’s skill gaps in entrepreneurship, financial management, business formalization, access to finance, value addition, and trade; women’s abilities to form profitable partnerships along the value chain; and women’s abilities to engage with the regulatory environment such as business formalization processes at the local level.  The programme will target out of school adolescent girls, teenage mothers and young women and will address the skills and knowledge gaps, specifically entrepreneurial and technical skills, that they to need engage in the sustainable energy value chains.

Programme Focus

Through this call for proposals UN Women invites applications from NGOs and CSOs with a strong track record in gender equality and the empowerment of women. Such organisations will have a proven capacity to develop and implement a programme to build the technical and entrepreneurial skills and knowledge of out of school adolescent girls, teenage mothers and young women to enable them to earn livelihoods from sustainable energy value chains both as entrepreneurs or as technical service providers.

The overall objectives of the programme are 1) Formal and non-formal TVET and entrepreneurial skills development opportunities provision for livelihoods development by out of school adolescent girls, teenage mothers and young women out of school increased; 2) Economic empowerment of out of school adolescent girls, teenage mothers and young women in selected communities promoted.

Proposed intervention(s)

The envisages five (5) key components to be implemented by either one or more organizations or in partnership in which case they will have to show proof of the partnership at the time of submitting the proposals and clear indication of responsibilities/lead role. The indicated budget estimates are for a 1-year period and interested CSOs/NGOs are expected to submitted covering this period.

With an overall outcome of Women, especially the poorest and most excluded, are economically empowered and benefit from development, proposals should address any of the following components:

• Component 1: Build capacity of out of school adolescent girls, teenage mothers and young women in entrepreneurship and business development skills in sustainable energy value chains;
  • Component 1.1: Provision of relevant and sustainable technical vocational skills in the area of sustainable energy, for out of school adolescent girls, teenage mothers and young women;
  • Component 1.2: Strengthen the capacity of out of school adolescent girls, teenage mothers and young women to start up enterprises in sustainable energy (including entrepreneurship and business development skills).
  • Component 1.3: Support the development of internship programmes or placements with enterprises in sustainable energy value chains for out of school adolescent girls, teenage mothers and young women
• Component 2: Mobilize local government, communities and private sector for support of start-up businesses of out of school adolescent girls, teenage mothers and young women

The Call for Proposals encourages innovative approaches and partnerships to economically empower out of school adolescent girls, teenage mothers and young women with low levels of literacy in the targeted communities to participate in sustainable energy value chains. Such initiatives will focus on ensuring adaption and adoption of technical vocational training targeted to out of school adolescent girls, teenage mothers and young women based on their specific needs. The Call for proposals also aims at providing out of school adolescent girls, teenage mothers and young women exposure to the operations of an established entity to understand the products and business practices of the sector. The submitted projects will include all aspects of business orientation, market access/market information and general aspects of enterprise development. In addition, beneficiaries will be trained on group formation and strengthening with a result on peer-to-peer learning and networking.

The Call for proposals encourages NGOs that have a proven capacity to develop and implement economic empowerment programmes for young women entrepreneurs with a focus on technical and entrepreneurship capacity building in sustainable energy value chains. The Call for proposals includes building awareness of government, communities and private sector to include out of school adolescent girls, teenage mothers and young women in their procurement and distributor networks including buying and selling from their enterprises, acquiring services from them, extending credit to them and fostering an enabling environment.

Amount and Technical Assistance

Budget Request Size

• Component 1.1 – TZS 134,000,000
• Component 1.2 – TZS   44,600,000
• Component 1.3 – TZS   44,600,000
• Component 2    – TZS   11,000,000

All applicants will have to demonstrate absorptive capacity and a financial management record commensurate with the grant request amount.

Technical assistance: Successful applicants will also benefit from the following support from UN Women Tanzania Country Office as follows:

• Package of monitoring and technical support services
• Impact tracking through Results Based Management Support

Eligible Programme Proposal

• An overall thematic focus on gender equality in women’s economic empowerment.
• A 1-year implementation schedule only
• Geographical implementation will be Kasulu, Ngorongoro and Sengerema Districts on Mainland Tanzania and Micheweni District in Zanzibar

Please note: All applicants are advised to review UN Women’s website to familiarize themselves with the organizations’ strategic priorities www.unwomen.org

Application and selection process

Who can apply?

• NGO’s/CSOs with over five years’ experience in enterprise development and particularly on women’s entrepreneurship development that are legally registered in Tanzania, that have specialised knowledge, expertise and track record of working in women’s economic empowerment.
• Legal status: Applicants must have valid legal status with the Government of Tanzania. (A valid Certificate of Registration is required)
• Gender equality focus:  Applicants must demonstrate experience implementing programmes on gender equality and economic empowerment of women and girls through an organizational resume or CV of past implementing experience and areas of expertise. (Documents required) 
• Audit reports:  Applicant must have certified audit reports for 2-3 previous fiscal years i.e. 2014, 2015 and 2016 (Audit reports required) 
• Endorsement: Applicants must submit at least one Letter of Endorsement from a gender equality or women’s empowerment mechanism, governmental authority on gender equality, or other multi-stakeholder institution (including UN offices other than UN Women). Please note: To ensure fairness, Letters of Endorsement by UN Women offices will not be accepted. (Letters of Endorsement required).

Experience on WEE programming

• Extensive experience in working on women’s economic empowerment issues, including on: informal and micro enterprise development; technical and business skills development; value chain development with a gender lens; economic rights of women.
• Experience on similar programmes (Entrepreneurship development, Sustainable energy value chain development).
• Experience working in the target districts
• Have presence (an office with staff capacity) in the target districts. Alternatively, applicants should demonstrate that they have existing partnerships or will establish partnerships with CSOs/NGOs based in the target districts. In such cases, applicants will indicate potential partnerships and will subsequently need to enter into an MoU as part of this engagement.  

Important notes:

• Proposals should ideally reflect partnerships among civil society organisations and Government institutions. Special attention will be paid to organizations with a demonstrated record of working with local women’s organizations especially grassroots women’s organizations and specialised WEE networks.
• Proposals from more than one organization or entity must clearly indicate which organization will take lead responsibility for project management and contractual obligations.
• UN Women will sign contracts with and disburse funds to the applicant organization only.
• Eligible organizations currently partnering with UN Women may apply under this call for proposals.

Non-eligible applicant organizations

The following are NOT eligible to apply to this call for proposals:

• Government agencies or institutions
• UN agencies
• Bilateral or multilateral organizations, financial institutions, development agencies
• Private sector entities
• Private individuals
• CSOs not focused on gender equality and women’s empowerment

Evaluation Criteria

Proposals passing the eligibility criteria (see above) will be scored against the following:

1. Relevance of the proposal (30 points)
   1. Vision for structural change in a relevant thematic area
   2. Quality of the context analysis and gender assessment
   3. Relevance of strategic priorities to entry points for programming in this area
2. Implementation strategies (40 points)
   1. Linking local implementation to National development frameworks, Regional and International Commitments, especially in the context of CEDAW and the National five-year development plan (FYDP II 2016/17 – 2020/21)
   2. Adoption of a rights based approach
   3. Establishment of strategic partnerships with key actors from the Government, civil society and community organisations and groups
   4. Strategies of engagement with particularly out of school adolescent girls, teenage mothers and young women
3. Added value elements (30 points)
   1. Monitoring SDG implementation
   2. Innovation and ICT
   3. Evidence based interventions
   4. Development of sustainability strategies

Successful proposal(s) will be expected to be further developed as a Programme Document meeting UN Women standards and formatting requirements, with support from UN Women staff as required, to include high‐quality standards of programme strategy, monitoring and evaluation

Plans, results and resource framework, budget, etc.

Proposal Submission details

All submissions should be delivered through email address.

All proposal MUST be submitted through email procurement.tanzania@unwomen.org  with subject line REF: CFP No. WEE TZ 2018/001 – Call for Proposals – UN Joint Programme for Empowering Adolescent Girls 2017-2020

All proposal applications without subject line indicating “REF: CFP No. WEE TZ 2018/001 - Call for Proposals – UN Joint Programme for Empowering Adolescent Girls 2017-2020”, will not be accepted within this call.

Applicants are expected to submit proposals in accordance with the guidelines for Call for Proposals using the Proposal submission templates below which are also found as Annexes to this Call for Proposals:

UN Women will support interventions from eligible Organizations up to TZS 234,200,000 for one year.

Call for Proposals should be submitted in English. The proposal currency shall be Tanzania Shillings (TZS).

Budget distribution between Programme and Administration/Operations ratio should be 70:30 %.

Proposal Submission Deadline:

The Call for Proposals will be open until February 28, 2018 23:59 hrs (Tanzanian Time). UN Women will acknowledge receipt of the applications through a confirmation e‐mail. Only those short listed shall be considered and further contacted. 

Proposals received after the deadline will not be considered.

Proposals will be selected in accordance with the procedure set out in the UN-Women Rules and Regulations.

This Call for Proposals does not entail any commitment on the part of UN-Women, financial or otherwise. UN-Women reserves the right to accept or reject any or all Call for Proposal without incurring any obligation to inform the affected applicant/s of the reasons.

Note: Organizations that had responded to an earlier UN Women Request for Proposal on WEE should re-submit following the guidelines specified in this Call for Proposals.