Request for Proposal- Online Community Research and Testing
Girl Effect India’s Digital Campaign
(Mixed Methodology)
BACKGROUND
Working with girls in India, Girl Effect (an international NGO) has created Chhaa Jaa (Go Forth and Shine) – a powerful youth brand that girls can access via social media. Chhaa Jaa focuses on inspiring, entertaining and empowering girls with the right skills and confidence to navigate adolescence – from accessing information about sexual and reproductive health to preparing them to enter the workforce.
WHO WE ARE
We’re a global creative non-profit combining expertise in media, mobile, brand and international development, a unique mix of skills we use to solve global problems in a new way. Started by the Nike Foundation in 2004, we’re now an independent organization working from nine global locations in 20 countries where girls are marginalized and vulnerable.
We use our in-depth understanding of girls’ real needs so that they are enabled to make choices about their health, education, and economic future. We use multiple touchpoints for branded story-telling and participation that millions of girls, and boys, love and interact with - from apps that build skills to TV dramas that explore vital issues to magazines written and distributed by girls.
We help girls change their lives by tackling social, cultural and gender norms – leveraging digital technologies to create change through creative content that engages and entertain audiences - designed to change and shift attitudes, knowledge and behaviours in tangible, measurable ways.
Our work is supported and funded by many people and organizations, from governments and philanthropists to NGOs and corporates. Recent examples include GAVI (The Vaccine Alliance), Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Facebook, UNICEF, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), Vodafone Foundation, Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), Nutrition International, and United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT PILOT CAMPAIGN
Context
Over the last two years (2019-2021), with support from CIFF and Vodafone Foundation, Chhaa Jaa invested deeply in behaviour change programming to improve sexual and reproductive health outcomes - specifically increasing health service access contraceptive uptake. Yet Chhaa Jaa was always built to be a holistic girls’ programme that addresses multiple facets of the girls’ experience of adolescence. Since 2021, the programme has started expanding its thematic focus with partnerships with Facebook on vaccine hesitancy and a mental wellbeing programme supported by Fossil Foundation. As a response to the post-COVID challenges to girls’ economic aspirations, in 2022, Chhaa Jaa plans to initiate programming on economic empowerment for AGYW (adolescent girls and young women) between the ages 16-22 years living in the Hindi belt of India.
The challenges to economic empowerment for girls include societal norms and structural barriers themselves. Even pre-COVID, girls struggled to get a foothold in the economy as there were limited options for jobs that were considered ‘appropriate’ and safe for her. Most desk jobs in the service sector also required expensive education and training - both of which she didn't have resources for.
Post-COVID, this situation has worsened with disruption of education, loss of more traditional jobs in the economy, and no visibility on ‘normalcy’. Due to the indefinite postponement of exams and the toll taken by fully remote learning, they are feeling unmotivated about future economic prospects - and this is coupled with a real worry of an increased pressure to get married.
We plan a two-month multi-platform campaign between April and May 2022 to renew her optimism and confidence to prioritize and pursue her economic aspirations. This pilot phase will precede a full global economic empowerment strategy and SBCC programming.
Objective
Chhaa Jaa’s FY22 economic empowerment campaign will focus on building confidence among AGYW (aged 16 to 22 years) and resuscitate optimism to prioritize and pursue her economic aspirations that have been impacted due to the COVID-19 pandemic. There is an urgent need to assure her that she is still in the running to be an essential economic agent for her family. We also know that it is more critical than ever to have a concrete plan to achieve these aspirations. To illustrate this and share with her one potentially exciting opportunity that she might not have explored so far, we want to introduce her to the digitally enabled economy and help her find a skill and opportunity right for her.
Campaign Components
The campaign will be made up of a range of media components:
MOVIE (HERO FORMAT)
(Makeover of your dream)
10-12mins movie on OTT or Social Media
VIEWING PARTIES
Collaboration with organizations to organize viewing parties discussions on the campaign film with AGYW and other relevant stakeholders networks.
GIRL ‘ADDA’
Honest Roundtable conversations between a host (social media influencer) and real girls on real issues and growing up as a girl in India,
Themes related to the campaign. E.g., 1) Curfews, Choices, Challenges 2) Planning a career, barriers and information
HOSLEIN - GIRL INSPIRATION STORIES
(Talks about your dreams)
6 Real girls stories - case studies (audio only)
‘HOW TO’ WORKSHOPS/ SAHI SALAH
Workshops and Masterclasses in
collaboration with partners
INFLUENCER CONTENT
Collaboration with micro and nano social media influencers in the Hindi belt who will create complementary content, drawing from the ‘Aha!’ moments of the film, to inspire, and knowledge-building.
RESOURCE HUB
Career page on chhaajaa.com with curated links to career guidance options
The formats highlighted above are the ones we are considering to test via Online community testing.
The film will be the campaign's centrepiece.
We want to use the film to emphasize resilience, optimism, conversation, and space to explore new opportunities and pathways. The film will be a starting point for online and offline discussions on girls' barriers, enablers and success stories concerning their economic agency.
WHILE OVERALL, THE CAMPAIGN IS A MIX OF ONLINE AND ON-GROUND INITIATIVES. GE WANTS TO LEVERAGE THIS METHODOLOGY TO MEASURE THE IMPACT OF THE ONLINE MEDIA COMPONENTS [I.E., MOVIE, YOUTUBE EPISODES, AUDIO/PODCASTS AND WEBSITE PAGE OF CAREER GUIDANCE].
Campaign Impact Goals
Improve attitudes (increased optimism) amongst girls regarding their economic aspirations
Introduce girls to new opportunities that they are not aware of
THE RESEARCH BRIEF
Girl Effect is looking to commission an agency with vast experience running successful online communities and girl-centred research. The successful agency will deliver a full-service online community research project, working closely with Girl Effect’s in-house research team. The successful agency will be responsible for:
● Designing a compelling and youth-friendly online community, including an evaluation and a few UX testing research activities
● Providing an inception report, including the plans for tool design, final sampling strategy, agreed research plan and timeline, data quality and management, research ethics and safeguarding processes
● Choosing/providing a suitable online community platform
● Gaining ethical approval for this study from the required bodies
● Advising on sample design within specification and agreeing on the final design with Girl Effect
● Recruiting communities and participants according to the provided purposive sampling criteria
● Piloting of tools and refined tools, including debrief and working sessions with Girl Effect to refine and finalize the data collection tools before the research
● Testing and scripting for the community
● Obtaining informed consent from all participants and permission from parents of participating minors
● Managing the online community for the duration of the research
● Ensuring quality control and data management
● Full data analysis
● Maintain a database of respondents for future research re-contact
● Cleaned, labeled, securely stored and correctly coded dataset in English for any quantitative data and full transcripts of qualitative data. Agency to provide details on what will be available.
● Final report answering the research questions.
● To ensure all work is conducted according to the Girl Effect Girl Safeguarding Policy and an agreed safeguarding agreement
● A wrap-up session with Girl Effect to debrief the online community.
Girl Effect will be responsible for the final sign off of all steps involved in the above process.
The recipient of this research will be the Girl Effect India team, with interest from the GE global team.
Online community objectives
Shifts in psychological drivers
User experience and content evaluation of the highlighted campaign components, namely: Movie (hero format), Youtube Episodes, Audio/ Podcasts and Chhaa Jaa website [career page].
As this is a short pilot campaign to test the potential of the Economic Empowerment content strategy, only shifts in psychological drivers will be the KPI.
Methodological Approach
Girl Effect welcomes recommendations on the best possible approach to deliver against our research objectives and would like to receive your approach design as a core component of the proposal.
We imagine this may take the form of a 2-3 week online research community and may contain some of the following :
● A baseline survey, in which participants will be questioned on their self-efficacy, attitudes, knowledge, and identity against the EE campaign change objectives before watching our content.
● Participants will engage with the economic empowerment campaign components through a range of online community activities/tasks. The research will explore likes and dislikes, the relevance of content, ease of navigation (website).
● An end line survey would be run after participants have had enough time to engage with content. Participants will repeat the baseline survey to measure the impact of the content. This can be conducted in various permutations and combinations of content exposure to identify the effectiveness of each format.
We will look for details in proposals on considerations and recommendations for:
Number of Research activities
To be discussed
Duration
We envision a 2 weeks activity but are open to suggestions
Sample
We anticipate a minimum of 150 participants to measure significant differences between baseline and end-line surveys. But welcome recommendations here
Recruitment and Target Audience
Gender
Female
Age
16-22 y.o. [cohort analysis - 16-18 ; 19-22]
Socio Economic Class
C, D
Locations
Hindi speaking belt [the following cities/states] :
Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand
Digital Access
Owns or shares a smartphone with internet access
Safeguarding and Ethics
The successful agency must adhere to Girl Effect protocols and safeguarding measures during all stages of research. This will ensure all girls’ participation will be conducted within a safe and secure process. Ethical approval will need to be submitted to the relevant ethical board to ensure the research takes place with the proper permissions.
Consent must be obtained from girls, and for girls under 16 from their parents, with consent forms that clearly state that at any time, research participants are free to decide to leave the research should they feel a reason to do so.
Care also should be taken by the successful agency to maintain the confidentiality of the information provided by the respondents during the community. Informed voluntary consent should be taken before starting community and parent/caregiver consent obtained for a minor. If an individual refuses to participate, they should not be compelled to participate or demoralized by any means. These cases will be treated as no-response under this survey. The research team must all undergo safeguarding training per Girl Effect’s safeguarding procedures and sign the Girl Effect safeguarding policy.
All data must be stored in password-protected electronic files and shared with Girl Effect via a secure file transfer protocol (FTP)
INTENDED TIMEFRAME:
Terms of reference published: Monday 28th Feb
Deadline for responses: Monday 14th March
Supplier selection, contracting and briefing: April first week
Project commencement: April first week
Content pieces will be ready to test by the week of 16th May [approximate] so baseline (pre-exposure) responses should be completed by this time. Please provide timelines with your proposal detailing activities before and after fieldwork.
WHO YOU ARE
Skills and Expertise
● Experience in designing and conducting online communities
● Access to a suitable online community platform
● Capacity to deliver all areas expected of this research from recruiting to our sampling criteria to developing and managing the online community, ensuring quality assurance and working in line with research ethics principles
● Experience in designing and conducting online communities in India, especially with children/girls, preferably in multiple regions
● Experience in research with minors and adolescents and of safeguarding policies and procedures
● Excellent and demonstrated understanding of Child Protection/ Safeguarding and ethical issues in research
● Excellent online community management and data quality control strategies
● Ability to conduct a risk assessment and mitigation plans for research
● Proven record of effectively managing relationships with research partners
● Excellent interpersonal skills and demonstration of effectively managing relationships with research partners
● Exceptional communication and organization skills
● Ability to respond to comments and questions in a timely, appropriate manner
● Experience in delivering outputs on time and on budget
PROPOSAL SUBMISSION
Interested consultants are requested to submit a brief proposal ( 5-10 pages), setting out:
● Technical proposal for meeting the objectives and achieving all responsible areas outlined
● Details about team members and their roles within the research team
● Work plan with a timeline
● 1 attached sample of previous similar work (if possible)
● Contacts of three referees (these will be contacted to obtain a reference)
A detailed budget proposal. Technical and Financial bids should be submitted as separate documents. Financial proposals (in INR) will not be opened until the conclusion of the technical evaluation and only for those deemed qualified and responsive proposals.
The budget submitted alongside the technical proposal needs to be a detailed, itemized activity budget (not just the provision of daily rates and expenses). Please include the following elements:
● All fees
● Expenses
● Taxes
REPORTING
This engagement will be managed by the Senior Manager of Evidence and Insights.
EVALUATION CRITERIA
The criteria against which proposals will be evaluated are listed below:
Demonstrate the capability and capacity to meet the requirements of this RFP - 15%
Methodology and approach in implementing the project - 20%
Demonstrated experience in carrying out research methodologies similar to online communities - 20%
The team that will be working on the project has relevant experience - 10%
Evidence of a minimum of three contactable references signed - 5%
Value for money/proposed budget breakdown - 30%
GE is not liable for any cost incurred during the preparation, submission, or negotiation of the award/contract. All submitted documentation and/or materials shall become and remain the property of GE.
TAX
Applicants are advised to ensure that they have a clear understanding of their tax position with regards to provisions of their local jurisdiction tax legislation when developing their proposals.
DISCLAIMER
GE reserves the right to determine the structure of the process, number of short-listed participants, the right to withdraw from the proposal process, the right to change this timetable at any time without notice and reserves the right to withdraw this tender at any time, without prior notice and without liability to compensate and/or reimburse any party. GE shall inform ONLY successful applicant(s). The process of negotiation and signing of the contract with the successful applicant(s) will follow.
EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES
Girl Effect is committed to equal opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, gender, gender identity or expression. We are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace.
We are committed to building an organization that is increasingly representative of and works extensively with the communities that we serve. To this end, due regard will be paid to procuring consultancy service organizations and individuals with diverse professional, academic and cultural backgrounds.**
How to apply:
HOW TO APPLY
Please submit proposals, as described above, to suppliers@girleffect.org by March 23rd 2022, 5:00 pm IST latest. Please clearly mark your email with the subject “‘Online Community Testing”’
Questions/Clarification should be emailed to niharika.sharma@girleffect.org and copied to suppliers@girleffect.org
Please email suppliers@girleffect.org to get a PDF format of this RFP as some of the info here might be misinterpreted because of the formatting.