Call for Expressions of Interest

Anticipated timeframe: Between 6 January 2025 through to 31 March 2025

Location: Kampala, Uganda Country Office

Sightsavers works with partners in over 30 countries across Africa and South Asia to eliminate avoidable blindness and support the empowerment of people with disabilities to learn, earn and participate equally in society.

In Uganda, the National Programme to Eliminate Lymphatic Filariasis (PELF) has implemented the WHO-recommended elimination strategy. It has focused on an annual Mass Drug Administration (MDA) campaigns and Indoor Residual Spraying (IRS) to kill mosquitoes, administered across all endemic communities, as well as implementing a Disease Management and Disability Inclusion (DMDI) approach to alleviate suffering from both the physical and psycho-social consequences of the disease.

The FCDO-funded Eliminating LF in Africa (ELFA) programme in Uganda focuses on DMDI. It will invest in Mass Drug Administration (MDA), Social and Behavioral Change (SBC), and Health Systems Strengthening (HSS).

Purpose

We are looking to engage an experienced social scientist to lead and support social, and behaviour change analysis, research, and strategy development and support for the delivery of that strategy for the NTD LF project in eastern Uganda.

Scope of Work/deliverables

• Conduct a literature review of existing research and case studies
• Facilitate focus group discussions and interviews with key external stakeholders
• Design and implement quantitative and qualitative data collection methods and analyse the data to identify trends, gaps, and opportunities for intervention.
• Garner behavioural insights
• Represent Sightsavers at external stakeholder meetings
• Facilitate a co-creation workshop with key stakeholders to develop a comprehensive strategy as to future SBC activities
• Assist in identifying relevant Social and Behavioral Change materials
• Propose a monitoring and evaluation framework

Timeline

The consultancy is expected to take up to 60 person days of the consultant’s time from 6 January 2025 to 31 March 2025.

Sightsavers will welcome expressions of interest from qualified independent evaluators or consultancy companies. An individual or team with members located in Uganda would be preferred. The consultant and team members should have the following core competencies and experience.

Consultant’s expertise

• Strong knowledge of different social science and/or anthropological research and analysis paradigms and methods, including both quantitative and qualitative approaches;
• Demonstrable experience of work in social and behaviour change analysis and research within or contributing to international development projects in Africa, specifically in the Uganda context.
• Insight into current issues and best practice in social and behaviour change research and analysis in the international development sector, including frameworks, approaches and methods
• Depth of experience in social and behavioural field research and analysis techniques and the development of insights to be used in SBC intervention design
• Experience of managing social and behavioural research and/or analysis, preferably in the areas of health and/or disability.
• Preferable experience in using participatory and inclusive methodologies for research and analysis, including planning, designing and delivering final reports
• Preferable experience in capacity building, leading research on social behavior change and training
• Experience in delivering guidance from a distance
• Preferable experience identifying, synthesizing and dissemination best practices and project learning
• Excellent analytical thinking and ability to convert social and behavioural research into practical programmatic insights
• Strong ability to develop and adapt programming guidance tools and other resources and materials
• Able to travel to the project field location frequently.

A consultant/consultancy with a proven track record in the above will be procured to undertake the project through an expression of interest process.

The deadline for the consultant/consultancy to submit their bid is Wednesday 4 December 2024, 6pm GMT UK.

Interviews are intended to be conducted from 16 December 2024 onwards. The interview process will be conducted virtually using Microsoft Teams, with an interview lasting up to 1 hour. A second interview may be conducted if required.

Please note due to the high volume of applications we reserve the right to close this ad early.

Payment Terms

Payment terms will be agreed between the Consultant and Sightsavers at interview.

Full details of the project, Scope of Work, Key Deliverables can be found within the ToR.

How to Apply:

To express your interest to undertake this assignment, please read the complete ToR, and complete our Expression of Interest (EoI) which can be found clicking here Apply.

The EoI response should include the number of days input, as well as a proposed workplan and indicative budget, daily rate for the assignment and any other anticipated expenses.

Interested bidders are also requested to include a couple of examples of previous similar work.

Selection Criteria:

Sightsavers is committed to running a fair and transparent tender process and ensuring that all bidders are treated and assessed equally during this process.

Bidder quotation responses will be evaluated against Essential Criteria, Capability Criteria, Sustainability Criteria and Commercial Criteria. These criteria have been especially created to help SCI determine which bidder is able to offer the best quality and most commercially competitive solution to meet our needs and deliver the most effective programming to our beneficiaries.