TERMS OF REFERENCE (ToRs) OF A CONSULTANT TO CONDUCT AN ASSESSMENT ON THE QUALITY OF SERVICES PROVIDED IN ECD FORMAL AND INFORMAL SETTINGS IN RWANDA.

Project: Contribution to the improvement of Early Childhood Development (ECD) service delivery in Rwanda.

Activity: Conduct an assessment on the quality of services provided in ECD formal and informal settings in Rwanda.

CATEGORY OF CONSULTANCY: Independent consultant, a team of consultants or a company.   

Job location:   Gasabo, Kamonyi, Bugesera , Musanze & Rutsiro districts.  

Duration of assignment: 46 days

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1. BACKGROUND

Save Generations Organization (SGO), is a Rwandan developmental and women’s rights Non- Government Organization (NGO) dedicated to promote, protect and advocate for children’s, youth and women’s rights and works to prepare, empower and equip the future generations with a vision of a community that is able to raise up generations full of hope, with good values, dreams, ability and action through creating space and providing opportunities to children, youth, and women for their integral development and healthy life enabling them reach their full potential.

Rationale

Early Childhood Development (ECD) is the holistic development of a child during the 6 first years of life in a socio-cultural context (physical, social, emotional, spiritual, moral, intellectual development).This education stage establishes a solid foundation of early life skills which are necessary for formal education and life in general and prepares them for later life, either academically socially, or emotionally. Early childhood development (ECD) is about supporting a child in these critical early years, providing holistic access to early learning, good nutrition, hygiene and protection. Nearly 800,000 children – 38 per cent – are stunted, preventing them from reaching their full potential in cognitive, motor, language and socio-emotional skills. In the long term, children who are chronically malnourished have a great chance of performing poorly in school. Just 18 per cent of children between ages 3 and 6 have opportunities to attend pre-school programmes, day care, or other early learning facilities.

Progress has been made after putting in place the ECD policy in 2016 as the Government of Rwanda made further steps of introducing a National Strategic Plan for Early Childhood Development (2018-2024) that was developed to speed up the implementation of the National Policy on ECD, and ensure it is in line with the national development objectives outlined in the National Strategy for Transformation (NST 2017-2024). It is a statement of intent underlining what should be done to ensure that Rwandan children are given a fair chance to survive, grow, develop and participate.

The gap in services provided by ECDs in Rwanda is a main challenge. The Ministry of Education developed a pre-primary competence-based curriculum in 2015, which helped ECD service providers to improve education as one of the ECD components. In 2016, the Ministry of Gender and Family Promotion elaborated the ECD minimum standards[2] to help ECD service providers improve the quality of their services; and community-based ECD facilities were also established in targeted communities, providing play-based learning and care for children aged 3-6 years. There is also a gap between the quality of services delivered in ECD at all levels, ECDs in formal settings provide standard services and equipped than those in informal settings. This gap is mainly caused by the level of skills, knowledge and competency of care givers, insufficient equipment and poor infrastructures in informal settings. The lack of skilled and competent care givers affects the child’s life since it’s recommended to provide a child with much attention during his/her childhood stage because that stage forms the kind of person, he/she will be in future. The lack of skills and incompetence of care givers and other duty bearers not only affects a child’s physical, psycho-social, emotional and cognitive development but also affects his preparedness to pre-primary education.[3]

Under the CS Engage Dufatanye program, Save Generations Organization in partnership with Never Again Rwanda supported by Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) intends to contribute to the improvement of the quality of ECD service delivery in Rwanda by implementing a project entitled ‘’Contribution to the improvement of Early Childhood Development (ECD) service delivery in Rwanda’’. It is in that regard that SGO is conducting an assessment on the quality of services provided in ECD formal and informal settings in Rwanda aiming at availing evidence for constructive recommendations on the improvement of the services delivered in ECDs in Rwanda.

Purpose of the assignment.  

To avail evidence for constructive recommendations on the improvement of the services delivered in ECDs program in Rwanda and support SGO to develop a policy brief.

Specifically,

The assessment intends:

• To avail data and evidence on the current status of the operation of ECD program in Rwanda
• To avail data and evidence on the gaps and challenges in ECD service delivery in Rwanda.
• To generate evidence-based recommendations to relevant stakeholders on the improvement of service delivery in ECD program in Rwanda.
• To develop a policy brief for advocacy purpose

Target population and scope of the assessment:

• 20 ECD including (1 home based, 1 community based, 2 Centre based and 1 school based ECDs) will be selected i.e. 5 ECDs per selected district.
• Children aged 0-6 yrs, parents, care givers, teachers, school leaders, sector and district officers, policy and decision makers from MIGEPROF, NCDA, MINEDUC, REB, RBC and other stakeholders.

Eastern province: Bugesera district (Kamabuye sector)

Southern Province: Kamonyi District (Ngamba sector/ Kabasare community)

Western province: Rutsiro district. (Mushubati & Manihira sectors)

Northern Province: Musanze district. (Muhoza sector)

City of Kigali: Gasabo district. (Rusororo sector/ Ruhanga community)

       2. SCOPE OF WORK/ KEY ACTIVITIES.

The following are the key tasks of the assignment;

• Submit an inception report.
• Elaborate, submit, validate and test assessment tools.
• Conduct the assessment in the mentioned scope of operation.
• Submission of 1^st draft of the report.
• Facilitate the validation of the assessment findings.
• Submission of the assessment final report.
• Produce and submit a policy brief.

NB: The ECD services to be assessed should be holistic including Nutrition, Health, Wash, parenting Education, School readiness and child protection & inclusiveness services.

      3. OUTPUTS/EXPECTED DELIVERABLES

The consultant will provide the following deliverables:

• Submitted inception report.
• Elaborated, submitted and validated research tools.  
• Conducted assessment.
• Submitted draft and final assessment report.
• Submitted policy brief. 

      4. DURATION OF THE CONTRACT

The consultant or group of consultants or company is expected to take 45 working days starting from the period of the contract execution.

      5. INSTITUTIONAL ARRANGEMENT

Save Generations Organization will contract an independent consultant who will work to undertake the assignment as described in this ToR. The consultant will work closely and report to the Project coordinator of the SGO CS Engage Dufatanye project as designated by the organization.

The Consultant will be responsible for the submission of the deliverables as requested. All deliverables submitted by the consultant should be validated and approved by the SGO technical team including project coordinator before any payment is made.

      6. PAYMENT MODALITIES

Payment modalities will be determined in the assignment contract and the consultancy fees will base on the available funds.

      7. REQUIRED SKILLS AND COMPETENCIES.

The independent consultant or group of consultant or company should at least have the following;

Essential:

• In depth knowledge and experience in Education and Early Childhood program in Rwanda.
• Proven experience in qualitative and quantitative research
• Good understanding of the policy formulation and implementation process of Rwanda.
• Experience in conducting national level assessments and research in line with child education & wellbeing and related research.
• Advanced degree in social sciences, education, childhood Development or child psychology, Development studies, child rights, political sciences and other relevant fields.
• Strong analytical, participatory and communication skills.
• Excellent written and spoken skills in Kinyarwanda, English or French.

Desirable:

• Proven experience in developing advocacy tools including policy briefs, position papers, advocacy papers and related tools.
• Proven experience in working with CSOs on different evidence-based advocacy related initiatives.
• Proven experience and skills to influence policies at different levels.
• Strategic ability to engage different stakeholders for constructive policy influencing and change including Government, Civil society and Private sector.

8. APPLICATION PROCEDURE

The interested candidates should submit their Expression of Interest letter addressed to the Executive Director of Save Generations Organization, CV, Technical and Financial proposals to Save Generations Organization (SGO) electronically via email: sgoprocurement@gmail.com  cc: savegenerationsorganization@gmail.com no later than 4^th August 2023, at 5pm /17h00. 

Done in Kigali, on 25th/07/ 2023  

Save Generations Organization