ENGAGE hires a Ukrainian consultant to evaluate ENGAGE’s contribution to strengthening Ukraine’s civic education ecosystem; to evaluate the quality of civic education, both curricular and CSO-led; to assess the sustainability of curricular civic education; and to garner lessons for further government, donor and CSO strategies, approaches, and programmatic directions, also considering Russia’s unjustified war on Ukraine.
I. BACKGROUND
Pact is an international development nonprofit that works on the ground in nearly 40 countries to end poverty and marginalization. We partner with local organizations, businesses, and governments to build lasting solutions for thriving, resilient communities. Our vision is a world where everyone owns their future. Pact has worked in Ukraine since 2006 in the areas of governance, capacity development, and health. Building on a decade of experience, we address key challenges facing civil society organizations in Ukraine.
This Request for proposals (RFP) is a part of the Activity to Enhance Non-Governmental Actors and Grassroots Engagement (ENGAGE). The purpose of ENGAGE is to increase citizen awareness of and engagement in civic activities at the national, subnational, and local level.
The goal of this RFP is to hire a Ukrainian consultant to evaluate ENGAGE’s contribution to strengthening Ukraine’s civic education ecosystem; to evaluate the quality of civic education, both curricular and CSO-led; to assess the sustainability of curricular civic education; and to garner lessons for further government, donor and CSO strategies, approaches, and programmatic directions, also considering Russia’s unjustified war on Ukraine.
Over the past six years, ENGAGE has accomplished key deliverables that led to tangible results. This is particularly the case under ENGAGE’s objective 1 (Enhance civic education), with the introduction of multiple mandatory civic education courses and thematic modules, along with textbooks and supporting documentation in curricular education, developing teachers training modules, and conducting widespread behavior change campaigns targeting students, parents, and educators alike. In the past six years, ENGAGE has also supported a variety of CSO-led civic education programs as well as civic education connected with policy advocacy. Learning from ENGAGE’s mid-term evaluation, in the past few years ENGAGE has focused on improving the teaching quality and strengthening a holistic system of donors, implementers, local actors in civic education.
Capitalizing on education reforms and early stakeholder discussions, Pact planned to work with government ministries and civil society actors to design and pilot civic education curricula based on active-learning methodologies, opportunities for safe dialogue, and experiential/service learning. Grant support was designed to encourage innovative use of sports, arts, and youth clubs in promoting civic education and provide concrete opportunities for citizen participation via explicit links to advocacy initiatives supported under Objective 2.
Building on evidence that formal and informal civic education must link theoretical concepts with practical applications, Pact planned to work with the Ministry of Education and Science (MOES), the Ministry of Youth and Sports (MOYS), CSOs, and international experts to promote hands-on civic education and citizen participation that bolsters Ukraine’s evolving democratic culture. The MOES reforms was believed to have created a conducive environment to introduce civic education as a standalone subject in the mandatory coursework. Other shifts of education reform provided space for mainstreaming civic education into existing curricula. The time seemed ripe as teaching “civics” was seen as antiquated, pseudo-nationalistic, and factually incorrect at the time.
II. SCOPE OF WORK
In addition to aiming to introduce civic education in the formal education system, ENGAGE complemented school-based civic education with support for CSO-led civic education, with accent on inclusion, anti-corruption, and reform topics connected to reform advocacy.
As programming evolved and lessons were drawn also as a result of ENGAGE’s mid-point internal and externally-led learning, Pact zoomed in on improving the quality of formal and informal civic education and move towards sustainability of the civic education system involving multiple pressing themes and a variety of actors and approaches. ENGAGE was to apply systems practice to find links, establish connections, improve collaboration amongst civic education actors and themes they are working with. ENGAGE was also to update teaching tools and improve teachers’ training on delivering civic education subjects.
ENGAGE was expected to achieve the following programmatic results:
- Citizen understanding of fundamental roles and responsibilities within a democratic society increased.
- Citizen awareness of corruption increased.
- Understanding and recognition of the importance of civic education among school administrators, teachers, and parents increased.
- Competencies of teachers and administrators responsible for delivering civic education curriculum increased.
- Citizen participation in extracurricular civic education initiatives increased.
- Availability of sector specific, practicum modules to supplement formal civic education increased.
- Access to civic education resources (modules, courses, activities, etc.) maintained during public health crisis or other unforeseen circumstances.
- Visibility of creative approaches to increasing civic education among Ukrainian citizens increased.
- Sustainable framework for delivery of formal and informal civic education initiatives developed.
- Partnerships between relevant government bodies, private and civic sectors committed to advancement of civic education initiatives created.
ENGAGE and its partner organizations worked with:
- MOES
- MOYS
- Oblast Institutes of Post-graduate Pedagogical Education (OIPPE)
- 9 Pedagogical Universities
- 25,000 10th graders and 3,500 teachers of civics from 1444 schools via online civic education
- Up to 200,000 of 10th graders via the mandatory civic education course
- Schoolchildren via extra-curricular activities and ICT tools
- Adult population via extra-curricular activities and media campaigns.
Purpose: To provide an evidence-based analysis of the project’s impact on curricular civic education by assessing outcomes, identify overarching lessons learned for the Ukrainian civic education ecosystem, including making recommendations for future programming.
Objectives:
- To evaluate ENGAGE’s attribution (or contribution) to strengthening Ukraine’s civic education ecosystem, in particular in the sphere of curricular education.
- To evaluate the quality of civic education, both curricular and CSO-led.
- To assess the sustainability of curricular civic education.
- To garner lessons for further government, donor and CSO strategies, approaches, and programmatic directions, also in light of Russia’s unjustified war on Ukraine.
Duties and Responsibilities:
Task 1: Inception research to fine-tune research questions and finalize research plan.
Task 2: Qualitative and quantitative research addressing the purpose, objectives, and research questions.
Task 3: Develop comprehensive evaluation report (in English).
Task 4: Presentations: of inception research and draft final report (in English).
Research questions:
- How sustainable from the technical point perspective is the current civic education ecosystem, especially in the war-torn curricular education system?
- How has the quality of curricular civic education teaching improved?
- How has CSO-led civic education improved its quality over quantity?
- How have civic education efforts impacted citizen’s civic literacy both in terms of knowledge and behavior?
- What gaps remain for future programming, especially in ensuring inclusion of marginalized, vulnerable, and hard-to-reach population and strata in the curricular education system?
Deliverables:
- Final workplan
- Inception research
- Draft PPT in-brief accompanying the inception report.
- KII guide templates / FG guide templates
- Stakeholder survey questionnaire
- Beneficiary survey questionnaire
- Surveys’ data tables in XLS, CVS, SPSS/Stata/R/similar
- Surveys’ data charts in PPT
- Draft final report (in English)
- Draft PPT out-brief to donor, stakeholders, beneficiaries accompanying the draft final report.
- Final report after final donor, stakeholders, beneficiaries out-brief/feedback, including documentation as annexes.
It is expected that at least:
- 500 civic education teachers, school administrators, schoolchildren and their parents will be surveyed online,
- 15 focus groups of beneficiaries and stakeholders organized, and
- 40 key informant interviews conducted.
Place of Performance: All services required under this solicitation will be performed in Ukraine.
Period of Performance: All services required under this solicitation will be delivered from June 20, 2023, and will conclude by November 30, 2023
Qualifications:
- Technical knowledge, skills and expertise in monitoring and evaluation (M&E) concepts.
- Technical knowledge of curricular civic education programming, approaches, impact.
- Demonstrated experience in developing research tools (online surveys, focus groups, key informant interviews).
- Strong analytical skills to support both qualitative and quantitative research.
- Excellent writing and presentation skills.
- Fluency in English is preferable.
III. SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS
- Submission of Questions: All questions or clarifications regarding this RFP must be in writing and submitted to kbondar@pactworld.org no later than 17:00 on June 1, 2023 (Kyiv time). The subject line should contain: “Questions to RFP P4767-2023-07”. Questions and requests for clarification, and the responses thereto, will be circulated to all RFP recipients who have indicated an interest in this RFP.
Additionally, a Q&A online session scheduled for June 2, 2023 16:00 – 18-00 to provide comprehensive clarifications for all the interested potential vendors. We will provide a link to the meeting prior the date.
Documentation required for application:
- Resume/CV. Short profile(s) of the prime applicant/team lead featuring expertise and experience relative to the goals and objectives of this RFP.
- Resume(s) of the consultant(s) or expert(s) engaged into the implementation of the tasks additionally to the prime applicant.
- Technical Proposal [the first page of the proposal must use the Proposal Cover sheet as per Attachment 1.]:
- Methodology or design
- Data collection methods and rationale for selection
- Sample and sampling
- Data analysis method
- Financial proposal (in UAH currency): Clearly stating the LOE with a requested rate per unit (per deliverableand/or per day/hour) for consultants.
Pact may require additional, more detailed budget information prior to issuing a contract.
- Submission of Proposals: The deadline for submission of proposals is June 09, 2023. Submissions must be forwarded in electronic format only (either PDF or Microsoft Word and Excel) to kbondar@pactworld.org. Offeror’s proposals should not contain any unnecessary promotional material or elaborate presentation formats (black and white is preferred). Offerors must not submit zipped files. Those pages requiring original manual signatures should be scanned and sent in PDF format as an email attachment. The technical proposal and cost proposal must be kept separate from each other. Please reference the RFP Number and RFP Name in the e-mail subject line. Offerors are responsible for ensuring that their offers are received in accordance with the instructions stated herein. Late offers may be considered at the discretion of Pact. Pact cannot guarantee that late offers will be considered.
IV. EVALUATION CRITERIA
- Review Process. Pact will establish a selection committee that includes representatives from various company departments and external professionals if necessary. All technical reviewers will be subjected to a screening process to eliminate any conflict of interest. Evaluation will be based on the criteria set forth in Section B. Evaluation Criteria.
- Evaluation Criteria. The award will be decided on Best Overall Value as determined by a Selection Committee based on the criteria set forth below, as demonstrated in the Offeror’s proposal. Only proposals conforming to the solicitation requirements will be considered. This RFP will use the tradeoff process to determine best value. That means that each proposal will be evaluated and scored against the evaluation criteria and expectations below, which are stated in the table below (100 in total):
- Qualifications (Expertise of an applicant and ability to perform tasks) – 40
- Technical Proposal (Methodology or design, Data collection methods and rationale for selection, Sample and sampling, Data analysis method) – 50
- Cost Proposal (Cost effectiveness) – 10.
V. TERMS AND CONDITIONS
Disclaimers
- Pact reserves the right to modify by written notice the terms of this solicitation at any time in its sole discretion. Pact may cancel the solicitation at any time.
- Pact may reject any or all proposals received.
- Issuance of solicitation does not constitute award commitment by Pact.
- Pact reserves the right to disqualify any application based on applicant’s failure to follow solicitation instructions.
- Pact will not compensate applicants for their response to the solicitation.
- Pact reserves the right to issue an award based on initial evaluation of applications without further discussion.
- Pact may choose to award only part of the scope of work in the solicitation or to issue multiple awards within the scope of work.
- Pact reserves the right to waive minor proposal deficiencies that can be corrected prior to award determination to promote competition.
- Pact may contact offerors to confirm contact person, address, and that the proposal was submitted for this solicitation.
- Pact may contact listed past performance references without notice to the offeror. Pact also reserves the right to contact other past performance information sources that the offeror did not list in the proposal.
- By submitting a proposal, the offeror confirms they understand the terms and conditions.
- Information pertaining to and obtained from the Offeror as a result of participation in this solicitation is confidential. The offeror consents to the disclosure of the documents submitted by the offeror to the reviewers involved in the selection process. Please note that all reviewers are bound by non-disclosure agreements.
Attachments
Attachment 1: Proposal Cover Sheet