Project name: Putting Girls at the Core – Restoring Dignity around Menstrual Hygiene in Somalia
Location of the study: Puntland – Somalia
Organization: CARE International Somalia
Duration: 30 days
Start date: 25 Sept – 25 Oct
CARE is a non-governmental organization committed to working with poor women, men, boys, girls, communities, and institutions to have a significant impact on the underlying causes of poverty. CARE seeks to contribute to economic and social transformation by unleashing the power of the most vulnerable women and girls. CARE has been providing emergency relief and lifesaving assistance to the Somali people since 1981. The main program activities since then have included projects in water and sanitation, sustainable pastoralist activities, civil society and media development, small-scale enterprise development, primary school education, teacher training, adult literacy, and vocational training. CARE works in partnership with Somali and international aid agencies, civil society leaders and local authorities. CARE Somalia is currently operational in the northern regions of Puntland and Somaliland and south and central regions of Galmudug, Hirshabelle, Southwest and Jubaland. The strategy is to adopt a program approach to demonstrate impact and promote organizational learning; reduce the impact of emergencies on vulnerable communities, particularly women and children; improve governance and access to services and resources.
Putting Girls at the Core is a 4-year program funded by the Slaight Family Foundation to empower adolescent girls to take control of their menstrual health through girl-led research and the principles of human centered design to pilot and test new solutions to Menstrual Hygiene Management (MHM). The goal of the project is to improve basic human dignity and good health for adolescent girls in fragile and conflict situations in the Puntland region of Somalia. The project will directly reach 5,000 girls in 20 schools and 400 mothers and affect MHM for thousands more in future scale-up.
CARE works with Girls Empowerment Forums (GEFs) and mentors to implement a participatory monitoring system where GEF members will track research activities and dialogues. The impact of this project will be measured qualitatively, by tracking the changes in attitudes and practices and reported outcomes across girls, boys, teachers, parents and community influencers. Monitoring and evaluation data collected by The Girls Empowerment and Education Project (GEEPS), a Global Affairs Canada funded project, including school-level and household level data will be leveraged for this initiative. This will allow the project to capture the contribution of this intervention to girls’ education outcomes (attendance, retention, and learning); girls’ practices on MHM; and mothers’ attitudes and practices towards girls’ menstruation and activities during menstrual periods.
The projects seeks the following outcomes:
The GEEPS baseline Survey revealed the need to build strong knowledge around MHM and exploring sustainable sanitary product that will enable adequate sanitary product. Other studies also shows menstruation as a challenge affecting girls’ attendance and retention in schools due to lack of appropriate menstrual hygiene products coupled with social factors including social norms, FGM practices, health related issues, among others.
Overall, the study objective is to undertake formative research on MHM and the connection to FGM related health concerns to better inform its interventions. The study will also help inform the piloting of reusable sanitary products and sanitary kits provided to girls. Part of this study will include an exploration of the use of menstrual cups and whether it would be appropriate for the Puntland-Somalia context. The findings from this research will be disseminated widely across key actors in Somalia to ensure other interventions benefit from the findings.
The study to target community level of catchment area, around 10 communities/schools, that will be randomly selected, and it should provide analysis on the following segments:
Study participants should include WROs, community leaders, school leaders, parents, girls enrolled in the schools, Gender Unit of the Ministry of Education and SOMA Eco pads Company. Both quantitative (surveys) and qualitative (FGDs, KIIs, vignettes) methods are expected to be used.
In particular, the consultant will be expected to:
Person/Unit/Organization
Activity
CARE
Provide list of sample schools
Consultancy
Submit a detailed inception report for the study
Consultancy
Hire enumerators
Consultancy
Train enumerators on the tools
Consultancy
Pilot tools
Consultancy
Provide logistics and accommodations for enumerators during study
Consultancy
Desk review of relevant materials to the study
Consultancy
Develop data collection tools
Consultancy
Data collection including data quality assurance
Consultancy
Data analysis and cleaning
Consultancy
Write research report
Consultancy
Presentation of findings to CARE and key stakeholders
CARE will be expected to review all deliverables, provide feedback on tools, reports and presentations, conduct a secondary analysis of the data, and attend the training provided to enumerators. CARE will also supervise the data collection and organize logistics around data collection including providing lists of schools.
In reference to the scope of work, the consultant team is expected to submit the following:
CARE will review all deliverables and provide feedback to the consultant within three business days of receiving the deliverable.
The consultancy shall be executed within a maximum of 30 days commencing after signing the contract. The proposal should include a detailed schedule.
The budget prepared by the consultant/s should cover all the activities outlined above, including design, data collection, cleaning, analysis and reporting. This budget is inclusive of all costs covering team member costs, travel, research costs and any other costs associated with the completion of the work including where required costs for reasonable adjustment. The selected consultants are required to organize and fund their own duty of care arrangements as required.
The consultant/s is required to provide a costed proposal in the form of a price schedule that as a minimum should include:
The selected consultant/s are required to provide a payment schedule based on milestone payments for the successful delivery of each deliverable.
Proposals should include the following:
Qualifications: The selected consultant/s is required to clearly identify and provide CVs for all those proposed in the team, clearly stating their roles and responsibilities for the study.
The proposed person or team should include the technical expertise and practical experience required to deliver the scope of work and outputs, in particular, concerning:
The interested candidates are requested to submit:
Applications should be submitted to: SOM.Consultant@care.org. no later than 20-September-2022 and clearly indicating the subject line “Formative Research on MHM and FGM”