Terms of Reference (ToR) for Preparation of Fund Seeking proposal

Project Title: Mobile Enhanced Resilience Improvement (MERI) in the Face of

Recurrent climate Variability and Extreme Events in the Tigrai National Regional
State (Kilte Awulalo and Raya Azebo districts) and Afar National Regional State
(Afambo, Asayita and Dubti districts)

Organization Background (Premier)

Organisation for sustainable Development (OSD) is a non-profit organization which
was registered as local NGO in 23/June/2011 pursuant to the Civil Society
Organisations (CSO) proclamation. It has a general Assembly (GA) at the apex and
board of director with a board of director that leads the overall activities through its
office secretariat. OSD has been established by community initiative with the intention
that strives to build sustainable community development and in the long run to
contribute to relieved poverty and improved food security status of the community
within the radar of environmental protection interventions as well. Hence, OSD is
emerged towards making interventions on issues pertinent to climate change, livelihood,
water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), health, disaster preparedness, adaptation and
mitigation with timely (early warning with early actions) responses to ensure
sustainable resilience to any of unexpected hazards.
OSD has a vision to see a prosperous people in a sustainable natural environment, and
pillar mission to create a better future through community based integrated natural
resources protection, creating access to clean and alternative source of energy,
livelihood development, providing clean and potable water with promoting sanitation
and hygiene, creating access to health and education for vulnerable groups and relief
programme during emergency.
OSD has an overall goal to improve the social and economic sectors with the integration
of environmental protection for sustainable development of the country through allied
specific objectives:
 To work on environmental protection for sustainable development of the country
 To enhance the livelihood development of vulnerable groups including refugee
communities
 To create alternative source of energy with reducing of carbon emission
 To build the resilience of vulnerable groups in refugee and host population to disasters
 To provide clean and potable water including sanitation and hygiene promotion for
needy communities
 To improve the health situation of vulnerable groups including refugees through
increasing attitude of the community and access to health service
 To increase household income and economic activities through agricultural and
livelihood development programmes
 To create conducive environment so that non-government organisations in the country
will have active involvement in the sustainable development
Currently, the organization has positioned experience in two national regional states,
Tigrai Region and Afar Region. The intervention locations/districts are among the many
identified epicenter and hotspots of both anthropogenic and natural disasters particularly,
droughts and floods. The very erratic rainfall pattern and recurrent El Nino and La Nina
induced droughts coupled with showery and disturbed air conductions caused flooding
that triggers displacement and depletion of assets like livestock, crops failure, and
occurrence of both animal and human diseases.
As part of response and measures to face these challenges, OSD has been implementing
diverse projects and created impacts on the livelihood and food security of both host
and refugee (Afar Camps) communities through adoption of integrated and climate
smart practices like agro-forestry and nursery establishments, small-scale irrigation and
backyard gardening, disaster risk mitigation such as flood diversion and gabion shelters,
and more. The organization has benefited some 5000 refugee households by introducing
multi-storey gardening who deemed to have limited agricultural/farm-size.
Moreover, large number of households adopted small scale agriculture supplemented
with adequate tap water and cattle/livestock troughs and good sanitation and hygiene
behaviors.
Nowadays, the demand and benefit of information and advisory services is becoming
vital component of many integrated interventions like agriculture, climate, environment,
health, nutrition, early warning and early actions, water, sanitation, hygiene, value
chains, and more.
Both official reports and observations support the reality that there is increased
penetration and tele-density rates in rural areas of Ethiopia including the most remote
and underserved communities. However, the poor are only utilizing the mobile phones
for communication purposes and there is both untapped and unlocked potential of this
information sector with some enhancement.
Of course, there are many diverse platforms available to digitally enhance the
developmental interventions like the SMS system, USSD system, IVR system, and the
like.
OSD intends to adopt the IVR (Interactive Voice Response) system for improving
access, efficiency, coverage hereby foster more up-take of advisory and extension
services by both the host and refugee communities.
This makes the poor farmers, agro-pastoralists, pastoralists and other vulnerable groups
like refugees to access information on agricultural, nutrition, health, water, sanitation,
hygiene, disaster risk and early warning at spot on their simple mobile handsets
reducing transport and transaction costs.
The digital enhancement intends to extend information advisory and extension services
to the community with large-scale and accelerate and scaling-up of best fit innovative
practices in an integrated and holistic approach. This will further facilitate the reduction
in digital divide and increase the access and up-take of digital dividend across the poor
and marginalized community groups.
Hence, the organization decided to outsource an individual/group of consultants who
can develop a bespoke a fund seeking project proposal entitled as Mobile-Enhanced
Resilience Improvement (MERI) in two districts of the Tigrai Region (Raya Azebo and
Kilte Awulalo), and three districts of the Afar region (Afambo, Asayita and Dubti).
Description of the Assignment
The consultant should develop the proposal within the radar lens of climate variability
and extreme events like drought and flood. Local context interventions should
appropriately address the prevailing problems such as nutrition sensitive agriculture,
climate smart agriculture, and the like.
The proposal should clearly indicate the TELECOM and IT infrastructures required in
donation or procurement, the demand generation sensitization infrastructures, potential
overseas partnerships, and the underpinning frameworks.
Regarding service scope and dependability, the selected platform is the IVR-mobile
enhanced assumed to be video-automated and friendly function on all mobiles (ranging
from simple mobiles to mobile data like 3G and 4G) with quality E1 transmission.
Besides, Video-Van and Video Fan for Edutainment activities should be included as
part of participatory video production.
The IVR system should have an help-desk with capabilities to handle 100 simultaneous
in-bound/out-bound calls, in-coming call, out-going call, internal calling, caller line
identity (CLI) caller line identification presentation, call transfer, three-way calling, ring
group (hunt groups), multiple IVRs and auto attended, multiple music on hold, multiple
queues, call recording, time based announcement/IVR, pickup group, call forwarding,
abbreviated dialing, conference room, incoming call screening, call monitoring, call
recording, auto dialer, BLF (Busy Lamp Field), and echo suppression and cancellation.
The system is envisaged to report on key variables like total number of answered calls,
total number of answered calls in a queue and total number of answered calls by subject
specialists, total number of abandoned calls, total abandoned calls in a queue, total talk
time of subject specialists, total answered calls of subject matter specialists, total
number of answered calls of subject matter specialists, total and average hold time, total
hold time of calls that remained in a queue unless it was attended and average hold time
for all calls landed in a queue, hourly, daily, monthly and yearly base call log of subject
matter specialists, and all reported should be available in hourly, daily, monthly and
yearly basis.
Phases and modality of Payment
The organization will make payments in two stages:
Stage 1: A portion of some amount dubbed as Proposal Fee will be paid in two
successive terms: 30% during the initial kick off to prepare the proposal, and the
remaining 70% of this part will be paid after submission of the draft proposal document
to OSD by the consultant (s).
 Stage 2: the consultant(s) will be adequately in consent and available for presentation
and clarification of the proposal to any donor searched and found by OSD. In case a
donor is not timely available, it will be paused for a while. If OSD is successful in
finding donor negotiation, the consultant(s) will juxtapose to the project implementation
arena through advisory services, hardware and infrastructure platform configuration and
system enhancement through by extending partnership with domestic ICT firms and
international companies engaged in Mobile for Development services (M4Dev). The
payment amount and schedules after successful grant will be governed by explicit
contractual agreement between the OSD and the consultant(s).
Role of OSD
The organization will supply the information existing in the localities, available reports,
research and evaluation data, and also telecom service coverage and penetration across
the country and in the locale. Moreover, the technical team at OSD will have significant
say in amendment, inclusion and exclusion of activities based upon evidenced
information and local plausibility.
Expected Quality, time and level of effort
The proposal should comply with generic formats aligned to the digital information for
development and should be cascaded in to results chain (logical framework, indicators,
outcomes and outputs) with justifying numerical scales and as much as possible
demystified in to discrete actionable tasks.
One information sharing workshop on IVR-system will be held at OSD office in the
midst of the work to sensitize and enhance the active participation of the technical
project team.
The proposal should be completed and submitted on or before May 19/2018 G.C.
Expected deliverables
The consultant(s) is expected to deliver the following as outputs:
 Training presentation on IVR-system and a half-day sensitization training----phase one
of the agreement
 Complete fund-seeking Proposal submitted to OSD--------------phase one of the
agreement
 Patterning, configuring, and activation of the hardware and software infrastructures
----phase two of the agreement and justified by the dual contractual agreement
 Partnering with internationally renowned M4DEV companies like CABI
International, MANOBI, ESOKO, etc. and facilitation of international and domestic
workshops, coaching and mentoring of subject specialists----phase two of the
agreement and justified by the dual contractual agreement
 Overall command of shipping and transshipment instructions of IVR-Equipment
coming from overseas, clearance and piloting of the system on behalf of OSD----
phase two of the agreement and justified by the dual contractual agreement
Desired Consultant(s) Profile
The consultant(s) should have an educational background related to development,
climate change, economics, Value chain, agricultural economics, animal science, plant
science, public health and nutrition, and others with a minimum of first degree. The
individual(s) should have demonstrated evidence of preparing complex fund seeking
intervention proposals, good understanding of result chains and indicators across multi-
sectoral areas including the SPHERE, USAID, DFID, FEWSNET, GAIN, etc.