Human Centred Design Experts and Coaches to Lead HCD Processes among youth development partners in Kampala and Arua Districts – Aga Khan Foundation

Aga Khan Foundation

The Aga Khan Foundation (AKF) is an agency of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), a group of private, non-denominational development agencies that share a mission to improve the living conditions and opportunities of marginalized communities in target countries across Africa and Asia. AKF was established by His Highness the Aga Khan in Switzerland in 1967 and began working in East Africa in 1974. In Uganda, AKF operates a multi-sectoral portfolio that includes programming in Education, Economic Inclusion, Civil Society, Health, and Early Childhood Development predominantly in the Central and West Nile Regions. AKF is committed to ensuring that girls and boys, women and men, are equipped with the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values to help them interact effectively with the world and be contributing members of a pluralistic society.

Background

Schools2030 is a new globally informed, locally rooted 10-year longitudinal action research and learning improvement programme that searches for and supports positive deviance about ‘what works’ in equipping learners in marginalized contexts with the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values needed to become contributing members of society. The project will enable teachers and school stakeholders to co-design, implement, and measure new school-level solutions to identify what works to improve students’ learning outcomes. Schools2030 will track the relationship between the school-level, gender responsive solutions and the holistic learning progression of boys and girls and young women and men in three cohorts (ages 5, 10 and 15 years old) from 2020 to 2030.

Background to the consultancy

The successful agency or individual design coach will specifically work with a team 3 Youth Development partners to provide mentorship and technical support to design and implement context driven solutions addressing ICT, Entrepreneurship and Self Efficacy as core skills. The Design coaches will partake at least 3 design teams composed of 10 diverse participants who will undertake an HCD process to explore and identify the challenges to be solved based on the everyday lived realities.

Based on these processes, the Design coach will prototype new or existing solutions to support the Youth Development partners implement impactful and scalable solutions in their diverse contexts. It is NOT expected for all solutions to be successful, but it is anticipated that, by the end of the process, these teams will jointly have developed approximately four to five awesome products to be further tested and incubated across other partners.

The solutions designed are intended to,

1. Promote literacy and numeracy among out of school youth.
2. Support out of School youth advance their employability skills and access to decent work.
3. Support Out of school youth attain self-efficacy, confidence and improve their state of mental health and emotional well-being.
4. Support 3 diverse teams of young people create a community of practice that will provide financial and technical resilience to market dynamics.

AKF is looking for a firm/companies with the following skills:

• Familiarity with inclusive social protection and jobs programs/policies.
• Excellent knowledge of qualitative methods in conducting informative and practical mentorship with a touch of life skill and financial literacy.
• Proven experience designing and implementing apprenticeship programs.
• Experience supporting programs with out of school youth
• Experience supporting programs using coaching as a growth model.

Scope of Work

The team of digital innovators will be expected to:

• Review existing non formal education needs assessment reports and all other relevant documentation related to Kampala and Arua earlier conducted by Schools2030 and other likeminded agencies
• Propose digital innovations that are at development stage or have already been tested and proven to be effective for promoting non-formal education and safeguarding in poor urban communities of Arua and Kampala.
• Work as design coaches supporting design Teams design to:

1. facilitate face-to-face workshops and beneficiary boot camps
2. Providing on-going support (Both in the field based and remotely)

Recognizing it is NOT expected for all solutions to be successful (given it is the nature of these processes) critical to this will be supporting these teams to embrace learning from ‘failure’, funnel solutions, and effectively collaborate across communities to distil approximately three to five high impact digital non formal education and community AGFY led solutions.

• Support HCD teams to co-design the ‘incubation strategy’ to enable the high potential solutions to be further tested across communities in Kampala and Arua (Such solutions should also encourage use of data free or a combination of online and offline gadgets and Apps)
• Lead introductory trainings for use of the successful solutions to support team members to develop knowledge, understanding and skills of adapting the innovations.
• Support documentation of the key learning trajectories

Expected Qualifications and Experience

• Demonstrated examples of delivering non formal innovations in low-resource settings that have enabled design teams to collaborate and design high potential solutions for social change
• Ability to deliver innovations in contexts with a high linguistic diversity
• Prior experience working without of school youth from marginalized on similar non formal education issues
• A demonstrated legacy of working for positive social change
• Some understanding of HCD processes or coaching as a growth Model will be an added advantage
• Experience of supporting Gender Equity interventions.
• Commitment to respect safeguarding of vulnerable populations including children, women, the elderly, and people living with disabilities.

Criteria for selection

All submissions will be assessed on the following criteria

• Technical proposal 40%
• Technical experience 30%
• Value for Money 30%