Long Term Agreement (LTA) for on-call Photographers (as Individual Consultants)

Background

UNDP partners with people at all levels of society to help build nations that can withstand crisis, and drive and sustain the kind of growth that improves the quality of life for everyone. With offices in more than 170 countries and territories, we offer global perspective and local insight to help empower lives and build resilient nations.

For over 30 years, UNDP has been supporting the South Sudanese in their fight against poverty. With the formation of the independent Republic of South Sudan in July 2011, UNDP established a Country Office and has been working all over the country to help build resilient and sustainable government institutions.

With the rise of digital platforms, it is more important today than ever before to communicate through videos. Videos are one of the most effective, immediate and powerful ways through which UNDP can convey how our work improves people’s lives worldwide.

In this context, UNDP in South Sudan is looking to contract multiple photographers based in the region to deliver powerful images that demonstrate the impact of UNDP projects and initiatives in a range of areas where we work. A key ask of the photographer will be to deliver international quality images for sharing through UNDP’s global communications channels and to supply images for use by the media in the region.

Under the Long-Term Agreement (LTA) photographers will be empaneled under two categories for:

Category I: Photographing events and workshops across the country

Category II: Photographing results from projects and partnerships all across the country.

Duties and Responsibilities

LTA Objective and Set-up

The overall objective to set up these Long-Term Agreement (On Call) Contract, is to facilitate and expedite the process by which UNDP will hire the services of photographers in one of the two categories above, once there are specific assignments in the next two years. The assignments will typically be to photograph key outreach events and photo document the impact of UNDP initiatives.

Under the supervision of the Programme Management and direct guidance of the Communications Units, the photographer provides high quality still photography services. The photographer demonstrates a client-oriented approach, tact and ability to work with people of different national and cultural backgrounds. The photographer ensures effective and efficient provision of services, full confidentiality in all aspects of assignment, management of information flow and follow-up on deadlines and commitments made. In all activities UNDP commissioned photographers are to ensure dignity of subjects, particularly in the context of people living or affected by HIV and children.

UNDP has many project across South Sudan which from time to time, require photo documentation.

Competencies

• Excellent communication skills;
• Excellent photography skills and ability to deliver images that tell a story
• Ability to work with a multicultural environment and a multidisciplinary team;
• Willingness to travel to project sites (within South Sudan), no matter how remote.
• Demonstrates integrity and ethical standards;
• Positive, constructive attitude to work.

Required Skills and Experience

Category I: Photographing events and workshops across the country

• Education Qualifications: Degree in communications, arts, media or any relevant field
• Minimum 2 years of experience in documenting events and workshops
• Good communications skills and ability to conduct short video/audio interviews
• Preference to photographers with local language skills

Category II: Photographing results from projects and partnerships all across the country

• Education Qualifications: Degree in communications, arts, media or any relevant field
• Minimum 5 years’ experience (nationally and internationally) delivering on high profile projects
• Contributing extensively to national and international media outlets is an asset
• Excellent communications skills especially written for putting together captions, photo essays etc
• Preference to photographers with local language skills

Candidates must clearly indicate in their Technical Proposal the Category(ies) they are applying for. Candidates applying for more than one category should only send one submission. There is no restriction on the number of categories to apply, i.e. a Candidate could apply to 1 or categories; however, candidates are requested to go through the required qualification and experience requirements stated above and only apply to Categories where they meet such criteria. Evaluation will be based per-category as per details in below section.

Price Proposal and Schedule of Payments

Consultant must send a financial proposal based on Daily Fee in USD. Note: this Daily Fee will be the basis for UNDP to calculate rates below one-day duration: half-day rate will be 60% of daily fee. Note: for contract purposes “daily” would be understood as 8 hours of work, and “half day” as 4 hours of work.

Evaluation Method and Criteria

Individual Consultants will be evaluated based on the Cumulative Analysis methodology. The raking of photographers shall be made based on proposals that are a) responsive/compliant/acceptable; and b) having received the highest score out of set of weighted technical criteria and financial criteria as per below weightages (technical-financial): 70%-30% (Categories I and II) Financial score shall be computed as a ratio of the proposal being evaluated and the lowest priced proposal received by UNDP for the assignment.

Technical Criteria for Evaluation (Maximum 70 points) – Category I

Experience in photographing workshops/ events, in particular in-door events – Max 40 points

Experience with international development organizations  – Max 20 points

Only candidates obtaining 70% of the total technical points (49 out of 70 points and 42 out of 60 points) would be considered for the Financial Evaluation.

Technical Criteria for Evaluation (Maximum 70 points) – Category II

Degree in relevant field – Max 10 points

Relevant international and national experience – Max 20 points

Excellent communication skills with demonstrated experience in writing news stories, web stories, photo essays and other communications products – Max 20 points

Quality of portfolio – Max 20 points

Documentation required

Interested individual consultants must submit the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications. Please group them into one (1) single PDF document as the application only allows to upload maximum one document:

Letter of Confirmation of Interest and Availability using the template provided in Annex II.

Personal CV or P11, indicating all past experience from similar projects, as well as the contact details (email and telephone number) of the Candidate and at least three (3) professional references.

Technical proposal, including a) a brief description of why the individual considers him/herself as the most suitable for the assignment; b) Clear statement of the Categories s/he is applying for; c) Clear statement of the Region in East Africa where s/he is based; d) Link to online portfolios (only mandatory for applications to Categories I and II).

Financial proposal, as stating Daily Fee in USD. No other costs (e.g. travel) should be included in the financial proposal at this stage.