Consultant

In December 2017, Sesame Workshop and the IRC were awarded the MacArthur Foundation’s inaugural 100&Change grant to make real progress toward solving a critical problem of our time and received $100 million to bring early education to refugee children. With this extraordinary investment, our partnership will transform the language, early reading, math, and social-emotional skills of a generation of children ages 0-8 affected by the Syrian war. Focusing on children in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Northwest Syria and Northeast Syria over the next five years, the Ahlan Simsim project combines the depth of in-person services, reaching 1.5 million children, with the breadth of mass media, reaching 9.4 million children. For more information, please visit: http://refugee.sesameinternational.org/.

Ahlan Simsim’s direct service ECD models aim for maximum replication and scalability through strategic partnerships with host governments and other actors, both to deliver at scale and to build more responsive, effective ECD approaches and broad engagement with partners on governance, design, and delivery. As such, a key function of the design is the capacity to work alongside these actors to enable them to adopt Ahlan Simsim program models.

The program seeks to see uptake of the program models and integration into national systems of education, health and social protection, seeding sustainability over time and having a multiplier effect impact on more and more children for years to come. The overarching goal is that young children affected by conflict and displacement have access to quality inclusive ECD services and support that enable them to achieve learning and development outcomes well beyond the lifespan of our intervention. To that end, modalities for collaboration include the potential to work with governments and partners to co-design and adapt Ahlan Simsim’s ECD models targeting children and their caregivers as well as focusing on work-force development to support and improve upon existing initiatives.[1]

The Ahlan Simsim team acknowledges that digital tactics and technology platforms provide a good opportunity to think about programming at scale. In addition, in the Syria Response region and due to ongoing displacement and populations movements there is a need to ensure maximum portability. As such we are looking to develop a comprehensive digital strategy that informs strategic ways to employ technology to better the program.

Terms of Reference: The Ahlan Simsim team is looking for a consultant for the following:

1.Conduct a mapping of current digital assets, including pre-existing Ahlan Simsim or IRC-ECD Digital assets as well as a mapping of other, similar digital assets that exist for the same target audience.

2.Define a menu of possible digital tools and strategies which will help Ahlan SimSim reach its program and scale goals, including things that can be either adapted or developed by and for Ahlan Simsim

3.The consultant will then develop a high level strategy that articulates:

a.The “desired state” of Ahlan Simsim digital programs

b.Value to key stakeholders

c.Role of key stakeholders

d.High level description of key products

4.Finally, a high level road map will be developed to achieve the desired state that articulates:

a.Actions by key stakeholders

b.Key milestones and timeline

c.Required inputs and expected outputs.

-Desk research data including transcripts from interviews, digital landscape research, list of key stakeholders, etc.

-Strategy document of no more than 20 pages

-Roadmap with key milestones and recommendations for resource prioritization

The consultant should submit a proposal that includes:

-Methods

-Workplan

-Other recommendations