RFP-Baseline Study for project titled ‘WORK: No Child’s Business’ in the states of Bihar and Delhi

 

Deadline for receipt of proposals: 19^th January 2020

 

 

Save the children (SC) is India’s leading independent NGO and child rights organization. As of June 2019, we work in 16 states in India. Since its start in 2008, it has changed lives of more than 11.7 million children and has reached 5.06 million children directly, and 6.6 million children indirectly during emergencies such as natural disaster, humanitarian crisis, and disaster risk reduction. We believe ‘every child deserves the best chance for a bright future’, and that’s the reason we are committed to ensuring children not only survive, but thrive. We are proud to be the world’s leading expert on issues related to children, delivering lasting results for millions of vulnerable girls and boys.

 

 

Significant efforts will need to be made to reach the target of SDG 8.7, that is, to end all forms of child labour by 2025. SC in partnership and collaboration with international philanthropic organizations are stepping up to ensure progress on this ambitious goal. The intervention will work towards making a significant contribution to achieving this goal.

 

SC in partnership with its alliance partner will combine a supply chain approach and an area-based approach to address child labour and bring about synergy. The supply chain approach of most companies is top-down and set up in a vertical manner (through the supply chains). In the ‘Work: No Child’s Business’- programme, the efforts of companies will be complemented and strengthened by the horizontal (area) and bottom-up approach initiated by local communities, civil society organisations and trade unions.

 

Reaching intervention impact requires structural long-term engagement in area-based and governmental programmes, taking into account legislation and regulatory environments. It involves local community mobilisation and organisation, as well as ensuring a strong role by local and national authorities to embed area-based interventions in broader labour, education, and social protection policies and programmes. Local interventions is pallned to be supported by actions aimed at influencing relevant governments, businesses and supply chain actors and multilateral organisations. This includes lobby and advocacy for an enabling environment, responsible public procurement, compliance with national and international child labour laws, and the promotion of responsible business conduct at local, national and international levels.

 

Combating child labour, and protecting the rights of children, requires more than removing children from the workplace, as it involves the responsibility of companies towards children, families and communities. SC see a large role for the private sector in reaching sustainable solutions and will therefore work towards stimulating and supporting companies and supply chain actors to display responsible business conduct and respect for children’s rights in their supply chains by improving their due diligence process. At the same time, the SC will work with governments to promote the timely and effective implementation of existing responsible business conduct policy and laws.

 

 

In the backdrop of problem outlined in preceding paragraph, the child labour situation in India is alarming. Although the incidence of child labour has decreased in recent years, it is still a widespread reality in most parts of India. According to the official figures, the incidence of child labour has decreased by 2.6 million between 2001 and 2011. However, the decline was more visible in the rural areas, while the number of child labourers has increased in urban areas[1]. The last official figures from the Indian government, from 2011, indicate that 35,389,898 children up to 18 years old work permanently or marginally[2] of whom 8,228,481 children are between 5 to 14 years old[3]. These children work in different sectors such as agriculture, industry and the service industry. Child labour has different ramifications in rural and urban India. It is most prevalent among children from excluded social groups such as poor families, subsistence farmers, and landless households. There are many inter-linked factors contributing to the prevalence of child labour in India, with poverty being one of the main underlying root causes.

 

The Indian Government is committed to combat child labour. The Government is following a multi-pronged strategy for effective implementation of the Child and Adolescent Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act. In 2016 a Standard Operating Procedure was developed to tackle the problem of child labour involving statutory and legislative measures, rescue and rehabilitation, universal elementary education, social protection, poverty alleviation and employment generation schemes. The objective is to create an environment where families are not compelled to send their children to work. Despite these efforts, a high incidence of child labour remains especially in the regions Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan,

Madhya Pradesh and Maharasthra. Bihar and Rajasthan. Furthermore, as children from these high incidence states migrate to other regions, for example the National Capital Region, so prevalence of child labour is also high in NCR region as well.

 

 

Proposed intervention will contribute to the overall Theory Of Change of the programme with a specific focus on achieving structural reduction, rehabilitation and prevention of child labour in India by fostering multi-stakeholder partnerships to improve access to quality education, skills training, and protection and support for girls and boys impacted by economic/internal migration (SDG’s 8.7, 16.2, 5.2). The intervention will be focusing on garment and textile sector (NCR) and family agriculture and domestic work (Bihar). The programme interventions in these states will directly contribute to all intended outcomes.

 

The programme will focus on children and young people subject to or at risk of child labour and their families in rural and urban areas of Bihar and the National Capital Region. This mainly includes children involved in unorganised work and home-based work in garment, family agriculture and domestic work - often hidden, migrants both with family and unaccompanied and potential migrants for economic purposes. Regarding adolescents and young adults the programme will also focus on the improvement of their access to decent work.

 

 

The objectives with proposed baseline have been aligned with intervention outcomes. This will help to benchmark progarmme indicators at baseline level and impact assessment during endline line stage. The primary research objectives and sub-objectives of this baseline study are:

Note: Due to the nature of Outcome 4, it has been excluded from overall scope of this baseline study. Hence, no research objective has been envisaged for outcome 4.

 

Development of Sampling frame and identification of study participants: The agency should outline a method for developing a sampling frame to study.

 

Development of survey instruments: The selected agency need to develop questionnaire on the basis of pre identified key indicators for quantitative and qualitative survey. The list of indicators as well as LFA will be provided to selected agency by SC. However, the agency may propose any list of indicators in their proposal.

 

Constitution of field research team: The agency should propose a Team Leader/Principal Investigator, describe the size and composition of the field research teams and supervisory staff that would be employed in data collection staff (including their minimum qualifications) and the method to be used for recruitment, and describe in detail the roles of each staff member.

 

Data collection training: All members of the field research teams will be trained jointly by SC, and staff of the organization implementing the research. The training agenda will be developed and finalized collaboratively with the SC team. The agency should describe the resources the agency will make available for the training, including the qualifications and prior experience of training staff, facilities and equipment. Please be sure to include plans for ethical training and procedures for protection of human subjects.

 

Procedures for data collection and management: The agency should outline logistic procedures, including methods of transportation, obtaining ethical approvals, propose methods for supervision of the data collection teams, and discuss how the data will be organized, managed and secured and analysed. Field work and collection of data can only start after acquiring all ethical approvals.

 

Data analysis, report writing and recommendation: The agency should propose the software for data analysis and a process for joint reviews with SC. Data analysis plan and report would be reviewed by SC for quality assurance and finalized only after SC inputs. The report should highlight recommendation or suggestion for effectiveness of intervention.

 

The proposals should be sent through email. The financial proposal should be on organization’s / agency’s letterhead (signed and scanned pdf version). The Application comprising of technical and financial proposal should be addressed to Dr. Sharmistha Das at (s.das@savethechildren.in) Dr. Devesh Kumar Sahu at (d.sahu@savethechildren.in) Mr. Ayoosh Srivastava at (ayoosh.srivastava@savethechildren.in) with CC to Mr. Siddhartha Pande (s.pande@savethechildren.in)via e-mail by 19^th January 2020. The subject line of the e-mail should read: “Baseline Study for project titled ‘WORK: No Child’s Business’ in the states of Bihar and Delhi”.

 

Submission timeline of the proposal – 19th January 2020. Only short-listed consultant / organizations will receive an acknowledgment and will be called for personal interactions. Agency/Consultants who do not hear from us within three weeks may assume that their application has not been successful.

 

 

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