REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL
FOR
BASELINE DATA COLLECTION AND REPORTING
The Asia Foundation (the Foundation) is a non-profit international development organization committed to improving lives across a dynamic and developing Asia. Working through our offices in 18 countries and informed by deep local expertise and six decades of experience, we address the critical issues affecting Asia in the 21st century by strengthening governance, expanding economic opportunity, increasing environmental resilience, empowering women, and promoting international cooperation.
The Foundation invites applications from qualified national or international individuals or institutions to design and collect baseline data for indicator reporting for a five-year (2022-2027) USAID funded, Civil Society Media (USAID-CSM) program.
PROGRAM DESCRIPTION
The Civil Society and Media program, funded by USAID through the Civil Society and Media – Standing Together and in New Directions (CSM-STAND) Leader with Associates Award, is led by The Asia Foundation in partnership with Pact. USAID-CSM is a five-year program (2022-2027) to support ongoing and emerging civic engagement in areas that advance the interests of sub-national communities, particularly those with a history of challenges in engaging women, youth, and marginalized sections of their populations. Recognizing the disproportionate opportunities for state-citizen-civil society engagement through advancing state, community, and family education priorities, USAID CSM will focus on civic engagement related to access to and quality of education. Most activities will focus on providing open competition granting to those organizations and communities outside of Kathmandu in population dense Lumbini and Madhesh Provinces, with some activities implemented in Kathmandu.
CSM’s overarching goal is to support independent civil society and media led by and for women, youth and marginalized (WYM) communities to advance public interest, fundamental freedoms, and accountability. The program works to achieve this through mutually reinforcing activities under three inter-related objectives, while contributing to USAID’s Country Development Cooperation Strategy (CDCS):
- To foster an enabling environment for civic space where issues and interests of WYM communities are addressed.
- Increase WYM's engagement in civic and public spaces and advance their interests through better access to resources, assets, and skills.
- Improve availability of credible information and diverse narratives within media that better represent WYM issues and perspectives.
ABOUT THE BASELINE
The USAID CSM program grounds itself in result-based programming, the program engages in an iterative process to assess and understand the local context, monitor activities, and track its progress. As such the program has identified 41 -level indicators. This data collection exercise will enable the project to establish baselines against some of the indicators (details in sections below) to ensure that the program is able to track its progress effectively and efficiently throughout the 5-year program period.
PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
The purpose of the study is to collect relevant data to establish baseline values for relevant progress indicators of USAID CSM. The study will also provide narratives on social, economic, and political dynamics and their cause-and-effect relationships that can affect progress towards the targets for the indicators in future enabling the program to plan and adapt. This data and information will then be used to set targets for the program.
Following are the specific objectives of the study:
- Collect relevant data to establish baseline values for USAID CSM indicators.
- Identify social, economic, and political dynamics, and their cause-and-effect relationship that can influence the indicator.
- Provide recommendations to programs to assist in target setting.
- Provide recommendations that can contribute to effective designing of programs to achieve targets.
For Detailed ToR please CLICK HERE
