RFP: Inviting Agencies or consortium of agencies for building the capacities of civil society in the Global Fund Round 9 Programme titled “Pehchān”, to increase community reach and enhance quality of services.
 India HIV/AIDS Alliance (Alliance India)
 Location:
 Last Date: June 9, 2011

  REQUEST FOP PROPOSAL 

Inviting Agencies or consortium of agencies for building the capacities of civil society (CBOs[i] / NGO[ii]s working with MSM[iii], Transgender and Hijra community) in the Global Fund Round 9 Programme titled “Pehchān”, to increase community reach and enhance quality of services. 

Background

The India HIV/AIDS Alliance (Alliance India) is a diverse partnership that brings together committed organizations and communities to support sustained responses to HIV in India. Complementing the Indian National programme, Alliance India work through capacity building, knowledge sharing, technical support and advocacy. Through our network of partners, we support the delivery of effective, innovative, community-based HIV programmes to key populations affected by the HIV epidemic.  

About Pehchān programme - Alliance India is the Principal Recipient for a new five-year project funded though Global Fund Round 9, named ‘Pehchān’ which in Hindi means ‘identity’, ‘recognition’ or ‘acknowledgement,’ this project will strengthen and build the capacity of community-based organisaitons (CBOs) to provide HIV prevention programming for 4,53,750 MSM, Transgenders and Hijra in 17 Indian states. The programme was launched on 1^st October 2010.                                         

The Pehchān consortium includes Humsafar Trust (an Alliance Linking Organization), the Maan Foundation, SAATHII, Sangama, and SIAAP. These partners will work in selected states and provide organizational development, technical and capacity building support to CBOs. Over the next five years, Pehchān will work closely with MSM, Transgender and Hijra communities to establish 90 new CBOs with the pre targeted intervention (TI) services while strengthening 110 existing ones to increase the community reach and enhance the service uptake.  

By supporting the development of strong CBOs, Pehchān will address some of the capacity gaps that have often prevented CBOs from receiving government funding for much-needed HIV programming. 

Objective

To hire an agency or consortium of the agencies having an experience of organizing capacity building programmes for CBOs in  large volume  and conduct regional trainings in four zones namely West, South, North and East India. 

Specific objectives

·       To conduct training on 12 Modules towards building capacities of MSM, Transgenders and Hijra populations.

·       To conduct training for the staff of 200 MTH CBOs/ NGOs during the above mentioned period 

Capacity Building in Pehchān

The core mechanism by which Pehchān will build the capacity of CBOs is through training key CBO human resources in core service delivery packages. The trainings will be specific to the MTH community. Many CBOs have proven skills in HIV/AIDS prevention programmes but often their work is limited to HIV & STI commodity-driven services. Pehchan training will help to build CBO capacity to deal with the complex issues of mental health, psycho-social support, living with HIV, trauma and violence, organization management, leadership development and other related issues. 

Sub-objectives under this component include:

·       Transfer of the capacity building to the MTH CBOs.

·       Strengthen community systems that reach men who have sex with men, Hijra and transgender communities in India

·       Increase the number reached by community based activities and services for men who have sex with men, Hijra and transgender

·       Strengthen the relevant health system resources and increase the involvement of community systems

·       Increase knowledge and advocacy related for MSM, Hijra and transgender communities. 

Primary Target Group: The primary target audience is key staff of 110 existing CBOs and 90 new CBOs. Existing CBOs have a staff strength of 6 (Program Manager, Finance Officer, M&E Officer, Counsellor and 2 Outreach Workers) and new CBOs have a staff strength of 5 (Program Officer, Counsellor, Finance Officer & 2 ORWs). These people will be trained on the various thematic areas by using the 12 modules.  

Secondary Target Group: The Sub- Recipient (SR) staff and core trainers are the secondary target group of the capacity building programme, who will be responsible for the development of training schedules, monitoring and evaluation, reporting and quality control. The total 6 SR staff will be trained on all the modules.  

Key Beneficiaries: The total 4, 53,750, Men who have sex with Men (MSM), Transgender (TG) & Hijra individuals in 17 states will be the key beneficiaries, as they will receive the services provided by the strengthened CBOs.  

Capacity Building Framework

There are 12 Modules used for the capacity building of the MTH CBOs. These modules are the following: 

1.      Leadership & governance ( 1 & 1/2 day  module )

This module would focus on building leadership qualities at the individual and organizational level through developing leadership skills among the MTH communities to address challenges facing the MTH communities. Leadership qualities would involve taking lead, taking the movement ahead, taking responsibility and assisting larger community to identify and address the concerns / issues at local, state and national level. Governance would focus on building the organizational strength in respect of the management systems, crating healthy environment in organizations, creating re-addressal systems at organizational levels, enhancing and cultivating human resource within and outside the organization.  

2.      Organizational Development and Documentation & Communication ( 1 & 1/2 Days  module )

This module would focus on the building the long term goals and vision for the organization, creating the road map, strengthening the leaderships and effective organizational policies, systems to deal with the periodic organizational challenges within and outside the organizations.

The documentation and communication sub module would focus on improving the organizational strength on documentation and communication systems. This portion would also focus on data management and levels of communication. 

3.      Resource Mobilization & Financial Management ( 2 Days module)

This module would focus on the overall sustainability of the organization through establishing strong resource centers. The module would include mapping of the resource areas, linkages, advocacy for resource mobilization and ensuring systems for long term resource support. 

Sub module on financial mgmt. would be on strengthening the financial systems. The management of the grants & book-keeping (Journal, cash book, ledger & petty cash book) and tally accounting system.

4.      Identity , sexuality and gender issues ( 1 Day module)

This module would include information on various identities, genders and sexualities. It would create the supportive reference for the health care providers regarding the physiological, mental and emotional aspects of the various identities, sexualities which will support to generate enabling environment at the health care settings and increase the service update.    

5.      Family support and mental health  ( 2 Days modules)

This module would focus on creating enabling environment with families of MSM, transgender and Hijra. It would deal with the strategies / activities to create the larger support from the families for gender and sexual identities. The module would also deal with the issues pertaining to the mental health counseling for the community and the family. It would provide the strategies, approaches for the family counseling and the options for the community seeking for the family support. 

6.      Addressing Issues of Female Partners ( 1 Day module )

This module would deal on two important aspects namely, dealing with the issues of the female partners of the MSM transgender and Hijra and also to develop strategies for referrals to SRH facilities. This module would mainly talk about the linkage between mobilizations of the female partners of MSM to RTI, SRH clinics. It would deal with the counseling and mental health components related to this issue and also empowering MSM transgender and hijra community to take healthy decision regarding marriage aspects. It would also cover the issues of married PLHIV MSM. 

7.      TG – Hijra Issues ( 1 Day module )

This module would highlight the TG & Hijra specific issues and would try to address the issues pertaining to the Hijra community. The issues around SRS, hormonal therapy & feminization would be highlighted. The advance counseling to cope up with these critical issues would also be included. It would also deal with the issues pertaining to the substance abuse in the community.  

8.      Life Skill Education (1 & 1/2 Days module)

This module would deal with inter-personal skills, decision making skills, assertiveness and personal control, sex education, soft skills training information for livelihood especially for the transgender and Hijra community. The module would specifically talk about concept “saying no” and being strong for the healthy decision making regarding their overall health, social wellbeing and the lifestyle.  

9.      Friendly Services: Referrals & Linkage ( 1/2 Day module )

This module would focus on the establishing the client friendly health services, establishing and mapping of the client friendly services. Strategies and activities that would assist to create the friendly community services and increase the service uptake by the community members.  

10.   Trauma, Violence & Legal Rights awareness among the MTH community ( 1 Day module )

This module would focus on the vulnerabilities of the MSM transgender and Hijra community and the approaches to deal and address such incidences. The section would also touch base on the trauma and violence from family and partners and larger society. 

11.   Living with HIV – PLHIV issues among MSM, TG, Hijra communities ( 1 Day module )

This module would deal with the pre ART registration mobilization, building capacities of the MSM Transgender and Hijra community to deal with the specific issues of the community pertaining to the PLHIV component. The component would also deal with the psychosocial issues, nutrition, OIs complications and other related topics. It would attempt to talk about the home base care and community care centre referrals. Overall the component would deal with assisting communities to cope with the PLHIV issues, seek prompt and necessary support and create systems with in community to establish strong support system for the MSM, Transgender Hijra PLHIV 

12.   Community Preparedness & Local Level Advocacy (1 Day module )

This module would highlight the steps involved in community preparedness. MSM Transgender and Hijra community is dispersed and mostly unaware about the systems to be built within the community to cope up with the services that would be rendered by the policy makers, government units. The community is in need of the services, social entitlement and rights. However, many times when these rights, entitlements will be introduced the community may not be able to access them effectively or adopt the requisite approach. The component of the community preparedness prepares the community at the larger level for the long term goal. These goals would enhance, prepare and establish the systems within the community to prepare in better ways to understand the community issues, take timely measures and access the rights, entitlements of the community. 

Methodology

The total 887staff of 161 MTH CBO/NGOs would be trained on various modules and total instances of the trainings will 1136. The staff will be trained on more than one module as per requirements.  

Alliance India shall provide the capacity building agency or consortium of the agencies, the training plan of the CBOs (MSM, transgender and Hijra) as per their inception & location in each state. The training modules will be prepared by the Alliance India with the help of external consultants and will be readily provided for the training implementation.  A ‘TOT’ will be organized for the master trainers selected by the agency or consortium of the agencies by Alliance India. Further Agency will be responsible completely to roll the training programme at the regional level with help of their master trainers. The agency or consortium of agencies will be responsible for managing all logistical details within budgetary limits designated by the Alliance India. The training load details will be provided as a part of detailed training plan from Alliance India partners that will consist the number of trainings, instances per quarter and number of staff trained per CBO per region.   

The logistical arrangement of the conference hall, hotels needs to be community friendly and accommodative to the MSM, Transgender and Hijra people.  

The agency shall identify the master trainers in each region; among these master trainers the agency should ensure 50% MTH community representation. These master trainers should be fluent in the regional languages of the following states: 

 The training will be interactive & participatory in a manner that effectively transfers the skills & knowledge to trainees. As the trainees would come from diverse backgrounds in terms of education and work experience, and trainers should ensure that their approach is inclusive. The trainers should have relevant experience in working with the MTH community and conducting the state level trainings.  

Documentation & Reporting

The agency or consortium of the agencies will document the entire processes in respective zones (East, West, North & South) and will share the reports before the deadline fixed with mutual understanding and feasibility by the agency and Alliance India. The agency will provide the narrative report for all trainings along with all the required documentation. The agency is required to discuss each stage of the capacity building plans in detail with Alliance India before finally implementing it in the field. These Terms of Reference may be varied to reflect the changing needs of Alliance India.  This will be done in consultation with the agency.  The agency will be expected to work in a flexible and adaptable manner, responding to changing needs, priorities and context. 

The agency is required to share the plan for reporting & documentation in the proposal. 

Quality Control Mechanism

The agency or the consortium of the agencies needs to develop and submit the plan for training quality control and measuring the effectiveness of the trainings. This will involve putting into place a documented evaluation mechanism for every instance of training completed. There should also be a system put into place whereby necessary changes are identified, and modules are adapted, redesigned accordingly. This should be clearly articulated.  

Alliance India representatives will also conduct field visits and support the quality control systems through spot checks, back checks and other measures.  

The Alliance India representatives will be the part of the training to oversee the overall quality of the training. The agency will generate the mechanism to receive constant feedback on the trainers and accommodate the timely changes if need be.  

Core Competencies

·       Experience delivering dynamic trainings to a high volume of trainees from diverse a range of linguistic, cultural, and socio-economic backgrounds.

·       Provide documentation for every instance of training, including evaluations to assess trainees’ experience.

·       Development of a system to identify, communicate and in some cases implement necessary changes to training module content.

·       Ability to arrange food and accommodation for trainees within a specified budget during the trainings, and to follow a well-documented procurement procedure.

·       The expertise in the regional languages of 17 states is required.

·       Regional presence will be additive

·       Data base of the community trainers will be required

·       Understanding of the MSM, TG & Hijra issues would be an additive

·       Prior experience of working with communities is considerable.  

Timeline

      The Training Schedule: From June 2011 to September, 2012  

Request for proposal

The India HIV/AIDS Alliance is requesting the training agency or consortium of agencies to submit a detailed proposal (technical bid & financial bid) as per the outline given below: 

Contact information (Annex A) 

List of annexes requested with the proposal 

1.   Detailed rationale/calculations for budget*

2.   Training plan with timeline

3.   Documentation  and evaluation plan

4.   Quality control plan

5.   Brief note on relevant past experiences related to the trainings conducted by the agency (include names and addresses of the clients)

6.   Brief bio-data of key resource persons 

(*) Unit cost of the training will be at par with NACO budgetary guidelines

Annex-A

Contact Information

Submission of Proposals

Interested agencies and/or consortium of agencies meeting the eligibility criteria are requested to submit their technical and financial bids to the below given address :

The Manager: HR & Administration

India HIV/AIDS Alliance

2^nd Floor, 39, Kushal House

Nehru Place – 110 019

Tel : 011 – 41633081-84

The technical and financial bids should be submitted in a sealed envelope, clearly mentioning the name of the proposal on the top of the envelope.  Please also forward your complete proposal as submitted in original to recruit@allianceindia.org.   

Please note that the proposals received in a sealed envelope will only be considered for technical evaluation.  

The bids will be evaluated by the Bid Evaluation Committee constituted by Alliance India.  Criteria for selection of an agency will be as follows:

·                Technical approach and methodology (quality control) -30 points

·                Past experience of the agency personnel assigned for the proposed task – 25 points

        (Experiences related to capacity building with the CBOs in the planned states)

·                Documentation Plan – 10 points

·                Budget – 35 points 

Last date for submission of bid documents: Monday, 9^th June, 2011 upto 17:30 hrs 

The same RFP document can also be downloaded from our website www.allianceindia.org under the career section.  All correspondence / communications regarding the proposal should be made at the above address only.