Creation of Appropriate Parental Learning Programme at Build Africa

Terms of reference:

1. Creation of appropriate parental learning programme
2. Creating contextualized training materials and support drawing on local community expertise on parenting to improve their knowledge on parenting skills as well as supporting their children’s holistic development.

Background

Background to Build Africa Kenya

Build Africa Kenya is an INGO and affiliated to Street Child- UK. It aims to improve the quality of education and support livelihoods by developing the capacity of communities. Build Africa Kenya has worked with communities stretching across several regions in Kenya enabling school communities to improve the quality of education they provide for their children.

Project Description-Rise and Shine

 

Build Africa Kenya is implementing the rise and shine project- an inclusive Early Childhood Development intervention in rural areas of Gilgil Sub-County in Nakuru, Kenya. The project aims at developing a more holistic ECD delivery - including cognitive skills, health, nutrition and social development - in the community and established ECD Centres, to benefit preschool children aged 3+ and their families in 20 ECD centres. The project is being implemented for three years starting January 2020 to December 2022.

The project seeks to address 2 interconnected challenges that pre-school children aged 3+ and their families face: a) A lack of holistic community-based and parental ECD learning support. b) A lack of inclusive ECD Centres with integrated provision for pre-school children to flourish: health, nutrition, sanitation, safeguarding and early cognitive stimulation alongside ‘traditional’ education

Intended project goal

Project Goal: Children (age 3+) and their families, especially those are most marginalised, enjoy increased and more integrated Early Childhood Development support - and access to this support - both in the community and at existing ECD Centres

Intended objectives and outcomes

The rise and shine ECD project is designed to deliver on two key outcomes:

• Development of community-based ECD provision that facilitates and encourages learning in the community and in the family home.
• More integrated, accessible and holistic services at 20 existing ECD Centres, offering an improved educational service that will benefit children's holistic early development

Purpose of the consultancy

The purpose of this consultancy to develop a parenting learning programme hand book and a training manual that will be used by parents and our community based trainers and mobilizers (CBTMs). Parental education affects children’s health at pre-school ages. The project is intended to produce improvement in community ECD support with improved capacity for parental learning that will assist ECD in the family home. We expect to see improved rates of literacy and numeracy among the parents, and improvements in the tying of these skills to income generation techniques whereby they can support their children’s early education. We also expect improvements in general parental skills and caregiving. The consultant will create learning materials for an integrated Parental ECD Learning Scheme covering functional literacy and numeracy, health, nutrition, parenting skills classes, child safety and security. The parental scheme will be informed and built on our existing parental manual produced under one of our projects (Farmers Network Project in Nakuru). S/he will work with community leaders, parents, BAK ECD Project Officer and government child education specialists within the project location to produce a participatory parental handbook and a caregivers training manual. The consultant will advise on the creation of appropriate localized learning materials for parents and for ECD teachers.

Consultancy approach

The consultant must be participatory in their approach and must incorporate and include the views of the beneficiaries and stakeholders while developing the manuals. S/he will also work with a disability specialist to ensure that inclusion is improved in developing the parenting learning programme handbook. The handbook must conform and derive from the new integrated CBC curriculum for parental learning.

Tasks and deliverables

The required consultancy deliverables are:

• A full and final printed integrated parenting learning programme hand book in English
• A full and final printed integrated parental learning programme guideline/training manual in English
• Soft copies of the final integrated parental learning programme handbook and guideline/training manual in English.
• Training of staff, government officials and Community-Based Trainers and Mobilisers in the integrated curriculum for parental learning.

The consultant will also be responsible for:

• Attending an inception meeting (remotely if required) with Build Africa Kenya staff to be introduced to the project and requirements of the consultancy
• Attending and guiding working sessions with beneficiaries and stakeholders in developing the manual to ensure participation and inclusion. The consultant will also work closely with a disability specialist to ensure that inclusion is improved.
• Reviewing the parental manual produced under BAK’s Farmers’ Network Project in Nakuru to inform the process.

Build Africa Kenya will be responsible for:

• Preparing relevant documentation and making it available to the consultant
• Holding an inception meeting (remotely if required) with the consultant to provide background information and to finalise timelines and expectations
• Providing the FNP parental manual that will help guide the process
• Respond to any queries or concerns regarding the consultancy
• BAK will mobilise relevant project communities in advance and to coordinate the logistics of the consultative meetings/sessions
• Reviewing the parental handbook and training manual and enquiring further where necessary
• Making payments for the exercise as agreed in the contract
• Budget and timeline

Please submit a full budget for the Terms of Reference including costs associated with and including:

• Consultancy fees
• Developing of the parental handbook and manual
• Training on the parental handbook to targeted stakeholders
• All costs are inclusive of relevant taxes.

In line with this consultancy, it is anticipated that the exercise will take

• 3 days consultative sessions with beneficiaries and stakeholders
• 10 days drafting, finalizing and writing of the handbooks.
• 3 days training on the handbook
• Skills and qualifications of consultancy team

The consultant/consultant team should consist of candidates who meet the following criteria:

• An advanced degree in early childhood education, development, social humanities with demonstrated practical experience on ground experience in Early Childhood Education.
• Links to other development specialists in the area of child development and or adult education
• Experience in conducting Training of Trainers (ToTs) with a technical focus on early childhood education and adult literacy
• Previous experience of developing, writing and delivery training using materials for low literacy adult learners
• Experience in monitoring and evaluation and usage of tools to measure effectiveness of trainings
• Experience in carrying out primary and secondary research using a range of participatory methods
• Knowledge and application of gender sensitive programming to ensure equal participation of all groups
• High level of credibility and integrity with experience of working in Kenya or East Africa
• Willingness to familiarise self with, and sign up to abiding by, Build Africa’s Child Safeguarding Policy
• Experience working with children of age 3+ and caregivers and knowledge of child safeguarding
• Child Safeguarding

It is essential that the successful applicant familiarize self with, and sign up to abiding by, Build Africa Kenya/ Street Child’s Safeguarding Policy. We reserve the right to conduct background checks for all shortlisted applicants in line with our child safeguarding policy. This may include collecting references from past employers or commissioning organisations.