RFP - Baseline for the project titled Preventing and protecting the rights of girls against the Child, Early and Forced marriages (CEFM)

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About the Organization

Centre for Catalyzing Change (C3), formerly known as Centre for Development and Population Activities (CEDPA), India, started working in India in 1987. In the last 30 years, C3 has emerged as a key change-making organization focused on improving the condition of girls and women in the country.

At C3, we design solutions that mobilize, equip, educate and empower girls and women to meet their full potential. We strive to create an ecosystem where all girls and women can demand and get their due entitlements. Our work addresses the challenges that they face in our country at various stages in their lives.

At the core of our work and approach is the belief that gender equality is essential for development and democracy. Our programs are aimed at equipping girls and women with practical life skills, improved confidence in personal decision-making, and increased self-esteem.

About the Proposal

Capacity Statement: Centre for Catalyzing Change (C3) brings with it over 30 years of experience working closely with adolescents, designing initiatives at-scale that would mobilize, equip, educate and empower young girls to reach their full potential. C3 recognizes that a change as systemic as the curbing of child marriage can only occur with interventions at each stage of a young girl’s life, ensuring they are equipped with the right knowledge, skills, and decision-making power. C3 began its investment in adolescent girls in India in 1987 with the launch of the Better Life Options Program to help adolescent girls make better life choices around education, rights, sexual and reproductive health, nutrition, hygiene and civic responsibility. C3’s approach of working on adolescent girl programs is an integrated and context specific framework with well-defined impact areas (e.g. Completing education, delaying age of marriage, being equipped and informed about SRHR, etc.). C3 uses group education methodology and context specific curricula and tools (print and digital) aimed at influencing gender attitudes and behaviour, building life skills and equipping them for accessing sexual and reproductive health and rights and creation of an enabling environment by working with communities and systems. 

 The nationwide lockdown in the first phase of the pandemic caught everyone unawares. Closure of businesses, educational institutions led to a mass reverse migration and limiting people to their home. When the lockdown became prolonged and extended, that’s when financial losses began to kick in, a large majority of students could not access online classes, burden of care increased on girls and women. Specifically, in the district of Gumla in Jharkhand, reverse migration led to job loss, which subsequently led to girls dropping out of school and being married off or trafficked for domestic labour or sex work to other parts of the country. Gumla is a trafficking hub for adolescent girls and is reported to have 21% prevalence of child marriage among the girls (15-19 years) and an adolescent pregnancy rate of 7.2 % (NFHS 5). A recent study by C3 in Gumla to understand the reasons for early marriage and discontinuation of education among adolescent girls showed that the major reason for dropping out of school and child marriages are that the girls are considered a burden to family (44%) and a security risk (55%).

Child marriage in Odisha at 20.5 % is a little below 23 % for India. Government of Odisha is working hard for ending child marriage by 2030, but job losses and increased economic insecurity during COVID-19 pandemic are forcing families to marry their daughters to ease financial burden. With administrative machinery and all other personnel busy in COVID 19 management, the vigilance on child marriage went down in the state of Odisha. Between January 1 and August 31 2020, the authorities managed to detect and prevent 706 child marriages in 16 of 30 districts of Odisha, according to a presentation made in a meeting of the state level child marriage prevention committee. Of these, 365 marriages – more than half – were held in three months between January 1 and March 24 – the day the national lockdown came into place. Since then, till August 31, 2020, the authorities were able to detect only 341 marriages in five months.

C3 has ongoing programs in Gumla and this will support a quick start-up of the proposed project. C3 works in 8 blocks in Gumla. While C3 has one dedicated project for prevention of child marriage in Gumla, we work on the issue across all our programs. In Odisha, C3 will leverage it experience of implementing RKSK in the state, and use the platforms available through this program to raise awareness and protect girls from child marriage

Expected Results and key Activities to achieve them

Goal: Creation of an enabling and empowering eco-system to protect girl’s human rights, promote access to services, and safety from violence, abuse, and exploitation, by preventing Child and Early Forced Marriages.

Outcomes:

• Increased capacity of 10,000 adolescent girls to protect themselves from child marriages via linkages with life skills, psychosocial, educational and skilling support, to establish pathways for adolescent girls to lead collective action against child marriage in the community
• 100 Youth champions selected, trained and mentored as change-makers to implement campaigns, create early warning systems, and prevent child marriage in their communities reaching 50,000 stakeholders
• Increased awareness of families and communities of the harmful impact of child marriage and alternatives available through engagement with community and 100 faith based leaders
• Increased commitment from stakeholders to prevent and mitigate risks of child marriage by strengthening the protection structures at village, block and district level
• Improved supportive legal and policy environment for preventing child marriage created through activation of existing health communications platforms on the importance of keeping girls in school and preventing CEFM.

Scope of work

• Support the design and finalization of the assessment tools using a variety of participatory and visual methods in interview and group discussion formats Translation of the tool into Oriya and Hindi languages
• Submission of the design to IRB and getting IRB approval for the assessment
• Capacity building during the training of investigators and other field level staff. Experts and representatives of C3 will participate and assess the quality of the training.  
• Data coding and editing. The final responsibility of ensuring data quality rests with the agency. Any inconsistencies identified will lead to repeat survey entirely at the cost of the research agency.
• Development of the real time dashboard
• Development and finalization of the analysis framework
• Development of first-look presentation and the draft report
• Incorporate edits/comments by C3 and submit final reports - a detailed report and an abridged version in the form of an Executive Summary.
• All data and results of this assessment are the property of C3 and cannot be published or disseminated elsewhere by the research agency.

Data Quality Assurance, Data Processing and Report Writing

• The research agency will be required to undertake scrutiny of questionnaires, data coding and entry and clean the data and submit the data into Excel and SPSS format to
• C3.
• The research agency will submit a daily report on data collection and quality assurance.
• The final responsibility of ensuring data quality rests with the agency; C3 maintains the right to reject the data, if there are inconsistencies or inaccuracies observed in quality of the data gathered. Any inconsistencies identified will lead to repeat survey entirely at the cost of the research agency.
• The research agency would ENSURE DATA CONSISTENCY before submitting it to C3.
• All data and results of this evaluation are the property of C3 and cannot be published or disseminated elsewhere by the research agency.
• The research agency will carry out DATA ANALYSIS AND REPORT WRITING.
• The research agency would provide C3 with a detailed analysis plan/framework and two reports- a detailed report of the study and an abridged version of the report in the form of an executive summary.

C3 will proactively assist the research agency in the following

• Participate in the training of investigators.
• Support to monitor the data collection processes.
• Guide and assist in preparing analysis plan, tabulation and report writing.
• Review and provide feedback on report.

Criteria for selecting the agency

• Agency should possess essential infrastructure facilities to conduct research.
• Adequate experience, past record, expertise, good reputation, and credibility of research agency in conducting social research and surveys in the field of education, Early and Child Marriage, SRHR of adolescents, assessments of digital literacy projects and livelihood projects.
• Agency should provide indicative evidence that they have experience needed to take similar surveys.
• Quality of proposals should be good, and it should follow the guidance provided in this ToR.
• The clarity of proposal, soundness of field implementation plan, budget, adherence to timelines and approach.
• Proposals reaching C3 within the specified timelines

Deliverables

• The final products submitted by the agency towards the successful completion of this assignment would include:
• Translated qualitative and quantitative evaluation tools in CAPI
• IRB approval for the assessment
• Training Presentation
• Spot check tools
• Report on the training of investigators, team composition and data quality checking
• Raw data sets and the syntax
• Raw data, transcribed data and analysis of the qualitative and quantitative data in spreadsheet
• Presentation of the baseline methodology and results
• Baseline Report with an executive summary with Lessons learned and key recommendations

How to Apply

Interested Research agencies proposal and budget along with credentials of the agency to procurement@c3india.org by 5.30 pm on 25 May 2022.