RFP to conduct an evaluation of the project W-GDP: Building Resilient Women Entrepreneurs

A request for proposal to conduct an evaluation of the project W-GDP: Building Resilient Women Entrepreneurs

 

Program description:

SEWA Bharat is undertaking a 3-year USAID funded program called W-GDP: Building Resilient Women Entrepreneurs to address the needs of women-owned collective social enterprises and women micro-entrepreneurs as part of COVID-19 preparedness and response.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent global economic recession have majorly impacted all businesses, especially women-owned enterprises in the informal economy, who are grappling with income losses due to reduced demands for their products and services and a disrupted supply chain. Women are also shouldering the disproportionate burden of unpaid care work and household work in the private sphere, which is taking away valuable time that could have been spent on developing one’s entrepreneurial venture. At this point, women need better access to markets, finance, reskilling opportunities, access to childcare support, and an enabling ecosystem for women microentrepreneurs and women-owned enterprises to revive and thrive. In particular, SEWA Bharat recognizes that women will need technical assistance to help them gain better access to markets, finance, and assets and overcome the backsliding they faced during the lockdown.

 

To this end, this program is aimed at supporting women-owned nano, micro, and collective social enterprises through technical assistance to increase their access to infrastructure, upskilling and reskilling, networking, and improved marketing opportunities. In doing so, this program aims to take forward the Women’s Global Development and Prosperity Initiative [W-GDP] to advance women’s empowerment, prosperity, and overall development. It would focus on helping women succeed as entrepreneurs by increasing their access to entrepreneurial skills training, capital, markets, networks, and mentorship. Training, for instance, digital literacy training will assist women in using new tools and approaches for entrepreneurship and link women with e-commerce opportunities and digital market information. This program aligns well with SEWA Bharat’s overall aim of increasing women’s self-reliance and ensuring full employment of women who work in the informal economy.

 

Objectives of this program

The specific objectives of the program are as follows:

To help women nano and micro-entrepreneurs identify opportunities to diversify or expand businesses in the current COVID-19 context, understand their rights and entitlements, and access avenues to improve their lives.

• To strengthen social enterprises promoted by SEWA Bharat to help members prepare for and respond to COVID-19 through market-based approaches
• To support the creation of an enabling environment that allows micro-entrepreneurs and enterprises to thrive. 

The target of this project is to reach 135,000 women over the course of 3 years through community mobilization in order to reach:

 

• 80,000 women with increased access to government support programs including health training and social security
• 50,000 women with better access to finance and other productive assets
• 50,000 women linked with entrepreneurship or financial literacy training,
• 4,000 women with new women-owned businesses created or 40,000 businesses with expanded/diversification of existing activities at a 10% annual increase of income per program participant
• an annual increase of 100,000 paid work hours for women through additional child support

 

• 135,000 women indicating they have increased empowerment/decision-making abilities in the same areas.

 

Target geographies of this program

SEWA Bharat will implement this program in 10 states, such as Delhi, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Punjab, Bihar, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, and Nagaland.

Scope of work

This RfP is seeking an evaluation partner that will conduct an independent evaluation of the intervention(s) conducted by SEWA Bharat. The objective is to measure the impact of the project interventions to assess the program and its impact against selected indicators of success and the learning questions. The external agency will be commissioned to conduct an outcome evaluation, to make an assessment of the effectiveness of the program, to synthesise program impact and learnings, and assist in decision making for further strategies. The evaluation will be a multi-method process incorporating quantitative and qualitative methods of evaluation. The evaluation process is to follow a quasi-experimental design collecting panel data for women respondents over different stages of time (depending on the time period of the intervention), with a preference for a mixed-methods data collection strategy. A robust methodology will be developed in partnership with the evaluation agency. This RfP requires that the agency submit a proposal to indicate their approach to the evaluation: including sample design, suggested data collection tools, and approach to data collection, analysis, and report writing. The agency will be conducting the evaluation across the 10 designated States under the project.

 

Evaluation criteria

Specifically, the evaluation processes need to track women micro-entrepreneurs’ economic empowerment through improvements in economic opportunities, access to finance, markets, entrepreneurial skill training opportunities, digital and financial literacy, infrastructure services

and civic amenities, childcare support, health outcomes and decision-making abilities over their assets, finances, and businesses.

 

Contract arrangements

This RfP seeks a financial and technical proposal. The financial proposal has to indicate the all-inclusive costs of the evaluation. This will include the cost of the survey design team, the training of the survey team, travel costs to the field locations, costs related to data collection, entry and analysis, and report writing amongst others. All other costs are to be borne by the agency or SEWA Bharat as per prior agreement only.

 

Proposal requirements

The technical proposal should specifically aim to answer these questions at the least:

 

• Research Design: Please describe in detail what research design you intend to follow to evaluate the impact of the project. Include quality assurance checks for each stage of the process.
• Sampling: Please describe how you will work with the SEWA Bharat to finalize the sampling for both qualitative and quantitative samples
• Measurement: Please describe how you will use quantitative and qualitative approaches to measure the impacts and intermediate impacts for this project.
• Tools: Please describe what quantitative and qualitative tools are required for this evaluation and how you will develop them
• Tracking: Please describe your approach to track and follow up with tracking the intervention and, if applicable, control groups at subsequent evaluation points
• Data: please describe who and how you plan to store, clean, and analyze data.
• Reporting: Please describe your approach to reporting your findings and providing recommendations.
• Ethical protocol: Please outline your ethical protocols you will follow to protect the safety of the participants.

 

 

Team experience

The evaluation partner agency should be well versed in both qualitative and quantitative methodologies, and have a minimum of 5-7 years’ of experience in conducting evaluations and fieldwork in both urban and rural India, specifically with the lower socio-economic classes. An experience of working with female respondents will be considered an advantage. The team should be well versed in survey and interview methodologies. Teams with access to technologies (tablets, CAPI, etc.) that can assist in the evaluation will be preferred. Consulting firms with experience in conducting research around one or more of the following four thematic

areas – gender, economic empowerment, women’s microentrepreneurship, and issues surrounding poor women workers’ access to finance, technology, markets, and other resources – will also be given a preference. Experience of evaluating large scale projects funded by international donors will be desirable.

 

Proposal submission process

Proposal submissions should include a technical and financial proposal as well as details of the team who will work on this. CVs (including team experience in the criteria mentioned above)

should be attached to the submission. Please submit the proposal in a pdf format via email to sonal@sewabharat.org  and chitranka.banerjee@sewabharat.org .

The proposal is due by 5 pm on 29th January 2021.

 

To download the full ToR, click here

Tags Women Empowerment Others