Scope of Work (SOW) for agency hiring to make 47 read aloud videos (1 – 3 Minutes each)

Scope of Work (SOW) for agency hiring to make 47 read aloud videos (1 – 3 Minutes each)                                       

Founded in 2000 on the belief that World Change Starts with Educated Children®, Room to Read is creating a world free from illiteracy and gender inequality through education. We are achieving this goal by helping children in historically low-income communities develop literacy skills and a habit of reading, and by supporting girls as they build life skills to succeed in secondary school and negotiate key life decisions. Room to Read collaborates with local communities, partner organizations and governments to test and implement innovative models that can be integrated into the education system to deliver positive outcomes for children at scale. To date, Room to Read has benefited more than 39 million children and has worked in 24 countries and in more than 192,000 communities, providing additional support through remote solutions that facilitate learning beyond the classroom. Room to Read aims to benefit 40 million children by 2025.

Room to Read India was established in 2003 and presently has programs in ten states – Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Telangana, Uttarakhand, and Uttar Pradesh.

About SERI:

The intervention started in Madhya Pradesh in 2017. The results of the impact evaluation study conducted after two years of intervention in SERI demonstration schools showed that school children made 1.5 to 2 times greater progress than their comparison school counterparts on the various reading skills assessed. Additionally, the results from the SERI Program study suggest that the program's impact was sustained even when it was scaled up across larger geographies supporting the effectiveness of the scale-up model as proposed by Room to Read.

Post these results, SERI moved to You-Do/Expansion phase in 2019 in which the focus was on state-wide systemic strengthening initiative. Across all 4 States, SERI focused on number of key initiatives, like –

• Co- designing and development of early grade instruction materials for both students and teachers.
• Co-development of children’s literature materials with respective State governments.
• Development and dissemination of various education materials during Covid school closure through government systems.
• Organizing various campaigns/webinar on issues related to foundational literacy.
• Conducting training of teachers, education officials on foundational literacy.

In the context of current national importance on FLN reforms, over next few years SERI will focus on –

• Providing state-wide technical assistance to respective State governments in implementing FLN reforms.
• Developing series of national level interventions (like national FLN Index report, Children’s Literature award etc.) in support of foundational literacy.

In 2022, two new states: Rajasthan and Telangana were added to the SERI project. Currently, We Do and You Do are being implemented in Telangana and You Do is being implemented in Rajasthan. 

In Madhya Pradesh, SERI has been contributing as the technical partner for the state of Madhya Pradesh to achieve NIPUN goals, through creating accessibility and availability of quality children literature, teacher capacity building through mentoring and coaching and bringing evidence through action research under NIPUN for foundational literacy.

For the children literature domain, SERI program has created 72 quality children literature along with 72 resource group teacher authors for the Rajya Shiksha Kendra Bhopal in partnership with USAID and Room to Read.

Background of the assignment: -

Development of Children's Literature by Teacher-Authors  

National Curriculum Framework for Foundational Stage 2022 reinforces the importance of good quality children's literature in children's language and literacy development. It further stresses the availability of a wide variety of books - large picture books, colourful graded readers, and books with engaging stories and poems to provide a stimulating experience in schools.   

To address the need for quality reading material and storybooks in Madhya Pradesh, the state-initiated discourse on children's literature and its role in the enrichment of language and literacy skills amongst children. In September 2020, Rajya Shiksha Kendra, Bhopal instructed all the districts to collect stories from the teachers at primary schools and submit at least ten exciting stories from each district after the screening of received stories at the district level to Rajya Shiksha Kendra and Room to Read.   

After selecting 50 stories, they needed to be refined to make them appropriate for children. Therefore, Room to Read invited well-established authors/children's literature experts to help refine these stories in collaboration with teacher – authors and organized workshops (in-person and remote). These 50 stories (15 story books + 35 reading cards) in 2022 and (12 Reading cards + 5 big books + 5 wordless picture books in 2023 were finalized and refined as a final product. These storybooks will be made available across all primary schools of Madhya Pradesh in digital and non-digital formats.   

Now, we are in the process of making Read-a-loud videos of these 47 reading cards, Therefore, Room to Read is looking for the service of production house for development of Read-a-loud videos.

Role of the Production house/ Agency 

The production team engaged in the recording /shooting should include.

1. Voice-over as per script demand; it may also be two or three different voices.
2. Animation at beginning and end of the video. Animation to introduce the story name and nudges throughout the story.
3. Internal consultancy from the production house on technicalities of Read Aloud videos and making it interactive.
4. Creation of questions related to the read aloud videos.
5. Each video will feature a children's book. The videos should be engaging, interactive, and promote a love for reading.
6. Require professional narration of the books in a clear and engaging manner. The narrator's voice should be suitable for the target age group.
7. The videos should include high-quality illustrations and highlight the text of the storybook that complements the storyline and engages the viewers.
8. Dubbing of voice into the video concept and characters settings.      
9. Professional voice-over artist.
10. Each video should be about 1-3 minutes long, with adjustments allowed for the book and its content.
11. Incorporate appropriate background music and sound effects to enhance the overall viewing experience.
12. There will be 3 rounds of review for the videos from Room to Read and then after the final review the final proceedings will be addressed. The first round will be after the vendor submits all 47 videos. After the inputs from Room To Read, the second phase of review will take and followed by the third and final review.
13. The production team would share the -

-        First cut of the film

-        Raw footage of the film

-        Un-mixed master with separate track/project file

-        Final film with mixed audio, animations and graphics - format (mp4 or .wmv)

Role of Room to Read

a)      Room to Read will orient the production house regarding work assigned with them.

b)     Room to read will orient the production house on the Literacy Program and help them understand the objective and use of the mentioned activities.

c)      Provide 47 stories for Read-a-loud videos.

d)     Look at the drafts of work and give relevant feedback to him/her on the criteria mentioned.

e)     Give final approval to recording/designing contents process.

f)       Approve the final cut of the videos.   

Expected Qualifications/ Skill set/ relevant experience (suggested)

Production house should have sound knowledge about education field and such type of Literacy and language development-based fully animated video works experience in past. Experience required to work on attractive and innovative scripts and quality in recording. The production house should have the capacity to work in time-constrained situations (if arrived).  

Evaluation Criteria:

a)     Understanding of the project: Understanding of children literature for early readers, read aloud concepts and perspectives.

b)     Prior experience of developing audio-visual materials: The organization must have prior experience of developing read aloud videos from story books/stories into a quality digital learning material and work under children literature.

c)      Open to provide special effects/ideas/inputs according to the need of the story (Improvise) the video with animation. Prior experience in High quality videos and animation work under children literature.

Timeline of the Assignment

Signing of contract	By September 2024
Submission of Final work	All 47 (Mix master) ready by Nov. 2024

HOW TO APPLY

Proposals are invited from the interested agency for the above assignment and the last date for receiving the proposal is 2 Sep 2024 at procurement.india@roomtoread.org [do not copy anyone from RtR]

Kindly submit two separate emails with following subject lines:

o EMAIL (1): TECHNICAL PROPOSAL – 47 read a loud videos

o EMAIL (2): FINANCIAL PROPOSAL – 47 read a loud videos

Submission terms:

• All applicants are advised to thoroughly review the SoW/ToR before applying. Share queries before pre-bid or attend the pre-bid meeting as mentioned above for clarification.
• Technical and Financial proposals are to be shared in two different emails separately and not in a single email (mandatory)
• Validity for the financial quotes would be 90 days .
• Incomplete applications or deviations from the prescribed process will result in automatic rejection.
• Proposals received after the prescribed deadline will not be considered.
• Only shortlisted agencies will be contacted and may be requested for face-to-face/online interaction/presentation.

For queries, please contact:

Vivek Shrawat

vivek.shrawat@roomtoread.org

Tags Education and Education Technology (edtech) Others