Partnership for Improving Prospects for Forcibly Displaced Persons and Host Communities

Expression of Interest (EOI)

Call for Service Providers in East Darfur and West Kordofan

BACKGROUND

As part of the recently launched Partnership for Improving Prospects for Forcibly Displaced Persons  and Host Communities (PROSPECTS) the ILO is undertaking multiple education, employment, and protection-related interventions  in East Darfur and West Kordofan, Sudan. The Partnership is a unique multi-year program, funded by the Government of the Netherlands, that brings together five agencies (ILO, World Bank, IFC, UNICEF, UNHCR) to devise collaborative and innovative approaches for inclusive job creation and education in contexts characterized by forced displacement. The program encompasses three pillars, namely:

• Education and Learning;
• Employment and Dignity; and
• Protection and Inclusion.

The program operates in eight countries across East Africa, Horn of Africa and the Middle East employing an area-based approach, in which the partner agencies jointly focus their activities on selected regions within each country. In Sudan, PROSPECTS  sister agencies have selected two focus (and neighbouring) states for implementation: East Darfur and West Kordofan.

Procurment of technical services

The ILO is seeking to identify potential NGOs, INGOs and or private sector insituationscapable to deliver the following services in the aforementioned states:

• Vocational Training and upgrading informal apprenticeship, this includes: trainings in vocational pre-selected occupations (vocational trainings in construction, nursing, midwifery, plumbing, electricians, repair and maintenance of boreholes and agriculture); capacity building to training providers and mastercrafts persons to provide work-based learning and value-adding apprenticeship experience; (mainly in welding, automotive repair, electronic repair and carpentry);  and providingmentorship services, training kits and access to financial services to trainees.
• Cooperatives and Value Chains Development, this includes: training and support in formation of local cooperatives; upgrading of agricultural societies into cooperatives; supporting smallholder framers in establishing agricultural cooperatives, aggregating supply, entering formal agreements with interested buyers andfacilitating access to finance/lending schemes. This will also encompass Value chain development in agriculture (through for example employment intensive investments improving access to water, and other sector support interventions);introduction to business opprotunitesalong the sesame, groundnuts and hibiscus value chains and providing relevant training and capacity building to produce value-addingproducts/services.
• Entrepreneurship,EnterpriseDevelopment and other non-financial Business Development Services(BDS), this includes: training on entrepreneurship and enterprise development; facilitating business excercises at the market; business mentorship and other business development services which further includesstrengthening the capacity of local actors to provide non-financial services.
• Developement of finananical services for the targeted localities’ population,this to include: piloting multiple approaches to financial products that are suitable for smallholder farmers and rigourously testing them for informing selection of best approaches.
• Capacity Building for smallholder farmers, this includes: continued agricultural technical support for farmers throughout the farming season, training on usage of improved equipment, facilitating access to improved seeds and ferilizers and support on sales and negotiation with big buyers

Eligibility

This call is open to qualified, national and or international NGOs and Consultancy firms that have an office or are currently implementing a project in East Darfur and/or West Kordofan or a very similar operational context (i.e. forced displacement, remote access, extreme informality, low social cohesion, socio-economic instability, etc). Only those NGOs or firms  fulfilling the predeterminedcriteria defined below and have a proven track record of performance in these fields of activities are encouraged to participate.

How to prepare and submit you response

Interested NGOs/companies are invited to submit an EOI to Fatima Sirelkhatim (sirelkhatim@ilo.org)  with the following information:

1. A description of the company profile (max 20 pages);
2. A detailed description of relevant previous experience in  any interventions in the areas/themes mentioned in the objectives section above either in East Darfur or West Kordofan or a very similar context;
3. Reference (minimum 2 clients);
4. Sample of reporting on an implemented intervention/activity.

EOIs should be submitted by midnight Khartoum,Sudan time (GMT +2) on Thursday, 15 January 2020

SELECTION CRITERIA FOR SHORTLIST

The ILO will not condiers incomplete submissions. All responses and supporting documentation received will be treated as strictly confinetional and will not be made available for the public.

Expressions of interest received in response to this call will be assessed on the basis of the criteria below.

COMPETITIVE PROCESS FOLLOWING THE EOI

Upon receipt of the EOI from the interested suppliers, the ILO will establish a shortlist based on the pre-selection criteria and documents mentioned above. Pre-selected suppliers will receive the complete Request for Proposals (RFP) documentation at the tender launching date. They will be given the opportunity to ask questions they may have regarding the tender procedure and evaluation process. The ILO reserves the right to change or cancel these requirements at any time in the EOI and/or solicitation process. The ILOProject Team will consider thesuppliers' qualifications and experience in the particular service area and previous performance, when preparing a list of invitees. Thus, submitting an EOI does not automatically guarantee that a supplier will be considered for receipt of the Request for Proposal document  when issued.

TIMING

RFP will be issued after completion of the prequalification exercise, i.e in the first quarter of 2020. Contract is expected to be in place by second quarter of 2020 for an initial 6 weeks with possibility of extention and/or undertaking multiple rounds of the intervention.

This EOI does NOT constitute a soclictation. The ILO reserves the right to change or cancel this procurement process or any of its requirements at any time during the process.