Consultancy - Institutional Consultant For Organizational Capacity Building

Building the Capacity of Local NGOs to Sustain & Manage Youth Community Centers Scope of Work Introduction Mercy Corps exists to alleviate suffering, poverty, and oppression by helping people build secure, productive, and just communities. The agency pursues its mission through emergency relief services, sustainable community development, civil society and economic development initiatives. Mercy Corps has been present in the Middle East since the 1980s and currently has offices in Yemen, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Egypt and Libya. Working in Lebanon since 1993, Mercy Corps has implemented community development programs focused on promoting economic development and increased opportunity for disadvantaged communities, while responding to emergencies as they emerged in the country.  In 2012, the program portfolio shifted in response to the massive refugee influx from Syria and Mercy Corps in Lebanon has solidified its emergency response programming while integrating longer-term development programming by focusing on key sectors: Protection, Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH), Governance and Conflict, and Livelihoods.  One of the primary sectors is focused on youth programming with an emphasis on protection. Under the No Lost Generation campaign, Mercy Corps, with the support of the Government of Canada, will support Syrian and host community adolescent boys and girls, between the ages of 13 – 17 who are not currently enrolled in school or are at high risk of dropping out of school as a means of providing them with life skills development, drawing adolescents away from their segregation, and encouraging greater interaction between host communities and refugees. Furthermore, the program will reach out to young adults between the ages of 25 – 35 from among refugee and host communities, seeking their involvement and building their skills to act as mentors and facilitators within the program. The overall aim of the No Lost Generation Busma Program is to provide psychosocial support to adolescents, while also developing their life-skills and promoting social cohesion through four community centers. In order to build the sustainability of the Busma Youth Community Centers, Mercy Corps is committed to building the capacity of our local partners and strengthening the management of the centers to ensure effective and quality programming that is impactful, long-term and contributes to community development. The second phase of the No Lost Generation program aims to support this generation of young people by promoting learning and psychosocial resiliency, building social understanding and peace, and renewing plans and re-establishing goal planning for the future. Social stability efforts through activities such as diversity training, life skills education, and community impact projects are social capital tools recommended to counter discrimination, lost years of formal education, poverty and potential for radicalism and extremism for the next generation. Furthermore, the NLG project aims to further build the capacity of Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian youth coaches between the ages of 25-35 and the CBO staff members by providing organizational capacity building to support in the management and operations of the community centers.   Objective To strengthen and build the capacity of local partners managing the youth community centers to provide quality and effective services, which is based on establishing strong internal foundations and management. The institutional contractor will focus on providing the following:   -          Conduct an in-depth and thorough needs assessment of the two local CBOs responsible for managing and operating the four youth community centers; -          Conduct a needs-assessment of the youth community centers; -          Develop a training plan with strategies and approaches to build effective and efficient internal systems and structures (management, communication, reporting, management styles and techniques, human resources, etc); -          Organizational Capacity Building trainings to selected organizations and further on-the-job coaching to the staff/coaches of the four youth community centers; -          Deliver ToT trainings and workshops to CBO, Community Center, and MC staff on various topics related to capacity building needs assessment; -          Support CBOs in developing sustainability plans in order to sustain the respective community centers and support CBOs in how they can chase their own funding sources;   Task Background/Scope of Work   The Organizational Capacity Building is to be developed by the Contractor on the basis of the needs assessment in order to improve and address the gaps and organizational/center constraints.    *        The Contractor will ensure a review of the CBOs and Community Centers against performance through the lens of, but not limited to, the following main components:   -          Relationship to local governance -          Community relations and involvement; -          Strategic Management; -          Leadership and Culture; -          Human Resource Management; -          Financial Resource Management; -          External Relationships; -          Information Systems’ -          Employee/Staff/Coach turnover and attitude and morale towards the center/CBO; -          Youth and community feedback;     Timeline Needs Assessment October 2015 Develop Training Needs & Plan October 2015 – mid November 6 full days on-the-job sessions for each of the 4 selected local organizations based on agency plans   [= 24 on-the-job sessions/6 per center/12 per organization] From December 2015 to February 2016 6 half-day workshops for CBO partner staff on sustainability plans and business models to support sustaining their respective community centers (including (i) resource mobilization: developing concept notes and proposal writing;  (ii)  budget preparation and monitoring; and (iii) project cycle management) From December 2015 to February 2016   Bid evaluation criteria/Submittals:  Previous experiences (list of references/portfolio, etc) Manuals (any training manuals or curricula implemented previously) CVs of key personnel