Request for Proposal-Story Telling & Communications Consultancy Foundations for Education and Empowerment (F4EE) Consultancy NEW

TERMS OF REFERENCE

Story Telling & Communications Consultancy Foundations for Education and Empowerment (F4EE) Project (2020-2027)

About the Aga Khan Development Network
The Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) is a network of private, non-denominational development
agencies that share a mission to improve the living conditions and opportunities for marginalised
communities across 30 countries in Africa and Asia. Through innovative, community-driven solutions that span social, economic, and cultural dimensions, AKDN agencies aim to holistically improve quality of life.
AKDN’s education goal is to ensure all girls and boys, women, and men, are equipped with the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values to help them interact effectively with the world and be contributing members
of a pluralistic society. AKDN assumes a holistic and systems approach to education programming ensuring all interventions are globally informed, locally rooted, are embedded in government and community interests and structures, and work to promote social inclusion, equity, and pluralism. AKDN invests in all sectors of the formal education systems, from pre-primary to tertiary, as well as in other formal and informal life-long learning opportunities, including teacher professional development.

About the Aga Khan Foundation
AKF partners with communities and governments to co-design and implement sustainable solutions to
long-term problems facing children, young people, women and men, communities, and society in
resource-poor areas. In East Africa, AKF operates a portfolio that includes Education, Economic Inclusion, Civil Society, Health, Early Childhood Development, Climate Resilience, and Gender Equality.
About Foundations for Learning Under the Foundations for Education and Empowerment (F4EE) Project, the Foundations for Learning (F4L) component was implemented from 2020 to 2025 across Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, co-funded by Global Affairs Canada and AKF, and implemented by AKDN. Under F4L, AKF has collaborated with over 500 schools and communities, civil society organizations, and the government to deliver targeted support that positions teachers, schools, and communities at the center of transformative change to improve quality, gender-responsive, and inclusive pre-primary and primary education. These have included, but not limited to;

i) Values-based teacher professional development.

ii) school and community human centered design processes,

iii) civil society and government support and development. Together, these
interventions have supported schools, communities, and system to address the gender, socio-economic,
and cultural barriers girls and boys face accessing education and improving equitable learning outcomes.

Purpose and Objectives
AKF seeks to engage an individual or team to tell the story of F4L from the perspective of girls and boys,
parents, teachers, schools, and communities, to celebrate the achievements of this network of people
across the region to curate a story of these experiences. It is expected these stories are linked to and
amplify the programme to situate them within the broader narrative of change. The individual or team
will need to develop a communications strategy and create the content to fit this strategy to ensure these
stories reach and effectively communicate these stories back to girls and boys, parents, teachers, schools, and communities across East Africa.

It is expected for the individual or team to:
• Collaborate with a core AKF team to co-identify the themes, stories, and people who will become
the centre of the story telling process.
• Collaborate with AKF teams in-country to ensure all stories can be efficiently and effectively
collected to develop the content.
• Develop the story using diverse media if needed, ensuring regular feedback loops with AKF
• Develop the communications strategy explicitly targeting girls and boys, parents, teachers, and
communities
• Ensure the content is relevant to the communication channels
• Support the implementation of the communications strategy

Key deliverables
The deliverables of this project are:
i. The story or stories of F4L told through the perspectives of girls and boys, parents, teachers, and
communities
ii. Communication strategy and content to effectively communicate story and messages to diverse
populations and demographics (as above)

Work Plan
The project will need to be delivered between 24th November 2025 and 20th March 2026

Qualifications
• Demonstrated experience of developing content and stories for the targeted audiences
• Clear understanding of effective communications and understanding of how diverse populations access, consume, and are influenced by content.

Criteria for selection
AKF is interested to receive proposals that demonstrate creative ways to achieve the objectives of this
project. All submissions will be assessed on the following criteria:
• Technical proposal 40%
• Technical experience 30%
• Value for Money 30%

Tagged as: Aga Khan Foundation, Kenya