Terms of Reference (TOR) for hiring consultant/organization to conduct end line study of Building Better Future for Girls Project

Introduction to Plan International Bangladesh:

Founded over 80 years ago, Plan International is one of the oldest and largest children's development organizations in the world. Plan has experience of working with children in poverty, and their families and communities. Plan is one of the most respected and trusted grassroots, child rights-based organizations in the world. Plan is independent, with no religious, political or governmental affiliations.

Plan plays an important role in mobilising children, youth, communities and civil society organisations to claim the rights of children/youth and achieve agreed local development priorities, towards a commitment to ensuring the wellbeing of children in support of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). Plan works in 71 countries, 21 countries raise funds to support work in 50 developing countries across Africa, Asia and the South America.

Plan has been operating in Bangladesh since 1994. Currently, under Country Strategy (CS) V (2020-2030) Plan International Bangladesh is implementing programmes in following thematic areas: SRHR, SOYEE and LEAD throughout the country. Our Country Office is located in Dhaka and we are working in 22 districts having four divisional offices. We partner with national and local non-governmental organisations and together our work benefits more than million children and their communities.

Overview of the project

Bangladesh marries off more girls as children than any other country in Asia.   Worst of all, it marries off more girls under 15 than any other country in the world.¹  Globally, UNICEF has ranked it fifth, and first in Asia, with 18% of all women aged 20-24 married off before the age of 15². In terms of numbers, the most widespread violation of child rights is the marriage of girls below age 18, regardless of economic status, ethnicity and religion.

Rangpur division has some of the highest rates of child marriage in Bangladesh and the proposed target location Kurigram is one of the worst performing districts. Kurigram district has a child marriage rate of 68.97 %³ of women age 20-24 years who were first married before 18 years where the national average is 52.3%. (annual outcome monitoring report 2016, Plan International Bangladesh)

Annual Outcome Monitoring Report 2016, Plan International Bangladesh

The government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has set targets for the elimination of child marriage by 2041⁴  Her government has set two intermediate targets for 2021 that will contribute to the 2041 goal.  The first will be to reduce by a third the existing child marriage prevalence rate for girls aged 15 to 18 and, the second, to bring down the existing prevalence rate for child marriage of girls below age 15 to zero.⁵  Ending all marriages below 15 within 2021 will be challenging but these are the government commitments and Plan International Bangladesh has committed to support the government as state duty bearer to fulfil them.  The targets set by the PMO (zero marriages of girls under 15 by 2021 and zero marriages of girls below 18 by 2041) have been cascaded to all districts of Bangladesh through the PMO’s Governance Innovation Unit’s document “Innovative Ways to End Child Marriage” published 15 June, 2016.  The target numbers are in section 1 of the document and districts have been provided a template to plan the annual percentage reductions based on local realities. The project will therefore, contribute to the achievements of the child marriage targets nationally and for Kurigram district, specifically.

The challenge is also greater for Kurigram as it faces additional vulnerabilities because of its large swathes of hard-to-reach areas that limit effective service delivery.  Kurigram is bordered and bisected by four major rivers and therefore prone to regular flooding, river erosion and disasters, resulting in greater levels of household poverty that lead to child marriage.  The district’s proximity to international borders also introduces another kind of vulnerability for girls who are trafficked in the name of child marriage.  Administratively, Kurigram is comprised of 72 unions, 9 upazilas and 3 municipalities.  The population is a little over two million as per the last BBS survey.

There are major challenges to public sector service delivery, such as health service delivery, that affects women and children the most. Sadly, the accessibility of the safety net programmes and special schemes such as food aid, cash for work, etc. is often blocked due to poor governance. Women and girls are also made more vulnerable because of discrimination. Their rights are violated, their voices are not heard, their labour is not valued and they do not access to opportunities and resources to better their lives, a situation which is further multiplied if they are disabled or come from a minority group.  The extreme poor, the bulk of which are the women-headed households, also face exclusion from microfinance groups and social activities to which microfinance lending is linked. Women and girls are therefore cut off from both social and economic lifelines and this creates a situation that lends itself to child marriage as a survival strategy for poor households
Plan International Bangladesh is supporting the strengthening of relevant institutions that can function as components of a national child protection system (such as the CBCPMs, CWBs, child-friendly police stations, Standing Committees of the UP on welfare of children and on prevention of violence, Union Marriage Registration offices, Student Cabinets in secondary schools, use of 1098 and 10921 helplines) some of which were set up under the Child Act, 2013.

As in the case of many of Bangladesh’s policies the challenges for the national child protection system is to implement and resource many of the mechanisms provided for in the relevant laws. Plan International Bangladesh has identified in particular the need to make active the Child Welfare Boards (CWBs) – outlined in the Children Act, 2013 – to operate at National, District and Upazila levels. These are also to be linked to newly instituted community-based (Ward) child protection committees that are to serve as the base for the national protection system. In reality most of the system is based on paper so within this proposal Plan International Bangladesh also proposes to work with the existing protection mechanisms at the Union level – such as the Union Standing Committees on welfare of women and children (USCWC) and the Union violence against women and children committees (UVAWCCs) recently reformed by the Government– both led by Union Parishad members.  Other positive initiatives taken by the Government to strengthen the national child protection system are: Government instructions for the formation of the various Union, Upazila and District committees, a national helpline (10921) for violence against women and girls and a recent launch (October 2016) of the national helpline (1098) for children.

The project proposes a mixture of behaviour change strategies, actions with key child protection system mechanisms and the strengthening and use of government accountability mechanisms to bring about change. Means that expecting of changes between child protection mechanism system and government accountability mechanism. The project tackles the underlying causes of child marriage as analysed in Plan International Bangladesh’s CSP Child Protection Theory of change. To summarise, the main root causes are:

• Deep-rooted social and cultural norms that do not value the girl child and women’s contributions to family and society. Girls are treated as a burden that needs to be transferred to a new family, rather than an asset and autonomous member of the family.  
• Poverty – which has a disproportionate impact on household choices.  Poorer families perceive daughters as financial burdens and marriage as economic security for girls. They also often cite lower dowry costs as a motivation for early marriage (although the real costs may be different).
• Sexual harassment by boys and men leads families to stop girls from going out of the household (within the wider community and especially to and from school) and marrying them off before any incident can take place that may violate the chastity of a girl and affect (perceived) family honour.

Poor implementation and enforcement of laws to register births, prevent child marriage and register marriages. Not only are the laws not upheld, they are frequently thwarted through active collusion by locally-elected representatives, community leaders, marriage registrars and public service providers.

Project Objective/Goal: “To contribute to Kurigram district’s target of zero marriages of girls under 15, and one third reduction in marriages of girls under 18, by 2021 .”.

Terms of Reference (TOR) for the assignment can be downloaded from this link.

Submission of Proposal

The technical and financial proposals should be submitted electronically to the email address: Planbd.consultant.hiring@plan-international.org with titled “Endline Evaluation – Building Better Future for Girls (BBFG) Project. Proposal submitted to any other email account except this and in hard copy will be treated as disqualified. Submissions after the deadline will be treated as disqualified. Two different folders i.e. technical and financial should be submitted into one zip folder with a covering letter. The proposals should be submitted in pdf format.

Submissions deadline 18 July, 2021 at 4:00 pm. Both technical and financial proposal should be submitted PDF format into one zip folder with a covering letter addressing to Md. Enamul Haque, Supply & Procurement Specialist, Plan International Bangladesh.