External Independent Evaluation of the Certificate Course “Development in Practice” run by Friendship Academy & Department of Development Studies, University of Dhaka Terms of Reference (ToR)
Background 1. Friendship, a social purpose organization, has been working for the last 22 years to help address the needs of remote and marginalized climate-impacted communities in Bangladesh, i.e., mostly people living in the northern shifting riverine islands and southern coastal belt areas. Friendship provides effective and integrated services, across six sectors interacting holistically with each other i.e., Health, Education, Climate Action, Inclusive Citizenship, Sustainable Economic Development, and Cultural Preservation. The organization, started in 2002 with the first mobile ship hospital, is now creating access to dependable basic services with innovation and impact in healthcare, education, and direct climate adaptive solutions for more than 7.5 million people a year. 2. Since independence in 1971, there had been significant development activities across Bangladesh where government, non-government organizations and private sectors are working in tandem. Parallelly, in the academic field there had been a consequential growth on development studies. However, it is felt that there lies a notable gap between the development industry and academia. Students in the development studies courses are getting satisfactory theoretical knowledge but lack adequate practical orientation and thus make it difficult in balancing these two. Hence, Friendship Academy initiated a new window in 2023 in collaboration with the Department of Development Studies (DDS) University of Dhaka (DU) to foster the excellence of learning and knowledge development by integrating theory with practice. 3. In this backdrop, a month-long certificate course titled “Development in Practice” was launched in 2023 in the framework of Summer/Winter School. Over the last four cohorts, around 150 participants—early-grade professionals, fresh graduates, and job seekers—have successfully completed these courses. As the program continues to expand, Friendship and the DDS, DU and with the support of Friendship Luxembourg aims to conduct an external independent evaluation of these courses so as to assess how effectively it has met the course objectives, and how it is contributing to participants’ professional development; the extent to which it satisfies participants’ expectations and aspirations and suggest areas of improvement. Click to download detail ToR (Click Here) Submission Details Only shortlisted applicants will be contacted. |
