Terms of Reference

Role:	Implementing Partner
Application close date:	July 16, 2023
Duration of project:	3 months
Work location:	Small Island Developing States
Type of contract:	Project Agreement
Direct contact:	AMPS Project Associate

I. BACKGROUND

Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT)

Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) is a US-based NGO and global community of thousands of volunteers working together to use maps and open data for humanitarian response and the Sustainable Development Goals. As the world’s preeminent participatory mapping NGO, HOT has fostered a global mapping community composed of more than 300,000 people with ground operations in several countries. HOT supports the growth of open mapping communities worldwide. When a major disaster strikes anywhere in the world, HOT rallies this global network to create the maps and data that enable responders to reach those in need. HOT works closely with humanitarian and development partners, including the Red Cross, Médecins Sans Frontières, World Bank, and UN OCHA, among others.

Women-Centered Disaster Risk & Resilience in Small Island Developing States Program

According to the United Nations: Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States (SIDS), a High-Level Panel was convened by the President of the General Assembly of the UN in 2022 to develop a Multidimensional Vulnerability Index (MVI). Countries most prone to vulnerability often find themselves on the frontline of multiple crises, including climate change and the vagaries of international markets and trade. SIDS, for example, whose vulnerabilities are attributable to their structural characteristics like small size, remoteness, low productive capacities, and inadequate infrastructure, are highly exposed to adverse external shocks such as natural hazards (1) and trade disruptions, and despite their income levels, SIDS are not necessarily more resilient.

Although there generally is a negative relationship between income and vulnerability, many countries, notably SIDS, are much more vulnerable than their income levels would suggest, including inter alia because of costs associated with remoteness from international markets such as of high import/export costs and irregular international traffic volumes, as well as diseconomies of scale. This vulnerability hinders their ability to overcome economic, environmental, and social external shocks and stressors and can also suddenly reverse decades of development gains.

This program will aim to invest in organizations that will enhance mapping contributions to enable scaling of local contributions to OpenStreetMap (2) and open geographic data. OpenStreetMap is a free, open geographic database updated and maintained by a community of volunteers via open collaboration. The program will create a values-guided cultural framework and standards enabling global collaboration, which will include ways of working and assessment mechanisms to evaluate how well HOT and its staff is exemplifying its own core values. It will connect to foresight themes of “beyond localization” through engaging key underrepresented groups and connecting partners in a new region. Contributes to the foresight theme of climate vulnerability due to the increased risks faced by small island nations to climate change related events.

Notes:

(1) SIDS make up two-thirds of the countries that suffer the highest relative losses – between 1% and 9% of their GDP each year, from climate and geological disasters.
(2) Contributors collect data from surveys, trace from aerial imagery, and also import from other freely licensed geodata sources.

The Challenge

• Many SIDS are currently not priority countries/islands within the existing regional Hubs (3), potentially due to low overall population size and small to nonexistent OSM community activities. The AMPS team is conducting an inter-hub program that encompasses SIDS in all 4 regions, including small contexts with limited OSM communities that may fall outside of regular hub activities.
• While SIDS are in different regions, they have many similarities, including reliance on the international economy through, for example, tourism as a primary industry in most SIDS. They also face similar types of challenges across all regions due to their vulnerability to natural disaster and climate change while being geographically isolated.
• According to the UN, most people displaced and who are vulnerable to displacement due to climate change are women in SIDS. Women’s unequal decision making power undermines development at every level and other emergency recovery efforts.
• Need of building fully inclusive resilient communities in order to face disaster and climate change, with a primary focus on women who would be the most affected.
• There are few graduates in GIS and open mapping within small island developing states, even fewer of these individuals are women. OSM communities are small or nonexistent in many of these countries.

Notes:

(3) Referred to Open Mapping Hubs, these are hubs established by HOT in 4 regions (Asia-Pacific, Eastern and Southern Africa, West and Northern Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean) to advance the open mapping movement working with organizations and open mapping communities by supporting the creation, maintenance, distribution, and use of high-quality open maps that are relevant for and contributed to by local communities.

Program objectives

The main objective of this program is to provide specific, targeted training and capacity building to women and local organizations from underrepresented high-risk (small island) geographies. Specifically, the objectives of this program include:

1. Build out women-centered projects in small island developing states that are faced with disasters with identified collaborators including women leaders from the four hub regions.
2. Facilitate women developing their skills and capacity via the execution of those projects.
3. Create a network of peer to peer support to help women share knowledge and lessons learned from within and across different regions.
4. Grow the OSM and open-source communities in the SIDS that are underrepresented and underserved.

II. SCOPE OF WORK

SIDS are a distinct group of 38 UN Member States and 20 Non-UN Members/Associate Members of United Nations regional commissions that face unique social, economic and environmental vulnerabilities. The list of SIDS according to the UN can be found here. The WC-DRR-SIDS program is a global program being implemented by the Applied Mapping and Project Support team focused on implementing projects on disaster and risk resilience and will be conducted in 12 SIDS from all four hub-regions that HOT is working in. In its pilot phase, the program is being implemented in 3 small islands—Trinidad and Tobago, Timor-Leste, and Saloum Islands in Senegal—and is now expanding to 9 more SIDS for the second phase of the program. The following 21 SIDS are eligible to submit their RFPs for this program:

* Least developed

Asia-Pacific	Latin America & Caribbean	Western & Northern Africa	Eastern & Southern Africa
Solomon Islands*	Guyana	Cabo Verde	Mauritius
Federated States of Micronesia	Haiti*	Guinea-Bissau*	Comoros*
Tonga	Dominica	São Tomé and Príncipe*
Fiji	Jamaica
Papua New Guinea	Dominican Republic
Kiribati*	Belize
Vanuatu	Barbados
Samoa	St. Lucia

The program aims to have an impact on women who are systematically underrepresented in island nations at high risk of humanitarian crisis and multidimensional poverty to experience improved wellbeing and increased agency and resilience to respond to crises through the creation, accessibility and use of open geo-data.

The Women-Centered Disaster Risk & Resilience in Small Island Developing States program intends to have:

1. Women communities in SIDS have the knowledge, tools, funding, and geo-data to implement and advocate for socio-economic change.
2. Women in underrepresented groups in SIDS are connected to tools and are motivated to create geographical data and solutions.
3. Diverse makeup of women communities champions and partners are increasingly networked to each other sharing learning and knowledge.
4. Women communities in SIDS have an open dialogue and collaborate with local/global actors from all sectors.

III. PROGRAM TIMELINE

The proposal should start its activities on August 15th, 2023. The work plan and timeline distribution will depend on the activities proposed, but all activities and final deliverables should aim to be finalized by November 30th, 2023.

All deliverables must be submitted in English. Support for translation available if needed.

IV. PROPOSAL REQUIREMENTS

The technical proposal should not exceed ten (10) pages and consist of three parts: (a) Technical Proposal, (b) Financial Proposal, and (c) Firm Qualification Questionnaire. The proposal shall be presented electronically in Adobe PDF format, in English, using the templates provided in the links.

Note that the budget available for this project is $20,000 (USD). The applicant must therefore develop the Financial proposal to suit the scope of the project. The applicant must organize the Technical Proposal as follows:

• Section A, Background: briefly describe the background and organization of your firm/organization and any sub consultants that your organization proposes to engage for this assignment.
• Section B, Summary of Consultants’ Experience: The applicant should provide a brief summary of any previous projects that are either within scope or implemented in a similar context.
• Section C, Comments or Modifications: present or justify any modifications to the terms of reference the applicant would like to propose, if any, to perform the assignment better and more effectively.
• Section D, Technical Approach: the applicant should articulate their approach to addressing the Problem Statement defined in this TOR and achieve the desired results. This section should also indicate how the applicant will achieve the objectives and deliverables. Proposals should be organized by project phase in accordance with the TOR (e.g., Assess, Map, Develop, Present).
• Annex 1: Staffing Plan and Key Personnel - The applicant must present an organizational and management structure which describes clearly the different positions, and the roles and responsibilities of team members. Each team should designate up to four “key personnel” including a Project Director and other team members that will lead the technical and managerial aspects of the project. The applicant should provide CVs/resumes for key personnel as Annexes to the technical proposal.
• Annex 2: CV of Proposed Key personnel
• Annex 3: Proposed work schedule for the project

COVID-19

HOT applies a general policy and protocols for field work in countries where activities are carried out. Our best efforts are put to foresee general risks in considering the COVID19 pandemic context, being applicable to any location, for all members of the implementation team. Its application to the latter will allow for greater control of working conditions. This includes strict requirements for all participants in the project to observe barrier measures, recommendations depending on situations with local communities and partners. The implementer will ensure the adherence of local protocols and rules for monitoring the health of each participant in case of signs of possible contagion. Applicants are required to take the COVID-19 local situation into account in the technical proposal methodology.

Applications should be submitted before July 16, 2023, 5pm (EST) at the email sids@hotosm.org

V. SELECTION CRITERIA

The following selection criteria will be used to evaluate proposals the determine WC-DRR-SIDS finalists:

	Criteria	Points
OSM and open source	Knowledge and engagement of the OpenStreetMap (OSM) community / open source & open data and tech local community	20%
Project development	Ability to respond to technical needs (eg. management of field person, research and connect with local service providers)	15%
	Demonstrated experience in management of similar large scale projects	15%
	Ability to formally engage with local stakeholder community/ partners and/or government counterparts	15%
	Ability to demonstrate financially sound budget	15%
	Ability to demonstrate financially sound budget	15%
Technical skills	Demonstrated experience in GIS / geo spatial information / mapping	15%
	Literature review / knowledge of the local context	10%
	Written and Oral communication skills (local language and english)	5%

VI. IMPLEMENTATION ARRANGEMENTS

During the Planning and Assessment stage, the implementer shall prepare a detailed project Work Plan, which depicts the interrelationship of various tasks in the assignment and depicts how they lead to the completion of different project components. The implementing partner will then prepare in collaboration with HOT a finalized budget according to this work plan and activities outlined.

The Implementing Partner should identify a Project Manager who will be the principal contact for the WC-DRR-SIDS work and will be expected to be available during project implementation. The implementer is encouraged to appoint an additional contact person who can be competently consulted on this undertaking. The implementer shall be responsible for all aspects of performance of services as set forth in this TOR.

HOT will provide:

• Technical training on data collection, analysis and user-centered tool/product development, depending on needs, to the implementation partner;
• Capacity building training on project management, leadership and sustainability, depending on needs;
• Where possible, HOT will share initial assessment findings with the project team(s) as a resource on available data and potential counterparts;
• Templates for the main reports so that they are consistent across cities.

V. PAYMENT SCHEDULE

* Payment schedule will be adapted according to each location’s deliverable and general work plan.

Event Triggering Payment*	% of Final Contract Amount Paid
Contract signing	25%
Training and capacity building	40%
Mapping Project implementation	25%
Final project report and financials shared	10%