New Job Opportunity at Nutrition International (NI) Tanzania – TOR to Support Compiling a BCI Strategy | TZ JOB CONNECTION : Tanzania Jobs Connection , Nafasi Za Kazi 2019, Ajira Mpya 2019, Mabumbe Jobs,

Nutrition International (NI)

Jobs in Tanzania 2021: New Job Vacancies at Nutrition International (NI) 2021

TOR to support compiling a BCI strategy
1.0 Introduction
The
Nutrition International (NI) formerly Micronutrient Initiative, is a
global organization dedicated to delivery of proven nutrition
interventions with a focus on pregnant women, new-born, infant, children
under 5 years and adolescents. The vision of NI is a world where
everyone, everywhere is free from malnutrition and able to reach their
full potential. NI’s mission is to be a global leader in finding and
scaling-up solutions to malnutrition through; Coverage: delivering
low-cost high impact nutrition interventions, especially for women,
adolescent girls and children in Africa and Asia; Leverage: Integrating
nutrition across sectors to maximize impact and ensure there are no
missed opportunities; and Influence: Utilizing research, technical
assistance, advocacy, and partnerships with national and global
nutrition actors to improve policies, programs, and resources for
nutrition.
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2.0 Background and Rationale
NI
recognizes that behavior change is an important component for the
success of nutrition interventions. In this regard, NI has continued to
implement strong behavior change interventions informed by research and
globally recognized best practices. NI uses the term BCI to define
behavior change interventions that include distribution of micronutrient
commodities and communications aimed at creating demand for these
commodities and relevant services. BCI is therefore one of the key
pillars of NI’s impact pathway model.

During the implementation
of Right Start project (April 2017 to March 2020), NI supported
implementation of demand creation strategies working with selected
partners within communities. The strategies were intervention-specific
and were based on formative assessment findings. The communication
objective of the strategies was to improve knowledge, change attitudes
and create self-efficacy among users on barriers to the desired
nutrition behaviors, using the known behavior change theories. The
strategies had some positive impact in creating overall community
awareness as well as change in behaviors among users as evidenced
through program progress reports.

Despite the success, some
challenges were noted in this approach. First there was a lack of a
standardized NI BCI approach within the different interventions.
Intervention specific BCI strategies created duplication or too many
uncoordinated messages targeting same communities, creating a potential
for confusion among the beneficiaries and communities. For example,
promotion of Iron and Folic Acid Supplementation (IFAS) for pregnant
women and Weekly Iron and Folic Acid Supplementation (WIFAS) for
adolescent girls led to communities questioning why pregnant mothers and
adolescent girls were given similarly supplements. Thus, intervention
specific strategies lacked synergy and were not well coordinated to
provide comprehensive nutrition knowledge to the communities. As a
response, NI developed a BCI toolkit to provide a standardized approach
on BCI Strategy design and implementation of demand creation activities
based on lessons learnt and best practices.

In current or just
started Institution Support Grant (ISG) program, Nutrition
International’s (NI) BCI strategies will focus on deepening gender and
Behavior Change Interventions (BCI) by incorporating new innovative
approaches for mainstreaming gender in programming. BCI objectives will
be expanded beyond the knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) domains to
include social mobilization and community dialogue to create demand for
commodities and services, as well as establishing a foundation of
societal awareness and approval of desired behaviors.

To achieve
this goal, NI BCI approaches seek to empower all levels of field staff
with BCI skills to identify and resolve behavioral barriers through
timely targeted information sharing and community dialogue among other
approaches. BCI strategies also need to compliment knowledge, changing
attitudes and practice approaches with empowerment of the target
audience to make informed choices, community agenda setting,
clarification and compensation/exchange of strong held cultural values
through community dialogue. This approach will create stronger ownership
of the achieved changes at individual and society levels and create
sustainability in the resulting changes.

To address the
challenge of duplication of efforts NI now plans to develop one
comprehensive BCI country strategy covering for all four interventions
which are:

Universal Salt
Iodation (USI) – through “consolidation approach” (formation of
producers’ or processors’ associations); NI Tanzania is working in salt
producing regions of mainland Tanzania to create an enabled environment
that will motivate salt producers and private investors to move towards
consolidation in order to facilitate effective enforcement and increased
technical and organizational capacity of salt producers in producing
adequately iodated salt.
Vitamin A Supplementation program (VAS)
– NI Tanzania provides in-kind support of high quality Vitamin A
capsules for all children aged 6 to 59 months country wide i.e. Mainland
Tanzania and Zanzibar through Child Health and Nutrition Month (CHNM)
campaigns and finalizing health system readiness assessment to support
the government to safely strengthening VAS services from campaign to
routine approach – six-month-contact-point.
Adolescents
Nutrition Education and Counselling (Adolescents Nutrition) – NI
Tanzania contributes to improved health and nutrition status by
strengthening nutrition education and counselling to adolescent boys and
girls and provide advice and guidance on Iron and Folic Acid
Supplementation to adolescent girls as would be advised by the Ministry
of Health.
Maternal Newborn Health and Nutrition (MNHN) – NI
Tanzania supports the implementation of proven interventions that
improve Maternal, Newborn Health and Nutrition by strengthening
provision of nutrition education and services in both community and
health facility levels. These include interventions which focus on the
first “1000 Days” of a child; Early ANC booking by continuing providing
support on availability and improved uptake of Iron and Folic Acid (IFA)
supplementation, improved postnatal care, promoting early initiation,
exclusive breastfeeding and improving complementary feeding.
Upcoming
Food Fortification program, NI Tanzania for the next five years will
provide technical and financial support to strengthen national and
subnational food fortification coordination, monitoring and enforcement
mechanisms; and support capacity building of medium and small-scale
maize flour processors to acquire proper skills and certification.

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The
comprehensive strategy will guide the programs by setting common
approaches so that all communication activities, products and materials
work in harmony to achieve the desired change. A comprehensive strategy
will also enable stakeholders and partners to provide input and agree
upon the best way forward so that actions are unified and contribute to
the desired behaviors across different target audiences. With an
agreed-upon communication strategy, staff and partners will have common
reference point to guide the implementation of demand creation
activities.

The strategy will have a common country background
dovetailing into specific interventions on behavioral objectives, as
described above, and later combining the community mobilization and
demand creation approaches. In preparation to move this process forward,
NI has conducted literature review on the different interventions to
inform and update the existing baseline knowledge and behavioral
barriers in each of the interventions .The next step will involve
discussions to identify gaps (if any) in the existing approaches,
communication objectives and gender issues for each intervention and
making recommendations for addition on intervention specific and cross
cutting issues.

3.0 Objective, activity and deliverables
NI
is looking for an expert/editor with a good understanding and
experience in behavior change communication strategy design and editing
skills to support in compiling a comprehensive strategy following
suggested recommendations and inputs. At the onset, the selected person
will be expected to read through existing NI reports and strategies to
gain an in-depth understanding of the programs’ background and goals.
Then the expert/editor will participate in a review meeting with NI
staff during which each intervention will be analyzed, and
recommendations made. The expert/editor will compile a comprehensive BCI
strategy based on recommendations and present it to NI for first round
review and feedback on areas of improvement. The copy will incorporate
diagrams and photo images of program activities where appropriate. The
individual will use the recommendations and suggestion to improve the
draft, then present the final edited and formatted version for approval.
Once approved the individual will present 3 hard copies and one
electronic version of the approved copy

Scope of Work
Activity 1: Familiarize with NI existing BCI strategies and other materials provided by NI.

Activity 2: Participate in a one day strategy development process with NI staff

Activity 3: Compile one combined strategy based on agreed objectives and recommendations

Activity 4: Present the draft strategy to NI for discussions and inputs

Activity 5: Revise, edit and format the final copy

Activity 6: Present the final soft copy to NI for approval

Deliverables
One
comprehensive BCI strategy for Tanzania in three spiral bound copies
and one electronic version. The layout and sections will include a
review on current situation by intervention, objectives, communication
approaches and innovations, sample messages crosscutting issues focused
on barriers to the desired behaviors of various target audiences
approaches for monitoring. The format will be agreed upon between NI
staff and the expert/editor during the first meeting.

Proposed timelines

This consultancy is expected to be delivered within 30 person-days.

4.0 Required Competencies and Knowledge

Masters level of education
Grounded experience with SBCC/BCI
Hands on experience in the design of communication strategies/implementation of health communication programs
Document compiling and editing skills

Interested and eligible consultant (s) should submit their expression which must include the following:

Up-to-date curriculum vitae (CV) and copies of their academic and professional certificates
Cover letter detailing how applicant fits the profile
Technical proposal: Not exceeding five (5) pages, describing the consultant’s understanding of the task, and detailed work plan
Financial Proposal: Budget proposal for the task.

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Method of Application Application process
Complete Proposals should be submitted by email to bidsTANZANIA@NUTRITIONINTL.ORG
before close of business on Friday 15th January, 2021. Only complete applications will be reviewed. Late submissions will not be accepted.
Clarification on the proposal: Clarification concerning this proposal should be sent to: bidsTANZANIA@NUTRITIONINTL.ORG by 13th January 2021 by 12 noon.