ECCE Technical Consultant

Project Background
Palladium International, LLC is implementing the $250 Million, 8-year USAID CATALYZE contract which offers a facilitated partnership model that will craft solutions to crowd in $2 Billion in blended finance (i.e. blended concessional and commercial finance) to USAID partner countries; it can work in any development sector or region. Launched in October 2019, CATALYZE is a buy-in mechanism that allows USAID Bureaus and Missions to efficiently deploy investment facilitation solutions that respond to the needs of specific sectors, issues, and geographies.

The USAID CATALYZE EduFinance program develops private sector partnerships to facilitate innovations in financing and service delivery that increase access to low-cost, quality education. CATALYZE EduFinance mobilizes blended finance – the strategic use of USAID funds to increase private sector investment – to crowd in private capital into non-state schools and education enterprises in USAID partner countries. Private capital leveraged with funding from USAID will address the substantial funding gap to respond to the global need for increased access to quality education.

Through the CATALYZE EduFinance Activity, co-investments in the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) window of CATALYZE will mobilize state and non-state financing to contribute to enhanced access and quality of early childhood care and education, particularly for the marginalized and vulnerable, and through that increase women’s economic empowerment and workforce development.

Early Childhood Care and Education in Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) Region
In the Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region, early childhood care and education is limited and has low enrollment rates, especially for marginalized and vulnerable groups. Few countries provide integrated systems for childcare services including health, nutrition, social protection, and early childhood education. Even in LAC countries where access to ECCE has improved, the quality-of-service provision continues to suffer leading to poor developmental and learning outcomes of young children.
Furthermore, since 2020 the global pandemic has decimated economies, led to families losing jobs, and caused children and youth to miss out on education. On average, schools in the region were closed for 168 school days due to the COVID-19 pandemic, equivalent to the loss of an entire academic year of school. The impact of the pandemic on children’s learning and development has taken a disproportionate toll on marginalized and vulnerable groups in part due to limited access to distance learning opportunities.

In 2022, CATALYZE EduFinance hired Mott McDonald to conduct an ECCE market assessment for Paraguay. The objective behind this work was to develop a firm foundation for multi-year ECCE investments in Paraguay funded by USAID LAC Bureau Office of Regional Sustainable Development.
The country-level deep dives addressed key aspects of the ECCE landscape, including child development outcomes and access to ECCE; gender dimensions of workforce and ECCE; the provider landscape (public providers, private providers, in-home care, etc.), policy/regulatory aspects of ECCE; key institutional actors, and ECCE funding (public financing, parental fees, etc.) and investments. The presentations also featured several potential entry points for CATALYZE ECCE programming in Paraguay). The results were presented to USAID in two succinct presentations and will be shared with the selected consultant as part of the reference documents.

Objective
To move the LAC Bureau ECCE activity forward, the CATALYZE ECCE team requires an in-country ECCE consultant in Paraguay to support the next steps of the project co-design process. This entails conducting country-level interviews and consulting with key stakeholders to identify the most viable key entry points and develop a concept note that would serve as the design for the investment. The concept note will then be refined through co-creation workshops with relevant stakeholders (co-investors, government, private sector, beneficiaries, USAID). The consultant will participate in the co-creation session as a key contributor and/or co-facilitator.

Tasks
To this end, the consultant will work closely with the Palladium ECCE team to:

- Review background documentation and participate in a kick-off call with the Palladium ECCE team.
- Develop a work plan and timeline for the project design. This plan would include the methodology for consultations, list of stakeholders, and interview questions for the initial consultations. Potential interviews include:
- Public sector (government) institutions involved in the ECCE ecosystem
- Private providers of ECCE services
- Donors and Foundations working in ECCE space
- Potential private sector investors (private employers, chambers of commerce, associations, corporate social responsibility institutions) in ECCE space
- Other key stakeholders as relevant
- Conduct in-country consultations together with Palladium ECCE team members
- Validate/adjust entry points and develop initial project concept note for Paraguay
- Hold targeted consultations with potential partners, government and other stakeholders to hone project design. This can include focus groups with end users.
- Document consultations into a concise, detailed matrix
- Co-develop and facilitate stakeholder roundtable with targeted key stakeholders, focused on top opportunities identified through process and incorporate inputs into design
- Consult on evolving co-design concept with USAID LAC Bureau and Missions, incorporating inputs into the design
- Identify key stakeholders that should be engaged in co-design
- Participate in co-design workshop with core team of most relevant collaborators
- Invited at the discretion of Palladium, the consultant(s) will be available to present the project design document to Palladium, USAID, or others

Deliverables and Timeline

The Consultant will complete the following tasks under this scope of work.
Deliverable Description Estimated Timeframe (in time elapsed after date of signing consultant contract)
Kick-off call held with Palladium ECCE Team This call will frame the activity and review key background documents to develop the workplan 2 days
Approved workplan The consultant will submit a proposed work plan and timeline, including the methodology, interview participants and interview questions that includes USAID’s inputs 1 week
Draft Initial Project Design document Based on initial country consultations, this document should identify most viable entry points and articulate a project design including core intervention, core activities, core collaborators, timeline, geography, parameters of partnership, potential contributions (both capital and in-kind) anticipated results, and any other areas as relevant. 4 weeks
Summary and Take-aways from Consultations This summary will provide details on the stakeholders and inputs from more focused consultations and focus groups, including recommendations to hone the Project Design and next steps for the stakeholder roundtable. 5 weeks
Updated Project Design and presentation slide deck After Palladium and USAID provide input the consultant(s) will incorporate all feedback, research outstanding items, and provide an updated Project Design to Palladium with concise slide deck presentation. 7 weeks
Key Takeaways from stakeholder roundtable This concise documentation will provide details on the learning and key takeaways from the stakeholder roundtable, including agreed actions to further hone the Project Design and recommendations on the core team to Co-design the activity. 9 weeks
Refined Project Design Document Consultant(s) will incorporate all feedback from stakeholder roundtable, Palladium and USAID into an updated Project Design to be used in the Co-design workshop for the core team of co-designers. 11 weeks
Inputs delivered into co-design workshop The consultant(s) will provide inputs to the Palladium ECCE team as a participant in the co-design workshop. 12 weeks
Submit final report and final approved version of all deliverables Consultant submits final report detailing all activities and including final approved versions of all deliverables (with Palladium and USAID inputs incorporated) 14 weeks

Competencies

- Masters in education, early childhood, economics, public policy, or related field
- Deep knowledge of the stakeholders, existing programming and gaps in the ECCE/ECD field in Paraguay
- Demonstrated experience in designing consultation processes and convening stakeholders across government, non-state sector, foundations, private sector, multilaterals and others in Paraguay
- Proven experience and success in multi-stakeholder project design on ECD, ECCE and/or childcare interventions
- Excellent written and spoken communication skills in Spanish and English
- An excellent track record of being proactive and working effectively in teams
- Superb attention to detail, and demonstrated sound organizational skills; and
- Ability to deliver assignments in a timely manner while operating under tight deadlines and juggling multiple tasks

Specifications: The Consultant for each country will submit the deliverables as per below specifications.

All written deliverables will be emailed to the ECCE Sr. Manager, by End of Day (local time) on the date specified in the work plan and will be in English and Spanish languages, single-spaced Microsoft Word or GoogleDoc in 11-point Arial or Times New Roman font. The deliverables must be free of spelling and grammatical errors.

Terms

The consultant will be contracted for 45 days, and remuneration will be paid upon presentation of outputs. Further extension to support the next steps of the USAID CATALYZE investment Paraguay is subject to project requirements and is contingent upon high performance. The contract will run to June 30, 2023.