Creative Communications RFP Issued

The United Nations Development Programme plays a vital role in supporting the social and economic development of agricultural communities in the developing world, and in improving supply chains so they work more efficiently and sustainably for all. UNDP’s Bureau for Policy and Programming Support (BPPS) supports Food and Agricultural Commodity Systems (FACs), covering a wide range of solutions to sustainable agricultural production. Within FACS the Green Commodities Programme (GCP) has deep expertise in facilitating collaboration between diverse stakeholders to encourage and enable joint action on critical issues for more sustainable production of agricultural commodities.

UNDP´s vision for FACS is, through multi-stakeholder collaboration, to transform food and commodity systems into resilient; equitable; inclusive; environmentally, socially and economically sustainable systems. This will be achieved by UNDP taking a systemic approach as the SDG integrator using multi-stakeholder collaboration for systemic change, partnering with others based on comparative advantage; bringing technical expertise; supporting global change across multiple geographical scales; and finally unlocking and catalysing public and private funding. 

To achieve the FACS vision, UNDP’s strategy is focused around 3 interlinked key expected results;

1 – Upscaling sustainable production landscapes and jurisdictions

2 – Transforming food and agricultural commodity supply chains to become sustainable GCP’s focus on strengthening the livelihoods of smallholder producers within commodity supply chains and reducing environmental footprints, particularly deforestation, through public private partnerships can be key for UNDP’s ambitions to reduce poverty, reduce deforestation and engage the private sector in SDGs.

3 – Empowering all members of vulnerable households and smallholder producers to become more resilient, attain food security and pursue sustainable livelihoods. The key results have a multiplier effect: as more food and agricultural commodity supply chains become sustainable, more production landscapes and jurisdictions have a route to sustainability, and more producers have the opportunity for a sustainable livelihood.

5 systemic intervention areas are being devised to drive the achievement of the 3 key results. Working with the expertise and funding of partners, UNDP will develop the detailed structure and activities in these 5 intervention areas; 

At country level: 

1 – Reforming policy, legislative and regulatory frameworks for sustainable and resilient food and agricultural commodity systems, and strengthening their enforcement;

2- Strengthening national and subnational capacities and systems to foster sustainable food and agricultural commodity systems;

3 – Improving market and financial incentives for producers to shift to more sustainable practices;

4 – Promoting sustainable and resilient livelihoods for all members of vulnerable rural households and small producers; At global level:

5 – Increasing global and country level impact through global advocacy, capacity building and partnerships.

UNDP will ensure that the concepts of leaving no one behind, gender equality and women’s empowerment, transparency and governance, and resilience are mainstreamed in all activities.

The time has come to place a greater focus on communications ideas, which create a common sense of purpose, change mindsets, and speed up the pace of change leading to the achievement of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals

PURPOSE

The Government of Sweden, through Sida, has funded a four-year, USD$40M global Strategic Collaboration Programme designed to strengthen UNDP capacities to achieve its overall SD vision for poverty eradication through a more integrated, coherent approach to the environmental and climate dimensions of the UNDP Strategic Plan.

In alignment with the goals of the Sida Programme, the main objective of this assignment is to develop effective communications around a new over-arching creative communications concept to encourage collaboration amongst diverse stakeholder groups and change mindsets for more sustainable agricultural commodity production in major producing countries. UNDP therefore wishes to explore how creativity could be used as an accelerator for their vital work in this area, using public behavior change campaigns as inspiration. The current COVID 19 crisis offers a unique window of opportunity for stakeholders to set aside their differences, find common ground, and kick-start the process of change. The UN Food Systems Summit in September 2021 will be a landmark event, followed by a UNDPled Future of Food Systems Alliance between FAO, UNE, the WEF and the Norwegian Foundation EAT to develop a post-summit initiative (Future of Food Systems Collaboration -FFSC) that will accelerate a new future for food systems collaboration. This provides a perfect launch pad for this new over-arching concept (often called a creative platform) and campaign. But it should also have the potential to develop and grow over the years ahead.

A key success factor will be the disruption of existing assumptions and mindsets which are at the root of unsustainable behaviours in economies, societies and individuals. UNDP has launched The Conscious Food Systems Alliance (CoFSA) to pioneer the application of evidence-based methods to cultivate the whole human as a vital element to transform Food Systems. Its mission, partnering with others in this field, is to establish Consciousness as a recognised field of practice for systems transformation.

The overarching concept needs to inspire collaboration and mindful collective action in the short to medium term and will use the UN Food Systems Summit 2021 as a catapult to greater profile and impact

SCOPE OF WORK

The assignment is to develop a concept and programme of action around the FFSC and CoFSA opportunities to make the message have wide applicability across UNDP and beyond to key target stakeholder audiences. The ambition is therefore to create a ‘big idea’, which helps to align the interests of these groups into a common purpose, and to bring about lasting change in all food and agriculture supply chains. The expected result is that FFSC and CoFSA are more widely adopted, supported and financed by partners and organisations across the food and agriculture sector. The creative concept will act as a catalyst for meaningful change in the longer term across the agricultural community, government agencies, partner organisations and corporates.

The primary target audience for the campaigns and indeed the number of campaigns to be developed will be key outcomes of this assignment. There will be other key elements of the campaigns to be determined during the scope of this design phase. A final element of the design phase will be outreach to potential partners and funders to join and participate in the campaigns to make them bigger, better resourced and more effective.

This entails working collaboratively with other UN Agencies involved in FFSC as listed above. There will be other communication programmes both within UN and other organizations – Foundations, NGOs, companies – and this assignment includes the responsibility to identify and propose fruitful collaborations with these during the design and for partnership in the campaigns. There will be a large number of campaigns and communications threads running in parallel around the Food Systems Summit and subsequently.

United Nations Development Programme

UN House, Building #129, City of Knowledge

Panama City

TEL: 507-302-4500

Bid Day: 6/14/2021 7:00pm

Relevant agencies to consider for this assignment include MWWPR and Zeno Group.