The Humanitarian Leadership Academy (the “Academy”) is seeking proposals to undertake market research on the supply and demand of learning products & services for humanitarian workers in Kenya.
The Academy’s mission is to enable people around the world to prepare for and respond to crises in their own countries. The Academy operates two major platforms – a digital platform and a global network of Academy Centres – designed to facilitate access to knowledge and quality learning opportunities. The platforms exist as a global public good, and act as a marketplace to connect learning providers to humanitarian workers.
The Academy aims to achieve transformational change across the humanitarian sector, empowering and equipping local governments and communities to prepare for and respond effectively to crises. The Academy will comprise a Global Academy Centre (GAO) and ten on-the-ground Academy Centres around the world, which will be underpinned by a global digital platform that will enable the delivery of learning opportunities, sharing of knowledge and good practice, and conversation across this network of Centres.
In its initial set-up phase to 2020, the Academy will use its core grant funding to invest in developing its infrastructure of 10 Academy Centres, the global digital-platform and a quality-assurance framework for humanitarian skills. Each Academy Centre will invest in identifying and addressing any critical gaps in local skills by paying for the development and roll-out of learning courses. The digital-platform will include an online marketplace enabling local people to access curated learning content, which will be aggregated from existing course providers, translated and contextualised for local settings. The quality-assurance framework will allow for the accreditation of learning-providers, the certification of learning products & services and the recognition of the skills of humanitarian-workers.
Scope of work
Phase 1
- Humanitarian context and capacity; build-upon the existing research conducted by the Academy by conducting a review of recent academic literature to; i) map the vulnerability of populations in Kenya to potential natural and/or man-made crises, ii) review the efforts of key institutions to mitigate this vulnerability, and iii) existing approaches to humanitarian learning and capacity-building by these institutions.
Phase 2
- Individuals; research the number and profile of i) professional, ii) voluntary and iii) aspirational humanitarian workers who have a demand for learning, including their career-status, motivation to undertake learning, willingness to pay and to commit time.
- Employers; assess the demand (and potential demand) from humanitarian organisations, which should consider how they currently provide learning for their staff (either in-house or via third-party providers) and their ability to hire staff with the right experience and competencies.
- Suppliers of learning and quality-assurance; map the supply of learning products and services available from both learning providers and providers of relevant quality-assurance (formal recognition, certification and accreditation). It should analyse their business models and financial health to help identify any challenges they face in sustaining and scaling their operations.
- Funders; Identify and quantify the relevant funding available for learning in Kenya. This includes the funding available to professional, voluntary and aspirational humanitarian workers, enabling them to fund appropriate learning. It should also include the sources of funding available for humanitarian organisations in Kenya, who the initial recipients are and how this funding flows through the supply-chain to smaller NGOs and front-line humanitarian workers.
Proposal due by December 12th, 2016
Humanitarian Leadership Academy
Attn: Dara Leyden, Sustainable Enterprise Adviser
1 St John’s Lane
London, EC1M 4AR