Food Security and/or Innovative Financing experts for the Humanitarian Innovation Programme

Innovation Norway’s Humanitarian innovation programme (HIP Norway) grants funding and support to develop, test and scale new solutions that can contribute to better and more efficient humanitarian action. It supports innovation projects led by humanitarian organisations where the expertise and technical know-how from the private sector is applied to find solutions to humanitarian challenges. The programme supports both early-stage innovation and scaling of solutions that have proven to be successful at the pilot stage. HIP Norway aims to support bold ideas that seek to improve humanitarian response. The programme is funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and managed by Innovation Norway.

Find the full request for tender via this link: Seeking experts to evaluate HIP proposals jobsnear.net Humanitarian Innovation Programme (innovationnorway.com)

More information about the programme may be found here: https://hip.innovationnorway.com/

Purpose of consultancy

HIP Norway launches an annual call for applications. The deadline to apply to this year’s call is June 28th. The programme has five focus areas:

• Green humanitarian response: Humanitarian organisations’ efforts that contribute to more sustainable and environmentally friendly solutions within the humanitarian sector.
• Health and sanitation: Humanitarian organisations’ efforts to ensure lifesaving basic health services, including prevention/control of pandemics, efforts within women’s, children’s and young people’s health, sexual and reproductive health, mental health and psycho-social support, and the provision of facilities and services for the maintenance of hygienic conditions and the safe disposal of human waste.
• Protection: Humanitarian organisations’ efforts that contribute to protecting people from violence, abuse and violation of international law due to humanitarian crises.
• Innovative financing: Innovative financing refers to a number of non-traditional mechanisms for raising additional funds for humanitarian and development assistance. This may be through innovations such as micro-contributions, impact bonds, public-private partnerships and market-based approaches/ business models.
• Food security: Responses during and after a humanitarian crisis addressing issues of food availability, access, utilization, and stability.

We are seeking two experts with proven experience to assist us in evaluating the applications; one within the focus area innovative financing, and one within the focus area food security. The consultants should have proven humanitarian experience and expertise within innovative financing or food security, and not currently be employed by any of the organisations that are eligible to apply for the call for proposals.

Innovation Norway has entered into Framework Agreements with experts within the other three focus areas and is now looking to enter into a Framework Agreement with an expert on innovative financing, and one on food security. For each call-off in the Framework Agreement, Innovation Norway will select the relevant expert(s) based on a concrete assessment of our needs.

Activities

The experts will be provided with an evaluation form and electronic copies of each application, including any annexes. Each application is approx. 5 pages long plus annexes.

The number of applications we will receive is not known, thus we cannot at this stage give the exact size of the assignment. However, we estimate between 15-25 applications to be distributed to each of our experts, with an estimated two hours spent per application for the evaluation. If the technical quality of the application requires that further time is spent on the evaluation, this can be agreed to on a case-to-case basis.

Planned timeline (subject to confirmation)

We expect to distribute the applications to our experts July 19th. The selected experts need to return their evaluations to Innovation Norway by August 19th. From August 19th through 23rd, meetings will be conducted with each expert to discuss the applications.

For consecutive years, it is expected that new calls for applications will be announced in the spring, with evaluations taking place in the period between June and September. The call-off period will be approximately two months.

Deliverables

• A completed evaluation form for each application distributed. The application form will be provided by Innovation Norway

Proposal Submission

The application deadline is June 19th at 12.00 PM CET. We will not be able to consider incomplete applications or applications submitted after the deadline.

Applications should include:

• Summary of candidate’s relevant experience and CV.
• Short cover letter stipulating interest and suitability (max 1 page)
• Examples of relevant research, consultancy and publications
• Rate/hour.

Part tenders

We expect to employ two experts, one for each focus area (innovative financing and food security respectively). These experts do not need to come from the same supplier. It is not possible to tender for parts of the delivery within the given focus area.

CONTRACT AND OPTION TO EXTEND

The contract period is from the date of signature and lasts for two years, with an option to extend by 1 + 1 year.