RFQ – 056 Global Safeguarding Culture Survey

Background Information on Plan International

Plan International is an independent development and humanitarian organisation that advances children’s rights and equality for girls.

We believe in the power and potential of every child. But this is often suppressed by poverty, violence, exclusion and discrimination. And it’s girls who are most affected. Working together with children, young people, our supporters and partners, we strive for a just world, tackling the root causes of the challenges facing girls and all vulnerable children.

We support children’s rights from birth until they reach adulthood. And we enable children to prepare for – and respond to – crises and adversity. We drive changes in practice and policy at local, national and global levels using our reach, experience and knowledge.

We have been building powerful partnerships for children for over 75 years, and are now active in more than 70 countries.

Read more about Plan International’s Global Strategy: 100 Million Reasons at https://plan-international.org/strategy

1. Requirements

Background Information on Plan’s Approach to Safeguarding

Violence and abuse within the aid and development sector reflect the power and structural inequalities that can be seen in societies. Violence against girls, boys, children, young people, women, men and those that do not identify with a gender is often linked to gender or identity. Any organisation or agency working with families, communities and the wider society has a moral and legal responsibility to take all reasonable measures to ensure that the risks of harm (both intentional and unintentional) are minimised.

Plan’s approach to safeguarding explicitly recognises the implications of power, how power confers certain privileges on groups within societies and how this may potentially negatively impact (through all stages of safeguarding – from prevention to response and reparation) on individuals and groups with certain identities.

All individuals have multiple identities and multiple social characteristics and the way in which these intersect shapes their experience and may make them privileged or, alternatively, subject to discrimination, increased risk and disadvantage. The application of a gender and intersectional lens to safeguarding requires us to identify how interlocking systems of power impacts those who are most marginalised in society. We need to reflect on how factors such as class, race, sexual orientation, age, religion, creed, disability and gender, are woven together, as well as what this means for the power, privilege and biases that are associated with groups in all societies. We also need to recognise how this plays out within the organisation (the privileges conferred to certain job positions and what it means for the identity of the person(s) holding them), as well as between the organisation and the wider society within which we work (recognising that we are a large influential INGO).

Background information on Plan’s Application of a Gender and Intersectional Lens to Safeguarding

The application of a gender and intersectional lens to safeguarding means Plan:

• takes into account people’s (children, young people and adults) gender and overlapping identities and experiences in order to understand the complexity of the prejudice and/or inequality they face, or conversely how this may lead to a heightened privileged status

• reflects on our status as a prominent INGO and acknowledge the power imbalance this causes within the organisation (where within the organisation power lies, who typically are the “dominant” and “subordinate” groups and how this impacts on decisions we take on safeguarding), as well as between the organisation and the wider society;

• develops our capacity to analyse how girls, boys, non-binary children and young people can be at risk of harm and abuse as a result of our organisation’s work because of their particular identity (gender, sexual orientation, tribe, race, colour, disability etc.);

• considers how we can most effectively create safe spaces for all staff and for the children and young people, in all their diversity, with whom we work, where it is safe to challenge and address inequality, power and bias.

As individuals and as an organisation we consciously choose to use our individual and collective power to work together with others and with girls, boys, children and young people in all their diversity to create a safer environment which benefits us all.

Background information on Safe Culture

Plan’s work is based on deeply held values and a clear purpose. We must ensure that our shared values and behaviours become embedded in our culture and the guiding principles behind all our decision making.

Plan frequently work in complex and insecure environments, and in situations where we are in positions of power and trust (in relation to the children, young people and beneficiary communities we work with, with other organisations and one another). We must under no circumstances abuse this power and trust.

We must ensure that representatives of Plan International Entities conduct themselves in a manner which is consistent with their role and commitment to our values both during and outside of working hours (whether inside or outside of the office environment) in accordance with the Global Values, Conduct and Whistleblowing Policy.

Plan International’s Global Policy on Safeguarding Children and Young People, Say Yes to Keeping Children and Young People Safe (hereafter referred to as the ‘safeguarding policy’) and accompanying standards ensure its safeguarding measures are integrated into all core organisational systems, processes and practices.

The first standard in our safeguarding implementation standards is centred around ‘Creating a Safeguarding Culture’ for children, young people, our beneficiaries and staff in all their diversity with an aim that:

Leaders, managers and staff create an environment where it’s safe to address structural inequalities, challenge issues of power and bias and promote equality for girls, boys, children and young people, and staff in all their diversity. Their behaviour demonstrates the safeguarding values and principle of the organisation

This requires us all to take on the responsibility to ‘do no harm’ to those we serve[1] and our colleagues, to create safe environments and to undertake efforts to recognise the direct impact and implications that power, privilege and bias have on our ability to safeguard. In addition, Managers have a particular role and responsibility for setting high standards, acting as role models, recognising the inequalities within the organisation and creating an organisational environment which is safe, respectful and encourages meaningful engagement while questioning and challenging behaviours, views or ways of working that do not serve these responsibilities.

Our Aim for the Plan Safeguarding Culture Survey

Every 5 years Plan embarks on a survey to understand the immersion of the Safeguarding policy and standards across the Plan federation. This year, in recognition of the revised Safeguarding Standards and in particular the first core standard, Creating a Safeguarding Culture, this survey seeks to understand the immersion of the Safeguarding Policy with an intersectional view of safety and safe culture.

We invite external proposers to design and implement this survey to ensure independent collection and analysis of data. Surveys may be designed and tailored according to target stakeholder group. The survey should target three key stakeholders:

1. Plan International Staff

2. Partners of Plan International

3. Plan International’s service users (programme participants; children, young people and adult participants)

We invite proposers to submit proposals to fulfil the following requirements:

Design the survey

• Review previous Plan Safeguarding surveys and identify areas to be revised
• The survey to capture of demographics of survey participants’ intersecting identities, including gender, race, age and sexual orientation in order to strengthen data analysis
• Design questions ensuring a gender and intersectional lens is applied throughout survey, the survey to cover specific areas of identity, at a minimum, gender, race, age and sexual orientation

• Design questions to elicit and understand each stakeholder groups’ attitudes, understanding and perception of:

  1. Plan’s Safeguarding Policy
  2. Plan’s commitment to creating a Safe Culture, including Preventing Sexual Harassment, Exploitation and Abuse (PSHEA) and Workplace Safeguarding
  3. Plan’s commitment to an inclusive and intersectional safe culture

• Consider, recognise and consult with representative of various identities in the design of questions.

• Design survey that is available in English, French and Spanish. Desirable to have Arabic and Portugues

• Design survey that can accommodate stakeholders who do not have access to an email account or pc.

Carry out survey

• Access to online based survey to be shared with all target stakeholder groups

Analysis of results

• Complete an analysis of the survey returns
• Prepare a report summarising the results and findings of the survey
• Report to disaggregate data according to:
• the 3 target stakeholders’ groups
• the organisational, regional, country and project level

• gender and intersectional identities where appropriate

• Report should include key observations and recommendations, the reports should be accessible for download in multiple languages

Proposers may choose to provide a single proposal outlining a proposed methodology and costing or may choose to submit separate proposals focusing on either or all of the surveys required for target stakeholder group. Suppliers should offer an accredited kite mark which Plan can use on our website, recruitment and funding bids etc.

Technical Expertise:

Bidder should indicate in-house technical expertise that you feel best fit this tender. We’ll be especially interested in any expertise in the area of Workplace Culture, this includes the ability to consider and take full account of gender an overlapping identities and experiences in order to understand the complexity of the prejudice and/or inequality. Any experience with regards to Gender Responsive Intersectional Safeguarding will also be an advantage, however Plan does how in-house expertise who can support this project as and where required with technical input.

Timeline:

We’re hoping to be able to launch the survey internally in February. We suggest the following timeframe for the project, but we are more than happy to alternative suggestions. The timeline does have slight flexibility so if you are not able to commit to the proposed timeline please do let us know as to your availability.

Suggested timeline:

• 2 months for design and consultation

• 1 month for survey participants to complete the survey

• 1 month for analysis of responses and submission of report.

2. List of documents to be submitted with the RFQ

RFQ must be inclusive of the following documents:

• · Company Profile
• · Three References
• · Proposed methodology which must include:

Ø The questions that are mandatory.

Ø The range of additional questions available to choose from.

Ø The flexibility of adding additional customised questions.

Ø Their benchmarking process including examples of who this would include.

Ø Survey platform information

Ø Reporting capabilities and timeline

Ø Clear implementation plan and escalation procedure

• · Full and detailed cost break down

[1] Children, young people and adult beneficiaries in all their diversity