Request for Proposals – Learning Coordination of Comic Relief’s Mental Health and Wellbeing in Kenya Programme

Comic Relief is seeking a consultant/team to act as a Learning Coordinator(s) on our Mental Health and Wellbeing in Kenya Programme over 37 months (between May 2021 and May 2024). The Learning Coordinator(s) will deliver a programme of cohort learning with funded partners; supporting them to surface and use learning (individually and collectively) through delivery; disseminating key learnings to a wider audience, where valuable; and contributing to the evidence base around issues affecting mental health programming in Kenya and more widely. We are interested in engaging, participatory approaches to collective learning that can inform best practice.

The Mental Health and Wellbeing in Kenya Programme is an initiative funded by Comic Relief and the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), formerly the Department for International Development (DFID). The programme is investing 4.7 million GBP, and aims to ensure people with mental health conditions and psychosocial disabilities can access the support they need and are empowered to speak out and live free from stigma and discrimination. Poor availability of quality mental health services, inadequate support in the community, human rights violations, and exclusion as a result of stigma and discrimination, contribute to the social, economic and political marginalisation of people with mental health conditions and psychosocial disabilities in Kenya. The programme invests directly in Kenyan civil society organisations (CSOs) and representative groups that implement a range of activities to tackle mental health related stigma and discrimination, and to improve access to quality mental health care, with a significant focus on working with partners to help them identify their organisational capacity priorities, and to strengthen these. As of April 2021, Comic Relief has invested in nine organisations.

The programme is expected to achieve three main outcomes. These are:

• Through the action of Kenyan CSOs and representative groups, stigma and discrimination associated with mental health conditions and psychosocial disabilities expressed by community members and government stakeholders is effectively tackled
• People living with mental health conditions and psychosocial disabilities have improved access to quality mental health services in line with human rights approaches
• Civil society organisations and representative groups working in the mental health sector have improved organisational capacity.