Healthy development in the early years (particularly birth to age five), often referred to as early child development (ECD), provides the building blocks for educational achievement, economic productivity, responsible citizenship, lifelong health, strong communities, and successful parenting of the next generation. During the early years, children’s exposure to nurturing and responsive relationships are necessary to develop foundational social and emotional competencies and core cognitive skills needed to communicate with others, problem solve and maintain attention.

In Pakistan, the state of stunting and the impact of early stimulation on children's development are pressing concerns with significant implications for the nation's human capital. The World Bank's Pakistan Human Capital Review highlights that a staggering 40% of children under the age of 5 in Pakistan are stunted. This has crippling impacts that are largely irreversible, damaging a child’s cognitive and physical capacity, leading to lower educational attainment, lower economic productivity, and reduced income earning potential​. This level of stunting is indicative of chronic environmental and nutritional deficiencies and poses a severe challenge to achieving optimal human development and economic productivity.

Improving child outcomes requires addressing the nutritional, health, and environmental determinants of stunting. However, existing programs aimed at stunting reduction in Pakistan primarily focus on the former with dietary and nutrition interventions for pregnant and lactating women and children under the age of two. While essential, these programs do not account for the critical environmental factors that contribute to neural damage and cognitive impairment, thereby preventing nutrition interventions from reaching peak effectiveness. Most importantly, an unsafe environment can expose a child to pathogens that cause chronic infection, limiting the body’s ability to absorb and use nutrients. This leads to nutritional deficiencies and poor immune function, eventually causing cognitive damages. Effectively reducing child stunting, therefore, requires comprehensive and well-coordinated multisectoral interventions that go beyond nutrition to address the underlying environmental drivers of stunting including access to water and sanitation, safe management of solid waste, and dietary diversity and quality. In an environment like Pakistan, where tackling these complex and multisectoral issues will take time, even with the highest level of attention and support, complementing such interventions with ECD could help moderate stunting-related cognition losses and protect generations of young children who are, or soon will be, past the age where the reversal of these losses is feasible.

Against this background the World Bank is seeking a firm to assist with the following activities:

1.    Review existing information guides for low literacy settings to identify messages related to stimulation. The World Bank task team has compiled a repository of communication materials and training content that could be used in a behavior change campaign surrounding parenting, stimulation, and stunting reduction. The firm would need to review the existing communication materials and training content, and identify whether a subset could be adapted for use in high stunting, low-literacy areas in Pakistan.

2.    Develop messages on stimulation in high stunting areas. In addition to reviewing existing content, the firm will review published and grey literature on child development and stimulation in the context of stunting to propose a set of messages that will serve as the central component of the behavior change communication. The messages selected must be theoretically and empirically driven, selected due to their relevance to low literacy, high stunting areas in Pakistan, and adapted to the Pakistani context.

3.    Produce a package of behavior change communication  for low literacy populations following UNICEF’s guidance on Social and Behavior Change (SBC). After the messages are identified, the firm will hold a session with the Bank task team to review them. Based on feedback received at this stage, the set of messages will be adapted into a behavior change communication campaign to be delivered through multiple media formats. The formats will be proposed by the firm (i.e., social, print, in-person, electronic or radio media). The formats should be proposed with effectiveness and reach in mind.

4.   Propose strategies for disseminating the key messages. The firm will develop a guide for local NGOs to pre-test the material through pilot(s). The local NGOs will conduct the pilot(s) with support of the World Bank convergence team and the firm. Once the feasibility, adequacy and efficacy of the messages is established, the firm will create a detailed implementation plan.

5.    Campaign design and NGO training: The finalized messages, dissemination strategies and materials will be handed over to local NGOs for delivery. Materials must include a comprehensive training program, equipping NGOs with the skills and tools for effective implementation. The firm will train the local NGOs and provide ongoing technical support as needed during the course of this assignment. 

SELECTION OF CONSULTING FIRMS BY THE WORLD BANK GROUP

REQUEST FOR EXPRESSION OF INTEREST (EOI)

Electronic Submissions through WBGeProcure RFx Now

ASSIGNMENT OVERVIEW

Assignment Title: Firm to provide Behavior Change Communication for Stimulation in Low Literacy Populations

Assignment Countries:

• Pakistan

ASSIGNMENT DESCRIPTION

Healthy development in the early years (particularly birth to age five), often referred to as early child development (ECD), provides the building blocks for educational achievement, economic productivity, responsible citizenship, lifelong health, strong communities, and successful parenting of the next generation. During the early years, children’s exposure to nurturing and responsive relationships are necessary to develop foundational social and emotional competencies and core cognitive skills needed to communicate with others, problem solve and maintain attention.

In Pakistan, the state of stunting and the impact of early stimulation on children's development are pressing concerns with significant implications for the nation's human capital. The World Bank's Pakistan Human Capital Review highlights that a staggering 40% of children under the age of 5 in Pakistan are stunted. This has crippling impacts that are largely irreversible, damaging a child’s cognitive and physical capacity, leading to lower educational attainment, lower economic productivity, and reduced income earning potential​. This level of stunting is indicative of chronic environmental and nutritional deficiencies and poses a severe challenge to achieving optimal human development and economic productivity.

Improving child outcomes requires addressing the nutritional, health, and environmental determinants of stunting. However, existing programs aimed at stunting reduction in Pakistan primarily focus on the former with dietary and nutrition interventions for pregnant and lactating women and children under the age of two. While essential, these programs do not account for the critical environmental factors that contribute to neural damage and cognitive impairment, thereby preventing nutrition interventions from reaching peak effectiveness. Most importantly, an unsafe environment can expose a child to pathogens that cause chronic infection, limiting the body’s ability to absorb and use nutrients. This leads to nutritional deficiencies and poor immune function, eventually causing cognitive damages. Effectively reducing child stunting, therefore, requires comprehensive and well-coordinated multisectoral interventions that go beyond nutrition to address the underlying environmental drivers of stunting including access to water and sanitation, safe management of solid waste, and dietary diversity and quality. In an environment like Pakistan, where tackling these complex and multisectoral issues will take time, even with the highest level of attention and support, complementing such interventions with ECD could help moderate stunting-related cognition losses and protect generations of young children who are, or soon will be, past the age where the reversal of these losses is feasible.

Implementation Approach

As part of the World Bank’s focus on reducing stunting in Pakistan, the Education, Health and Poverty teams are developing a set of synergistic interventions to address the specific challenges Pakistan faces in reducing child stunting and to achieve significant results within the next decade. A key component of the proposed behavioral intervention is the focus on fostering parenting practices that support cognitive stimulation of children from birth to age 5. Evidence shows that early stimulation can impact psychological and neural development and therefore reduce the negative impact of stunting on cognitive development.

The proposed intervention will be implemented on a pilot basis in a subset of the 16 Tehsils (third admin unit) in Punjab that have been strategically selected to implement an integrated multisectoral “convergence” program to address child stunting. This approach includes the provision of safely managed water and safely managed sanitation, along with comprehensive behavior change communication, as well as complementary interventions in nutrition, health, social protection, as well as a pilot program to increase dietary diversity and quality. The addition of SBCC on ECD focused on improving parenting and caregiver practices will help close an important gap.

Against this background the World Bank is seeking a firm to assist with the following activities:

1.    Review existing information guides for low literacy settings to identify messages related to stimulation. The World Bank task team has compiled a repository of communication materials and training content that could be used in a behavior change campaign surrounding parenting, stimulation, and stunting reduction. The firm would need to review the existing communication materials and training content, and identify whether a subset could be adapted for use in high stunting, low-literacy areas in Pakistan.

2.     Develop messages on stimulation in high stunting areas. In addition to reviewing existing content, the firm will review published and grey literature on child development and stimulation in the context of stunting to propose a set of messages that will serve as the central component of the behavior change communication. The messages selected must be theoretically and empirically driven, selected due to their relevance to low literacy, high stunting areas in Pakistan, and adapted to the Pakistani context.

3.     Produce a package of behavior change communication  for low literacy populations following UNICEF’s guidance on Social and Behavior Change (SBC). After the messages are identified, the firm will hold a session with the Bank task team to review them. Based on feedback received at this stage, the set of messages will be adapted into a behavior change communication campaign to be delivered through multiple media formats. The formats will be proposed by the firm (i.e., social, print, in-person, electronic or radio media). The formats should be proposed with effectiveness and reach in mind.

4.   Propose strategies for disseminating the key messages. The firm will develop a guide for local NGOs to pre-test the material through pilot(s). The local NGOs will conduct the pilot(s) with support of the World Bank convergence team and the firm. Once the feasibility, adequacy and efficacy of the messages is established, the firm will create a detailed implementation plan.

5.   Campaign design and NGO training: The finalized messages, dissemination strategies and materials will be handed over to local NGOs for delivery. Materials must include a comprehensive training program, equipping NGOs with the skills and tools for effective implementation. The firm will train the local NGOs and provide ongoing technical support as needed during the course of this assignment.

FUNDING SOURCE

The World Bank Group intends to finance the assignment / services described below under the following:

• BB: Bank Budget
• TF0C3223: SABER

ELIGIBILITY

Eligibility restrictions apply:

• [Please type list of restrictions]

SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS

The World Bank Group invites eligible firms to indicate their interest in providing the services. Interested firms must provide information indicating that they are qualified to perform the services (brochures, description of similar assignments, experience in similar conditions, availability of appropriate skills among staff, etc. for firms; CV and cover letter for individuals). Please note that the total size of all attachments should be less than 5MB. Firms may associate to enhance their qualifications unless otherwise stated in the solicitation documents. Where a group of firms associate to submit an EOI, they must indicate which is the lead firm. If shortlisted, the firm identified in the EOI as the lead firm will be invited to the request for proposal (RFP) phase.

Expressions of Interest should be submitted, in English, electronically through WBGeProcure RFx Now

NOTES

Following this invitation for EOI, a shortlist of qualified firms will be formally invited to submit proposals. Shortlisting and selection will be subject to the availability of funding.

Only those firms which have been shortlisted will be invited to participate in the RFP phase. No notification or debrief will be provided to firms which have not been shortlisted.

If you encounter technical difficulties while uploading documents, please send an e-mail to the Help Desk at corporateprocurement@worldbank.org prior to the submission deadline.