Request For Proposal Field Research Services for the Yegna Gize Impact Study

Who We Are

Girl Effect is an international non-profit organization dedicated to addressing challenges faced by adolescent girls and youth in Ethiopia. Operating in the country since 2013, the organization leverages Social and Behavior Change (SBC) strategies, combining media and on-the-ground interventions to tackle various societal issues and empower young people.

Girl Effect Ethiopia created the youth brand Yegna in 2014 and, since then, has reached over 10 million people through multiple products, outreach programs, girl networks, and research pieces done all for the betterment of adolescent lives.

We create safe spaces for girls, sharing facts and answering questions about health, nutrition, education, relationships, etc. And we use innovative technology so we can reach girls at scale. We arm girls with the skills to negotiate and redefine what they are told is possible, so every girl can choose to be in control of her body, her health, her learning and livelihood.

When a girl unlocks her power to make different choices that change her life, it inspires others to do so too. She starts a ripple effect that impacts her family, community, and country.

That’s the Girl Effect.

Background

Yegna Gize, meaning “Our Time” in Amharic, is a Girl Effect Ethiopia programme that builds on the Yegna brand and its experience of using media, storytelling, role modelling, and community engagement to influence positive social and behavioural change among young people. Yegna Gize focuses specifically on youth economic empowerment, with an emphasis on improving young people's aspirations, mindsets, skills, access to opportunities, and pathways towards employment and entrepreneurship.

Over the programme period, Yegna Gize seeks to contribute to improved economic opportunities and livelihood outcomes for young people in Ethiopia by addressing barriers related to employment, entrepreneurship, skills development, social norms, and mindsets. The programme works with young people, schools, communities, government institutions, civil society organisations (CSOs), private-sector actors, role models, and other relevant stakeholders to create an enabling environment for youth to pursue viable economic pathways.

The programme is implemented across six regions of Ethiopia: Tigray, Oromia, Amhara, Central Ethiopia, Sidama, and South Ethiopia. Through a combination of youth-centred interventions, partnerships, capacity strengthening, communication and social and behavioural change approaches, Yegna Gize aims to strengthen young people's knowledge, skills, confidence, aspirations, networks, and access to employment and entrepreneurship opportunities.

Key areas of Yegna Gize programming include:

• Youth employment and transition to work: Supporting young people to access internships, work-based learning, employment opportunities, and other pathways into the labour market.
• Entrepreneurship and enterprise development: Strengthening entrepreneurial knowledge, business skills, growth mindsets, and access to support for young people interested in starting or growing businesses.
• Skills and mindset development: Building practical, transferable, entrepreneurial, and employability skills, alongside confidence, aspirations, resilience, and positive attitudes towards work and entrepreneurship.
• Peer-to-peer and youth support mechanisms: Establishing and strengthening youth groups and peer-support approaches that enable young people to learn from and support one another.
• Role modelling and mentorship: Connecting young people with role models, mentors, entrepreneurs, and other influential individuals who can provide inspiration, guidance, and practical exposure to different livelihood pathways.
• School-based engagement: Working with schools, teachers, students, and relevant stakeholders to promote entrepreneurship, creativity, growth mindset, career aspirations, and awareness of economic opportunities.

Youth-centred media and social and behavioural change communication (SBC): Using Yegna's established multimedia and storytelling platforms to challenge limiting norms, promote positive attitudes towards work and entrepreneurship, and increase young people's awareness and uptake of available opportunities.

Partnerships and systems strengthening: Working with regional and local government structures, CSOs, private-sector actors, educational institutions, and other stakeholders to strengthen the ecosystem supporting youth economic empowerment.

Girl Effect works with local partners to contextualise and implement interventions according to regional realities and the needs of young people. The programme therefore combines national-level approaches with locally relevant implementation, allowing interventions to respond to the different economic, social, cultural, and institutional contexts across the six regions.

Yegna Gize Programme Impact Study

As the programme progresses, Girl Effect Ethiopia intends to commission an independent Impact Study of Yegna Gize to assess the extent to which the programme has contributed to changes in young people's knowledge, skills, attitudes, aspirations, behaviours, access to opportunities, and economic outcomes.

The study is expected to generate credible evidence on the effectiveness, relevance, and contribution of Yegna Gize interventions and to identify which approaches are working, for whom, under what conditions, and why. The findings will inform programme learning, adaptation, accountability to stakeholders and donors, and future programming and scale-up decisions.

The selected agency will therefore be expected to develop and implement a rigorous and contextually appropriate study methodology that captures both quantitative and qualitative evidence, where appropriate, and considers the diversity of young people, intervention types, implementation approaches, and regional contexts within Yegna Gize. The study should generate actionable evidence and recommendations that can strengthen the programme's contribution to sustainable youth economic empowerment in Ethiopia.

Girl Effect is looking to engage a qualified agency to recruit, train, and deploy experienced data collectors across the specified geographic scope, and to manage the full data collection cycle, from fieldwork through to data analysis and submission in line with Girl Effect Ethiopia's tools, sample design, and quality standards.

Who You Are

The ideal candidate/Agency will:

Have demonstrated experience managing field-based data collection for household, community, or individual-level surveys in Ethiopia, ideally on youth, gender, education, livelihoods, or social behaviour change topics.

Maintain, or be able to rapidly build, a roster of vetted, experienced enumerators with local language coverage and cultural familiarity across some or all of the six Yegna Gize regions (Tigray, Amhara, Oromia, Sidama, Central Ethiopia, South Ethiopia), including hard-to-reach and pastoralist areas.

Have hands-on experience with mobile data collection platforms, particularly SurveyCTO, and the ability to train enumerators on tool use ahead of each deployment.

Demonstrate robust field supervision and data quality assurance practices — spot-checks, back-checks/call-backs, and real-time progress monitoring against a sample plan.

Have in-house or readily available capacity for data cleaning, processing, and first-level quantitative and/or qualitative analysis, with clear documentation of methods.

Be able to mobilize and scale data collection teams on short notice against a recurring, on-call task-order structure, without compromising quality or timeliness.

Show a genuine commitment to Girl Effect's mission and values, with a demonstrated understanding of child/adolescent safeguarding standards appropriate to research involving youth.

Be highly organised, detail-oriented, and able to manage multiple concurrent task orders across different regions.

What You will do

• 2.1  Geographic Coverage
• Data collection will take place across 6 regions and 60+ woredas, including hard-to-reach and pastoralist areas. Exact woreda-level assignments will be shared with the selected agency alongside each task order, together with the corresponding sample size and tool set.
• 2.2 Sourcing, Vetting, and Onboarding of Data Collectors
• The agency is responsible for building and maintaining a roster of qualified, experienced data collectors who can be deployed against Girl Effect Ethiopia's task orders. This includes:
• Recruiting data collectors with relevant prior experience in household or community-level data collection, ideally on similar topics (e.g., health, gender, youth, social behavior change).
• Ensuring appropriate local language coverage and cultural familiarity for each assigned region/woreda, including pastoralist communities.
• Verifying qualifications, references, and prior fieldwork experience before onboarding.
• Maintaining a sufficient bench of vetted collectors to meet fluctuating task-order demand without delays.
• Ensuring the data collectors are given a functioning tab and are trained on the use of survey CTO.
• 2.3 Training
• The agency will organize and deliver training for all data collectors before each deployment, covering:
• Use of Girl Effect Ethiopia's data collection tools and mobile data collection platform.
• The sample design and how it translates into fieldwork assignments.
• Data quality, ethics, consent, and child/adolescent safeguarding protocols appropriate to the population being surveyed.
• Logistics, reporting lines, and escalation procedures for field issues.
• Girl Effect Ethiopia will provide technical content on the tools and safeguarding standards; the agency is responsible for organizing, scheduling, and delivering the training itself, and for confirming collector competency before deployment (e.g., through a short practical assessment or pilot/pre-test).
• 2.4 Deployment
• Data collectors will be deployed per task order, which Girl Effect Ethiopia will issue for each data collection round/moment. Each task order will specify the woredas/regions, sample size, tools, timeline, and any round-specific instructions. The agency is responsible for:
• Assigning trained collectors to each task order based on location, language, and availability.
• Managing collector logistics (travel, accommodation, safety/security arrangements as applicable) within hard-to-reach and pastoralist areas.
• Providing day-to-day field supervision.
• 2.5 Data Quality and Timeliness
• The agency is accountable for the quality and timeliness of data collected under each task order, including:
• Real-time monitoring of data collection progress against the sample plan and timeline.
• Quality assurance mechanisms such as spot-checks, back-checks/call-backs, and review of flagged or inconsistent entries.

Responsibilities

• The Hiring Organization and the selected Consultant/agency will have the following division of roles:
• Activity
• Girl Effect Ethiopia
• Contracted Agency
• Data collection tools & sampling frame
• Provides (already designed)
• Reviews & confirms understanding
• Data collector recruitment
• Sets qualification criteria; final sign-off
• Sources, screens, and shortlists candidates
• Training
• Provides technical/content input; approves training plan
• Organizes and delivers logistics & tool-use training
• Task orders
• Issues task order per round/moment
• Deploys collectors against task order
• Fieldwork supervision
• Spot-checks and technical backstopping
• Day-to-day field supervision & collector management
• Data quality assurance
• Defines quality standards; conducts audits
• Implements real-time QA checks, back-checks, call-backs
• Timeliness tracking
• Reviews progress dashboards
• Reports daily/weekly progress against timeline
• Data cleaning & analysis
• Reviews and validates
• Cleans, processes, and produces first-level analysis
• Submission
• Receives final dataset & report
• Submits clean dataset, syntax/code, and summary report
• Deliverables
• Specific deliverables for the duration of the engagement will include:-
• Roster of vetted, trained data collectors, updated and available on an ongoing basis.
• Training plan and completion records for each deployment.
• Field deployment plan per task order (collector-to-woreda assignment).
• Data collection progress reports (per agreed frequency) per task order.
• Quality assurance reports (back-check/spot-check findings and resolutions).
• Clean, validated datasets with accompanying documentation.
• First-level analysis and summary report per task order.
• Deliverables will be accepted when they meet the applicable task order, agreed quality standards and Girl Effect’s written feedback.
• The agency must correct substantiated quality issues attributable to its work at no additional fee.
• Expected Commitment
• This engagement is structured as a framework/on-call arrangement: the agency will be expected to mobilize data collectors on a per-task-order basis over the contract period between October 2026 and September 2027, with the frequency and scale of rounds varying according to program needs. Each task order will specify its own scope, sample, and timeline.
• Management
• The Consultant will have a primary point of contact within the Evidence & Insight team.