Background

L&T Public Charitable Trust (LTPCT) has been working in Talasari taluka, in close coordination with government departments, local governments and communities since 2011. It has undertaken several initiatives related to health, education, water, infrastructure development and agriculture in villages across the taluka. In 2017, it forged a partnership with UNDP which would converge, leverage on and build up on existing (and past) initiatives and resources of L&T Public Charitable Trust (LTPCT), UNDP and the Government of Maharashtra (GoM) in the region. The partnership has been envisaged in two phases. Phase 1 was for one-year period to test the model of private sector partnership with UNDP in 3-gram panchayat namely Kochai-Bormal, Zari and Girgaon. Based on the learnings of phase 1, it was agreed that UNDP will develop a scale up proposal to create transformational impact in Talasari. There is extensive presence of UMED (Maharashtra State Rural Livelihood Mission) in the Talasari Taluka. It has formed more than 900 self-help groups across 21-gram panchayats and 18 Village Organisation and is in process of forming cluster level federations in Talasari.

About 85% tribal population is engaged in agriculture either full time as cultivators or agricultural labourers, out of which 70-80% are farmers and the remaining 20-30% are agriculture labourers. Traditional agriculture, the mainstay of the 85% population, is mostly characterized by poor to average soil fertility, low level of inputs, lack of awareness and poor management. Uncertain rains and lack of irrigation facilities lead to poor yields further deteriorating these conditions. Most of the tribal area has a good forest cover (15% to 20%). Lifestyle of tribal community is closely linked with the forest, which takes care of their major needs like food, fuel and fodder for livestock. Thus, most tribal communities are characterised by subsistence agriculture, fast depleting traditional resource base, fast degrading natural resources, poor health, poor reach of services and migration for survival. Against this background, the tribal communities find themselves at the (non) receiving end of a plethora of inadequate development schemes which are difficult to access and have little impact.

The project in the first year has mobilised 150 artisans and mobilised them into 10 producer groups. The project has also developed products, catalogues and provide training to develop these products to the artisans. The artisans have received market orders also facilitated by implementing agency. The next phase aims to build on it. The project will mobilise an additional 50 artisan and organise them into five producer groups and continue to support 150 artisans in Talasari and will promote organic growth of numbers of warli artisan by demonstrating it a viable livelihood proposition which will help Talasari to gain influence in Warli art ecosystem.

The project has already selected ten cadres and conducted one time 10 days trainings in business development, product development, financial management, market linkages etc. The strengthening of cadres will continue through more trainings on variety of topics like product development, e-commerce management, business development and meeting business targets for their producer groups will ensure sustainability of institutions. The project will intensify the activity of strengthening producer groups, product development, cadre development. There is as such no aggregation center in the Talasari town but informal aggregation and sale/purchase of warli art products happens in Talasari. The project will create a center which will work from the office of selected implementing agency where the buyers can see the live warli art product development and interact with artisans to place the orders. The project assumes that the cadres will be able to earn at least 5000 per month through commissions while working for the producer groups through facilitation of business orders and delivery of the same. The project will hire a technical resource agency to manage this stage of capacity building needs of the cadres. They will have target to raise order of 3 lakh at least in a year.

On an average, a good artisan can earn orders of around Rs. 10,000 to 12,000 per month at a time but the actual value of the products made is much higher.  They can realize only 10-20% of the value that the end customer pays.  The project will develop an effective ecosystem which helps Warli artisan’s households to upgrade their skill and link effectively with market. It may happen that project attracts more artisan to organise themselves as groups after seeing the benefits accrued to the existing 150 artisans. The project expects that the producer groups will be evolved into artisan producer organisation organically although no financial support has been proposed for promoting the artisan producer company in Talasari.

A GI tag for Warli painting exist under Application No - 239 in respect of Greeting Cards, Posters, books, Wall Paper, Stationery & similar Items, Picture Frame, Wooden items, Decorative Items, Hangings, Furniture, Cloths & apparels, Canvass, Banner, Curtain & Covers & Similar Textiles falling in Class 16, 20 & 25 is hereby advertised as accepted under sub-section (1) of Section 13 of Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration and Protection) Act, 1999. It has been granted to a non-profit organisation named Adivasi Yuva Sewa Sangh which has been mentioned as registered proprietor. But, these is a provision for authorised users. It has been mentioned that a producer of goods can apply for registration as an authorized user, with respect to a registered Geographical Indication. He should apply in writing in the prescribed form along with prescribed fee. The project proposes that all the registered producer group will apply to concerned authority for becoming authorised user. Only authorised users have the exclusive rights to use the Geographical indication in relation to goods in respect of which it is registered. It has been mentioned in the GI Journal 59 published November 13, 2014 that A Geographical Indication is a public property belonging to the producers of the concerned goods.

Duration of the Contract
The Long-Term Agreements under the Individual Contract modlity, are expected to have a duration of 3 years. The consultants selected for the LTAs will be awarded one year contracts with an option for renewal in subsequent years upon satisfactory performance and availability of budget. These contracts will be based on a specific requirement (Terms of reference) and corresponding number of days required to complete these tasks. Contract values will be based on the per day fee rates and number of expected days for completion of assignment.

Duties and Responsibilities

Longer term results

The Uddyam partnership between LTPCT and UNDP will demonstrate that how an effective multi-stakeholder partnership - between Government, Private Sector, UN and the Community - can result in an area-based intervention to bring about SDG-aligned social transformation. The long-term vision for the project is to develop Talasari as a model convergence block with special focus on poverty reduction of 3000 families in 3 GP namely Zari, Girgaon, Kochai-Bormal by the end of June 2021 which will be sustainable over a period beyond the project duration of 3 years. This will enable the families and vulnerable tribal communities in Talasari taluka of Maharashtra to experience a transformational impact in their lives. To achieve the vision, the project has four major objectives 

The project is expected to create a sustainable ecosystem to sustain enhanced income of families of Talasari. The transformational impact will be seen in terms of:

• Increased incomes and economic well-being of the families
• Improved human development outcomes, with higher levels of productive skills and ways to engage in productive occupations
• Improved access to benefits and programmes of the Government

At the outcome level, it is expected that Uddyam will contribute to micro-level achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly the following:

Project Strategies

As indicated earlier, the Uddyam Project in Talasari will build on the existing work done by LTPCT in the taluka. It will also synergize directly, with interventions of the Government, convergence will be achieved with other government schemes. The Project will also draw upon the technical capabilities of non-governmental organizations with substantial sectoral experience as well as those active in the taluka. It will draw upon the global experience that UNDP brings, to learn from best practices and build a comprehensive management and monitoring system in line with the SDGs. The specific field-level strategies to be adopted by the Project are the following:

• Strengthening the existing SHG, VO & CLF and community cadre as well as government system
• Strengthening technical support cadre at the local level to implement and sustain interventions
• Creating institutions and mechanisms for backward and forward market linkage to strengthen farm and non-farm production systems
• Capacity building of community members, local governments, government departments and agencies and other stakeholders
• Close collaboration with UMED, ITDP, District and Block administration.
• Block as a unit of convergence with 3 focus GP as resource gram panchayats 
• Bottom up planning & visioning exercise with convergence plan and gram panchayat development plan 
• Facilitation from technical expert agency as well as individual experts in respective fields to handhold the CBOs/PRIs & their representatives for income enhancement.
• PMU will act as resource center of ITDP for Talasari 
• Focus on achieving progress towards SDG goals 1,2,3,4,5,8,12,13,17
• Effective documentation and reporting of the processes, results and challenges

The project has created project management and monitoring system that allows for transparent monitoring, convergence among community, local government at GP, Block and District. The project will also build collaborations with the state government, civil society organisations and the UN sister agencies. It will further strengthen the system of knowledge management through local studies required for success of the project and guiding district and block officials regarding planning and execution.  The project has already developed a tool to monitor progress on relevant SDG goals for each gram panchayat. The project will further make the tool robust and improve it for accurate capturing of progress towards SDG indicators. The project has proposed six monthly survey to monitor the progress on each indicator of the tool.

Key Activity Areas

To achieve the above results, the Uddyam project in Talasari, will focus on the following four sets of activities.

• Farm interventions
• Strengthening warli art Interventions 
• Strengthening the government delivery system for convergence 
• Knowledge product development to facilitate evidence-based policy making for local governments at district and block level.

Against this backdrop, UNDP is seeking the services of an experienced consultant to provide strategic inputs in all phase of the project till the target is achieved in warli activities in Talasari.

Scope of Work

To ensure program’s strategic objectives and results are fully accomplished on time and expected technical quality standards, the Individual consultant must

General Responsibilities:

• Provide technical assistance on various warli activities related practices to the PMU and technical partners on need basis
• Conduct Quarterly and monthly (as needed) planning sessions to meet project targets
• Build the network of project stakeholders, facilitating relationship-building and market linkages
• Provide supportive supervision to project and partner staff, including mentoring for the growth and development of supervisees
• Provide technical oversight and inputs and draw on CSR and industry best practices in strengthening warli art interventions.
• Support PMU in achieving warli related objectives.
• Monitoring of milestones set and donor reporting.
• Monitor implementation of initiatives for increasing beneficiary accountability and ensuring gender sensitive programming
• Track progress and ensure robust M&E, intelligent analysis and use of information, strong organizational and sectoral learning.

Specific Responsibilities

Domain Leadership

1. Under the guidance of Project Manage, Uddyam Project, UNDP, New Delhi, provide support to the PMU in leadership, supervision and oversight of all project activities that seek to improve the performance of all warli related activities in the project, ensuring efficient and effective project implementation including the timely completion of high quality work plans, accurate reports, and other mandated deliverables.
2. Work with the PMU and NGO partners in preparing domain related project work plans with clear objectives and achievable benchmarks, reflecting strategic long term and short term priorities.

Program Quality and Management

1. Collaborate with UNDP project team, NGO partner and community cadre to support capacity building training sessions of warli artisans and other stakeholders.
2. Provide technical leadership to program activities such as access to market, finance , government schemes under the project leading to expected increase in household income.
3. Review the work of the PMU and of the field team and support PMU in promotion of warli products with women/men members of the community.
4. Monitor the quality and appropriateness of activities to achieve the target indicators in a cost effective timely and sustainable manner.
5. Provide accompaniment and handholding support to the implementing partners to link with the technical agencies
6. Assist artisans to adopt new technologies and techniques to increase the quality and quantity of production.
7. Support selected artisans to grow their business through mentorship and market linkages.
8. Perform any other task as assigned by Project Manager, Project Uddyam, UNDP New Delhi.

Field Research & Data Collection on warli related products:

1. To meet and discuss with UNDP, NGO partners and other relevant agencies to understand the challenges related to mobilization of warli artisan, production of warli art products on scale, quality issues, market linkages etc
2. Conduct desk research to identify market demand of warli commodities
3. To visit the respective location and meet artisans, producer groups, ITDP, and other institutions in the project villages as well as nearby blocks like Jawahar & Dhanu and understand their capacity and identify gaps

Provide Technical Expertise, Oversight & Capacity Building of PMU & NGO Partner Staff:

1. Assist with the orientation and training of key staff and community coordinators to help build a technically strong, well supported motivated team.
2. Provide direction and technical advice through quarterly coaching sessions.
3. Provide oversight function to ensure that the activities being undertaken are in congruence with achievement of domain goal as well as overall goal of the project.
4. Monitor the activities related to warli to ensure that these are in tune with the overall project objectives.

Documentation & Communication

1. Preparing progress report, briefs and supervision notes as and when required.
2. Providing technical advice and direction in preparation of communication material for internal and external stakeholders
3. Develop a plan for the development and dissemination of lessons learnt.
4. Conduct regular supervisory/technical assistance visits to the field
5. Coordinate with the M&E Coordinator to document success stories

Project Location:

The assignment will be home as well as field based. It will include travel to districts in Maharashtra and may require to UNDP Country Office in New Delhi to meet with project team members. 15-25 days field visit and 15 days of offsite support, per year, is expected for this assignment.

Competencies

Corporate competencies:

• Promotes the mission and values of the UN;
• Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity;
• Treats all people fairly without favoritism;
• Ability to work under pressure and stressful situations;
• Effective interpersonal and communication skills

Functional competencies:

• Strong interpersonal and communication skills;
• Strong analytical, research, reporting and writing abilities;
• Ability to plan, organize, implement and report on work;
• Openness to change and ability to receive/integrate feedback;
• Positive, constructive attitude to work.

Required Skills and Experience

Required Academic Qualifications and Professional Experience:

• Masters degree in Social Science, business Management or Rural Management
• 7 years of project implementation and management experience with progressive responsibility
• Experience managing staff and partner organizations as well as managing relationships and interactions between
• government officials, skill building interventions and reschooling interventions among various stakeholders
• Demonstrated ability to provide leadership in strategic planning initiatives
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills
• Experience in monitoring and evaluation, especially in software for data management
• Strong computer skills (MS Word, Excel, Outlook and Power Point).

Evaluation Method and Criteria
Proposal will be evaluated based on the Cumulative Evaluation (technical + financial) methodology.

Cumulative analysis:

The award of the contract shall be made to the individual consultant whose offer has been evaluated and determined as:

Responsive and having received the highest score out of a pre-determined set of weighted technical and financial criteria
specific to the solicitation.

Only candidates obtaining a minimum of 49 points (70% of the total technical points) would be considered for the Financial Evaluation:

• Technical Criteria weight - 70%;
• Financial Criteria weight – 30 %
Technical Criteria weight – 70 Marks

Education – 30 Marks
Work Experience and Knowledge – 40 Marks
Financial Criteria weight - 30 Marks.

Documents to be submitted

Detailed CV with contact details of three references;

Financial proposal specifying per day consultancy fee . Prior approved travel expenses will be reimbursed as per actuals in
line with UNDP rules or would be arranged by UNDP.

Note: Application will not be accepted, if all the above listed documents are not submitted.

For any clarification, please write to ic.india@undp.org