Deadline: 10-Jun-22
The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition’s (GAIN) Workforce Nutrition Programme is now open to improve the health of workers and farmers in low- and middle-income countries or communities through work-centred nutrition programming.
The programmes focus on improving the access to and demand for nutritious and safe foods towards healthier diets generally. They do this by using existing business structures as entry point (workplaces or supply chains), recognizing that employers, buyers and brands in supply chains can play an important role in improving workers’ diets.
With this request GAIN seeks a partnership with a business school, business school affiliates, or well-respected business consultancy service who will work closely with GAIN’s Knowledge Leadership team and GAIN’s Workforce Nutrition team to develop a few select and strategic business cases for investing in worker nutrition programmes.
Specific Objectives
The specific objectives to be addressed by this Project are as follows:
- Phase One (Proposal Development):
- Conduct a desk review of available literature on the investment case for improving the nutritional status of workers, drawing from the business literature, company reports, and grey literature as much as possible.This should not duplicate existing literature reviews from GAIN which focus on the public health literature (search terms can be shared) and should cover sectors which have the greatest interest in a business case. Produce a public report on the same in an agreed format and site.
- Agree with GAIN and its partners, important and essential elements of a workforce nutrition business case including: key results, benchmarks and targets; methods and approaches (e.g. ROI, modelling); recommended metrics, and accepted limitations to pending studies.
- Identify with GAIN and its partners, 2 to 3 and key industries and workforce sectors from which return on investment studies could be conducted with reliable results. Strong programme theory and delivery with the potential for impact will be included in selection criteria.
- Develop proposals on the overall approach, methods, timelines and resources needed to develop a robust business case on workforce nutrition in each identified context. The approaches should be strategic in terms of targeting industries interested in a sound business case and where the potential for future investments is likely across the sector. The business case should speak to their interests and needs.
- Support GAIN and/or its partners to liaise with companies and other interested partners to get their engagement and buy-in to the proposals developed.
- Phase Two (Implementation):
- Conduct mutually agreed upon and as-funded research in close collaboration with GAIN, CGF and the identified businesses willing to participate and share their data. The number and selection will be funding dependent. These are likely to be implemented over the course of the next 1-2 years.
- Identify and test, within the scope of research, recommended or proposed standardizable metrics for productivity as well as pathways for other business relevant outputs, immediate and intermediate and outcomes.
- Develop a number of business case studies as agreed in the proposal development phase, including industryspecific cases in various peer-reviewed and other agreed forms of literature.
Scope of Work
The successful applicant shall provide the following services:
- Conduct a thorough desk review of available information and evidence, drawing from the literature generally accepted in the business community. Publish a report.
- Regularly meet with GAIN’s WFN and KL team, and selected partners (steering committee) as part of a collaborative effort, including a kick off meeting
- Contribute to thought leadership for the approach and work bringing in relevant business-minded approach
- Work with GAIN and partners on the determination of agreeable, meaningful and standardizable business outcome measures.
- Assess with GAIN, programme approaches and their potential for impact ahead of determining their evaluability for a business case
- Develop business case proposals in 2-3 strategic selected settings and industries
- When and if proposals are funded, support or oversee (as agreed with GAIN) primary data collection, quality assurance, and data entry, cleaning, management and analyses conducted if primary data are collected. This may depend on the business partner and their willingness to have external bodies collect data, or if they will share data already collected. Regardless assessment of data quality will be important.
- If relevant, identify a local research partner (business school or other) to support conducting research in particular countries, obtain all relevant ethical approvals, access and data collection permissions as appropriate, e.g., government approvals.
- For primary data collected, ensure that GAIN receive raw and clean datasets, accompanying codebooks, and syntax and output of all data analyses. If quantitative data are collected, data documentation must be provided using Nesstar2.
- Identify opportunities for and lead in collaboration with GAIN peer-reviewed papers about business cases, approaches, methods, and similar.
- Support the dissemination of business case reports
Instructions for Expression of Interest
- This overall partner selection process will be managed in a 2-stage process. This initial expression of interest must be based on the information available in this request for EOIs only and does not represent a commitment to submit a full proposal should the additional details modify the interest. For those selected to submit a full proposal, no funding will be made available from GAIN for this process. GAIN anticipates inviting 2-3 EOIs to submit a full proposal. Thedecision will be based on understanding of the task, viability and innovation of proposed approach, and composition of the team.
- For the expression of interest, they request a response of no more than 2 pages containing at least the following information:
- Clear explanation of the bidder’s understanding of the role of the proposed research partner
- Brief overview of proposed approach to meeting the stated objectives
- Overview of approach to working in collaboration with GAIN
- One paragraph capacity statement outlines key proposed team members and overview of relevant experience
- Brief overview of anticipated illustrative costs for both phases of the project.
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