Overview of the Programme
The Education Outcomes Fund (EOF) in partnership with the Government of Sierra Leone through the Ministry of Basic and Senior Secondary Education (MBSSE) are set to launch an innovative Outcomes Based Financing (OBF) programme in Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE). The programme aims to support the opening of new community ECD centres within existing infrastructure to aid in the expansion of quality foundational learning opportunities for children aged 3-5 in Sierra Leone. This programme offers an exceptional opportunity for ECCE service providers or consortia to deliver through an innovative and transformative model, with the capacity to impact up to 50,000 children in vulnerable areas across Sierra Leone.
The programme's outcomes encompass multiple dimensions of ECCE. The selected grantees will play a crucial role in:
Establishing new community-based Early Childhood Development (ECD) centres in areas with the greatest need. The approach involves repurposing existing community-level infrastructure to safely provide ECCE services.
Ensuring access and regular attendance of children at these centres.
Enhancing the quality of settings and practices, including through inclusive, and child-centred approaches aligned with the national standards.
Improving children's holistic development outcomes.
The four-year programme allows for long-term community engagement and meaningful impact. While final formalisation of funding partnerships is ongoing, EOF plans to launch this program in Q2 2024, with mobilisation by selected grantees in Q4 2024.
This programme design was a coordinated effort between EOF and MBSSE, and follows Sierra Leone’s President Julius Maada Bio’s powerful address at the UN Transforming Education Summit in 2022, where he announced, “a new level of ambition to make education an even stronger driver for gender equality, inclusion and sustainable national development.” He outlined how Sierra Leone have been “aggressively transforming our education sector since 2018” and added “Building on the success of the Outcomes Fund in Primary school with the Education Outcomes Fund, we will work with EOF to scale access to quality early childhood education.”
Purpose of this Expression of Interest
EOF looks forward to receiving Expressions of Interest (EOI) from experienced providers, consortia, and/or investors in Sierra Leone and/or the ECCE sector. The applicants for the programme will be selected through a two-stage procurement process.
The Expressions of Interest (EOI) stage is the first round of this process. The purpose is to select a first set of applicants that will be shortlisted after a first assessment. This assessment will focus on the suitability of proposals for the implementation of the programme based on applicants’ track record in this space and a preliminary intervention approach. Organisations shortlisted in the EOI stage will be eligible to bid in the second stage - the Request for Proposals (RFP) stage.
The EOI Materials provided in the documents below provide all the necessary information to prepare and submit applications.
Key Deadlines
EOI launch: October 30th, 2023.
Deadline for bidders to submit questions in writing on ToR: November 10th, 2023.
Pre-bidding conference to clarify questions: November 15th, 2023.
Public summary of conference and any amendments to the ToR: November 17th, 2023.
Deadline for submission of proposals: November 24th, 2023.
Assessment of proposals and deliberation by the selection panel: December 6th – 8th, 2023.
Notification of decision to applicants: Mid-December 2023.
Apply An EOI proposal should contain the following:
Applicant information form
Eligibility documentation
Technical proposal and financial viability form
Additional information form
Supporting documents
Further information on these documents, the process for asking clarifying questions and more can be found in the EOI Materials packet provided below. There is an additional document with templates for all documents to be submitted with the proposal.
The deadline for submission of proposals is November 24th, 2023.
All proposals should be submitted before this deadline to procurement@edufundmea.org, clearly labelled “Sierra Leone Early Childhood Education Outcomes Fund - Expression of Interest (EOI)”.
Applicants should ensure that the attachments do not exceed 25MB per email. If necessary, proposals can be sent in more than one email, each clearly labelled in the subject line.
Important documents