1. BACKGROUND
Over the past decade, NRC has been pivotal in delivering essential psychosocial support services (PSS) in educational settings through its flagship PSS in education intervention, the Better Learning Programme (BLP) - a key initiative developed in collaboration with the Arctic University of Norway (UiT). As part of NRC's Right to Wellbeing 2025 initiative, the BLP is now operational in 34 countries, aiming to enhance the wellbeing and educational outcomes of children and youth impacted by displacement.
Recognised as a core component of NRC's education efforts, the BLP is known for its effectiveness, adaptability, and evidence-based approach. With the programme's expansion, there is a growing need to ensure the BLP resources - manuals and implementation guides - are as user-friendly and accessible as possible. This need is critical for maintaining the programme's quality and effectiveness as it scales and adapts to diverse contexts and users.
This initiative aims to enhance the usability of BLP resources for NRC implementers and strategic partners by ensuring these materials are accessible through a digital remote hub for broad and practical application.
This consultancy will build upon the work of a parallel consultancy focusing on simplifying and streamlining selected resources to improve usability for NRC staff and partners in Palestine. The simplified resources will be adapted for broader access, prepared for inclusion in a digital hub, and converted into an online course.
For reference, an example of what we have in mind: Equip Competency.
2. OBJECTIVES
The objective of this consultancy is to establish a Better Learning Programme (BLP) digital hub where digitized resources can be made accessible to NRC staff and key strategic partners. The consultant will ensure that the hub and its content are user-friendly, well-structured, meaningfully interactive, secure and designed to facilitate the dissemination and application of BLP materials in emergency contexts.
The Emergency BLP Digital Hub Consultant will:
- Conduct a Needs Assessment: Collaborate with NRC’s Global BLP Unit (GBU), PSS Managers, ICT colleagues and other relevant teams to assess the needs and requirements for the digital remote hub. This includes identifying the types of resources to be digitized and the type of user profiles that will have access to the hub, ensuring that the hub meets the operational needs of NRC staff and partners.
- Stakeholder Engagement: Engage with key strategic partners in Palestine and NRC country offices to ensure the hub meets their operational needs and aligns with local contexts. Collect feedback from these stakeholders to make iterative improvements to the hub as needed.
- Digital Hub Design and Structure: Design the architecture and user interface of the BLP remote hub to ensure intuitive navigation, ease of access, and efficient resource organisation. The Digital hub should be device, operating system and language agnostic to support our need to use it at scale in different emergency contexts. This should take into account user feedback and be optimized for low-bandwidth environments often found in emergency settings.
- Content Upload and Testing: Facilitate the upload of digitized materials to the hub. Ensure that all content is functional, editable and accessible, conducting thorough testing to identify any potential issues with usability, compatibility, or access, particularly for users in low-connectivity environments. A pilot will be conducted to test the usage with Palestine local partners to get their feedback. The Content Management System will need to support multiple languages including right-to-left Arabic content
- Collaboration with the Product Development, PDU and IT Ops Teams: Work closely with NRC’s teams to ensure that the hub is integrated into existing NRC systems and is secure, scalable, and easy to maintain.
- Capacity Building for NRC Staff and Partners: Propose to develop user guides, tutorials, and other instructional materials to train NRC staff and strategic partners on how to effectively use the remote hub. Conduct online sessions or webinars to ensure that all users are comfortable with accessing and navigating the platform. NRC already has some resources, but we are open to other solutions based on cost, fitness-for-purpose, and maintainability
- Monitoring and Evaluation Framework: Design a basic monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) framework in collaboration with the GBU MEL Specialist to track the usage, effectiveness, and impact of the BLP digital remote hub. This should include key performance indicators (KPIs) for measuring user engagement, resource accessibility, and overall satisfaction among NRC staff and partners.
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