Consultancy for "Review of Operational Women-led Cooperatives and SMEs - FLOW/EOWE"

SNV is looking for consultants/consultant team to support Vietnam Women’s Union to conduct a study to review operational models of women-led cooperatives and SMEs.

Objective

The consultancy aims at supporting Vietnam Women’s Union to conduct a review operational models of women-led cooperatives and small & medium enterprises in order to provide findings of key factors of successes and obstacles for stimulating women’s businesses, and to provide recommendations to government for enabling environment for women’s economic empowerment.

Scope of Work
a.    Reviewing formulation and operation of selected women-led enterprises models (SMES, cooperative and production/cooperative groups) which are successful models and/or models that face number of challenges and in the necessity of reform. The number of models is to be suggested by the consultant(s), estimated 3-4 models/province.

b.    Determining factors that influence the success/failure of cooperative/enterprise and the role of women in running these enterprises in the following aspects:
-      Capacity for management and running cooperative/ enterprise, production, sales/marketing, human resources management and financial management
-      Ability to access to credit sources and resources mobilization
-      Ability to access market and linkage chain to production and services, business and production activities of cooperatives/enterprises
-      Both positive and negative impacts of business policies and business environment at locality
-      Specific advantages, opportunities, challenges and issues related women role in business leading and development.

c.    Analyzing potentials to develop and scale up women-led and/or women co-businessed taking findings from these models.

d.    Actions:

-      Stakeholder consultation: Central level: VWU, Vietnam Cooperative Alliance, VCCI, MARD and NGOs; Provincial levels: provincial departments at 05 studied provinces as representative for different regions including: Son La (North upland), Ha Tinh (Red River Delta and North Central), Lam Dong (Central Highland), Binh Thuan (South Central) and Dong Thap (Southwest).
-      Field survey and assessment on selected cooperative and SMEs models led/run by women at these studied provinces
-      Developing reports and guidance including an assignment report with progress and findings, a models consolidation document and a policy brief
-      Dialogue, consultation for validation and presentation.

Deliverables

-      01 detailed outline that describe the design, scope of research, subjects of research, relevant stakeholders, methods, work-plan, work division, timeline with specific milestones/results to be approved for conducting study in advance;
-      01 set of research tools including questionnaire and survey forms;
-      01 dataset including materials and photos;
-      01 assignment report in both Vietnamese and English including findings and practical recommendations for Vietnam Women’s Union, FLOW/EOWE programme, enterprises and provinces;
-      01 consolidated models document of reviewed women-led cooperatives/enterprises;
-      01 policy brief for advocacy toward Government for influencing policies that enable women’s businesses.

Interested consultant(s) are invited to send their technical proposal and financial proposal with the title “FLOW/EOWE – Review of operational women-led cooperatives and SMEs” by 23 August 2017 to:

SNV Netherlands Development Organisation
3rd floor, D Building, La Thanh hotel, 218 Doi Can, Ba Dinh, Hanoi
Email: [email protected]

For more information, see the attached TERMS OF REFERENCE.