Consultant – Content Developer for Permagarden Online Foundations Course – Remote At Mercy Corps

About Mercy Corps

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Background:

The Strengthening Capacity in Agriculture, Livelihoods, and Environment (SCALE) program is a five year Associated Award funded by the USAID Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA) through the Technical and Operational Performance Support (TOPS) program led by Save the Children US. SCALE is designed to further improve the impact, sustainability, and scalability of BHA’s programming in agriculture, natural resource management, and alternative (off-farm and non-farm) livelihoods in emergency and non-emergency settings. Specifically, the program focuses on sustainable and climate sensitive approaches that foster resilient agricultural systems, and enhance income opportunities within or outside agricultural systems. This program is managed through Mercy Corps’ Agriculture Technical Support Unit (TSU) and is in its fifth year.

Over the last several years, implementing partners from organizations such as Catholic Relief Services, Mercy Corps and others have implemented permagardens using the existing Permagarden Technical Manual and 3- and 5-day training guidelines. In light of COVID-19 travel restrictions over the last 18 months, the SCALE Award had to adapt much of its in-person capacity strengthening support to online options. One such adaptation was an introduction to Permagardens, which consisted of a series of six online technical sessions including recorded video presentations, short activities and reflection questions. SCALE received positive feedback from the final evaluations of this series, and from further discussions with the SCALE Technical Committee and other implementing partners. Given this feedback, and in an effort to make Permagarden technical materials available to a wider set of practitioners after the end of the Award, SCALE proposes to create an online Permagarden Foundations course.

Purpose / Project Description:

The consultant will design an online Permagarden Foundations online course with the aim of introducing participants to the foundations of the Permagarden Method (concepts, terms, practices) and how they can be applied to the homestead level. Additionally, the consultant will draft a Scope of Work for and collaborate with a graphic designer to adapt and design new graphics and animations for the course videos, as needed.

The consultant will ensure the terminology, technical content and graphics used in the Permagarden Foundations course align with other resilient agriculture materials developed by SCALE, such as the Permagarden monitoring checklist and Resilience Design manual & facilitators guide.

Consultant Objectives:

The consultant will first design a step-by-step overview of the six-session Permagarden Foundations online course, using best practices for adult and distance learning. Based upon this course overview, the consultant will then write a course narrative for the six sessions and design presentation slides for each session including instructions for a graphic designer on final formatting and incorporating visual content. The consultant will also curate supplemental materials for the course. This will include adapting the existing Permagarden skill building material into a series of “How To” sheets; curating supplemental videos as needed; and developing a Permagarden glossary and photo/ graphics gallery.

Consultant Activities:

The Consultant will:

• Develop workplan/timeline for completing all deliverables
• Consult with Mercy Corps team for orientation to all permagarden materials and agree upon workplan
• Kickoff call with Mercy Corps team to discuss and agree up workplan and focal areas of the six sessions
• Develop a step-by-step session overview describing key points to be covered in bullet points for each session as well as an overview of supplemental material for each session.
• Write a narrative for each of the six sessions based upon the course overview and present in a format ready for voice narration. The narrative should outline learning objectives, technical content, interactive field exercises and reflection exercises for individuals or groups.
• Design a set of basic presentation slides with instructions for formatting and visual content for graphic designer.
• Draft Scope of Work for graphic designer and liaise with designer to ensure accuracy of final product.
• Develop a series of “How To” sheets based on current skills building materials.
• Curate supplemental videos or other relevant resources including selecting existing Mercy Corps videos suitable for course and sourcing additional publicly available videos.
• Develop a Permagarden glossary and photo/graphics gallery.

Consultant Deliverables:

• Workplan/timeline for project
• Step-by-step overview of six sessions
• Narrative for each of the six sessions ready for voice narration
• Draft presentation slides for the six sessions with instructions for graphic designer
• Scope of Work for graphic designer
• Collaboration with graphic designer to produce finalized course videos
• Series of “How To” sheets (approx. 17)
• List of existing supplementary materials, including Permagarden resources, MC videos and publicly available videos suitable to be included as supplemental material in course. This will include a short introductory paragraph about each video and a note about where in the course it will be used.
• Folder with glossary of key Permagarden terms and a list of relevant photos and graphics ready for uploading onto online platform.

Experience and Qualifications:

• 5-10 years of experience in a relevant technical field
• Extensive experience implementing permaculture design techniques and/or permagardens;
• Expertise in participatory adult education training methodologies
• Experience facilitating trainings for adults in diverse contexts, preferably with USAID-funded projects
• Experience with distance/remote learning approaches

Timeframe / Schedule:

41 working days between January – June 2021

The Consultant will report to:

Senior Specialist – Program Quality & Capacity Strengthening

The Consultant will work closely with:

SCALE Program Director, SCALE Capacity Strengthening Advisor, Resilient Agriculture consultants, Director-Agriculture Systems TSU

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Achieving our mission begins with how we build our team and work together. Through our commitment to enriching our organization with people of different origins, beliefs, backgrounds, and ways of thinking, we are better able to leverage the collective power of our teams and solve the world’s most complex challenges. We strive for a culture of trust and respect, where everyone contributes their perspectives and authentic selves, reaches their potential as individuals and teams, and collaborates to do the best work of their lives.

We recognize that diversity and inclusion is a journey, and we are committed to learning, listening and evolving to become more diverse, equitable and inclusive than we are today.

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