As the Syrian conflict enters its eleventh year, the impact of the crisis on neighboring countries continues to deepen. To date, Turkey is home to nearly 3.7 million Syrian refugees – of which over 1.7 million are children – in addition to over 330,000 asylum seekers and refugees from other countries. More than 773,000 refugee children are enrolled in school, however, an estimated 424,000 are still out of school. Refugee and migrant children are highly vulnerable and at heightened risk of isolation, discrimination, economic and sexual exploitation, and child marriage. The UNICEF Turkey Country Programme contributes to addressing these issues through its education, child protection, and social protection components. To monitor the effectiveness and efficiency of programme implementation, UNICEF and its partners use different information management tools that facilitate the collection and processing of programme data and information.
During 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 the UNICEF Turkey Country Office (TCO) implemented a real-time monitoring SMS System by deploying RapidPro in Turkey. The use of this system allowed UNICEF TCO to upgrade its monitoring systems of large-scale education programmes and also to strengthen UNICEF’s programmatic work in other areas such as rapid assessments to understand emergency related issues, communication with beneficiaries to collect perceptions on the quality of services received and the dissemination of COVID-19 related messages for preventative purposes.
The implementation of the new UNICEF TCO Country Programme Document (CPD) will require the continuous implementation of innovative platforms (i.e. RapidPro) that secure an effective communication with UNICEF partners and beneficiaries.
PURPOSE OF THE AGREEMENT
The purpose of this solicitation process is to select and establish Long-Term arrangement/s for a period of 5 years (=1+1+1+1+1) with an SMS service aggregator in Turkey which can handle domestic SMS of large volumes and with all Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) for mobile based innovative initiatives and provide all necessary support in obtaining new short codes and integration with all the MNOs. The selected service aggregator will integrate their services with different SMS, USSD and IVR based applications of UNICEF which are based upon the host company software framework with provision of The aggregator needs to guarantee an excellent gateway performance with a high level of efficiency and confidentiality about UNICEF recipients’ information and overall project data, using toll-free SMS/USSD/IVR four (4) digit short codes. The aggregator should also guarantee a free of charge response service for UNICEF recipients, regardless of their Mobile Network Operators. The UNICEF Turkey Country Office will be in charge of paying back UNICEF recipients’ SMS, USSD and IVR response costs to the aggregator, through signing agreements with all local Mobile Network Operators on behalf of the UNICEF Turkey Country Office.
The service will be used for the implementation of a monitoring programme under the supervision of the Planning Monitoring and Evaluation (PME) Section.
Deadline on:23-Aug-2021 17:30 (GMT 3.00) Baghdad, Riyadh, Moscow, St. Petersburg