WILpower/Women in Law Project

Request for Applications for the development and implementation of basic business & entrepreneurial capacity-building activities

Objective: To introduce basic business, management and entrepreneurial skills to young Arab female attorneys in the Middle East

To implement high-quality face-to-face interactive business/entrepreneurial skills training, as well as provide high quality online capacity-building activities

Proposal due date: Final proposals must be submitted to Amy West by 12:00 P.M. EST on November 26, 2008 at the following address:

Amy West, WILpower Project Manager
AED/ITAC
8th Floor, North Building
1825 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20009 USA
Tel.: +1.202.884.8108

Electronic copy may be submitted by 12:00 P.M. EST on November 26, 2008 to Amy West at awest@aed.org.

Period of Performance: December 1, 2008 – July 31, 2009

Background: The Women in Law Project (WILpower)  is an AED - implemented, U.S. State Department Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) - funded project supporting the professional development of young Arab women law students and legal practitioners in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Through a regional information and communication network with local national-level hubs, or chapters, WILpower seeks to provide technical legal skills training (legal research & writing, and oral argumentation), leadership development for young lawyers, business & entrepreneurial skills development for young lawyers, and legal knowledge sharing by mentor-experts.

WILpower designs activities according to local feedback and will monitor and evaluate the roll out of project activities in the Kuwaiti, Palestinian and Lebanese legal communities - with an aim to establish a model for replication in other MENA region legal communities. At every point of implementation, opportunities to involve representatives from other MENA region countries will be leveraged in order to build collaboration with a network of legal practitioners broader than the three initial participating legal communities.

Description of Activities: WILpower seeks an experienced and respected partner to deliver practical and basic business & entrepreneurial skills development training to legal communities in the MENA region. This organization, institution or individual will have an established track record in training others in basic business plan writing, knowledge and human resource management, basic budget development, and basic marketing principles for start-ups. The implementer must be experienced in delivering both face-to-face training as well as six months worth of content curriculum for use on the WILpower portal. This could consist of two to three interactive activities each month that focus on a particular aspect of building the capacity of successful entrepreneurs. The selected organization, institution or individual will work with AED/WILpower to implement content curriculum through online modules of interactive business plan, budget and marketing plan development as follow-on activities aimed to compliment intensive face-to-face trainings to be held at two regional workshops in January and April 2009. Experience in Arabic and English, as well as business/entrepreneurial skills training for lawyers in the MENA region is preferred.

WILpower encourages the proposal of creative business/entrepreneurial content and interactive training activities upon which agreement will then be made. All content curriculum and interactive training modules will be the property of AED/MEPI’s WILpower project. The required framework for training activities and materials are as follows:

• Develop two full interactive training days of business/entrepreneurial skills development for a January (1 day) and April (1 day) regional workshop to be held in Jordan
o Create content curriculum for trainings at regional workshops in Jordan
o Provide peer-led training exercises for use by WILpower regional workshop participants to train other young legal practitioners post-regional conference(s) in their local communities
• Conduct basic business/entrepreneurial skills training 1 day in January and 1 day in April in Jordan
• Provide six months’ worth of content curriculum for WILpower’s online participant learning community (2 – 3 interactive activities/month for six months)

Interactive training activities and online content materials must be carried out in support of WILpower objectives and in close coordination with WILpower/AED project staff, as well as other project implementation partners.

Priority will be placed on interactive training activities that are designed to deliver high-quality practical basic business/entrepreneurial skills training for young female lawyers.

Proposal must address:
• Experience and track-record in designing and implementing interactive business/entrepreneurial skills training for young professionals
• What staff will be in place to ensure accountability for regional workshop trainings in January and April, as well as for six-months’ worth of content curriculum development

• Proposed roll out framework of content materials and training

Substantial involvement: AED will be involved in final approval of content curriculum for training and online modules

Requirements for presenting proposals: Proposals will only be accepted from organizations, institutions or individuals with successful experience working in the business/entrepreneurial sector at the decentralized level, with demonstrated experience and positive results in business skills training.

The sub-award will be a fixed price agreement: range of $10,000-15,000 for content development, trainings and curriculum plus costs of travel to Jordan for regional workshops.

Interested organizations, institutions or individuals must send a brief letter of interest to awest@aed.org. Deadline for submission of questions will be 5p.m on November 19, 2008. All questions submitted will be posted to all interested organization or institutions on or before noon on Thursday, November 20, 2008.

Issuance of this request for application does not constitute an award commitment on the part of AED, nor does it commit AED to pay for the costs incurred in the preparation and submission of the application.

Proposal format: Prospective recipients must include a capabilities statement (focus on business/entrepreneurial training experience and content development), technical narrative to include format for proposed interactive training as well as examples of modules for online content, information on project management and staffing as well as curriculum vitae(s), and a detailed budget and budget narrative. Expertise in the Middle East and Arabic language preferred but not required. Proposals are to be written in English.

8 pages maximum, exclusive of budget, budget narrative, and attached training model examples. Sample price in U.S. dollars must indicate the following:

(1) Personnel with the following information
a. Type of expert, level of effort in days, rate and amount
(2) Other direct costs
(3) Travel costs

Selection criteria
• Technical approach for achieving results (40%)
• Proposed personnel and business/entrepreneurial expertise (40%)
• Price (20%)