Type: Home-based, individual or in team of consultants.
Scope of work: Multiple comic strip stories to illustrate program achievements (graphic novel style)
Delivery: 7 September 2020

About Hivos

Hivos is an international organization that seeks new solutions to persistent global issues. With smart projects in the right places, we oppose discrimination, inequality, abuse of power and the unsustainable use of our planet’s resources. Counterbalance alone, however, is not enough. Our primary focus is achieving structural change.

Open Up Contracting

To ensure citizens have equal and inclusive access to public goods and services and can meaningfully engage in public resource allocation and policy decisions, Hivos and ARTICLE 19 have launched the Open Up Public Contracting program. It aims to:

1. Increase transparency of government’s public spending and procurement processes;
2. Have non-state actors participate and engage citizens in the planning, procurement, and monitoring of public contracting; and
3. Make sure accountability mechanisms are created to receive and act upon citizen feedback.

The program is implemented in Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, Indonesia, Philippines, Guatemala, and Bolivia in close cooperation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands.

The program supports local partners such as independent journalists, activists, businesses and civic watchdog organizations in their efforts to use contracting data and public revenue flows for public scrutiny and advocacy campaigns, to translate the data into meaningful information for citizens.

What we are looking for

Hivos’ Open Up Contracting program is seeking a company or freelancer that can produce a series of high quality comic strip illustrations, of 4-7 stories, each 1-3 pages. The selected stories will focus on the context that partner organizations from the Open Up Contracting program, a problem that occurred and/or the strategy that was used to solve this. The stories will celebrate program achievements and help build a cohesive story for external communication.

Goal of Project

The stories will serve two primary purposes:

• Show the context in which this partner organization works, the problems they are dealing with and the strategies they use to overcome those problems.
• Zoom in on and explain a case in order to explain what the program is doing/achieving and why to others outside of the program context. The strip illustrations will help build a cohesive story across the countries where the program is active and streamline this message for external communication.

The successful applicant will collaborate with Hivos and partners at all stages of the production of the stories. The applicant will deliver a creative brief, draft/final script as well as storyboard, and final production of stories. Complete project wrap-up is 7 September.

Qualifications and how to apply

The proposal should include a timeline, listing which activities are proposed and when they would be conducted. The budget will be determined following the review of proposals. Please provide an estimated, itemized budget within the proposal. The budget should include all costs, total number of working days including the hourly rate of members of the team, and any additional direct expenses.

The proposal should also include examples, if any, of similar projects already undertaken or completed. It should also include a list of key staff who would work on the project with their summary biographies.

Please submit your proposal by 31 July to Jolien van der Vaart (jvandervaart@hivos.org).