Humanitarian expert on protection, green humanitarian response and health & sanitation

About the assignment

Innovation Norway’s Humanitarian Innovation Programme (HIP Norway) grants funding and support to develop, test and scale new solutions that can contribute to better and more efficient humanitarian action. It supports innovation projects led by humanitarian organisations where the expertise and technical know-how from the private sector is applied to find solutions to humanitarian challenges. The programme supports both early-stage innovation and scaling of solutions that have proven to be successful at the pilot stage. HIP Norway aims to support bold ideas that seek to improve humanitarian response. The programme is funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and managed by Innovation Norway.

More information about the programme may be found here: https://hip.innovationnorway.com/

Purpose of consultancy

HIP Norway launches an annual call for proposals. The deadline to apply to this year’s call is in the end of June. The programme has five focus areas:

• Green humanitarian response: Humanitarian organisations’ efforts that contribute to more sustainable and environmentally friendly solutions within the humanitarian sector.
• Health and sanitation: Humanitarian organisations’ efforts to ensure lifesaving basic health services, including prevention/control of pandemics, efforts within women’s, children’s and young people’s health, sexual and reproductive health, mental health and psycho-social support, and the provision of facilities and services for the maintenance of hygienic conditions and the safe disposal of human waste.
• Protection: Humanitarian organisations’ efforts that contribute to protecting people from violence, abuse and violation of international law due to humanitarian crises.
• Innovative financing: Innovative financing refers to a number of non-traditional mechanisms for raising additional funds for humanitarian and development assistance. This may be through innovations such as micro-contributions, impact bonds, public-private partnerships and market-based approaches/ business models.
• Food security: Responses during and after a humanitarian crisis addressing issues of food availability, access, utilization, and stability.

We are seeking three experts with proven experience to assist us in evaluating the applications; one within the focus area protection, one within the focus area green humanitarian response, and one within the focus area health and sanitation.The consultants should have proven humanitarian experience and expertise within one of the above mentioned focus areas, and not currently be employed by any of the organisations that are eligible to apply for the call for proposals.

Innovation Norway has entered into Framework Agreements with experts within the other two focus areas and is now looking to enter into a Framework Agreement with an expert on protection, one within green humanitarian response, and one within health and sanitation.For each call-off in the Framework Agreement, Innovation Norway will select the relevant expert(s) based on a concrete assessment of our needs.

Activities

The experts will be provided with an evaluation form and electronic copies of each proposal, including any annexes. Each application is approx. 5 pages long with written text plus annexes.

The number of applications we will receive is not known, thus we cannot at this stage give the exact size of the assignment. However, we estimate between 15-25 applications to be distributed to each of our experts, with an estimated two hours spent per application for the evaluation. If the technical quality of the application requires that further time is spent on the evaluation, this can be agreed to on a case-to-case basis.

Planned timeline (subject to confirmation)

We expect to launch the 2025 call for proposals in early April, with a deadline to apply in the end of June. We will distribute the applications to our experts mid-July. The selected experts need to return their written evaluations to Innovation Norway in the beginning of August. After the submission deadline, meetings will be conducted with each expert to discuss the applications. The experts may also be invited to join in on some of the pitch sessions with relevant projects for their inputs.

Deliverables

• A completed evaluation form for each application distributed. The application form will be provided by Innovation Norway