Business Incubator promoting youth’s economic empowerment in Beirut

 
2020 Emergency Shelter, WASH, Livelihood and Protection Response in Lebanon

Terms of Reference
For Business Incubator promoting youth’s economic empowerment in Beirut

 

Funded by
GAC & HC

 

Implemented by
Islamic Relief Worldwide – Lebanon Office

2020 - 2021

Introduction
As an independent humanitarian and development organization, Islamic Relief has been serving humanity for 36 years. With an active presence in over 48 countries across the globe, we strive to make the world a better and fairer place for the three billion people still living in poverty.
Islamic Relief helps poor communities to improve their lives. With a focus on sustainable development, our Programmes give poor people better access to essential services, and the opportunity to improve their livelihoods and lift themselves out of poverty, permanently.
Many of the vulnerable communities in Lebanon are concentrated in specific areas in the country, in which the vulnerable Lebanese consists of 67% and the vulnerable Syrian are 87% who are living in 251 most vulnerable areas. 
In addition, livelihoods support becoming crucial to help these households access income in order to lift half a million Lebanese out of poverty. Until this happens, the major consequence will be that job shortages are consistently and clearly mentioned not only as the primary need of all groups, but also as the main source of tension between communities, regardless of gender or age group.
IRL intends to implement a project aligned with LCRP to provide a critical contribution goal to Lebanon’s stability by expanding economic opportunities benefiting local economies and the most vulnerable communities and individuals in line with government rules and regulations. The project activities will be aimed to create an employment and income generating opportunities thus enhancing their job skills that mainly fit the market needs on one hand and to be able to run a small business on the other hand. 

With funding from the GAC & HC, Islamic Relief Lebanon (IRL) is implementing the “2020 Emergency Shelter, WASH, Livelihood and Protection Response in Lebanon” project to increase access to business incubator program and employment for vulnerable youth from the host and refugee communities. The program will be implemented from January 2021 to June 2021 in the Beirut City.
 Under Outcome 3 “Strengthened access to life-saving and conflict-sensitive livelihood opportunities for displaced, host and refugee households, particularly women and other marginalized groups in Beirut”, IRL will partner with a business incubator (BI) over six months in order to build the capacity of youth. 
Background 
Since October 2019, the situation in Lebanon has been deteriorating. Political instability and an economic crisis, which saw many banks closing and/or imposing tight restrictions on funds withdrawal and movement, has significantly impacted livelihoods and the ability of families to purchase basic needs. For example, families’ purchasing power has weakened due to the devaluation of the Lebanese pound against the USD. This has been aggravated by the nationwide (and worldwide) lockdown in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic which started to impact Lebanon in early March. As a result, all businesses have been struggling to cope and adapt to the new situation, with many being forced to close. The Beirut blast has compounded these challenges and have also led to concerns about food insecurity.
With the support of GAC & HC, IRL implementing a 12 Months Livelihood project. It aims to contribute to foster economically, personally and socially active and resilient youth to increase entrepreneurship, and technical training, empowerment, participation, and civic engagement of this cross-cohort” in line with the goals of the Lebanon Crisis Response Plan (2019) of youth affected by the economic Crisis and with the priorities of the National Economic Plan to leverage relationships with the National Youth Policy (2012) to increase the opportunities for youth to have an economic active participation and improve the career orientation for graduates

IRL will support entrepreneurs having already established their businesses, but having them at risk due to the Lebanese economic crisis along with the Covid-19 pandemic. The support will be through delivering a technical programme, individual coaching and mentorship, in order to achieve the following objectives:
1.    Strengthening the sustainability and competitiveness of youth-led enterprises with high potential for inclusive job creation, and innovation in Beirut City.
2.    Promoting youth participation in the labour market through active engagement of Policy makers and key private and public stakeholders at local and national levels.

IRL seeking for a business incubator to provide a conducive environment for the creation and development of startups and existing businesses, through incubation, business support, counseling, networking.

Scope of work
Under the Action, IRL will conduct an outreach using social media platforms and traditional outreach campaigns to identify 20 potential enterprises for support youth and located in Beirut. The outreach will prioritize, but will not be limited to two main sectors, ICT, and eco-tourism. These sectors have been prioritized due to an in depth market assessment conducted early 2020 after the evolution of the Economic crisis. Other sectors might be also selected based on the level of competitiveness in the business idea in addition to the scoring obtained during the application process.
Established and nascent business will be supported to become more viable and sustainable through the provision of a capacity building programme and business coaching that addresses the main obstacles to their business acceleration, growth and sustainability in addition to a big focus on job creation. Business incubator could aim to focus on entrepreneurial skills, improve the management structure, internal systems, cost effectiveness, market access and marketing tools, quality of products or services of target enterprises, etc…
Business Incubator Services trainings will be provided by experts, having experience mainly in entrepreneurship support to be able to develop a tailored capacity building scheme optimized depending on the identified needs of the selected entrepreneurs in line with the current economic crisis and with the context of the area and sector.

Targeted Group
The project targets 20 youth that have the willingness to register along sectors with a potential for growth and job creation that have been pre-identified. The business should be owned and established by a male or a female Youth aging between 18 and 30 years old. The business idea should be competitive having the capacity to generate decent jobs with relevance to the market needs.
Priority will be given to enterprises with economic viability and sustainability potential, growth and job creation potential as well as a positive impact. To assess this, IRL collects information, through an enterprise profiling tool, on the economic viability and sustainability of enterprises, the growth and job creation potential, and impact of businesses.

Implementation methodology
IRL is seeking Business incubator to support the intervention by providing business continuity and business resilience trainings, coaching and mentorship and respond to a range of business development needs for Youth entrepreneurs contributing to their businesses development, sustainability and creation of decent jobs.  
The growth and scale-up of business will be supported through a demand-driven and needs-based approach to identify specific barriers and address them. IRL will draw a diagnostic of all selected enterprises through individual interviews, to assess main issues and point out required expert advice. BI will be asked to collaborate on the selection of areas of focus in terms of training topics and outlines. IRL will closely follow up with the BI, evaluate, and keep track of participants’ performance.
Following the selection of enterprises, the project envisions coaching support that is tailored for the needs of each enterprise. This can be done over a series of visits, including an assessment meeting which is preferably conducted on-site at the enterprise premises. The exact support activities to be provided will be clarified following an assessment.
This assessment will form the basis of a business development plan which includes an assessment of the current situation of the enterprise, its business development goals, and its business development roadmap.
As a final step, BI will work collaboratively with each enterprise to update existing business plans or produce a business plan, as needed by each enterprise.

Objectives of the business incubator (DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES):
-    Provide sessions of 1 to 2 hours to each team based on needs and gaps faced by each business owner.
-    Providing market-related advices, guidance and counselling to the selected business owners who are chosen for the Business Grant.
-    Together with the selected business owners for the Business Grant, preparing the list of items/equipment/raw materials with clear details and specifications & supporting them to utilize the business grant in an optimum level.
-    Supporting selected businesses owners in identifying most convenient suppliers for their requested items / services, while regularly studying the market prices and identifying the best option for services and goods to be referred to selected business owners as needed.
-    Developing a short-term action plan for the businesses and supervising the owners in terms of procurement of items/equipment/raw materials in line with their business plan within the available grant budget
-    Mentoring business owners during the first four weeks after the delivery of the business grant, through a field visit and an additional follow-up call
-    Deliverables must be successfully achieved, and deliverables provided to IRL by June 30th.
-    For each business, provide a synthetic action plan including: A. Context of intervention: how the blast affected the business and our intervention can tackle this.
-    List and quantity of items/services to be procured and estimated prices
-    List of short-term actions to be taken in addition to procurement
-    Confirmation of attendance to the session
-    For each MSME, updated status from follow-up
-    Assessment meetings with selected enterprises;
-    Provision of 20 Business Development Services sessions for a group of 20 Youth, with an average of 3 hours per session. Trainings will be divided among three groups of 20 entrepreneurs.
-    Develop a clear outline and training agenda based on the needs and capacity assessment conducted with the selected entrepreneurs.
-    Provision for IRL for the full training Curriculum before the start of delivering the program
-    Business development plan for each enterprise, detailing assessment findings, identified business development goals, the content to be covered during coaching sessions, as well as the delivery timeline;
-    Development of progress monitoring forms and tools i.e. pre and post-test;
-    Delivery of coaching sessions;
-    Provision of material and/or tools needed for the delivery of coaching sessions;
-    Final evaluation report detailing the progress of the enterprises and outlining steps for future improvement (this document could include an updated business plan if this is an identified need).
-    Delivering in person training sessions with all precautions taken due to covid-19, and/or online sessions depending on the situation, with a possibility to provide trainings in different locations located in North Lebanon
-    Provide direct visits to the 20 selected businesses for the provision of coaching sessions.
-    Coordinate the production of branded and promotional items.
-    Train and coach 20 youth on a. Social Media Marketing, b. How can I market my business for free, c. How I can promote my business, and d. Digital marketing tips for small businesses.
-    Delivering any required pedagogical support material (i.e.: training manuals, lesson plans, training material, etc.).
-    Developing pre-post tests, collecting pre-post data and submitting a final report.

Requirements:
Qualified Business Incubators are invited to apply for this task. 

-    Experience in the private sector in small business development / scaling up / entrepreneurship and/or consultancy.
Years of Experience:  At least 3 years of documented professional experience.
-    Familiarity with the issues affecting the private sector in Lebanon as well as national trends in business and the economy.
-    Provide blended sessions.
-    Fully legal entity.
-    Accredited certificates for participants.

Timeframe
Support to entrepreneurs is expected to last for six consecutive months.

Proposal submission
BI shall submit Technical and Financial Proposals in a package containing two separate envelopes as follows. 
a)    The first envelope must be marked “TECHNICAL PROPOSAL” and shall contain one original hard copy of the technical proposal.
b)    The second envelope must be marked “FINANCIAL PROPOSAL” and shall contain one original hard copy of the financial proposal.
•    All offers shall be signed and stamped by the BI’s Manager.
•    No financial information shall be contained in the Technical Proposal otherwise the offer will be cancelled and excluded from the evaluation process.
•    BI shall not be entitled to compensation related to costs of preparing the proposals.
•    Proposals shall be submitted before 07.06.2021 at the following address:

 

Islamic Relief, Lebanon logistic and procurement coordinator, Samer Ibrik.
Touffic Tabara center 8th floor – Elzarif   | Bierut – Lebanon
        Mobile: +961 76111438

 

How to apply

Tender shoud be submitted in a closed sealed envelope by hand in the tender box in Islamic relief lebanon office. 

Touffic Tabara center 8th floor – Elzarif   | Bierut – Lebanon

منتهية الصلاحية
آخر مدة للتقديم
الاثنين, 07. يونيو 2021
نوع الدعوة
دعوة لتقديم المناقصات
قطاع(ات) التدخل:
العمل وسبل العيش