Terms of Reference for the Development of Sos Children'S Villages Somalia Country Strategy (2027- 2030)

- Background SOS Children's Villages Somalia (SOS CV Somalia) is a child-focused humanitarian and development organization committed to ensuring that every child grows up with the care, protection, and support needed to thrive. Through its integrated programs in child protection, family strengthening, youth employability, education, health, emergency response, and community development, SOS CV Somalia contributes to improving the well-being and resilience of vulnerable children, young people, families, and communities across Somalia. The current SOS CV Somalia Country Strategy (2023–2026) has guided the organization's programming, partnerships, advocacy, organizational development, and resource mobilization efforts. A review of the strategy conducted in 2025 demonstrated significant achievements, with approximately 95% of the strategic Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) achieved. The review found strong results in humanitarian action, education access, and alternative care scale-up, alongside three structural risks requiring attention in the next strategy cycle: the phase-out of child sponsorship by SOS Norway and SOS Finland, a persistent self-reliance gap among the Alternative care and Family Strengthening households exiting the programme, and the 2024 Parliamentary rejection of the Child Rights Bill. The review further identified key lessons, emerging priorities, and opportunities for future growth and impact. As the current strategic period approaches completion, SOS CV Somalia intends to develop a new Country Strategy for the period 2027–2030. The new strategy will provide strategic direction for the organization over the next four years and ensure alignment with the SOS Children's Villages Federation Strategy, Somalia's National/Transitional Development Plan, national sector policies, humanitarian and development priorities, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and the evolving needs of children, youth, families, and communities. SOS Children's Villages Somalia therefore seeks to engage a qualified consultant or consulting firm to facilitate the development of the Country Strategy (2027–2030) through a participatory, evidence-based, and inclusive process involving internal and external stakeholders. - Purpose of the Assignment The purpose of this consultancy is to facilitate the development of a comprehensive, results-oriented, and future-focused Country Strategy (2027–2030) that will guide SOS CV Somalia's strategic priorities, programming, partnerships, advocacy, organizational development, and resource mobilization efforts over the next five years. - Scope of Work / Objectives of the Assignment The consultant will lead the development of the Country Strategy (2027–2030) through a comprehensive review of the current strategy's performance, achievements, challenges, and lessons learned, while assessing organizational strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and risks that may influence future programming and growth. The assignment will include an in-depth analysis of Somalia’s humanitarian, development, socio-economic, environmental, and political context, with particular attention to emerging trends affecting children, youth, families, and communities. The consultant will engage a broad range of internal and external stakeholders—including children, youth, caregivers, communities, government institutions such as line ministries such as Ministry of Health (MoH); Ministry of Education, Culture and Higher Education (MoECHE); Ministry of Family and Human Right Development (MOFHRD), Ministry of Youth and Sports (MOYS); Ministry of Labour and Social affairs (MOLSA) Institutional donors such as ECHO, GAC , FCDO, BMZ etc. ; Partners supporting Association (PSA) such as CVW , SOS Norway ; SOS Sweden, donors, development partners, UNICEF, civil society organizations such as Somalia Child right Coalitions (SCRC) , the Joining Forces Alliance (JFA) Somalia chapter;and private sector actors such as Hormuud telecom, —to identify strategic priorities, opportunities, and areas for collaboration. The situational analysis and consultations should assess geographic expansion opportunities identified in the 2023–2025 review, including operationalization of community-based Alternative Care programming in Southwest state Somalia and potential Family Strengthening expansion into Jubaland and Hirshabelle, where unaccompanied and separated children (UASC) caseloads are highest. Through a participatory strategic planning process, the consultant will facilitate visioning and planning workshops, develop the organization’s strategic priorities, objectives, outcomes, implementation approaches, Theory of Change, Results Framework, and performance measurement mechanisms. The strategy development process should explicitly build on and test the strategic hypotheses identified in the 2023–2025 strategy review, including: whether community-based care (foster, kinship, Kafala) should become the primary Alternative Care modality in place of Family-Like Care; whether the SOS College of Health Sciences warrants a standalone strategic objective; the scope of SOS CV Somalia's role in the national Child Helpline partnership; the target proportion of locally-generated income by 2030 given PSA sponsorship phase-out; and whether advocacy should be elevated to a standalone programme stream with dedicated budget and staffing. The strategy development should follow an execution-oriented planning approach (per the Kaplan & Norton execution premium framework, adapted for the humanitarian/nonprofit context), translating strategic priorities into a Strategy Map, a Balanced Scorecard, a prioritized Strategic Initiative Portfolio, an organizational alignment/cascade plan, and a defined strategy governance and review mechanism. Cross-cutting themes to be addressed include gender, age, and diversity mainstreaming; protection mainstreaming; climate resilience; and disability inclusion; the latter reflecting Somalia's 2024 Disability Ac