RFI-522-17-00002_Tertiary_Activity.pdf

(USAID I HONDURAS

FROM THE AMERICAN PEOPlE

Notice Type: Special Notice — REQUEST’ FOR INFORMATION (RFI)

RF1 Number: RFI-522-1 7-00002

Subject: Tertiary Activity

Issuance Date: January 23, 2017

Closing Date: February 6, 2017

This is a Request for Information (RFI). This is not a Request for Proposal or a Request for Application (RFA) and is not to be construed as a commitment by the U.S. Government to issue any solicitation or Notice of Funding Opportunity, or ultimately to award a contract or assistance agreement on the basis of this RFI, or to pay for any information voluntarily submitted as a result of this request.

USAID posts its competitive business opportunities on www.fbo.gov or www.grants.gov.

it is the potential offeror’s/applicant’s responsibility to monitor these sites for announcements of new opportunities. Please note that responding to this RFI will not give any advantage to any organization or individual in any subsequent competition. Responses may be used by USAID without restriction or limitation, therefore proprietary information should not be sent.

This RFI is issued pursuant to FAR Part 15.201(c), (d) and (f) and FAR Part 10.002 (bX2Xiii). The purpose of this RFI is to offer the opportunity for interested organizations and individuals to provide information, opinions and recommendations on approaches for the implementation of the Tertiary Violence Prevention Activity to reduce recidivism within targeted populations of the highest-risk juveniles, as described in the attached Statement of Objectives (SOO). Specific matters to be addressed are as follows:

• General comments on the overall program description and the feasibility of achieving the stated objectives (i.e. capacity to implement the services described) within the Honduran context?

• Which organizations - worldwide - are currently providing services of this nature, specifically with youth involved in conflict (including excombatants) and/or urban violence?

• Suggestions regarding effective interventions or diagnostic tools within juvenile justice systems.

• Other suggestions to improve USAID’s approach.

Kindly respond to this RFI through email directed to Vann D. Rolfson, Contracting Officer, USAIDIHonduras at oaahondurasusaid.gov. Please include the RFI number in the subject line of the email. Questions regarding this RFI will not be answered. USAID will review and consider any responses as part of determining whether and how to proceed with a new activity in this area.

Thank you for your continuing partnership in this important development sector.

sincpr!? Q Vann D. Rolfson Contracting Officer

Attachment: Statement of Objectives

Improving Tertiary Violence Prevention DRAFT Statement of Objectives

OVERVIEW

The goal of USAID/Honduras’s proposed Improving Tertiary Violence Prevention activity (ITVP) is to reduce recidivism within targeted populations of the highest-riskjuveniles. The development hypothesis for this activity is that if high-quality, tertiary violence prevention services, specialized and targeted by risk levels, are provided to identified juvenile populations at the highest risk, (e.g., those already involved with gangs, crime or the court system), then the repeated criminal and violent offenses by these individuals will be reduced, ultimately contributing to reducing crime and violence in their communities.

USAID understands that a small number of state and non-state actors currently provide a very limited array of services to these populations. However, several fundamental challenges exist which limit the sufficiency, coherence and adequacy of these services to effectively reduce recidivism.

Through this new five-year activity, USAID will seek improved Human and Institutional Capacity Development (HICD) and technical proficiency of state and non-state actors seeking to provide high-quality, specific and targeted services to juvenile tertiary populations. To qualify for support, these actors must be providing (or seeking to provide) services that are explicitly linked to preventing recidivism and likely centered on the themes of rehabilitation, reintegration and the reduction of stigma.

BACKGROUND

Crime, violence, and homicide are at or near record highs in the northern triangle countries of Central America - Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. In the last decade multiple observers have ranked Honduras and El Salvador among the most violent countries in the world. To reverse this trend, USAID adapted both sociological and public health models of violence prevention in support of government and civil society efforts. USAID/Honduras further adapted and advocated a public health model of violence reduction and prevention, first posited by the U.S. Surgeon General in 1979, and taken up by the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control . This model views violence in epidemiological terms, equivalent to communicable diseases, and seeks to interrupt violent behaviors through targeted interventions that reduce incidence and prevent further transmission. The public health violence prevention approach is predicated on having clearly defined target populations, disaggregated by risk levels, and clearly identified risk and protective factors. USAID/Honduras has adapted a fourth component — community policing — to the three “traditional” public health interventions l HICD is a structured and integrated process model designed to identify root causes of performance gaps in host country and partner institutions. http.//pdf.usaid.gov/pdf docs/Pnadt442.pdf 2 Honduras reached a high of 87 homicides/100,000 people in 2011. January — September 2016 rate was 45/1000. (Observatorio Nacional de Ia

Violencia, Universidad Nacional Authnoma de Honduras/IIJDPAS htp://www.iudpas.orgJboIetines/boletines-naciona)j.

uahiberg, et.al. The Histaty of Violence as a Public Health Issue. (2009). American Medical Association.

http://virtualmentor.ama-assn.org/2009/02/mhstl-0902.html against violence This is an essential component to sustain the positive results of prevention and effectively confront crime and violence with the cooperation of the community.

USAID/Honduras Stratgyj

Under USAID/Honduras’ 2015-2019 Country Development Cooperation Strategy (CDCS)4,this ITVP activity will contribute to Development Objective (DO) 1: “Citizen security increased for vulnerable populations in targeted areas” through sub-intermediate results (Sub-IRs) 1.1.2 “Access to quality services for key populations increased” and Sub-I R 1.2.2 “Efficiency of Security and Justice systems improved”.

USAID/Honduras pioneered the implementation of a place-based strategy (PBS) for violence prevention that complements the public health model with a law enforcement element. PBS simultaneously directs prevention, law enforcement and community policing at the same specific hot-spots. Experience in other countries has shown that identifying those zones with the highest levels of violence, and the individuals and groups active therein, can dramatically reduce crime and violence. This broad and coordinated PBS approach by government and civil society in specific communities also emphasizes identifying and targeting individuals for secondary and tertiary prevention. This approach can simultaneously neutralize the worst perpetrators while reaching out to support the highest-risk individuals and their families to modify their behaviors and reintegrate into society.

Under the current CDCS, USAID/Honduras targets the five most violent Honduran municipalities -

Tegucigalpa, San Pedro Sula, La Ceiba, Cholóma and Tela. USAID/Honduras teamed with the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (INL) and US military civil affairs to pilot the first PBS program in the three most violent districts of the city of San Pedro Sula . USAID/Honduras also has an ambitious Collaborative Learning Agenda; it is a goal of many DO 1 activities, including PBS and tertiary prevention, to provide evidence to support replication by the GOH and others.

The bulk of USAID/Honduras’s citizen security program focuses on primary prevention. To complete the spectrum of prevention programming, the Mission is exploring additional secondary and tertiary interventions, in which this ITVP activity is a major component.

Additionally, USAID awarded a three-year secondary prevention activity (Proponte Més) to measurably lower risk factors for adopting violence and gang-involvement among youth between the ages 8-17. Implemented by Creative Associates International, Proponte Mós includes developing a community-based secondary prevention model and referral systems to improve, expand or create secondary prevention services. Tertiary components of this program include work with the Honduran justice sector to strengthen or create alternative measures to youth detention/incarceration and adapt a case management system for the juvenile justice system.

Other new USAID/Honduras programs also have tertiary programming components. The Strengthening the Justice Sector activity (implemented by DAI) emphasizes improving the efficiency of Justice Sector institutions, including institutional development and improvements to the alternative sentencing and pretrial detention components of the juvenile justice system.

htto5:J/www.usaid.ov/hpndurp5/cdcs Unidad Metropolitano Policial UMEP 7 (Satélite), UMEP 6 (Charnelecón), and UMEP 8 (Rivera Hernändez)

The Generating Entrepreneurs and Sustainable Synergies (GENESIS) activity implemented by the Honduran NGO FUNADEH increases protective factors among at risk youth and former gang members in targeted municipalities through employability training and small business support with chambers of commerce and business partners. The Empleando Futuros workforce development activity (implemented by Banyan Global) includes a dedicated component for 400 tertiary participants that highlights social and behavioral components of employability training.

The Puentes school violence prevention pilot (collaboratively implemented by Children International, the German agency GiZ and the Honduran Ministry of Education in 36 schools in Tegucigalpa) emphasizes positive behavioral interventions and supports for young students that exhibit precursors of future tertiary problems. Results from this activity will inform future GOH and donor school violence prevention initiatives nationwide.

All of these activities are or will be implemented in USAID/Honduras’s five DOl target municipalities. Successful implementation of the ITVP will require intimate collaboration and a common referral and tracking system among these activities and with other initiatives of USAID, the GOH and donors. Successful collaboration will deconflict, avoid duplication and promote synergies while, enriching USAID/Honduras’s Collaborative Learning Agenda on crime and violence prevention.

APPROACH

Systems Aooroach: USAID is cognizant that linking at-risk youth and their context is critical for a holistic response to the multiple needs of these populations. USAID’s Youth in Development Policy highlights Positive Youth Development (PYD) as a suite of strategies with a holistic approach for engaging youth, families, communities, and governments. The ITVP activity must likewise engage and empower youth to reach their full potential. PYD approaches build skills, assets and competencies; foster healthy relationships; strengthen the environment; and transform systems. These linkages, once established and functional, need to outlast USAID engagement and provide the long-term avenues through which committed stakeholders, including youth, can communicate, assess issues, and direct (Honduran) resources. A national strategy to improve and promote policy coherence with these alliances could maximize tertiary prevention outcomes and nurture PYD in Honduras that is inclusive even of the stigmatized tertiary population.

CaDacitv-develoornent: USAID seeks to apply the HICD methodology to identify key gaps in service delivery for highest-risk tertiary youth that are most likely to commit and recommit violence and crimes. HICD will be applied to strengthen the capacity of local service providers (NGOs, government, academic and private sector), in close coordination with other USAID-funded interventions. Equally important, HICD will confront problems in the enabling environment for tertiary prevention by supporting new and effective partnerships and coalitions, improving the quality of and access to rehabilitation and reintegration services, advocating for national strategic planning and policy change, mitigating the significant stigmas and risks in this space, and monitoring and evaluating results and impacts. Strengthening of central government institutions with active roles in the juvenile justice sector will be in large part supported by USAID/Honduras through the Mission’s new Strengthening the Justice Sector activity.

Examples of internal capacity building interventions with actors and service providers include:

budgeting, fundraising and management of financial resources; human resources management (including recruitment, position and functional descriptions, deployment planning, development and training (in-service and specialized/advanced), security and risk management, and performance-driven evaluation metrics); planning, as both an organizational strategic concept and as an operational framework for application; internal leadership development; robust monitoring and evaluation; and transparency and accountability - particularly for personnel actions and public finances. All these organizational development interventions should be guided by evidence, indicators and benchmarks.

Capacity development interventions should be undertaken through a defined engagement strategy (elaborated with relevant and targeted stakeholders) that describes how technical assistance and grants programming will tangibly improve tertiary service providers’ outcomes and long-term sustainability. USAID recognizes the potential for an incentives structure to encourage further development of expertise for non-state organizations providing tertiary violence prevention services.

Technically sound. high-aualitv ororammin: Tertiary programming is a new, highly complex, and enormously risky undertaking in the Northern Triangle context. The ITVP activity will emphasize improvements in the technical quality of services provided to beneficiaries while prioritizing “Do No Harm” principles and the safety of beneficiaries, providers and staff. While multiple organizations in many countries have experience engaging these populations, the Honduran context will require learning, adapting, and applying evidence of best practices while recognizing the particular assets and challenges of Honduras. Considering the current high-levels of impunity and violence, managing risks and personal security will be an essential and transversal component of this activity. Each of these components, and the suite of all services together, should be carefully crafted with objectively measured results and impacts. A feedback loop to incorporate continuous, evidence-driven adaptation is essential throughout the life of the activity.

Learning and Adaoting: The activity must allow for continuous learning and adapting based on results, outcomes and evidence from USAID and others’ investments. USAID/Honduras is actively searching for, and encourages colleagues to forward, evidence of implementers and governments in the LAC region having successfully implemented initiatives similar to this ITVP activity. In order to make the most informed programming decisions possible it is critical to have clarity on roles, responsibilities, mandates, existing services, and evidence of impact of current tertiary initiatives in Honduras. While some of this mapping has been done recently, information on tertiary prevention in the whole Northern Triangle is limited in scope and depth. The ITVP activity should invest considerable effort to better understand the critical gaps in current service provision, alternatives to fill these, and their implications for the definition of success in this new space. To improve sustainability and avoid overburdening or displacing existing Honduran efforts, considerable attention should be paid to the structures, capacities and activities of existing actors. Simultaneously, it will be critical to develop a better understanding of the tertiary population in Honduras.

Additionally, the ITVP activity should have enough technical and programmatic flexibility within and across program components to respond to changing circumstances and dynamics in political

6 availability and sustainability of funding is critical to the success of any institution and should be prioritized.

will’, legal and institutional structures, violence prevention and citizen security. In addition to informing the Mission’s own ambitious Collaborative Learning Agenda, this activity should also support knowledge sharing and a greater respect for evidence-informed decision making amongst tertiary stakeholders. All beneficiary organizations, as part of the criteria for receiving support, will be expected to incorporate collection and analysis of results, outcomes and impacts in their programming models (i.e., What happened to beneficiaries post treatment? Did interventions produce the desired impact? Has recidivism decreased? Has crime and violence been reduced in their communities?).

OBJECTIVE

The overall goal of this project is to reduce recidivism within targeted populations of the highest-risk juveniles, by building the organizational and technical capacity of Honduran service providers (state and non-state, policy and programmatic) to provide specific, targeted, and high-quality services to the highest-risk, tertiary juvenile populations.

USAID understands that while many tertiary support systems and services are similar for both voluntary and involuntary (incarcerated or court-involved) populations, evidence in other countries has shown that differing conditions and levels of risk between and within these groups must be adequately addressed to ensure relevance, effectiveness and safety. While this activity will differentiate between types of services, providers and recipients, it also envisions that strategies and suites of interventions (i.e., HICD support, behavior change, counseling, mentoring, etc.) will be complementary across the activity. An enabling environment and coherent policies will be important, particularly when addressing the stigma and obstacles that prevent adequate reinsertion strategies. Therefore, state actors, regulators and service providers (particularly those that establish, create or implement policy) should be considered for specific investments.

Result 1: Involuntary high-risk juvenile tertiary populations have access to providers offering high-quality services and support.

Involuntary high risk juvenile populations are defined as individuals of both sexes, 12-24 years of age, that have been mandated by juvenile courts to alternative sentencing or juvenile detention centers to engage with service providers programing.

For service providers that engage with involuntary (e.g., court-involved), youth either incarcerated (pre-sentencing and sentenced) or non-incarcerated (alternative sentences/community service), a long-term approach is critical for the success of this activity.

The ITVP activity will focus on strengthening organizational and technical capacities of service providers to confront challenges in rehabilitation and reintegration. The first could address psychosocial needs, educational and employability deficiencies, mental and reproductive health, substance abuse, and other’s needs. The former could address probation and follow-up support, government, community, and private sector alliances to overcome stigma, provisional residence, ‘ Which may benefit from the conduct of Political Economy Analyses (PEAs) 8This activity does not envision extensive support to service providers to work in high-security facilities until the state reestablishes adequate security. Initially, the ITVP activity could operate in one or two safer or minimum security facilities, likely Jalteva for minimum-security males and 21 de Octubre, a secure facility for females.

and others. The IrVP activity must invest resources in a complementary and collaborative manner with other activities of USAID and other Honduran and international actors.

USAID Is particularly interested in better understanding and supporting improvements in access and quality of service provision to youth under alternative sentencing. Currently Honduran judges make extraordinary efforts to require alternative sentences (over incarceration) for nonviolent offenders. While this is promising, it is unclear if sufficient options (state or non-state) are available, how rehabilitative these sentences actuall’ are, and if and how compliance, progress or impact are monitored, among other issues . USAID contemplates that where there are insufficient alternative sentencing and diversion options courts courts may be less inclined to pursue alternatives to incarceration, which will only exacerbates violence dynamics.

For both involuntary (incarcerated and non-incarcerated) and voluntary populations, the ITVP activity should assist service providers in creating/adapting and applying a rigorous assessment tool to better understand beneficiaries, differentiate between levels and types of risk, and tailor and targeting interventions appropriately. This process should build on other risk assessments already being employed or tested in Honduras or the northern Triangle.

Result 2: Through pilot programs, voluntary high-risk juvenile tertiary populations have access to Improved services from providers showing promise In this field (Phase II of the ITVP).

Voluntary high-risk tertiary juvenile populations are defined as individuals from approximately 83Ob0 years of age that are self-referred or referred by families, churches, schools, other community platforms or other USAID-funded prevention programs. These youth would participate in ITVP activities of their own volition.

USAID is already supporting a range of community-level interventions in workforce development, education, family counselling, etc. The ITVP activity should complement and not duplicate these interventions. However, it is also clear that tertiary populations require extraordinary considerations to ensure that services offered respond to actual needs and risks, to prevent elevating their risk level or that of fellow beneficiaries, to protect the lives of beneficiaries, families and program staff. It is also clear at this moment that few if any providers and services in Honduras target this population. USAID envisions that investments under Result 2 would be phased into the ITVP activity once evidence demonstrates that programs have a better understanding of populations, operating context, safety protocols, and potential services and providers, etc.

Illustrative indicators:

• Number of service providers offering improved tertiary services

• HICD scores of targeted service provider organizations/institutions

• Number of beneficiaries receiving new services

• Number and percentage of court-involved youth that are tracked and engaged with tertiary services providers

Note that the PrOponte Más program is likely to assist the GOH to create and implement a case management system for youth in alternative sentencing.

legally defined age of ‘youth” in Honduras extends to 30 years old.

• Reddivism rates among participating youth

• Crime and violence rates in the communities of participant youth