1. About the Aga Khan Foundation Pakistan

The Aga Khan Foundation Pakistan (AKFP), an agency of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), is a private, non-denominational, international development agency established in 1967. It seeks sustainable solutions to long-term problems of poverty, hunger, illiteracy, and ill-health with special emphasis on the needs of rural communities in mountainous and other resource-poor regions, primarily in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.  

2. Introduction to the Project Broadening Economic and Social Transformation for Women’s Economic Empowerment and Recovery (BEST4WEER) is a five-year project funded by Global Affairs Canada (GAC) and the Aga Khan Foundation Canada started in 2021 and ending March 2026. The project focuses on improving women’s social and economic empowerment in Gilgit-Baltistan and Chitral district of KP in Pakistan. The aim of the project is to (1) reduce the social, cultural, institutional, and economic barriers for women’s engagement in economic and social spheres while (2) enhancing the social and economic agency of women. BEST4WEER is a gender-equality-specific (GE-3) initiative. The project is executed by Aga Khan Foundation Canada (AKFC) and implemented by Aga Khan Foundation Pakistan (AKF-P), in partnership with Aga Khan Rural Support Programme Pakistan (AKRSP) and Accelerate Prosperity (AP).

The project employs a whole community approach to build acceptance for the increased social and economic empowerment of women, while challenging the social and gender norms dictating the roles that women and men can hold in society, markets, workplaces, and households. BEST4WEER places a specific focus on the norms and institutional gaps contributing towards the gendered division of unpaid work and the disproportionate burden of childcare shouldered by women in Pakistan.

To achieve this, the project is implementing a comprehensive array of intersecting gender equality (GE) activities across different implementation levels described by the project, including:

Engaging local influencers: The focus is on engaging men through behavior change communication regarding GE and women’s economic empowerment (WEE) and exposure visits across levels. 

Gender Pairs: Initiating gender dialogues through gender pairs, household decision making, role models and cascading. 

Business Infrastructure: Improving business infrastructure and services for women-led enterprises, workspace safety and safeguarding. 

Engage Employers and Women-Only Markets: Engaging employers and business associations and supporting women-only markets across the project’s diverse implementation levels.  

Support to CSOs, Women Organizations and Government Line Departments: A major focus is on the provision of financial and technical support to civil society and women’s organizations to advance GE and building capacity of government and partner organizations in GE policy formulation and implementation. 

Future of Work and digital skills: Further, to enhance opportunities for young men and women to acquire employable skills relevant to “future of work”, the project is delivering financial and technical support to digital hubs, employer-led internships, and apprenticeships, and initiated youth soft skills and 21st century skills training in partnership with three universities in GBC.

Entrepreneurship Development: To enhance entrepreneurship opportunities, the project has launched the incubation and acceleration activities for aspirants through AP and AKRSP’s START Program, which targets young women and men who are seeking to pursue entrepreneurship. 

Voice and Representation: To increase the voice and representation of women in household and community decision making, the project is implementing activities that build the confidence of women and increase women’s access and control over assets and resources, including enhancing women’s voices, and promoting women’s representation in areas such as sports, disaster risk reduction and through community-based saving groups, life skills and civic-related realms. 

3. Project’s Communication Strategy

The communications strategy for BEST4WEER seeks to create visibility and momentum around women’s empowerment by amplifying women’s voices, celebrating role models, and engaging diverse stakeholders through gender-sensitive, inclusive, and context-appropriate communications. By leveraging both traditional media (radio, print, television, community dialogues) and digital platforms (social media, blogs, online events), the project aims to raise awareness of its goals and impact stories, promote stakeholder ownership, and encourage replication of successful approaches. All communications adhere to AKF guidelines on consent, safeguarding, inclusivity, and respectful representation, while ensuring recognition of Global Affairs Canada’s support. 

Ethical Standards and Safeguarding: The consultants/firm must conscientiously abide by AKF’s Global Safeguarding Manual and its adaptations in the assignment context, and all members of the Consultant team must sign AKF’s Safeguarding Statement of Commitment upon contracting.

Codes of conduct must be specifically referenced, and commitment confirmed in writing by each member of the team. The consultant/firm must clearly specify how human stories will be collected and used with integrity and honesty, respecting human rights and differences in culture, customs, religious beliefs and practices of all stakeholders. Provisions to obtain informed consent of participants and ensure confidentiality and data security must be explicit. The Consultant must explain how the team will be mindful of gender-related needs and roles, ethnicity, children living with disability, age, language and other differences when designing and carrying out the training to participants. The design and implementation of the scripts and videos must strike an appropriate balance between recognition of the potential benefits and the protection of participants and communities including women and girls from potential harm. Safeguarding principles to protect key informants from sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment and bullying, including youth protection, must be explicit.

4. Background to the Assignment

Communities in Gilgit Baltistan and Chitral face unique socio-economic, climate and environmental challenges, including climate change affects, youth unemployment, and limited platforms for self-expression. At the same time, these communities have rich stories of resilience, women’s activism, youth-led initiatives, and inspiring role models in education, sports, health, local governance, voluntarism and entrepreneurship to name a few.

Storytelling through short documentaries is a powerful tool to highlight such narratives, amplify local voices, and connect communities to wider audiences. Many young women and men in these areas already have some technical knowledge of mini-video documentaries and access to basic mobile phone gadgets. However, most of them, especially young women, lack professional technical guidance to refine their craft, structure compelling narratives, and more specifically using video documentaries or short videos as a medium for advocacy and social change in their communities and to empower women and girls in their own cultural and physical contexts.

In this connection using crowdsourcing method, 10-15 local videographers/filmmakers from Gilgit Baltistan and Chitral will be identified/involved by AKF(P) with support from AKRSP and exposed to technical training and mentorship through a 3-4 days workshop including practical demo, in one location in Gilgit Baltistan to be selected, with a focus on women, videographers, content writers, storytellers. The criteria for selection of participants will include, preferably young women and men (18–35 years) passionate about impact storytelling through documentary style videos, should have basic technical knowledge of videography/photography and editing, must own or have access to equipment (camera, DSLR, smartphone with good camera, tripod, mic, etc.), besides language proficiency in Urdu and English as well as a commitment to attend the full workshop, mentorship sessions and produce a short impactful story after training and submit it to the panel for review and feedback.

These aspirants will be oriented both on ideas, story/content development and technical aspects of videography/mini-filmmaking, editing. Towards the end of the training, a plan will be developed for each participant with the project team and consultants, to decide which stories are developed into film or documentary and will be supported to go to their communities to collect impact stories of the project and produce short videos (5-7 minutes or less) on diverse themes such as successes in addressing gendered division of unpaid work and the disproportionate burden of childcare shouldered by women, community resilience, women’s economic empowerment, climate action, disaster preparedness and response, and women and youth as change agents etc. The selected films/videos thus produced will be reviewed by the selected consultants and project team and screened publicly to local audiences at regional levels, one each in Gilgit, Baltistan and Chitral. The finalized documentaries/films will be screened at national level for recognition and profiling. This will help create a critical mass of women filmmakers at local levels, as well as document and share impact stories through community lens. The targeted communication audience of the documentary style impact stories is local communities, social and mainstream media and provincial and national level policy makers and development partners.

4.1. Objective of the Consultancy

The consultancy aims to engage a highly professional documentary team/or firm to help:

1. Build the storytelling and technical capacities of young video makers (preferably women digital storytellers).

2. Mentor participants throughout the process from ideation to final product development.

3. Support the creation and screening of impactful short films rooted in authentic community voices to local and national audiences.

4. Create a video collage of the training and mentorship process from start to finish and by including the overview of the selected impactful video stories in the final product with English sub-titles.

4.2 Scope of Work and Tasks

The consultant team will be engaged in doing pre-workshop preparations, designing and conducting the workshop as well as providing post workshop mentoring and final review and submission and screening of the awards:

Pre-Workshop Preparation

• Develop training content, exercises, and case examples.

• Prepare guidelines on ethical and safe documentary making as per AKF’s safeguarding policy and ethical standards and orient participants on it in collaboration with project’s gender team.

• Review participant profiles and adapt training materials accordingly.

Technical Workshop (Both Story Content and videography)

• Facilitate interactive sessions on impact storytelling, directing, filming, editing, and advocacy.

• Guide participants to conceptualize and plan their short films.

• Provide practical, hands-on mini-filming and editing exercises.

Post-Workshop Mentorship

• Offer remote mentoring and feedback as participants film in their own communities.

• Troubleshoot technical and narrative challenges.

Film Review and Screening Awards

• Review submitted videos with sub-titles and shortlisting for screening.

• Participate in jury deliberations for awards.

• Provide a summary note on the strengths and lessons learned from the process.

• Attend the videos screening day and engage in discussions with youth and community stakeholders and audiences and capture feedback.

4.3 Deliverables

• Training modules and workshop materials developed.

• 3-4 days training workshop delivered to a total of 10-15 youth participants in GBC.

• Ongoing mentoring support to participants during training and post training production of short impact stories in documentary style.

• Reviewed and shared final digital products/impact stories/videos produced by 10-15 participants

• Feedback and selection of films for screening awards and arranging screening events in collaboration with AKF/AKRSP (2-3 one each in GB and Chitral.

• Produced a video collage of the training process from start to finish and by including the overview of the selected impactful video stories in the final product with English sub-titles.

• Final narrative report summarizing the process, successes, challenges, and recommendations, with all finished products, archives and raw footages on quality external drive.

5. Duration of the Assignment

Approximately 28 working days starting mid-October 2025, spread over two months, including preparation, workshops, mentoring, and review, editing and finalization of the digital products and reports.

Reporting line: The consultant will report to the Program Manager, BEST4WEER/Work and Enterprise at AKF(P).

6. Required Qualification and Expertise

The consultants/firm should have proven experience of training and mentorship in professional script writing, storytelling, videography and editing. 

Professional degree with a minimum bachelor’s in communications will be an advantage. At least 3 years of professional experience of production and training amateurs/ early career professionals in videography, editing, script writing and storytelling. Clear understanding of the technical aspects of video making process and understanding of gender equality aspects of socio-economic development and the GBC context is required. Expertise and skills in using different tools and techniques in developing appropriate and quality audio-visual products and training material are required. 

Consultant should provide credible records and references of previous consulting services experience in Pakistan.  

More specifically following skills and information are needed:

Content & Direction Specialist

• Proven track record of designing and conducting video and documentary making training and mentorship workshops (at least 2-3 previous assignments with youth/communities) preferably with experience in low-resource field conditions.

• Strong background in documentary making on social issues and training others.

• Experience in narrative building and community-sensitive storytelling.

• Facilitation, creative and youth training-focused experience.

• Understanding and knowledge of local cultural conditions and development perspectives.

• Fluent in verbal and written communication in English and Urdu. Knowledge of local languages of GBC is an asset.

Videographer/Technical Trainer

• Hands-on experience in DSLR/mobile phone filmmaking, editing software. 

• Practical knowledge of filming in field conditions with limited resources.

• Experience in training or mentoring amateurs/non-professional filmmakers

Eligibility of Service Provider: A natural person or firm is eligible to apply who is not blacklisted by any national/international organization and is legally compliant to undertake the assignment. 

7. APPLICATION PACKAGE 

Application package may be sent through email to [email protected]  with following documents by September 24, 2025:

1. Letter of interest, including the names and contact information of two previous clients who can be contacted regarding relevant experience. Service Providers are also expected to disclose any conflict of interest related to this mandate with AKFP or the implementing partners of BEST4WEER. 

2. Detailed technical proposal of not more than six pages demonstrating a thorough understanding of this request for proposals and including the following:  

1. Description of methodology, including gender equality and ethical standards 

2. Outline of the training modules, session plans for the 3-4 days training workshop.

3. Demonstrated previous relevant experience and qualifications outlined in this TOR 

4. A proposed timeframe detailing activity and a schedule/work plan  

5. Team composition with their technical and level of effort of each proposed team member as per the requirements mentioned above.

6. The type of tools and equipment to be used in this assignment.

2. The financial proposal must be all-inclusive of professional fees, travel, boarding/lodging, administrative expenses, equipment/software usage, communication, production, subtitling, event costs, and all applicable taxes. No additional costs beyond the agreed proposal will be entertained. In addition, following details need to be provided:

i. Itemized consultancy fees/costs

ii. Itemized administrative expenses

iii. Validity period of quotations

iv. Expected payment plan and method (As per section 8 below)

4. CVs of team leads and team members, if any, outlining relevant experience and skills, latest first. 

5. A copy of a previous project of similar work undertaken in any of the themes. Work experience with corporate sector and development agencies will be considered an added value.   

6. Copy of legal registration (for registered firms / Companies)  

7. A Consulting Firm / Company profile (if applicable).  

8. NTN certificate 

8. PROPOSED PAYMENT SCHEDULE