Consultancy for Production of an End-of-Project Video about the Vegetable Seed System Development Project

1. The Organization

The Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) delivers research-based solutions that harness agricultural biodiversity and sustainably transform food systems to improve people’s lives. Alliance solutions address the global crises of malnutrition, climate change, biodiversity loss, and environmental degradation.

With novel partnerships, the Alliance generates evidence and mainstreams innovations to transform food systems and landscapes so that they sustain the planet, drive prosperity, and nourish people in a climate crisis.

The Alliance is part of CGIAR, a global research partnership for a food-secure future.

2. Background

Vegetables are a main source of nutrition and income for ethnic minority farmers in Vietnam’s Northern highlands. While value chains for fresh retail produce and seed markets offer huge opportunities for development, particularly for women and youth inclusion, current smallholder systems suffer from multiple problems.

Smallholder farmers often face inadequate access to qualityseeds of indigenous and exogenous vegetable varieties. The seeds that they use lackdesirable uniformity, health, physiological properties, or traitssuch as disease or drought resistance and micro-nutrient density.Insufficient quality guarantees, poor storage and treatment, lack ofaccess to appropriate information sources, and limited smallholderparticipation in (seed) value chains aggravate the situation.

The lack of access to quality vegetable seeds is particularly strikingamong ethnic minorities, given the role of vegetables in people’s dietand the potential contribution to income. To address this challenge, the project  “Integrated vegetable seed systems development among ethnic minority communities in Northern Vietnam for enhanced nutrition and income security” (Vegetable Seed Systems Development project)have adopted anintegrated approach organized around three work packages:

• Taking the pulse of the seed system based on crop characteristics,producer ethnicities, and market systems.
• Case studies on demand-driven and business-led improvements inseed production to enhance smallholder access to quality seed ofnutritious and commercial vegetables.
• Providing fast-track insight into ‘evidence-based causal pathways’between seed access and nutrition security.

The project combines action research with development activities to create inclusive and nutrition-sensitive seed systems. The project’s development activities include training on seed production, storage, selling, and use for farmers and extension officers, exchange visits for farmers, health and nutrition promotion, result sharing, and policy action workshops.  These activities are implemented in Mai Son district (Lao Cai province) and Sa Pa township (Lao Cai province), Vietnam.

Funded by NWO-WOTRO within the framework of the Netherlands-CGIAR research partnership, the project is implemented by a consortium led by the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT (the Alliance), in collaboration with Wageningen University & Research (WUR), the Fruit and Vegetable Research Institute (FAVRI), and Tan Loc Phat Seeds Company Ltd. (TLP). Launched in April 2019, the project is going to end in June 2022.

More information about the project can be found in the link below:

https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/1cokbrJERe_MwemtvWJnS9310kHVqNcY3

3. Objectives

The Alliance is looking for a video production agency to produce 01 end-of-project video to summarize key activities as well as to capture the results and potential impact of the Vegetable Seed Systems Development project.

Specifically, the video has two objectives:

• Document and highlight key aspects of the project, including context, approach, activities, results and impacts;
• Raise awareness among relevant stakeholders and the general public on the importance of high-quality vegetable seeds/planting material in improving nutrition and income among ethnic minorities.

4. Deliverables / Expected outputs

The video production agency is expected to deliver the final video with the following technical requirements:

• Be of the highest quality. The optimal standards are: 1080 25p/1080 29.97p or 30p. All material should be shot in 16:9, HD 1080;
• Be available in different formats suitable for social media, event playing and TV broadcast
• Broadcast on Vietnam’s national television channels (preferable on Vietnam Television - VTV);
• Be produced in the languages of the interviewee farmers and Vietnamese with English subtitles;
• Estimated length: maximum 8 minutes
• Make sure that there are no copyright issues regarding the usage of footage, photos and music in the videos so that they can be published on YouTube.

Regarding content, the video production agency should ensure that the following key elements of the project are captured in the video:

• Context: Vegetables are a main source of nutrition and income for ethnic minority farmers in Vietnam’s Northern highlands. However, current smallholder seed systems suffer from multiple problems due to inadequate access to quality vegetable seed/starting material.
• Approach: The project’s participatory and integrated approach to improve smallholder seed systems.
• Focus: Focus on seed system development and nutrition (most other vegetable projects focus on commercial vegetable production and income generation).
• Activities:
  • Nutirtion groups: The project has established 3 women groups (with Thai in Mai Son, and Hmong and Dao in Sa Pa) to improve nutrition through seed system interventions. This includes capacity building (training) on nutrition, vegetable and seed production techniques of nutrient-rich vegetables, as well as interventions/experiments to address gaps in seasonal availability of nutritious vegetables and improvement of seed quality and storage.
  • Income groups: 2 mixed farmer groups were established for income generation. Based on the Farmer Business Schools model, they were provided with technical, organizational as well as marketing knowledge and skills to produce and sell high-quality seeds (small group of Dao farmers in Sa Pa) and vegetables (cooperative of Thai farmers in Mai Son). The project has also helped connect these farmers with other value chain actors such as vegetable / seed wholesalers and retailers.
  • Diet Health Clubs: As a part of a research study to test the impact of nutrition education and seed provision, Diet Health Clubs (DHC) were established in 18 villages (360 households) across the two districts. The DHC provides a potential model for scaling nutrition education in combination with the promoting of seed sharing/exchange.
• Project results/broader impact: how the project is perceived by local farmers and stakeholders who are involved and how lessons learned from the project can be used and mainstreamed to improve nutrition and income among ethnic minorities.

5. Expected tasks, timeline and location

6. Required Qualifications and Experience of the Service Provider

The service provider will be required to meet the following requirements:

• Must have more than 5 years of experience in video production;
• Excellent technical capacities to ensure high-quality production;
• Willing to travel to the fields upon short notices;
• Experience in working with non-governmental organizations in the field of agriculture is an advantage;
• Ability to meet deadlines and being creative/flexible in addressing challenges that may arise.

7. Application procedure

To apply for the contract, service providers are requested to submit a proposal including the following information to the Alliance: 

• Brief presentation of the team, withan introduction on expertise, experience and functional responsibilities of the team members to be engaged in the production of the video
• Links to work samples demonstrating most relevant previous productions
• Experience in working with the media / TV
• Two references (with contact information) from previous clients
• Broad concepts or proposed creative direction for the video
• Proposed total budget with detailed break-down of estimated costs, including field trip-related costs and media booking fee

Interested service providers are invited to send their proposal via email to C.Swaans@cgiar.org and lamluong710@gmail.com with the subject line “Application – Project video production – company’s name” no later than 21^st September 2021.

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