- 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 Act and the exclusion risks for children with disabilities identified in Baidoa vulnerability assessments.
The consultant should be aware that several immediate management actions from the 2023–2025 review (Tier 1 recommendations) are being implemented in parallel with this assignment during 2026; including a PSA sponsorship transition plan, recruitment of a dedicated Advocacy Officer, and initiation of the Board of Directors establishment process and should ensure the draft strategy is consistent with and builds on these in-progress actions rather than duplicating them.
The assignment will also include the development of an implementation roadmap, strategic monitoring framework, resource mobilization priorities, and partnership strategies to support effective delivery of the Country Strategy over the 2027–2030 period.
- Management and reporting arrangements
The consultant shall report to the National Director, with technical oversight and day-to-day coordination provided by the Head of MEAL/National planning and review coordinator. A Strategy Development Reference Group comprising members of the National Management Team (NMT) and relevant strategy area priority leaders/programme leads shall be constituted to review and approve deliverables at each stage of the assignment. All deliverables shall be submitted in draft for review and comment before finalization, with SOS CV Somalia allowing a standard review period of five working days per deliverable unless otherwise agreed.
- Documents to be provided by SOS CV Somalia to the consultant
SOS CV Somalia will provide the consultant with the following reference materials at inception: the 2023–2025 MA Somalia national strategic review and forward intelligence report; Results-Based Project Management Regulation (RBPMR), MA Somalia annual reports 2023, 2024, and 2025; the current SOS Children's Villages Somalia National Strategy (2023–2026); relevant SOS Children's Villages International Federation Strategy 2030 guidance; the National Transformation Plan 2025–2029; and other internal MEAL, financial, and risk documentation as required to support the situational analysis.
- Methodology
The 2023–2025 Strategic Review identified a recurring execution gap between well-designed programme strategies and consistent operational follow-through (e.g., the Family Strengthening self-reliance design gap, the under-resourced advocacy function, delayed rollout of finalized care guidelines). To address this, the 2027–2030 strategy development process will apply an execution-oriented planning approach in terms of translating strategic priorities into a strategy Map, Balanced Scorecard, and prioritized initiative portfolio with named ownership and review cadence so that the strategy document is paired with a concrete mechanism for sustained implementation.
The assignment employs a participatory and mixed-methods approach including, A comprehensive desk review will be undertaken to analyze key organizational, sectoral, and contextual documents, including the current Country Strategy, Federation guidance, program and annual reports, evaluations, assessments, donor reports, national development frameworks, and relevant sector research. Building on this review, a situational analysis will be conducted to assess the internal and external environment through PESTEL and SWOT analyses, stakeholder mapping, humanitarian and development context assessments, child rights and protection landscape reviews, and funding and partnership analyses.
Prior to finalizing the situational analysis, the consultant shall commission or incorporate targeted evidence on the following priority gaps: (1) an updated Child Rights Situation Analysis (the last full CRSA was conducted in 2016); (2) a comparative evaluation of community-based Alternative Care models versus Family-Like Care on outcomes and cost; (3) a mapping of the local fundraising and funding landscape in Somalia; and (4) an assessment of EPHS handover readiness across all SOS CV Somalia-managed health facilities.
The process will be complemented by extensive stakeholder consultations involving key informant interviews with management, staff, government representatives, development and humanitarian partners, donors, civil society organizations, and community leaders, as well as focus group discussions with children, youth, caregivers, women, persons with disabilities, and community-based organizations.
All consultations involving children and youth shall be conducted in accordance with SOS CV Somalia's Child and Youth Safeguarding Policy; the consultant and any enumerators or facilitators engaged shall sign the organization's safeguarding code of conduct and complete a safeguarding briefing prior to engaging directly with children and shall obtain age-appropriate informed consent/assent for all child participants.
The situational analysis should also assess organizational readiness against capability gaps identified in the 2023–2025 strategy review, including progress toward re-establishing an independent Board of Directors (committed to within five years of the current strategy), staff turnover, HR system digitization (Dynamics 365 migration), and supply chain resilience for emergency nutrition and health commodities.
Findings from the analysis and consultations will inform a participatory strategic planning process, including workshops to validate key findings, define the organization's strategic direction and positioning, establish strategic priorities and objectives, identify programmatic and geographic focus areas, and agree on cross-cutting themes and organizational development priorities for the 2027–2030 strategy period.
Task 1 - Development of the Country Strategy (2027–2030)
The development of the Country Strategy (2027–2030), which will provide a comprehensive strategic framework to guide the organization’s priorities, operations, and growth over the four -year period. The process will include preparation of a draft strategy that presents the organization’s vision, mission, core values, and strategic positioning, informed by a detailed situational analysis and assessment of the broader strategic context.
The strategy will define the organization’s Theory of Change, strategic priorities, objectives, expected outcomes and outputs, and key cross-cutting themes. In addition to the Theory of Change, the consultant shall develop a strategy map a nonprofit-adapted, multi-perspective (Mission/Beneficiary Impact, Financial/Donor Sustainability, Internal Process, Learning & Growth) cause-and-effect diagram showing how strategic objectives across perspectives drive one another and ultimately deliver the SOS Children’s Villages Somalia mission outcomes. This is distinct from, and feeds into, the Theory of Change. It will also outline approaches for localization, partnerships, advocacy and influencing, resource mobilization, and organizational development. The Results Framework shall be structured as a Balanced Scorecard, with each strategic objective carrying a linked measure, target, and named strategic initiative rather than a standalone list of indicators. The consultant should also develop a prioritized Strategic Initiative Portfolio, identifying the discrete initiatives required to close performance gaps against each objective, and shall recommend an indicative strategic expenditure (StratEx) budget for these initiatives, kept distinct from recurring core programme/operating budgets.
Resource mobilization strategy should specifically address funding concentration risk (donor income currently concentrated in a small number of large institutional and PSA partners), the case for multi-year (3+ year) donor funding cycles to support genuine programme self-reliance outcomes, and scale-up of local and digital fundraising mechanisms such as the Impact Fund for Children. In addition, the strategy will establish a risk management framework, a Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL) framework, a results framework, and a practical implementation roadmap to ensure effective execution, accountability, and measurement of results throughout the strategy period**.**
The strategy shall also include an organizational alignment plan, describing how national-level strategic objectives cascade into aligned plans for the Banadir and Baidoa program locations and for each programme stream, and how they connect to individual staff performance objectives. Given the absence of an independent Board of Directors during this strategy period, the consultant shall recommend an interim strategic-oversight mechanism (such as an NMT-level strategy committee) to provide board-level review of strategy execution until a Board is established and shall define how this oversight transitions to full Board governance once seated. The consultant shall further recommend a strategy execution governance model, including a lightweight Office of Strategy Management function responsible for maintaining the scorecard, coordinating the planning–budgeting cycle, and convening a defined cadence of operational review meetings (frequent, tactical) and strategy review meetings (quarterly, assessing whether the strategy itself is working), to sustain execution after the consultant's engagement ends.
Task 2: Validation and Finalization
The draft Country Strategy will be presented to key stakeholders through a validation workshop to review findings, strategic priorities, and proposed interventions. Feedback and recommendations gathered during the validation process will be systematically incorporated to strengthen the strategy’s relevance, ownership, and alignment with stakeholder expectations. The process will culminate in the preparation and submission of a finalized Country Strategy document, reflecting agreed priorities, implementation approaches, and organizational commitments for the 2027–2030 period