Ecosystem Framework Study
Contract Timeline: 10th March 2023 - 30th August, 2023
SELCO Foundation is a not for profit organization based out of India. The organization works towards creating a holistic ecosystem to provide reliable energy access for underserved communities in a manner that is socially, financially, and environmentally sustainable. The Foundation works to link the benefits of sustainable energy to poverty eradication by collaborating with NGO partners, local financial institutes, and social enterprises.
SELCO Foundation has worked strongly towards building inclusive ecosystems for Decentralised Renewable Energy (DRE) access for the underserved populations in the past decade. Efforts have been made in the themes of livelihood, health and built-environment to innovate efficient solutions, powered by renewable energy, and via the synergies made with ecosystem partners and stakeholders at multiple levels (individual to institutional), these solutions have been made affordable and accessible to the underserved communities on ground. The interventions designed are aimed at leading to positive upliftment in the lives of these communities, balancing social and environmental sustainability. Holistic approaches are used that simultaneously encompass social, financial and environmental dimensions.
SELCO Foundation has been exploring ways to accurately represent and articulate the ecosystem “building” aspect of their work, while acknowledging their own critical role of being the glue in the ecosystem that holds all the stakeholders together. An attempt towards this has been published in the study which used a modification of the ‘Ecoscope’ tool- which is a matrix-based analysis tool that helps in assessing the interactions between actors- needed to be enabled to build an ecosystem under various given contexts of the underserved populations, and supports the planning of activities and interventions that lead to development of a sustainable and inclusive Decentralized Renewable Energy (DRE) access-based ecosystem around livelihood solutions for underserved populations.
SELCO is keen to further break down the tool into methodologies and monitoring frameworks which can help make it more accessible to practitioners, and design improved programs, and provide an improved language for SELCO’s role in ecosystem building. It aims to do that by embedding these tools into implementation teams within the organization, and provide additional support for documentation of past, current and future projects through the tool. In this process, SELCO would aim to publish its findings, learnings, case studies etc in an open source manner for other organizations in the impact sector.
1. To test the validity and usefulness of the framework tool for the internal teams at SELCO Foundation responsible for designing programs
a. Attempt to test the framework tool and map systems and interactions on the past projects implemented by the teams at SELCO Foundation
b. Test the framework tool on current program justifications and conduct live tracking of tool and the changes in ecosystem interactions as the program implementation moves forward
c. Maintain a repository of case studies used for mapping actors and interactions on the Ecosystem Framework tool for showcasing a dedicated toolkit around ecosystem building activities
2. Further refining of the design of the visual ecosystem framework tool to improve the visualization and articulation of Ecosystem building processes of SELCO Foundation
Building a Framework, and a series of tools for adoption of Ecoscope within the Organization
- Working with SELCO to refine the Ecoscope tool, breaking it up into tools which can be used by SELCO teams internally for program design and monitoring. The tools developed should bring out the following aspects, which are key to program design and implementation of ecoscope:
- Explore the possibility of dynamic system modeling, depending a chosen few contexts from the thematic analysis conducted with the teams
- Periodic testing of newer versions of the visual ecosystem tools with the teams to validate the efficacy of the revised tools
- Discuss with SELCO on the adoption of some of these tools within the justification, approval, planning and monitoring processes of SELCO
- Regularly publish key findings, case studies and toolkits etc
- Co-host workshops and webinars to disseminate learnings with SELCO
- Housed at SELCO office, a 2-3 member team to work extensively with 3 program teams in testing the visual ecosystem framework tool. The selected programs will be chosen by SELCO. Under each program, the following scope of work would be carried out:
Overall Deliverables:
Interested consultants/organizations, with relevant experience (please include references of previous similar work as proof of experience), team member details working on the project and based out of Bangalore (preferably) are requested to reach out with a detailed proposal giving a brief on the methodology and the process they will uptake for this project, including budgets (with break-ups and explanation), timelines and milestones and send the same to knowledge@selcofoundation.org & procurement@selcofoundation.org marking: “Systems Thinking: Internal Training Course” on or before 10th March ’23.