GENEVA CENTRE FOR SECURITY SECTOR GOVERNANCE TENDER SEPTEMBER 2025
| CALL FOR APPLICATION |
SUPPORT TO CONDUCT COMMUNITY SURVEYS AND FOCUSED GROUP DISCUSSING
Closing date: 23 Sep 2025
DCAF – Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance is dedicated to improving the security of states and their people within a framework of democratic governance, the rule of law, respect for human rights, and gender equality. Since its founding in 2000, DCAF has contributed to making peace and development more sustainable by assisting partner states, and international actors supporting these states, to improve the governance of their security sectors through inclusive and participatory reforms. It creates innovative knowledge products, promotes norms and good practices, provides legal and policy advice, and supports capacity‐building of both state and non‐state security sector stakeholders.
DCAF’s Foundation Council brings together representatives of over 40 countries. Active all over the world, DCAF is internationally recognized as one of the world’s leading centres of excellence for security sector governance (SSG) and security sector reform (SSR). For more information, visit https://www.dcaf.ch/ us on LinkedIn, Facebook, and X (formerly Twitter) @DCAF_Geneva.
Call for Application – Support to conduct community surveys and focused group discussion
Location: Nairobi and Mombasa, Kenya
Starting date: September-October 2025 (as soon as possible)
Background
Rapid urbanization is transforming the landscape of Kenyan cities, creating new demands on police institutions and the broader ecosystem of urban governance. In contexts marked by informality, inequality, climate vulnerability, and weak public trust, traditional policing models often centralized and militarized struggle to meet community needs. Overlapping security providers, fragmented governance, and limited coordination between police, municipal authorities, and oversight bodies have hampered efforts toward responsive, accountable, and inclusive urban security.
In order to capture lessons learnt from these challenges and regarding potential entry points, DCAF will conduct a study exploring how urban policing in Kenya can be reimagined in ways that respond to the social, environmental, and institutional challenges of urbanization while centering community trust, multi-level governance, and collaborative security.
The study will be conducted in three phases Inception, Fieldwork, and Validation, a combination of qualitative, participatory, and survey-based methods. To ensure the tools and approaches are well-contextualised, inclusive, and locally grounded, DCAF seeks to engage a local expert or civil society organisation to support data collection and community engagement.
Key roles and responsibilities
The objective of this assignment is to provide technical and logistical support in Nairobi and Mombasa to ensure high-quality, ethical, and contextually appropriate field research. More specifically the expert/CSO will:
- Review draft data collection tools (surveys, interview guides, FGD protocols) to ensure contextual relevance, cultural sensitivity, and accessibility.
- Provide input on language adaptation and pilot-testing.
- Undertake community surveys (public perception + police station user)in four sub-counties (2 in Nairobi, 2 in Mombasa). Each survey (to be provided by DCAF) will be approximately 25 multiple-choice questions with some opportunity for more qualitative feedback to be captured from each user under key sub-categories. Based on the final location selected for each survey, it is expected that across the four surveys 1250 participants will have been interviewed.
- Support the organisation of and/or facilitate focus 4 group discussions in each target region (4 sub-counties across Mombasa and Nairobi) involving key local stakeholders.
- Provide logistical support for field missions by DCAF’s team, including venue arrangements, translation and/or interpretation and identification of relevant local stakeholders.
- Document key challenges, risks, and recommendations for improving the data collection process.
- Provide written documentation on key inputs and takeaways from the focus group discussions
- Provide analysis and a short synthesis report on the quantitative survey results
- Contribute to the thematic analysis of findings—particularly around police–community trust and conflict resolution, provide written inputs and commentary on relevant sections of the report and help frame findings and recommendations.
