Who We Are
Girl Effect is an international non-profit that builds media and technology girls choose, use and trust. Across Africa and South Asia, our youth brands — including Wazzii and Tuki in Kenya, Big Sis in South Africa, Chhaa Jaa and Bol Behen in India, and Yegna in Ethiopia — reach millions of adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) with content and digital tools that support the decisions shaping their lives, from sexual and reproductive health (SRH) to wellbeing, education and work. Our approach is girl-centred by design: girls co-create our products, our evidence teams measure what actually changes for them, and our safeguarding architecture treats their safety as a design constraint, never an afterthought.
Girl Effect has spent a decade building conversational products for young people, and several years deliberately and publicly charting what responsible technology for girls looks like.
What is WAZZII
Today. WAZZII is Girl Effect’s WhatsApp-based chatbot for AGYW in Kenya, offering confidential SRH information, signposting and human help desk support in English and Sheng. It draws on a decade-deep corpus of more than 50 million questions young people have asked our chatbots — one of the richest datasets in existence on what girls actually want to know. Human help desk operators, working on the RapidPro help desk, remain central to the experience.
The next evolution of its design. Over the coming two years, WAZZII will evolve from a conversational companion into a trusted service-navigation platform: girls will move from a conversation to finding a real, vetted, youth-friendly provider nearby; prepare for the visit with confidence; access services using codes issued in the chat; and be supported to continue afterwards — with verified loops confirming a girl was actually served. Tens of thousands of girls are expected to use these capabilities directly, and the learning will shape Girl Effect’s chatbot portfolio globally. This tender selects the partner for the service design and platform engineering behind that evolution.
The Girl Effect Tech Stack
Girl Effect has built an ecosystem of technologies which underpin its user-facing solutions. By using the existing tech stack, we ensure our in-country teams can focus their time and budget on delivering impact. The stack consists of:
- RapidPro: Low-code chatbot building platform through which we connect to instant messaging platforms, build out user engagement pathways including informational content, quizzes and surveys, and connect to other tools via API. Hosted on partner org’s multi-tenant AWS infrastructure
Wagtail: Python-based CMS, used to build our user-facing websites. Connects to RapidPro via API to provide structured content such as service directories. Self-hosted on AWSIntelligence Module: GE’s self-built tool to manage connectivity with LLMs. Connects via API to RapidPro to build user-facing GenAI workflows.Self-hosted on AzureAPIs: Manage connections between the different tools in the system. Self-hosted on AWS
We are open to suggestions of changes that could be made to the stack which would provide tangible benefits to our programmatic output, whether through improved functionality or cost efficiencies.
Objective
To appoint an experienced technology and service-design partner to design, build, test, deploy and support the next phase of WAZZII as a safe, accessible and measurable service-navigation platform for adolescent girls and young women in Kenya.
The engagement will follow a service-design-led approach, with user needs, safeguarding requirements and tested service journeys informing the final technical build.
What You will do
Girl Effect is seeking an experienced partner to deliver WAZZII’s next evolution through a human-centred design approach: service design leads, and engineering follows. The partner’s senior service designer works with girls, operators and the Girl Effect team to understand needs, shape journeys and define the feature requirements — and the build then delivers against those requirements. The partner will build on WAZZII’s existing stack and be onboarded to current systems and documentation at inception. AI functionality is not in scope of this TOR.
Service design. Key activities include:
- Co-creation workshops with young people — multiple rounds across the engagement, designed and facilitated with Girl Effect — shaping the finder, the redemption moment, visit preparation and continuation support around how girls actually live, move and pay
- Design sprints with the Girl Effect team — per feature cluster, turning co-creation insight and programme requirements into tested, buildable designs before engineering begins
- End-to-end journey mapping — from first conversation to provider visit to continuation, kept current as the build evolves
- Escalation flow design — with Girl Effect’s safeguarding team, so every journey has a safe, human path out
- Service blueprint for the redemption moment — the seconds at the pharmacy counter where the whole service succeeds or fails for a girl
- Feature requirements definition — workflow maps and functional requirement packs per feature cluster — the outputs that define what gets built, for this engagement and for future platform capabilities
- Design QA — on every girl-facing feature, including accessibility and low-bandwidth performance
Feature development. Many of the features likely to be built as part of these requirements include, but are not limited to:
- Code redemption system — girls receive single-use codes in the chat that unlock services at participating pharmacies and clinics. The partner builds the full lifecycle: secure code generation, delivery in-chat, validation at the counter, and reconciliation — with anti-fraud controls (single-use enforcement, expiry, anomaly detection) and reliable performance on low-end devices and patchy connectivity
- Provider dashboard — a simple web dashboard for participating pharmacies and clinics: validate a girl’s code in seconds at the counter, track stock of supported products, view redemption history and reconciliation status, and access basic reporting. Designed for busy counter staff with minimal training, on the devices providers actually have
- Geolocation & provider finder — a girl shares her area in the chat and receives the nearest vetted youth-friendly providers — services offered, opening hours, indicative pricing, and simple directions. Provider records are managed by Girl Effect through an admin interface; the directory exposes open APIs so future partner services can be surfaced
- Structured chat journeys — new structured flows in Sheng and English — method exploration, visit preparation, follow-up scheduling — authored by Girl Effect, implemented and instrumented by the partner so every journey step is measurable
- Cost comparison tool — a lightweight in-chat calculator letting girls compare the costs of methods and services across provider types, supporting informed choice before a visit
- Help desk enhancements — workflow improvements on the existing RapidPro help desk — routing, tagging, queue management and reporting for operators.
- Code generation tools — bulk and offline code generation for on-ground activations and community events, with attribution so redemptions can be traced back to the channel that issued them
- Quality, security & operations — QA throughout; security audit and penetration test before any girl-facing launch; hosting and infrastructure; maintenance and bug-fix support through the engagement
Scope Confirmation and Change Control
The feature descriptions above represent the anticipated scope. The final feature requirements will be confirmed through the inception and service-design stages.
To control scope and cost:
- Each feature cluster must have an approved requirements pack and acceptance criteria before development begins.
- No material change to the agreed scope, cost or timeline may proceed without written approval from Girl Effect.
- Proposed changes must document the rationale, impact on costs, timeline, security, dependencies and other deliverables.
- Work completed without the required written approval may not be eligible for payment.
- Girl Effect may prioritise, defer or remove features based on user evidence, technical feasibility, available budget or programme priorities.
- Girl Effect may commission optional or future features through separately approved work orders or contract amendments.
Deliverables
Service design
Deliverable Description
Co-creation workshop rounds A minimum of three rounds with young people across the engagement, each with documented outputs feeding directly into design decisions
Design sprint outputs Sprint per feature cluster with the Girl Effect team: tested prototypes, decisions log, and buildable specifications
Journey maps End-to-end maps maintained across the engagement
Escalation flow designs Safeguarding-approved designs for every journey
Redemption service blueprint Counter-moment blueprint validated with providers and girls
Feature requirements packs Workflow maps and functional requirements defining each feature cluster before build
Design QA reports Per release, covering accessibility and low-bandwidth performance
Development features
The final feature set is confirmed through the service design process; the deliverables below reflect the features currently anticipated.
Deliverable Description
Code redemption system live End-to-end generation, delivery, validation and reconciliation in production, with anti-fraud controls and monitoring
Provider dashboard live Deployed to participating facilities with onboarding materials and admin tooling
Provider finder live Geo-located directory in the chat experience, with the admin interface and open APIs documented
Structured chat journeys live Agreed RapidPro Flow journeys set implemented, ins...