Consultancy for Drafting a Climate & Environment Education Curriculum
Background and rationale:
Terre des hommes (Tdh) teams increasingly face the direct and indirect impacts of climate change and environmental degradation in their humanitarian and development work on the protection of children and their rights. Empowering staff, partners, children, and youth with understanding of climate change and tools to act is essential to protecting and strengthening child well-being. Integrating climate resilience and environmental sustainability into Tdh’s programs has therefore become a strategic priority.
Building on global advocacy and evidence, including the 2022 report of the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative on Violence Against Children (SRSG-VAC) on the adverse impacts of climate change on children, Tdh developed and launched an interagencyendorsed resource pack: Engaging with Children about the ClimateCrisis and Violence Against Children: A Rights and Resilience-Based Approach. Co-developed with children and youth, this resource supports practitioners in engaging young people on climate issues in ways that strengthen psychosocial resilience, promote child- and youth-led action, and help prevent harm, including eco-anxiety.
As anext step, Tdh has been working to further operationalize these approaches into structured educational content. In collaboration with the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Tdh recently conducted an Applied Research Project (ARP). This work combined a comprehensive literature review, insights from Tdh’s field experience, particularly in India, Nepal, and Bangladesh, and the perspectives and recommendations of children and youth engaged through participatory processes. It also included a broader analysis of existing climate education approaches.
The report highlights the following:
- Climate change acts as a “threat multiplier” exacerbating risks to children’s rights, protection and
- wellbeing.
- Children should be treated as active agents and rights-holders, not passive recipients.
- Effective climate education requires participatory, action-oriented and experiential pedagogies, rather than traditional knowledge transfer.
- Psychosocial resilience and eco-anxiety must be integrated as cross-cutting components throughout the curriculum.
- Curricula should be modular and adaptable, with structured guidance for contextualization embedded from the design phase.
- While the ARP provides strong conceptual and methodological foundations, including initial guidance for both youth and adult practitioners/trainers, it does not include the full drafting of curriculum content.
- Tdh now seeks a consultant to develop a foundational, modular climate and environment curriculum that can be adapted and contextualized across different settings, building on the evidence and recommendations generated through this research.
Objective of the consultancy:
To develop a complete, well-structured, and user-friendly draft curriculum package that operationalizes the recommendations of the ARP and is ready for initial review and field adaptation.
The deliverables will include:
- Climate Curriculum Overview Note (curriculum’s objectives, key approaches, core principles,
- implementation prerequisites, and outcome evaluation approaches)
- A core curriculum for practitioners
- Child- and youth-accessible documentation (i.e a simplified leaflet or booklet) designed to support understanding and engagement.A Training of Trainers (ToT) manual
- A contextualization and adaptation guide to support use across different settings
Scope of work:
Under the supervision of Terre des hommes, the consultant will cover the following tasks:
- Curriculum drafting
- Translate ARP findings into a coherent, full curriculum document, including a facilitators / practitioner curriculum, a youth curriculum, a training of trainers (ToT) manual
- Structure the curriculum according to the report’s recommended logic: knowledgeà emotional processing à action pathway.
- Develop complete module content including session plans, activities, instructions for facilitators, reflection components, and action- oriented elements
- Content development:
- Develop modules aligned with the report’s four thematic progression areas: immerse,
- understand, perspective, empower.
- Integrated key cross-cutting components:
- Child rights-based approach (CRBA)
- Psychosocial support
- Participation and co-creation,
- Gender and inclusivity considerations.
- Pedagogical design:
- Embed methodologies identified as critical by the report:
- Participatory and co-creation approach
- Experiential learning
- Creative and play-based learning (arts, storytelling, games)
- Community-linked and action-oriented approaches.
- Contextualization guidance:
- Clearly indicate in the curriculum:
- Core components (to remain unchanged acrosscontexts)
- Adaptable components (requiring contextualization)
- Include tools to support adaptation, such as:
- Templates and guiding questions
- Prompts for integrating local examples
- Guidance for integrating indigenous and local knowledge.
- Usability and formatting:
- Produce a curriculum that is
- Clear, engaging, and practitioner-friendly,
- Well-structured and easy to navigate,
- Suitable for humanitarian and low-resource settings.
- Include supportive design elements such as:
- Tables, boxes, summaries
- Practical facilitator tips and guidance notes
- Regional relevance:
- Ensure initial draft is particularly relevant to Southeast Asia contexts reflecting:
- Key climate risks (e.g. floods, cyclones, land degradation, etc.)
- Social vulnerabilities (e.g. migration, child labor, etc.).
- Include illustrative examples from the region, while maintaining global applicability.
Cross-cutting principles to respect:
- Fully align with Tdh child protection and safeguarding standards, ensuring that all content is safe, ethical, and appropriate for engagement with children and youth
- Build on Tdh’s psychosocial support (MHPSS) and child empowerment approaches, ensuring that both wellbeing and agency are systematically integrated throughout the curriculum
- Embed meaningful participation and co-creation throughout, ensuring that children and youth are actively engaged as contributors and not only as beneficiaries
- Ensure systematic adaptability across diverse contexts, with built-in flexibility to respond to different cultural, socio-economic, and humanitarian settings
- Prioritize action, agency, and empowerment, moving beyond knowledge transfer to enable children and youth to take informed, practical action
Deliverables:
Inception Note (short):
- Understanding of assignment
- Proposed structure of the curriculum
Methodological approach for curriculum development
Draft curriculum package:
- Climate Curriculum Overview Note (objectives, key approaches, core principles, implementation prerequisites, and outcome evaluation approaches)
- Core curriculum for practitioners, (Clearly defined modular structure with detailed session plans and content (activities, guidance, and materials)
- Training of Trainers (ToT) manual
- Contextualization and adaptation guide to support use across different settings
- Child- and youth-accessible documentation (e.g. simplified leaflet or booklet)
- Final curriculum package
- Revised and finalized version of all curriculum components
- Integration of feedback from Tdh, including documented revision and adjustments)
Duration;
Estimated Duration: Approx. 20 working days
Qualifications:
Required:
- Advanced expertise in climate and environment education, curriculum development and child-centered or rights-based programming.
- Proven experience in developing training or educational materials.
- Participatory and experiential learning approaches.
- Solid competencies in child protection (CP), including safeguarding principles and child-sensitive approaches to programme design and facilitation
Desirable:
- Experience with humanitarian and development settings, child protection or MHPSS, and NGOs or international organizations
- Experience in child protection and/or mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS
- Experience in Southeast Asia, particularly in climate and environmental education, and work with youth in vulnerable contexts.
How to apply:
Application process
Interested candidates are invited to submit the following:
- CV
- Short technical proposal (maximum 2 pages)
- Example(s) of similar work
- Financial proposal
Application should be submitted by email to: maria.bray@tdh.org , louis.mauler@tdh.org and che.tenders@tdh.org
with “Candidature Climate Education Curriculum” specified in the subject line.
Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis, and early submission is encouraged. The final deadline for submission is 14 August 2026.
The consultancy is expected to start in early September 2026.