Consultant to Document programmatic good practices and lessons learnt In 5 UNICEF countries offices across the MENA region

UNICEF MENARO is seeking a consultancy to support in documenting these experiences and the key lessons learnt. The consultancy is specifically envisaged to highlight the integration of gender across the different programing cycle components; SitAn; planning results; design; delivery; and monitoring. The exercise will address experiences in fields of WASH, Education, Child Protection, and Adolescent Empowerment from five countries in MENA region (Morocco, Palestine, Sudan, Djibouti and Yemen). Specifically, the consultant will document the following programmatic interventions 1. Reform of Social Protection in Egypt and UNICEF Work: Egypt 2. Menstrual Hygiene management: Palestine 3. Forsa Programme: Morocco 4. Female Genital Mutilation: Djibouti 5. Adolescents’ Nutrition: Yemen

BACKGROUND

UNICEF Strategic Plan (SP) integrates gender equality in results across all five of its goal areas, with relevance to both development and humanitarian contexts. It also integrates gender in the programme strategies and the underlying systems and processes that enable the achievement of results

UNICEF work on gender equality and the empowerment of girls and women is grounded in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and is anchored in the landmark Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. Advancing gender equality and the rights of women and girls is essential to realizing the rights of all children. Childhood investments in gender equality contribute to lifelong positive outcomes for children and their communities.

UNICEF Gender Action plan (GAP) 2018–2021 has been developed concurrently with the Strategic plan and, specifies how UNICEF will promote gender equality across the organization’s work in alignment with the SP, elaborating the gender dimensions of the programmatic results across the five SP goal areas and the steps needed to strengthen gender across change strategies and institutional systems and processes

Improving UNICEF strategies and systems to be more gender-responsive is key to achieving programmatic results, and necessary for UNICEF to meet its organizational commitments to gender equality.

However, Technical knowledge of effective gender analysis to inform programmes; Knowledge on the existing resources/tools; and knowledge in integrating gender into sectoral programmes were the key capacity gaps identified by gender focal point in MENA during 2017 network meeting. Hence, documenting best practices across the sectoral programmes and knowledge sharing around programming excellence models that integrate gender across the programme development cycle are critical to foster high-quality, gender-responsive programme design and implementation in MENA region,

UNICEF Gender and Knowledge Management teams joined efforts to identify regional good examples for documenting.

The team undertook an intensive internal process to identify good programming examples that worth documenting, the process included

• Reviewing country level experiences through UNICEF 2016 annual reports to identify potential examples based on selected criteria.
• Conducting sectoral consultation with regional advisors to vet the potential cases and select the cases that could also serve for public goods.
• Consultation with country offices to endorse the process and ensure ownership and facilitation of the implementation

Five experiences were identified for documentation from different sectors. These experiences concentrate on emerging areas of knowledge across different sectors and are considered to have good potentials to being innovative and up to scale programming experiences

Specific objectives will be:

• Reflect on good practices, lessons learned, and innovations considered across those experiences using the below list of questions.
• Identify evidence around the impact of these interventions as applicable 
• Reflect on how gender was incorporated both from process and results perspectives across the programme cycle using the below list of questions.
• Provide an over view of key recommendations to influence effective programming based on the results of the documentation.
• Production of a well-designed, visually appealing and reader friendly four – page document for each of the five programmatic interventions including photos.

Some questions to be considered for documentation “if applicable”:

The consultancy is envisaged to highlight the integration of gender across the different programing cycle components; SitAn; planning results; design; delivery; and monitoring.

Below are some questions to reflect on gender integration to be considered as applicable for each experience.

1. Situation Analysis (SitAn) and targeting:

• Did the situation analysis include sex disaggregated data relevant to that project?
• Does the situation analysis of the project include a paragraph / section to reflect on analysis of structural and social factors (positive and negative) that influence gender Inequality including barriers and bottleneck analysis as well as enabling factors?
• Does the situation analysis of the project reflect on the impact of emergency on situation of girls and boys?
• Does the situation analysis acknowledge the gap in evidence to conduct proper gender analysis and identifies areas for future research on gender?
• Does the project target the most disadvantaged girls and boys?

2. Design and planning

• Does the project address an equity gap?
• Is the design of the programme gender responsive? (in term of the type of the services, the care providers, the channels of communication, the location ……etc.)
• Does the project consider multi sectoral approach?
• Does the approach consider innovations? and Does the project considers any of the innovation principles?
• Did the project use participatory methods?
• Did the process include engagement/ consultations with all stakeholders including women and girls or relevant government gender authority across the programme cycle?
• Were any communication related materials used for the project gender sensitive?
• Was Gender sensitive language used in project document (i.e. instead of generic terms like ‘children’, ‘adolescents’, ‘parents’ there is reference to ‘girls’ and boys’, ‘adolescent girls’ and boys’, ‘mothers and fathers’)

3. Sustainability and scalability

• Is the project at scale?
• Is the project sustainable (link to national agenda, national system strengthening, local community ownership)?
• Does the project include a component on institutionalizing gender in system strengthening efforts? (information management, capacity building, gender parity)
• Is the project replicable in other areas beyond original scope /other countries?

4. Monitoring

• Do project results specifically address some of the gender inequality barriers? If yes, was the result of gender transformative nature
• Did the monitoring framework include specific monitoring indicators progress in gender related results?
• Did the monitoring framework specifically include feedback from men, women, girls and boy’s beneficiary of the project?
• Were key quantitative results disaggregated by sex and age and did qualitative results include a gender dimension (to the extent possible)
• What is the value added by UNICEF?

5. Institutional consideration /Resources:

• Were adequate financial resources allocated to address gender results? 
• Was HR capacity of the project adequately equipped with gender expertise? 

DESCRIPTION OF ASSIGNMENT:

Under the supervision of Regional Gender Advisor, in collaboration with the Regional Knowledge Management Specialist and in close coordination with the programme focal points in country offices the consultant will work on documenting lessons learned, good practices and innovations from preselected interventions in Five countries (Egypt, Morocco, Palestine, Djibouti, and Yemen (remotely)). The assignment includes both desk work and field visits.  The consultant will be carried out in three phases:

1. Desk review:

• Develop and inception report on the proposed work and approaches to be used for documentation.
• Conduct desk review of regional and country offices reports, documents, strategies, and other related documents, which will be shared by the regional and country offices to document the cases (2 days for each Programme) (10 Days)
• Prepare preliminary work plan with time line for documenting each case in agreement with regional office and country office (2 Day)

2. Field visits/travel to five countries:

• Start the documentation using the format provided by Regional Offices and focal points at the country offices during the field mission; (within the 28 field visits’ days)
• For Yemen, the Documentation will be remotely (5 days)

3. Documentation and reporting:

• Five documents with maximum of 6 pages each should be produced for the cases selected. The documents should include photos of the intervention the photos should be of professional quality.
• Submit draft documents developed in English to regional and concerned country offices for review after documenting two programmes  
• Revise draft products based on the comments received from country and regional offices and get approval. (one week and the regional office and one week at country offices)
• Final products should be submitted in English. (7 Days)

QUALIFICATION REQUIREMENTS:

1.            Education:

• Master's degree in Social Sciences, Media, Journalism International Development, International Relations, Sociology, Gender studies, Area Studies, or other relevant social sciences.

2.            Work experience:

• Minimum 3 years of professional experience in gender equality programming;
• Minimum 8 years’ experience in programme planning, monitoring, reporting, outreach and analysis;

3.            Technical knowledge:

• Knowledge of the MENA region and UNICEF programming.
• In-depth understanding of human rights/gender issues.
• Experience in facilitating focus group discussions
• Experience in documentation to convey programming efforts.

• Capacity to familiarize herself/himself with UNICEF’s work and follow UNICEF branding guidelines and style book.

• Fluency in the English language written and spoken – Arabic is an asset.

• Ability to convey technical language in simple English.
• Excellent writing and editing skills.
• Inter-personal skills
• Experience working in a multicultural team and environment and meeting strict deadlines.
• Key competencies, technical background, and experience required

4.            Language:

• Fluent in English
• Arabic/French languages would be an asset