UN Women - National consultant to develop municipal profiles of poverty and social exclusion from a gender perspective

Background

UN Women, grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, works for the elimination of discrimination against women and girls; the empowerment of women; the achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development; human rights; as well as humanitarian action and peace and security. Placing women's rights at the center of all its efforts, UN Women leads and coordinates United Nations system efforts to ensure that commitments on gender equality and gender mainstreaming translate into action throughout the world. It provides strong and coherent leadership in support of Member States' priorities and efforts, building effective partnerships with civil society and other relevant actors.

UN Women Programme Office in the Republic of North Macedonia in line with its priorities set in the UN Women strategic plan and in the UN Partnership for Sustainable Development, is coordinating the UNCT on gender equality, supports the country on the normative commitments and is working in two thematic areas – governance and national planning and ending violence against women. In fulfilling its mandate, UN Women is cooperating with UN, the government and the CSOs to advocate for women’s empowerment and advancement for gender equality.

Over the past years, through the regional project “Promoting Gender Responsive Polices in South-East Europe and the Republic of Moldova”, UN Women has provided extensive support to national and local stakeholders to strengthen democratic governance and advance women’s rights through initiatives aimed at mainstreaming gender in policy planning and budgeting. As result, gender responsive budgeting has increasingly been recognized as important tool for advancing gender equality in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), Republic of North Macedonia and Republic of Moldova.

UN Women Programme office in Skopje has started with the implementation of the new project “Promoting Gender Responsive Policies and Budgets: Towards Transparent, Inclusive and Accountable Governance in the Republic of North Macedonia” (2018-2022). The project is structured around two outcomes:

1. The Government’s public finance management and the strategic planning processes are improved to respond to the different needs of women and men as a result of effective application of gender responsive budgeting.
2. Civil society organizations, women, including the most vulnerable actively participate in planning and decision-making mechanisms, and their priorities are fully reflected in public policies and budgets. 

The programme’s country component implemented in the Republic of North Macedonia includes activities focused on enhancing the institutionalization of GRB at central level and an extensive component for introducing gender responsive budgeting at local level.

To better inform future interventions and complement the existing research base with sufficient evidence on how policies and programmes can respond to the needs of women, including the most vulnerable groups, the office has commissioned a Mapping of Social vulnerabilities and exclusion at the local level with gender lens (mapping study). Based on a nationally representative field survey covering 11 municipalities, this mapping study is providing an in-depth insight in vulnerabilities and exclusion caused by different factors such as age, place of residence, ethnicity, disability, health risks etc., analysed from a gender perspective.

The report includes municipalities of Aerodrom, Bitola, Bogovinje, Centar, Delcevo, Mavrovo-Rostushe, Novaci, Shtip, Sveti Nikole, Strumica and Tetovo. The research was conducted by GfK Skopje and peer reviewed by an international gender expert.

To support the LSGUs to develop action plans and specific measures for alleviation of poverty and social exclusion with strong focus on integrating gender perspective, UN Women is seeking to recruit a local consultant which based on the data already collected, will prepare municipality profiles, including  policy conclusions, as well as draw some important/key data that could be translated into info-graphics.

Scope of work

The main objective of this assignment is to provide expert analytical support in the process of developing poverty and social exclusion profiles from a gender perspective for 11 municipalities targeted in the mapping study report. The aim of the assignment is to summarize the data per municipality and draw important/key data that could be used for different communications products, for ex. info-graphics.

For achieving this goal, the local consultant will work, refer and coordinate with the GRB Regional Project Manager, GRB programme team at UN Women Skopje office and the team of expert researchers that collected the data. The local consultant will be responsible for informing regularly UN Women on the progress and for submitting the required deliverables.

Duties and Responsibilities

Based on the above-described objectives of the assignment, under the supervision of the GRB Regional Project Manager, GRB programme team, the local consultant is expected to undertake the following tasks:

• Develop a specific Profile on poverty and social exclusion with gender lenses of each municipality (11 total, as mentioned above), that will encompass key data gathered from the research, and draw some finding as recommendations.  
• Identify key data in the report for each municipality, which could be important for addressing poverty and social exclusion;
• Liaise with UN Women team with comments on drafts, and in regards to any other issues related to the content of the report;  

• Prepare the Chapters/Profiles of municipalities in clear and concise wording and taking into consideration that it will be used for developing communications products (ex. info-graphics);
• Submit final report to UN Women for the assignment.

Key deliverables, activities and timeframe

The Local consultant will be expected to complete the below tasks within the indicative timeframe:

Tasks	Deliverables	Working days
11 draft chapters/profiles of municipalities for UN Women’s review (max 5 pages per municipality)	11 Chapters/Profiles of municpalities submitted for review (in English)	10 days (by 25 March 2019)
Final profiles of municipalities	Final version of the municipalities’ profiles (in English)	5 days (by 10 April 2019)
Propose ideas for key messages and data for visual presentation of the municipality profiles	Summary of key message and data/statistics for visual presentation	3 day (by 15 April 2019)
Final report on the assignment to UN Women (English)	Final individual report	2 days (by 30 April 2019)
Total		20 working days

Reporting

Under the overall supervision of the to the GRB Regional Project Manager and the GRB programme team at UN Women Skopje Office, the Local consultant will develop and deliver the above listed deliverables in accordance with the indicative timeframe.

All deliverables of an acceptable standard and quality should be submitted to the UN Women and in languages as specified above.

Competencies

Core Values/guiding principles:

• Integrity - Demonstrate consistency in upholding and promoting the values of UN Women in actions and decisions, in line with the UN Code of Conduct.
• Professionalism - Demonstrate professional competence and Consultant knowledge of the pertinent substantive areas of work.
• Cultural sensitivity and respect for diversity - Demonstrate an appreciation of the multicultural nature of the organization and the diversity of its staff. Additionally, the individual should have an international outlook, appreciating difference in values and learning from cultural diversity.

Core Competencies:

• Planning & Organizing – Develops clear goals in line with agreed strategies, identifies priorities, foresees risks and makes allowances accordingly.
• Organizational Awareness - Demonstrate corporate knowledge and sound judgment.
• Teamwork - Demonstrate ability to work in a multicultural, multi-ethnic environment and to maintain effective working relations with people of different national and cultural backgrounds.
• Accountability – Takes ownership of all responsibilities and delivers outputs in accordance with agreed time, cost and quality standards.

Functional Competencies:

Knowledge Management and Learning

• Shares knowledge and experience
• Seeks and applies knowledge, information, and best practices from within and outside UN Women
•  Actively works towards continuing personal learning and development in one or more practice areas, acts on learning plan and applies newly acquired skills
• Development and Operational Effectiveness
• Demonstrates excellent written and oral communication skills. Communicates sensitively, effectively and creatively across different constituencies
• Demonstrates very good understanding of and experience in communications and outreach/advocacy
• Ability to perform a variety of standard specialized and non-specialized tasks and work processes that are fully documented, researched, recorded and reported
• Ability to review a variety of data, identify and adjust discrepancies, identify and resolve operational problems
• Uses Information Technology effectively as a tool and resource

Leadership and Self-Management

•     Focuses on result for the client and responds positively to feedback
•     Consistently approaches work with energy and a positive, constructive attitude
•     Remains calm, in control and good humored even under pressure
•     Proven networking skills and ability to generate interest in UN Women’s mandate
•     Identifies opportunities and builds strong partnerships with clients and partners

Required Skills and Experience

Academic Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in social sciences, gender studies, political sciences or humanitarian development. Master’s Degree will be considered as an asset.

Experience:

• A minimum of 3 years of relevant professional experience in conducting research or work in the area of social exclusion and poverty reduction. Carrying out a gender analysis will be considered as an asset.
• Demonstrated understanding of the links between gender and social exclusion, poverty and vulnerabilities;
• Experience in writing research reports, briefs and publications.
• Developing texts for communications products will be considered as an asset;
• Previous professional experience with the UN and other international organisations in the country is an asset;
• Good computer skills in Windows environment, knowledge of internet communications and command of MS Office applications (Word, Excel, Power Point).

Language

Fluency in Macedonian and English is required.

Evaluation of applicants:

UN Women applies a fair and transparent selection process. Applicants will be evaluated using a cumulative analysis method taking into consideration the combination of the applicants’ qualifications/skills and their financial proposal. Contract will be awarded to the individual consultant whose offer has been evaluated and determined as:

• Responsive to and compliant with the ToR; and
• Having received the highest score out of below combined technical and financial criteria.

Only candidates obtaining a minimum of 56 points in the technical evaluation will be considered for the Financial Evaluation.

Criteria	Total points	Max. Points
Technical Evaluation (70%)	70
Relevant education		10
Relevant professional experience in conducting research, or work in the area of social exclusion and poverty reduction. (min. 3 years)		20
Demonstrated understanding of the links between gender and social exclusion, poverty and vulnerabilities		20
Excellent research and writing skills, including a proven track record in writing clear and concise reports, briefs and publications.		20
Financial Evaluation (30%)	30
TOTAL	100

Evaluation of submitted financial offers will be done based on the following formula: S = Fmin / F * 30

S - score received on financial evaluation;

Fmin - the lowest financial offer out of all the submitted offers qualified over the technical evaluation round;

F - financial offer under the consideration.

1.Duration and remuneration:

The national consultant will be engaged for a total of 20 working days during the period of 6th March 2019 until 30th April 2019. Deliverables from the consultant will be reviewed and approved by UN Women before they are considered final. UN Women will process the payment of consultancy fee upon satisfactory completion of all tasks in the assignment, submission and approval of final report by UN Women.

Application:

Interested individual consultants are requested to apply electronically through the following link: http://jobs.undp.org/cj_view_jobs.cfm  no later than 27 February 2019 and to submit the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications:

• Short Letter of interest, including financial proposal in local currency (MKD), indicating a total lump sum for the delivery as per above description. The financial proposal shall include a breakdown of this lump sum amount (consultancy fee, travel and any other possible costs).
• Completed UN Women Personal History (P11) form, that can be downloaded from http://www.unwomen.org/about-us/employment
• UN Women applies fair and transparent selection process that would take into account the competencies/skills of the applicants as well as their financial proposals.