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Consultant - Development of LHIF/LHDF Partnership Strategy

Lebanon

  • Organization: IRC - International Rescue Committee
  • Location: Lebanon
  • Grade: Consultancy - Consultant - Contractors Agreement
  • Occupational Groups:
    • Humanitarian Aid and Coordination
    • External Relations, Partnerships and Resource mobilization
    • Public, Private Partnership
  • Closing Date: Closed

Lebanon is more fragile now than ever before. The likely deterioration of the economic situation in Lebanon into 2020, will require both the humanitarian and development community to respond to increasing needs amongst refugees (both Syrian and Palestinian), in addition to current and emerging needs amongst vulnerable Lebanese and migrant worker communities. The onset of COVID-19 and Beirut blast on August 4 have exacerbated socio-economic vulnerability, with the full extent of these factors not yet fully revealed.
Amidst this dire outlook, the role of NGOs is of critical importance as they represent, channel, address and promote needs and concepts that come from field insights. The two largest NGO forums created in Lebanon from the onset of the Syrian crisis are LHIF and LHDF.  

The Lebanon Humanitarian and development Forum (LHDF) was created in January 2014 by a group of local and national NGOs organizations active in the humanitarian and development sectors with all populations, all over Lebanon. LHDF has more than 50 members and 20 observers and is hosted by Lebanon Support.
The Lebanon Humanitarian INGO Forum (LHIF) is an informal and independent coordinating body comprised of 56 international NGOs (INGOs) who are working to address the needs of vulnerable individuals, families and communities throughout Lebanon.

Over the course of a protracted crisis many INGOs initiated or scaled up their programming significantly through partnership with local organizations. In conjunction, local organizations have also increased their programming substantially to become lead stakeholders in a number of sectors. A number of consortiums have been established between local and international organizations that proved effective. Through this partnership, a number of specific tools have been used, adapted or developed.

LHDF and LHIF have worked on a number of joint initiatives coordinating and responding to the Syria crisis, COVID-19 and lately the Beirut Blast, as well as common advocacy for numerous international donor conferences such as  Brussels, Paris, Geneva, etc. Whilst these efforts are effective, both forums have shown the interest in a number of internal workshop and evaluations to develop a joint strategy which will strengthen longer term collective NGO position towards key stakeholders. Building on this solid track record of joint capacity assessment and development, LHIF and LHDF are keen to increase their collaboration to more strategic levels.

LHDF-LHIF seek support to develop a 3-year medium-term strategy that will guide our joint work across advocacy, operations and coordination.

Overall objective: To establish a strategic partnership between LHIF and LHDF to be proactive in coordinating, representing and advocating to enhance the living conditions of vulnerable people in Lebanon

Specific objectives:
To assess LHDF-LHIF interactions to date and explore how this could be transformed into a more strategic approach for the forthcoming period.
To assess how a partnership strategy could better position LHDF-LHIF towards a nimble approach when it comes to identifying, developing and responding to multiple crises in Lebanon.
Outlining the relationship of LHDF-LHIF with strategic stakeholders, Government of Lebanon entities donors, UN agencies, World Bank, etc. This could also involve agreeing on joint principles of work, but different positions or even approaches when tackling specific matters.
To assess the extent to which LHDF-LHIF partnership strategy could actually contribute to institutional change and progress towards civil society breakthroughs in important processes such as responding to Lebanon socio-economic crisis, Beirut Blast, 3RF, COVID Response or LCRP.
To identify opportunities for establishing platforms that would allow for more effective aid delivery mechanisms.
To write up draft partnership strategy for the LHDF and LHIF Steering Committees, and membership approval, which identifies the best possible ways to strengthen, enhance and expand the partnership between LHIF and LHDF on specific work related to advocacy, operational capacity, joint management, technical capacity, volunteer management, etc.
The partnership is to mainstream 4 areas of engagement in its objectives and partnership consultancy methodology:
At the level of the SC: best practices exchange, policies, procedures, coordination meetings
At the level of the members: enhance the capacity and strengthen the position of NGOs, promote partnerships, promote minimum standards and humanitarian principles, conflict resolution role towards efficient response, role distribution, and localization/ phase out strategies. Also, I was thinking about grand bargain recommendation on simplifying and harmonizing reporting (we could play this role with INGOs to alleviate the burden on the LNGOS) … preserve operational space of NGOs
At the level of strategic stakeholders: identify common need, common positioning, advocacy, opportunities, joint participation in important conferences etc.
At the level of the affected communities: optimize the response, accountability towards people of concern, identify needs, challenges, vulnerability index, best practices, cross sectoral.

Methodology:
Assessment of the current LHDF-LHIF relationship, their individual and joint work with numerous stakeholders, etc. (3 days)
Conducting interviews with key stakeholders working regularly with LHIF, LHDF such as HCT group, donor community, Government entities, etc. (2 days) 
Brainstorming sessions with Partnership Core Group of LHDF and LHIF, and Steering Committees (1 day)
Partnership Strategy Workshop (2 days)
Write up of Strategy (with deliverables from the workshop, including comments/revision from the initial drafts) (7 days)
De-briefing with LHDF-LHIF Steering Committees (0.5 days)

Key Stakeholders:
Internal:
 LHDF Steering Committee; LHIF Steering Committee; Core Partnership Group of LHDF-LHIF
External: GoL/national authorities, UN agencies, donors, WB, 3RF leads, etc.
Working Conditions:
A consultant is expected to fly in country for the assignment. LHIF Secretariat would introduce the consultant(s) to the key contacts for this work. Extensive virtual (and when possible physical) meetings will be required during the first few days. Security induction will be provided with clear instructions about C19 protocols in Lebanon, Lebanon political situation, etc.

Deliverables:
Detailed methodology and action plan on conducting the Partnership Strategy development exercise
Facilitation of 2-day partnership workshop with key LHDF and LHIF stakeholders on partnership roadmap
Determining key areas (via workshop) on how the Partnership Strategy could tackle multiple crisis.
Final LHDF-LHIF Partnership Strategy document for 3-year timeline

This vacancy is now closed.
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