Proposal Writer and Technical Coordinator (Technical focal point)-Consultant

Proposal Writer and Technical Coordinator (Technical focal point)
for Multi-Year, Global Irish Aid Strategic Partnership Grant Proposal

BACKGROUND

The International Rescue Committee’s mission is to help people whose lives and livelihoods are shattered by conflict and disaster to survive, recover, and gain control of their future. Founded over 80 years ago, the IRC is a leading humanitarian and development organization with presence in more than 40 countries. Across contexts, the IRC is committed to delivering innovative, high-impact programs tailored to the needs of communities affected by crisis.

The IRC began a strategic partnership with Irish Aid in 2014 providing critical life-saving and life-sustaining GBV response and prevention assistance to women and girls in emergencies including forgotten and protracted crises. The IRC was selected as the Irish Aid Humanitarian Unit’s key partner for addressing GBV in emergencies. The Strategic Partnership between Irish Aid and the IRC is intended to support Ireland’s commitments to a focus on fragile and conflict affected states; gender equality; addressing gender based violence; and Ireland’s commitments to the Call to Action on Violence Against Women and Girls in Emergencies.

There are five mutually reinforcing pillars/components under the Strategic Partnership:

1.GBV Response, Preparedness and Recovery: In Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia, Cameroon, South Sudan and Burundi. IRC provides life-saving GBV response services; engages in empowerment programming with women and girls from crisis-affected populations; carries out community level advocacy to address norms around GBV; and works to share capacity with local NGOs working on GBV response.

2.GBV Policy and Advocacy: IRC focuses on influencing and increasing leadership across the global humanitarian system to ensure the resources needed are in place to effectively prevent and respond to GBV against women and girls in acute and protracted crises. IRC generates and disseminates new evidence filling critical gaps around appropriate resourcing and the current barriers and challenges impacting the effective prioritisation of GBV across the humanitarian system, using the findings to inform the development and strategic dissemination of concrete and solution focused recommendations.

3. GBV Emergency Response: IRC prioritises establishing life-saving services for women and girl survivors of GBV, and advocates for urgent action to reinforce the protection of women and girls in the initial weeks after a sudden onset emergency or spike in existing protracted crises. Prepositioned emergency funding, known as the Emergency Response Fund Scheme (ERFS), is allocated to provide GBV services for W&Gs at the onset of a crisis.

4. GBV Learning: IRC consolidates and shares learning from across the Strategic Partnership and Women’s Protection and Empowerment (WPE) programming to promote adaptive, inclusive GBV programming which is accountable to women and girls in acute and protracted emergencies.

5. Management, Coordination and Quality Assurance: This crosscutting pillar supports the effective management and delivery of IRC’s contractual requirements under the strategic partnership with a focus on enhancing management, coordination and quality assurance across pillars.

The IRC is pursuing a three-year, multi-million euro global Irish Aid Strategic Partnership proposal with the aim of continuing this strategic partnership with Irish Aid in addition to implementing the remainder of commitments under the current IA SP 2019-21.

 SCOPE OF WORK

The Proposal Writer and Technical focal point will write a compelling proposal for IRC for IA SP 2022-24, while the Senior Technical Advisor (TAs) for Women’s Protection and Empowerment (WPE) will provide guidance, technical sign-off and supportive supervision for the programmatic design to ensure alignment to the concept note previously submitted and IRC’s Outcomes and Evidence Framework. The Writer/Coordinator will work closely with the WPE STA, Frameworks Team Portfolio Manager, and Irish Aid pillar leads, as well as other relevant stakeholders, to complete relevant current project tasks and develop the full proposal. To do so, the Writer/Coordinator will also coordinate extensively with the Frameworks Team Portfolio Manager who will serve as the Proposal Manager, and be responsible for soliciting reviews from TAs and IA pillar leads; the Writer/Coordinator will then be responsible for incorporating feedback into the proposal narrative. The Proposal Writer and Technical focal point will also provide targeted support to the effective implementation of the current IA SP.

RESPONSIBILITIES

The consultant will undertake the following tasks:

IA SP Technical Focal point/Coordinator:

• Day to day technical support focal point for liaison with the Frameworks team, receiving supervision from WPE STA technical lead.
• Helping ensure that IA SP 2019-21 project remains on track and is implemented in line with GBV and IRC Women’s Protection and Empowerment technical standards and best practices.
• Work with the IA SP WPE STA leads, IRC Country Program WPE Technical Advisors and VRPU program support team to coordinate the Irish Aid Global Learning Forum webinars
• Work with the IA SP WPE STA lead and VPRU Monitoring Evaluation and Learning leads to support finalization of the Irish Aid evaluation report 2019-21
• Back-stopping support to lead WPE STA for liaison on development of pillar 3 – Irish Aid policy product 2021 in collaboration with Senior WPE Advocacy Advisor and UK Head of Policy.
• Support planning and technical content development for annual donor meeting focused on Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) drawing out key experiences over the current partnership and amplifying the voices of women and girls that have participated in IRC and partner-led WEE activities under the current IA SP award.

Proposal Writer

• Review all IA donor guidelines, evaluation criteria, templates, and existing IA SP documents, as well as IRC’s IA SP concept note for 2022-4 and feedback from donor.
• Review all inputs from pillar leads.
• Participate in program design meetings to finalize technical approach, and circulate clear guidance to proposal contributors on their technical inputs and timelines.
• Receive and incorporate inputs from TAs; consolidate feedback from Country Programs; and identify knowledge gaps and areas for follow-up.
• Work with the STAs, TAs, pillar leads and Frameworks Team to ensure technical design is responsive to the discussions with and feedback from Irish Aid.
• Provide narrative support to the Frameworks Team Portfolio Manager in confirming that relevant annexes are in line with the technical approach.
• Write a high-quality final proposal incorporating the IRC team’s technical feedback. This will include multiple drafts of the proposal in accordance with donor guidelines and project design, as agreed and articulated in the concept note, IA SP 2019-21 evaluation report and design discussions.
• Work with the proposal team to ensure consistency between the narrative and the budget.
• Regularly communicate progress to lead STAs, WPE TAs, and Frameworks Team.

INDICATIVE TIMEFRAME and DELIVERABLES

The consultancy will begin tentatively on September 9, 2021 and the deliverables will be due in accordance with agreed upon timeframes. The Consultant will work for a maximum of 22 billable days for the role over the period of September 9 – September 30, 2021.