National Consultant - Communications

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; and the achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security.

In Nepal, UN Women focuses on strengthening women’s voice, choice, agency and security across sectors to advance women’s rights, provide space for women’s meaningful participation and to demonstrate tangible differences in their lives. It is guided by Nepal’s stated priorities and its commitments to relevant normative frameworks, the country’s United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) 2018-2022, the CEDAW Concluding Observations (2018) and UN Women’s Corporate Strategic Plan 2018-2021. The programme promotes national ownership, capacity development and institutionalization, inclusiveness, coordination and partnerships, and knowledge generation and management, and seeks to prioritize engagement with and support to key duty bearers who are responsible for advancing Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (GEWE). The goal of the programme is to “achieve gender equality and social inclusion and empower women and girls in Nepal to realise their human rights.”

The key strategies to achieve the goal include: (a) normative support for the development, reform and repeal or amendment of discriminatory laws using a CEDAW lens; (b) providing technical support and integrated policy advice to stakeholders to implement gender equality policies and action plans; (c) building institutional capacities at federal and local levels to promote gender-responsive governance, rule of law, prevention of violence and delivery of minimum essential services through innovations, long-term trainings, peer learning and focused workshops; and (d) advocacy and social mobilisation with excluded and vulnerable groups to build alliances and mobilise political will to drive public support for GEWE.

Duties and Responsibilities

With COVID-19 outbreak, UN Women is chairing Gender in Humanitarian Action Technical Taskforce (GiHA-TT) since 2019. GiHA-TT is a multi-stakeholder network of Civil Society Organisations, International Development Partners, UN agencies and Government of Nepal. The taskforce brings together stakeholders from different groups to bring forth the issues of the most marginalized groups due to COVID-19 to ensure incorporation of gender equality and social inclusion into the responses to the pandemic. The issues raised in GiHA-TT is documented into a knowledge product – Gender Equality Updates to provide wider visibility. To support in the development of the knowledge product, NCO is seeking to recruit a qualified national consultant. The objectives of the consultancy are as follows:

1. To develop Gender Equality Updates, as per the discussions in GiHA-TT
2. To develop GiHA Meeting minutes
3. Develop content for communications visibility as needed

Scope of work:

• Draft and finalise six Gender Equality (GE) Updates. The draft GE updates shall be shared with UN Women for feedback and finalised as per the suggestions received.
• Six meeting minutes as per GiHA meetings conducted
• Develop content for communications visibility as per the need of the office

Key Deliverables

Deliverables	Target completion date
Finalize six GE Updates	1 June 2022-31 May 2023 (24 working days)
Six GiHA Meeting Minutes	31 May 2023 (12 working days)
Digital and narrative content for visibility such as stories, opinion pieces, social media posts, project briefs, one pager, two pagers, programme slide decks	31 May 2023 (80 working days)

Payment:

• Payment will be made within 20 days upon satisfactorily completion and certification of each deliverable by the supervisor.
• Travel Cost: NA

Contract period and duty station

The assignment is home-based.  The contract duration is from 1 June 2022-31 May 2023

Competencies

• Awareness and Sensitivity Regarding Gender Issues;
• Accountability;
• Creative Problem Solving;
• Effective Communication;
• Inclusive Collaboration;
• Stakeholder Engagement;
• Leading by Example.

Required Skills and Experience

The selected consultant should fulfill the following requirements:

Education:

• Master's degree in public relations, mass communication, journalism or any related field
• At least 5 years of relevant professional work experience in public relations, communications or advocacy;
• Past experience of developing high quality communication materials such as writing for web, developing briefs and concept notes;
• Understanding of and familiarity with gender issues would be an added advantage;
• Fluency in English and excellent oral and written communication skills;
• Experience working with UN Agencies is an advantage.

Payments

Payments for this consultancy will be made on a deliverable basis. The financial proposal should be submitted in the following template

Deliverables	Estimate No of Days	Per unit Cost
Finalise six GE Updates
Six GiHA Meeting Minutes
Digital and narrative content for visibility such as stories, opinion pieces, social media posts, project briefs, one pager, two pagers, programme slide decks
Total

Inputs

UN Women will provide the consultant with background information/ material, feedback and technical inputs to accomplish this assignment.

Link to GSP goal and outcomes

OEE 2.1: Increased engagement of partners in support of UN Women’s mandate

Evaluation and Selection Criteria

A two-stage procedure is utilized in evaluating the proposals, with evaluation of the technical proposal being completed prior to any price proposal being compared. Only the price proposal of the candidates who passed the minimum technical score of 70% of the obtainable score of 100 points in the technical qualification evaluation will be evaluated. If required, an interview will be conducted before making the final decision on selection of the consultant.

1. Technical qualification evaluation criteria:

The total number of points allocated for the technical qualification component is 100. The technical qualification of the individual is evaluated based on following technical qualification evaluation criteria:

• Required degree and qualification (10 points);
• Relevant years of experience on issues related to project design, monitoring and reporting integrating the RBM standards and principles (40 points)
• Working knowledge and experience in the area of gender equality and the empowerment of women (20 points);

• Writing sample (30 points), at least two samples of original writing produced where the applicant is the author/co-author

Only the candidates who have attained a minimum of 70% of total points will be considered as technically qualified candidate.

1. Financial/Price Proposal evaluation:

The financial proposal of candidates who meet the technical assessment threshold will be evaluated. The financial assessment will count as 30% of the total points.  In this methodology, the maximum number of points assigned to the financial proposal is allocated to the lowest price proposal. All other price proposals receive points in inverse proportion.

A formula is as follows:

p = y (µ/z)

Where:

p = points for the financial proposal being evaluated

y = maximum number of points for the financial proposal

µ = price of the lowest priced proposal

z = price of the proposal being evaluated

How to Apply?

Interested applicants should apply to this announcement through UNDP jobs site: jobs.undp.org

Interested individual consultants must submit the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications in one single PDF document:

• Expression of interest
• Completed UN Women Personal History form (P-11) of all the team members which can be downloaded:  http://www.unwomen.org/about-us/employment
• A separate page of financial proposal

The financial proposal shall specify the per day consultancy fee based on which the total contract value will be calculated. UN Women HR might request the candidate to share evidence of the per day consultancy fee of the previous assignment(s).

Kindly note that the system will only allow one attachment, please combine all your documents into one single PDF document. Applications without the completed UN Women P-11 form and the written sample will be treated as incomplete and will not be considered for further assessment.

Note:

In July 2010, the United Nations General Assembly created UN Women, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. The creation of UN Women came about as part of the UN reform agenda, bringing together resources and mandates for greater impact. It merges and builds on the important work of four previously distinct parts of the UN system (DAW, OSAGI, INSTRAW and UNIFEM), which focused exclusively on gender equality and women’s empowerment.