Team of three National consultants to extend expert, training and mentoring services on gender responsive budgeting

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 Presence Office in the Republic of North Macedonia in line with the priorities set in the UN Women Strategic Plan 2022-2025 and the UN Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework (2021-2025), is supporting the country to fulfil National and International commitments to gender equality and empowerment of women.

Over the past years, 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. Through its ongoing project “Promoting Gender Responsive Policies and Budgets: Towards Transparent, Inclusive and Accountable Governance in the Republic of North Macedonia” (2018-2022), UN Women is extending technical support to Government stakeholders at central and local level on gender responsive budgeting, and to civil society organizations and oversight bodies on strengthening the accountability towards gender equality commitments. The programme provides a consolidated framework that enables systematic and sustained implementation of gender responsive budgeting and optimal impact of gender budgeting initiatives on lives of women and men in the country.

The project includes a set of interventions focused on gender mainstreaming in local planning and budgeting processes, which aims at extending technical and expert support to local self-government units (LSGUs) to advance the application of gender responsive budgeting. The project supports thirty-one (31) local self-government units in the country to implement GRB initiatives, upscale the proven approaches in mainstreaming gender in sectoral programmes through gender analysis, introduction of gender specific objectives and measures and monitoring progress and impact on lives of women and men.

To respond to the demand of LSGUs for technical and expert support on GRB, UN Women is seeking to recruit a team of experts that will provide capacity development and mentoring support to the LSGUs.

Duties and Responsibilities

The objective of the assignment is to strengthen the capacities of the local administration and municipal council members on gender responsive programme planning and budgeting. More specifically, the aim is to further strengthen the capacities of 18 LSGUs that have already been exposed to GRB capacity development and/or have implemented GRB initiatives and have undertaken specific measures to engender their local programming and budgeting, by assisting the local administration to analyse specific local programmes and budgets and develop gender specific measures and indicators, as well as by mentoring the local councillors to review local policies from a gender perspective.

 

With this ToR, UN Women is seeking to hire a team of 3 Local Consultants to provide expert, training and mentoring services on gender responsive budgeting. The consultants will be responsible for delivering expert training and mentoring services to 18 municipalities that have already piloted GRB initiatives and have the basic capacities and skills to mainstream gender in policies and programmes. Each expert will cover total of 6 LSGUs.

 

1.Tasks and Responsibilities

 

• Desk-review of findings of relevant programme analyses conducted in the framework of the project, training evaluations and other materials on gender mainstreaming and gender responsive budgeting to inform their work on the assignment;
• Develop detailed capacity development plan for the 6 LSGUs covered by each expert based on the findings of previously conducted capacity needs assessment for those LSGUs;
• Extend mentoring support to 6 LSGUs that have implemented GRB and have undertaken specific measures to engender their local programming and budgeting through tailored interventions based on the needs and capacities of each municipalities, develop local action plans and/or strategies on gender equality and conduct gender analysis;
• Extend training support to public officials from targeted departments of the 31 LSGUs involved in the project, local Commissions for equal opportunities between women and men, local Intersectoral working groups for gender equality and Commissions for budget and finance on gender responsive budgeting and results-based management;
• Deliver mentor support to 6 (2 per each expert) regional development centers to mainstream gender in strategic documents and policies;
• Monitor and track progress in engendering local level programs and/or development of new action plans/local strategies through continuous communication with the coordinators for equal opportunities ana Intersectoral working groups for gender responsive budgeting;
• Facilitating exchange of good practices and lessons learned among local level policy and budget makers by participating and facilitating thematic roundtables and thematic events on GRB;
• Participate in regular preparatory and coordination meetings with UN Women and other consultants throughout the assignment;
• Facilitate workshops with participation of public officials from different municipalities to exchange experiences and learn from each other;
• Prepare quarterly progress reports summarizing results (changes in capacities, engendered local progammes and budgets, lessons learned, recommendations and pictures from the activities);
• Provide inputs to tracking matrix for engendered sectoral program on semi-annual basis;
• Submit monthly time sheets for recording the time spent on each activity;
• Prepare final individual report on the assignment.

 

 

2.Key deliverables, activities and timeframe

 

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

 

Tasks	Deliverables	Working days
Prepare a detailed plan for the assignment	Work plan for the assignment	1 day (by 30 June 2022)
Desk review of relevant analyses, training materials, training evaluations and local actions plans on GE   Develop detailed capacity development plan for the 6 LSGUs covered by each expert based on the findings of previously conducted capacity needs assessment for those LSGUs;	Detailed outline of the training programme and proposed training materials	3 days (by 25 July 2022)
Extend mentoring support to 6 LSGUs that have implemented GRB and have undertaken specific measures to engender their local programming and budgeting through tailored interventions based on the needs and capacities of each municipalities, develop local action plans and/or strategies on gender equality and conduct gender analysis;	Mentoring plan with specified activity timetable and expected results   Quarterly progress updates on the mentoring work and results	30 days (by 5 March 2023)     Regular updates until 15 March 2023
Extend training support to public officials from targeted departments of the 31 LSGUs, local Commissions for equal opportunities between women and men, local Intersectoral working groups for gender equality and Commissions for budget and finance on gender responsive budgeting and results-based management;	Training Agenda, detailed training programme with exercises and handouts Pre/post training evaluation questionnaires, final analysis of the evaluations	10 days (by 28 February 2023)
Deliver mentor support to 6 (2 per each expert) regional development centers to mainstream gender in strategic documents and policies;	Report on the mentoring work and results	6 days (by 15 February 2023)
Facilitate workshops with participation of public officials from different municipalities to exchange experiences and learn from each other;	Agenda and materials for the workshops Report from workshops	5 days (by 28 February 2023)
Monitor and track progress in engendering local level programs and/or development of new action plans/local strategies;	Inputs to tracking matrix for engendered sectoral program on semimanual basis (In Macedonian);	2 days   Regular updates, on a quarterly basis until 15 March 2023
Reporting	Quarterly individual progress reports (In English) Final individual report with specific information on the results achieved, challenges and opportunities in English (max. 3 pages)	3 days (by 15 March 2022)
Total		60 working days

Reporting

Under the overall supervision of the Programme Analyst and 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, along with a timesheet.

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.

Please visit this link for more information on UN Women’s Core Values and Competencies: http://www.unwomen.org/-/media/headquarters/attachments/sections/about%20us/employment/un-women-employment-values-and-competencies-definitions-en.pdf

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:

• A university degree in public administration, social studies, development studies, gender studies, international relations, or any other degree relevant to the requirements of the ToR. A Master’s degree is considered an asset.

Experience:

• A minimum of 5 years of demonstrated professional experience in the area of gender equality with focus on gender responsive budgeting and/or public policy and budget monitoring;
• Previous experience in designing and delivering training and/or mentoring programmes on gender equality and gender mainstreaming in policy making and budgeting;
• Experience and knowledge on decentralization, local policy and budget development process in the Republic of North Macedonia;
• Previous work experience in working as part of or managing large team would be considered as an asset
• Knowledge on results-based management and strategic planning is a strong asset;
• Previous experience working with international organizations would be considered as an asset;

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 consultants whose offer has been evaluated and determined as:

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

The candidate needs to obtain a minimum of 49 points in the technical evaluation to be considered for the Financial Evaluation.

 

Criteria	Total points	Max. Points
Technical Evaluation (70%)	70
Relevant education	10	10 0: without relevant university degree 7: A first-level university degree 10: master degree
A minimum of 5 years of demonstrated professional experience in the area of gender equality with focus on gender responsive budgeting and/or public policy and budget monitoring	15	15 0: without relevant expertise and experience 0-5: 1 year of experience 5-10: 3 years of experience 15: more than 5 years of experience
Previous experience in designing and delivering training and/or mentoring programmes on gender equality and gender mainstreaming in policy making and budgeting	15	15 0: without relevant expertise and experience 0-5: 1 year of experience 5-10: 3 years of experience 15: more than 5 years of experience
Experience and knowledge on decentralization, local policy and budget development processes in the Republic of North Macedonia	15	15 0: without relevant expertise and experience 0-5: 2 years of experience 5-10: 5 years of experience 15: more than 5 years of experience
Previous work experience in working as part of or managing large team would be considered as an asset	5	5 0: without experience 5:Demonstrated experience
Knowledge on results-based management and strategic planning is a strong asset	5	5 0: without experience 5:Demonstrated experience
Previous experience working with international organizations would be considered as an asset	5	5 0: without experience 5:Demonstrated experience
Language requirements Fluency in Macedonian and English is required.	REQUIRED
Financial Evaluation (30%)	30
TOTAL	100

Duration and remuneration:

The national consultant will be engaged for up to 85 working days during the period of 15 June 2022 until 15 March 2023. 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 in two instalments:

I instalment - 60% upon submission and approval of deliverables 1-3 and submission of  quarterly progress reports;

II instalment - 40% 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 May 2022 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.

At UN Women, we are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment of mutual respect. UN Women recruits, employs, trains, compensates, and promotes regardless of race, religion, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, ability, national origin, or any other basis covered by appropriate law. All employment is decided?on the basis of?qualifications, competence, integrity, and organizational need.

If you need any reasonable accommodation to support your participation in the recruitment and selection process, please include this information in your application.

UN Women?has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UN Women, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination.? All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to UN Women’s policies and procedures and the standards of conduct expected of UN Women personnel and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. (Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.)