Advocacy / Adviser to Develop an Advocacy Strategy on Enabli...

Consultancy Service - Advocacy / Adviser to Develop an Advocacy Strategy on Enabling Environment for Entrepreneurship

CARE International Palestine (West Bank & Gaza)

Empowered Women and Youth, Resilient Communities – AMALI Project - Gaza

INTRODUCTION:

 CARE International’s presence in Palestine (West Bank/ Gaza) was established during the Palestinian refugee crisis of 1948. Since then, CARE has been working with and for Palestinian communities to attend to life-threatening and other urgent needs through humanitarian support, and to build community resilience and support empowerment and development. Currently, CARE’s work in Palestine (West Bank/ Gaza “WBG”) prioritizes three program areas, with a focus on Nexus programming: (1) delivering Humanitarian Protection and Response Action; (2) implementing Economic Empowerment with a Gender Transformative Programming focus; and (3) Gender Equality and Women’s Voice. CARE tailors project interventions to meet market demands, while challenging gendered social norms within the broad range of economic and cultural contexts in WBG.

With funding from the Austrian Development Cooperation (ADC), and in cooperation with CARE Austria, starting from 1 November 2020 until 30 October 2023, CARE Palestine has been implementing “Empowered Women and Youth, Resilient Communities- AMALI Project” in the Gaza Strip, which aims to contribute to the enhanced socio-economic resilience and empowerment of vulnerable communities and individuals, particularly women and youth in Gaza. The project is an intrinsic part of CARE’s Economic Empowerment & Gender Transformative Program, which seeks to empower those most affected (women and youth) while working deliberately to address the challenges they face in conflict-restricted markets. It also promotes innovative and successful market- driven approaches to entrepreneurship and business development and scales up programming by strengthening women’s decision-making power at home, in the community, and nationally.

SCOPE OF WORK:

The Consultancy Firm will work under the direction of CARE International in Palestine (WBG) to assist in developing and implementing an advocacy strategy (including a clear action plan) to effectively support and enhance an enabling environment for women and youth entrepreneurship, and to strengthen the resilience of women and youth entrepreneurs to shocks and stresses that are direct result of the longstanding blockade of Gaza and the barriers to entrepreneurship for these groups. Advocacy strategy requires both short-term and long-term thinking, an understanding of the points of resistance and the means to gain traction, the readiness to form alliances and activities that inform and influence relevant stakeholders. Through the assignment, a series of advocacy meetings and events will be organized with different stakeholders including activists, private sector, governmental bodies, community leaders, and active entrepreneurs to develop actions including (not limited to) relevant policy briefs, round table discussions, human-interest story video, wide-range media campaigns, meetings with CBOs, awareness raising workshops, and production of advocacy materials / leaflets.

GOALS:

- Develop an advocacy strategy/action plan on enabling environment for entrepreneurship. The advocacy strategy will focus on challenging and reducing barriers to female and youth entrepreneurship in Gaza and will include advocacy goal, objectives that can be achieved within a realistic timeline with plan and activities, key messages, identified target audiences, allies and points of resistance.

-Lead the implementation of the action plan, including carrying out a series of advocacy meetings and events with different activists and stakeholders to develop relevant policy briefs, including round table.

discussions and production of materials/leaflets in, case study, human interest story video film, media campaigns, and others in full coordination with CARE team in specific and partners.

DELIVERABLES:

-Inception report: Outlining short report with proposed methodology and timeline/ delivery dates. The inception report should also include the outline for the advocacy strategy.

-Draft advocacy strategy, including an action plan for implementation of the strategy, for feedback and comments from CARE focusing on challenging and reducing barriers to female and youth entrepreneurship in Gaza.

-Develop PowerPoint presentation on draft of advocacy strategy to be presented at the validation workshop in the presence of all key actors, decision makers, influential, partners and private sectors representatives.

-Produce the final advocacy strategy informed by inputs from the validation workshop.

-Implement the advocacy strategy (and its action plan) through conducting 4 meetings with local CBOs and influential community members to promote social norm changes at the community and national level.

-At the international level, implement the advocacy strategy (and its action plan) through conducting one raising awareness workshop on the impact of the blockade on economic resilience of women and youth in Gaza with AIDA members in full coordination with CARE.

-Design and produce a policy brief, leaflet, and other required advocacy materials in full coordination with CARE.

-Holding one round table discussion with activists, stakeholders, private sectors, governmental bodies, community leaders, and active entrepreneurs.

-Produce one human-interest story video (i.e., for instance on women/youth entrepreneurs affected by the blockade) and one case study.

-Develop and implement a Gaza-wide media campaign including methods, tools, and actions on female entrepreneurship to raise and challenge perceptions and attitudes towards women's economic participation, women's entrepreneurship, and women in non-traditional enterprises and roles. The media campaign would draw from and be in line with the advocacy messages as outlined in the advocacy strategy

-To obtain accurate evidence of changes, occurring because of the implementation of the advocacy strategic including development of the M&E tools, collecting, and analyzing the data and reporting against the above-mentioned indicators.

QUALIFUCATION AND COMPETENCES:

- Post graduate degree or equivalent in advocacy, political science. international relations; development studies; social sciences or any related fields.

-Must have a minimum of 5 years of professional/relevant at international level and national level in developing advocacy strategy and policy development/formation.

-Excellent communication and networking skills.

-Experience with public relations and in developing advocacy /strategy and activities is highly desirable.

-Strong ability to collaborate and work as a team is essential.

-Experience of working in public and private sector is highly desirable.

-Creative and out of the box thinker, with demonstrated track record of analytic problem‐solving/seeking solutions to challenges.

-Some experience engaging with members of governments, private sector companies, NGOs, and/or multilateral organizations.

-Proven experience in leading advocacy work.

-Demonstrated experience in undertaking desk-based research, summarizing complex information and producing advocacy materials.

-Strong M&E experience in analyzing and assessing relevant advocacy projects.

-Familiarity with working with women & youth, startups, CBOs/cooperative with special emphasis on gender, socio-economic empowerment issues with evidence, scalability, and sustainability.

-The consultancy firm must showcase and demonstrate their knowledge and experience relating to gender equality, social inclusion and gender mainstreaming, and green enterprises or green business practices.

-Proven conceptual and analytical capacity to monitor complex and interlinked issues to ensure that the main arguments of the written/edited document are communicated.

-Strong working knowledge of social media platforms, websites, and communication processes.

-Professional experience in formulating advocacy strategies that address ongoing advocacy issues facing identified target groups and designing communication materials and advocacy campaigns that target diverse groups of stakeholders.

-Demonstrates strong facilitation skills for diverse audiences (advocacy workshops, meetings, and round table discussions, presenting policy briefs, etc.), time management, regularly providing helpful feedback and advice to others in addition to reporting skills.

-Good experience in designing a monitoring and evaluation strategy that determines what data will be collected and how it will be used to inform decisions throughout the advocacy process.

-Good interpersonal and communication skills (verbal and written) in both Arabic and English.

-Effective negotiation and representation skills.

-Strong team player skills and experienced collaborator.

-Good understanding of development issues with emphasis on participation and sustainability

-Ability to arrange and manage all logistical issues related to the implementation of the consultancy.

-In-depth knowledge of the specific social, economic, and cultural sensitivity conditions.

-Technical skills Must possess in depth knowledge to adequately use the basic Microsoft Office package (Excel, Word, and Power Point), the Internet and email.

JOB DETAILS:

Job Title: Consultancy Firm - Advocacy Consultancy Firm / Adviser to Develop an Advocacy Strategy on Enabling Environment for Entrepreneurship.

Duration:  9 months service contact, starting June 2022 and shall be renewable subject to project needs.

EVALUATION OF PROPOSALS:

The technical evaluation committee, appointed by CARE International in Palestine (WBG), will evaluate the proposals based on their responsiveness to the Terms of Reference, applying the evaluation criteria, according to the following pointing system:

• 80% for the technical evaluation.

• 20% Financial evaluation.

PAYMENT MODALITY

The Consultant will be paid according to achieved deliverables/tasks based on the payment schedule as specified in the ToR.

SUBMISSION OF PROBOSALS

Term of Reference can be downloaded from here: Terms of Reference (ToR).

Consultancy Firms shall submit technical (as outlined below) and financial proposals by CoB of Wednesday- 8th, June 2022 to [email protected].

Pre-submission meeting: will be held in CARE International office in Gaza on Wednesday, 1st, June at 11:00 am.