Consultancy – Advocacy Strategy Development and Capacity Building Specialist Roster, UNICEF EAPRO, Bangkok, Thailand

Contract

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UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfilling their potential.

Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone.

And we never give up.

For every child, a better future

UNICEF works to ensure the rights of all children in the East Asia and Pacific Region. This means the rights of every child living in this country, irrespective of their nationality, gender, religion or ethnicity, to:

• survival – to basic healthcare, peace and security;
• development – to a good education, a loving home and adequate nutrition;
• protection – from abuse, neglect, trafficking, child labour and other forms of exploitation; and
• participation – to express opinions, be listened to and take part in making any decisions that affect them

How can you make a difference?

The Communication Section, UNICEF East Asia and Pacific Regional Office (EAPRO) is seeking applications to a roster for individual consultants to support UNICEFs endeavour in East Asia and Pacific to be the leading voice and advocate for children and children’s rights and to provide support to UNICEF’s regional and country offices in developing strong advocacy strategies. Under the global Advocacy Capacity Building Initiative, there is a need to support country offices within the region to build their internal capacity to engage in strategic advocacy and to use the power of advocacy and communication to deliver positive changes for children’s rights.

The regional office and country offices seek assistance to create the conditions for success in advocacy including: how to set an advocacy agenda, how to develop a strategy, how to analyse the target audiences and the key political and public influencers, how to build advocacy partnerships, and how to design tactics to influence target audiences so that they care about children’s issues and take action.

Work Assignment:

Under the supervision of UNICEF Regional Chief of Communication EAPRO, the overall approach of the consultant is to increase advocacy understanding, skills and confidence of UNICEF staff, empowering them to lead and contribute to their country office’s advocacy efforts. This ‘advocacy capacity building approach’ will be adopted in delivering the following areas of support to a country office:

1. Deliver team training and capacity building on advocacy:

Provide training to build the capacity of different teams and their understanding of what advocacy is, and what it involves.

2. Guide the country office to develop its overall organisation strategy for advocacy:

Support the regional and country office to develop its overall Advocacy Strategy for how it will engage in strategic advocacy, including a roadmap for moving from where it is now, to where it wants to be in 3 to 5 years.

3. Advise on leadership for advocacy and inter-office coordination:

Guide the regional and country office on ways to organise advocacy across the office: leadership for advocacy, roles and responsibilities of different teams, and systems/mechanisms for inter-office coordination – to ensure strong collaboration between staff members across the office and strong leadership to pave the way forward.

4. Assist the country office to set its advocacy agenda:

Assist the team to determine the advocacy priorities for a country office, and to establish decision making criteria for selecting priorities.

Steer the office through a decision-making process to agree the priorities, and to ensure buy-in across the office.

5. Build the capacity of the relevant staff members to deliver advocacy planning workshops and to develop comprehensive advocacy strategies for each child rights priority:

Build the capacity of the relevant staff members to design and deliver an Advocacy Planning workshop for the country office to explore each priority issue, to generate ideas, and to secure collective agreement on the best way to advocate for the specific child rights issue.

Developing communications content: Crafting and delivering communication that influences key audiences. Developing content for presentations, websites, digital channels, printed materials, brochures. Identifying critical influencing moments. Breaking down the strategy into an actionable work plan.

6. Build the skills of the team in monitoring and evaluating advocacy:

Advise the team on methods for monitoring and evaluating advocacy efforts to help to ensure that advocacy is as effective as possible.

7. Guide the office to develop strategic partnerships for advocacy:

Guide the regional and country office to identify opportunities to create collaborative partnerships and to plan how to develop relationships with new and existing stakeholders so that these can be mobilised for the advocacy agenda when their help is needed.

8. Provide the office with tools and templates for advocacy:

Provide a range of tools that can support advocacy planning, monitoring and evaluation, as well as templates for Representative speeches, key issue briefs, and high-level meetings.

9. Provide one-on-one coaching/mentoring:

Provide ongoing mentoring for the lead staff member as the strategy is implemented though coaching/mentoring sessions delivered remotely through Zoom/Skype.

Work Schedule:

The consultant will require to work for the regional and country office communication teams. Workplan shall be discussed and finalized with the hiring manager of each assignment in country office.

As determined by the regional office and country office, the work includes a combination of the following (but not limited to) expert guidance on drafting a clearly defined advocacy strategy; partnership mapping and guidance on partnership development; training materials; communication content; tools and templates and coaching.

Official travel: The consultant will work remotely from home, but the candidate should be able to work in real-time with the regional office based in Bangkok and country offices in the region.

Estimated Duration of Contract: The number of actual working days will be determined on a need basis of specific assignments. For 11.5 months, expecting to start November 2020, with possibility of extension.

Qualifications or Specialized Knowledge/Experience Required:

• Education: Advanced university degree or equivalent in Communication, Journalism, the Humanities, Marketing, Business Administrations, Social Sciences or equivalent.
• Experience: Minimum of eight - ten years of professional work experience in creating advocacy strategies and communication plans.
• Proven a good track record of successful in managing campaigns or creative projects.
• Advanced skills in strategic planning, developing workflows and processes, and monitoring for results.
• Advanced skills in building and managing relationships at all levels of an organization.
• Skills and experience in managing or leading research to inform campaign/content creative plans.
• Demonstrated high-level competencies in interpersonal communication, teamwork, and drive for results.
• Hands-on technical expertise in a multi-channel campaign/content environment.
• Proven ability and Advanced skills in providing advocacy skills training and coaching.
• Excellent organizational skills.
• UN and UNICEF experience will be considered an asset.

Interested candidates are requested to provide CV/P-11/profile, proposed professional fee per day in USD, some example of previous work, and contacts of 3 references by 9 November 2020.

FORM P11.doc

For every Child, you demonstrate…

UNICEF’s values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, Accountability (CRITA) and core competencies in Communication, Working with People, and Drive for Results.

View our competency framework at

http://www.unicef.org/about/employ/files/UNICEF_Competencies.pdf

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UNICEF is committed to diversity and inclusion within its workforce, and encourages all candidates, irrespective of gender, nationality, religious and ethnic backgrounds, including persons living with disabilities, to apply to become a part of the organization.

UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. UNICEF also adheres to strict child safeguarding principles. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles 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.

Remarks:

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process.

Individuals engaged under a consultancy or individual contract will not be considered “staff members” under the Staff Regulations and Rules of the United Nations and UNICEF’s policies and procedures, and will not be entitled to benefits provided therein (such as leave entitlements and medical insurance coverage). Their conditions of service will be governed by their contract and the General Conditions of Contracts for the Services of Consultants and Individual Contractors. Consultants and individual contractors are responsible for determining their tax liabilities and for the payment of any taxes and/or duties, in accordance with local or other applicable laws.

UNICEF is committed to promote the protection and safeguarding of all children.

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