Consultancy: Consultant, EiE Digital Rapid Response Toolkit Development in RRM-like settings - Education Section, PG, NYHQ/Remote - Req

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Consultancy Title: Consultant, EiE Digital Rapid Response Toolkit Development in RRM-like settings

Section/Division/Duty Station: Education/PD/NYHQ

Duration: 15 November 2021 – 30 may 2022, Total of 129 days

About UNICEF

If you are a committed, creative professional and are passionate about making a lasting difference for children, the world's leading children's rights organization would like to hear from you. For 70 years, UNICEF has been working on the ground in 190 countries and territories to promote children's survival, protection and development. The world's largest provider of vaccines for developing countries, UNICEF supports child health and nutrition, good water and sanitation, quality basic education for all boys and girls, and the protection of children from violence, exploitation, and AIDS. UNICEF is funded entirely by the voluntary contributions of individuals, businesses, foundations and governments. UNICEF has over 12,000 staff in more than 145 countries.

BACKGROUND Purpose of Activity/Assignment:

The Global Education Cluster (GEC), co-led by UNICEF and Save the Children at the global level, plays a key role in supporting education country cluster teams and partners with technical advice, capacity development, guidance and tools development, and advocacy. UNICEF and GEC have been working since 2019 to strengthen EiE responses in Rapid Response Mechanism (RRM) settings.

Millions of children have their education interrupted and are at risk of never going to school because of humanitarian emergencies. Education is critical to reduce vulnerabilities, protect children, help them cope with and recover from crises and ensure they continue learning skills that will improve their future opportunities. However, education is rarely prioritized in the first phase of humanitarian responses where Rapid Response Mechanisms (RRMs) exist, or via similar emergency response coordination mechanisms in diverse emergency situations. With funding support from ECHO, the Global Education Cluster (GEC), co-led by UNICEF and Save the Children International (SCI), has developed an Action to address this gap by EiE response toolkits for use in current and future RRM settings to systematically include and strengthen flexible and tailored EiE responses, from early childhood (3-8 years old) to adolescence (10-19 years old). The development of these EiE RRM toolkits will leverage evidence generated under previous phases of the ECHO-funded generated by UNICEF and GEC partners Education Cannot Wait (ECW), SCI, UNESCO, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), REACH and Translators without Borders.

Based on the RRMs Global Mapping and Assessment Lessons Learned key findings, there is currently very limited involvement of EiE actors in RRMs.. Education is rarely prioritized in the first phase of humanitarian responses where RRMs have proven to be effective in reaching the most vulnerable people with multi-sectoral responses. According to the GEC Country Calls Support on RRM conducted with national education cluster coordinators, there is in general a weak understanding of RRM among education cluster staff and partners. In particular, in the needs assessment and analysis phase of RRM, often education indicators are not included, and if they are, needs assessment findings are not used and do not reach education partners at all. There is a general lack of rapid needs analysis tools to ensure the information can be used constructively to plan for appropriate EiE responses. There is also limited capacity of education partners to plan, conduct and coordinate education interventions, lack of practical guidance and presence of partners in areas in which alerts are raised. Also, there is inadequate knowledge amongst non-education RRM actors about rapid EiE response modalities, and in particular for RRM focal points no clarity about the benefits and aims of inclusion of education in RRM. The Global Mapping also reported that there is a lack of advocacy tools to explain the benefits and aims of inclusion of education in RRMs. It is important to show to show immediate or short-term ‘success’ in RRMs and education (beyond just the delivery of materials). A 2017 review of UNICEF RRMs identifies as key challenges a lack of continuity of services following initial response and weak post-intervention monitoring and evaluation, few systematic linkages with the education cluster system.

The ECHO-funded Action led by the GEC aims to address these gaps to support current and future RRMs (and similar humanitarian response coordination mechanisms) to systematically include rapid quality education responses so that all partners involved (UN, INGOs, local partners, Ministry of Education) have resources and tools to achieve the best education outcomes for children across different types of emergency situations. Activities under this consultancy will thus contribute to achieving objectives of the broader GEC-led ECHO Action related to Result 2 (developing a toolkit for rapid education response) and for UNICEF to deliver on its Core Commitments for Children in Humanitarian Action and as embedded in UNICEF’s Global Education Strategy 2019-2030.

Terms of Reference / Deliverables

The scope of work for this consultancy(ies) will focus on developing a user-friendly interactive digital toolkit (including on and offline functionality) to support effective EiE responses in RRM settings. The toolkit will encompass areas related to:

1. 1. Risk-informed inclusive planning tools and contingency and preparedness planning tools.
   2. Conducting rapid needs assessments and analysis in varied humanitarian settings (natural disaster, conflict, famine, drought, health related crises).
   3. Standardized yet adaptable rapid response packages that can be tailored to specific humanitarian response settings (environmental emergencies, conflict settings, including other contexts).
   4. Advocacy and resource mobilization tools for rapid responses
   5. Real time response monitoring and other appropriate response monitoring tools tailored for different humanitarian response settings, including those with limited access and security risks, which also contribute to strengthening local monitoring systems.
   6. Standardized methods for promoting PSEA across all operational settings.
   7. Rapid deployment of ready-to-use and adaptable learning tools that will facilitate skills acquisition in the areas of Foundational Literacy and Numeracy, SEL/ MHPSS
   8. Rapid deployment of adaptable formative assessment tools to support teachers improve learning outcomes for children across all humanitarian settings.
   9. User-friendly checklist to ensure key areas related to: inclusion of marginalized and vulnerable groups, gender, adolescents, GBV, Child Safeguarding, conflict sensitivity, MHPSS, AAP, disability and other cross-cutting aspects as captured in the CCCs are taken into account across all tools and aspects of RRMs tools.
   10. Other key resources identified as the toolkit is developed

Gender and Conflict Sensitivity. All toolkit content will adhere to gender and conflict sensitive approaches. Tools developed on monitoring, reporting and responding to attacks on education will also be integrated wherever possible. Key issues to be considered under gender sensitivity include hygiene facilities, teaching learning opportunities, classroom environment including language of instruction, distribution of learning materials, participation and expression of opinions by all the students, etc.

Accountability to Affected Populations. Tools developed will ensure the integration of strategies and resources to promote accountability to affected populations.

Protection against Sexual Abuse and Exploitation (PSEA): Tools developed will ensure the integration of strategies, approaches and resources to promote PSEA through all partner actions and responses in humanitarian settings.

Participation of young people. Tools developed will ensure the integration of strategies, approaches and resources as appropriate and as detailed in the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) Guidelines for Working with and four Young People in Humanitarian and Protracted Crises (See here).

Core Commitments for Children in Humanitarian Action (CCCs). Tools developed will ensure adherence to all relevant aspects of the CCCs in education and cross-sectoral areas as appropriate (See here).

Deliverables

Under the supervision of the UNICEF Education in Emergencies Specialist and with technical guidance from the GEC and SAG members, the consultant(s) will be accountable for the following deliverables:

1. Catalogue of existing tools used in EiE RRMs
2. Provide an outline of the interactive digital toolkit content and overall structure (drawing from evidence generated by SAG members and research evidence conducted under the broader Echo-funded action)
3. Finalized RRM digital interactive toolkit content and user guidelines covering agreed areas including key elements listed above

Supervision

The digital toolkit development will be conducted by a consultant(s) recruited and hosted by UNICEF and who will be supervised by the EiE Specialist and EiE Team Leader in PD/HQ and will be liaising and coordinating with the GEC SAG. The GEC SAG will be asked to provide access to response as outlined in this TOR to identify relevant resources from tier respective organizations to be included in the digital toolkit. In addition, they will be asked to review and provide comments to the toolkit draft versions and endorsement of the final digital toolkit. The consultant(s) is(are) expected to integrate GEC SAG member feedback into the final version of the digital toolkit and its user guidelines.

Given the current COVID-19 pandemic context and uncertainties persisting with regards to travel, it is expected that key informant interviews with field teams will be conducted online.

Qualifications

• Master’s degree (or equivalent) in Social or Public Policy, Development Studies, Social Sciences, Education or another relevant technical field.
• Degree in computer science or related field in technology
• At least 10 years of experience in planning, implementing and managing education programmes, especially in humanitarian settings;
• Demonstrable experience in development technical tools for education personnel;
• Experience developing functional digital and user-friendly online tools;
• Ability to communicate effectively to diverse audiences;
• Ability to be flexible and work within tight deadlines;
• Ability to work collaboratively on tool development;
• Excellent verbal and written English; knowledge of a second language (French, Spanish, Arabic) desirable.

Requirements

• Completed profile in UNICEF's e-Recruitment system and provide Personal History Form (P11) Upload copy of academic credentials
• Financial proposal that will include:
• your daily/monthly rate (in US$) to undertake the terms of reference
  • travel costs and daily subsistence allowance, if internationally recruited or travel is required as per TOR.
  • Any other estimated costs: visa, health insurance, and living costs as applicable.
  • Indicate your availability
• Any emergent / unforeseen duty travel and related expenses will be covered by UNICEF.
• At the time the contract is awarded, the selected candidate must have in place current health insurance coverage.
• Payment of professional fees will be based on submission of agreed satisfactory deliverables. UNICEF reserves the right to withhold payment in case the deliverables submitted are not up to the required standard or in case of delays in submitting the deliverables on the part of the consultant.

U.S. Visa information:

With the exception of the US Citizens, G4 Visa and Green Card holders, should the selected candidate and his/her household members reside in the United States under a different visa, the consultant and his/her household members are required to change their visa status to G4, and the consultant’s household members (spouse) will require an Employment Authorization Card (EAD) to be able to work, even if he/she was authorized to work under the visa held prior to switching to G4.

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

For every Child, you demonstrate…

UNICEF’s core values of Commitment, Diversity and Integrity and core competencies in Communication, Working with People and Drive for Results. View our competency framework at: Here

UNICEF is committed to diversity and inclusion within its workforce, and encourages all candidates, irrespective of gender, race, sexual orientation, nationality, culture, appearance, socio-economic status, ability, age, religious, and ethnic backgrounds, 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, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks, and will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles.