Consultancy: Knowledge Management Consultant, Gender & Social Protection - Social Policy, PD, NYHQ/Home based - Req

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UNICEF - United Nations Children's Fund

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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 fulfill 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, hope.

Consultancy Title: Knowledge Management Consultant – Gender & Social Protection

Section/Division/Duty Station: Social Policy, Programme Division, New York

Duration: 7.5 months

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

Social protection is broadly understood to refer to “a set of policies and programmes aimed at preventing or protecting all people against poverty, vulnerability and social exclusion throughout their life-course, with a particular emphasis towards vulnerable groups.” It is strongly associated with protecting people as they face idiosyncratic shocks (specific to individuals/households, such as a change that often comes about as part of the life cycle, such as pregnancy, unemployment, or old age) and covariate shocks (affecting communities and/or societies at scale, such as flooding or indeed COVID19). As outlined in UNICEF’s Global Social Protection Framework (2019), social protection tends to refer to four key domains of practice: social transfers (whether cash transfers or in-kind support, universal or targeted); social insurance (such as health insurance); labor market policies and programmes (such as employment guarantee schemes) and the provision of non-cash social welfare services.

Evidence has long shown the strong relationships between social protection and gender outcomes, for example including increasing girls’ access to education, increasing women’s empowerment, and reducing intimate partner violence. Evidence has also demonstrated the potential for negative unintended effects. It is vital that social protection programmes are informed by evidence and expertise, intentionally designed to mitigate gendered risks and deliver on these opportunities. The importance of this work has never been clearer with the devastating impacts of COVID on women and girls.

Gender has been a long-standing part of UNICEF’s approach to social protection, but work has accelerated rapidly in recent years. UNICEF’s ability to accelerate and lead this work in the field is demonstrated by UNICEF’s response to COVID, with the number of UNICEF country offices supporting social protection programmes or systems with gender-related objectives more than tripling – including in fragile and humanitarian contexts. We have committed to significantly raise our ambition in the next Strategic Plan, building from this progress. The Social Policy Section in Programme Division in UNICEF HQ is supporting this organizational change in practice in collaboration with our global network, with specific commitments and workstreams around:

  1. Evidence, data and strategy
  2. Technical assistance and guidance
  3. Capacity-building; knowledge exchange and learning
  4. Communication and advocacy

We are seeking a consultant who can contribute to this important agenda across the four workstreams, with a particular focus on workstream 3 – capacity-building, knowledge exchange and learning. The role will include support with the development, refinement, maintenance, dissemination and uptake of products and platforms for sharing knowledge and information about gender and social protection policy and practice, including across UNICEF’s global network (regional and country offices, as well as UNICEF Office of Research - Innocenti) and our partners. It will also include the opportunity to help to shape the strategy and priorities as the work progresses, learning from our practice and partnerships and seeking innovation to get knowledge and ideas into the hands of practitioners. Our knowledge exchange and learning work includes a partnership with the World Bank and FCDO on the theme of gender and social protection, which the consultant will also support.

The KM consultant with work closely with the Social Protection & Gender Adviser in the Social Policy Section, Planning Specialist and Communications Specialist in Social Policy; the Senior Gender Adviser in the Gender Section and the KM Specialist in the Gender Section. They will also coordinate closely with the research uptake lead in and Gender and Development Specialist in Innocenti. They will have regular engagement across our different ‘game-changer’ areas of social protection to ensure coherence in our knowledge management and capacity-building efforts.

Terms of Reference / Deliverables

  1. Support UNICEF’s Community of Practice on social protection

  2. Logistical and technical support for UNICEF’s new internal Community of Practice, including organization of webinars on priority themes relating to gender and social protection – shaping the agenda, leading logistics and ensuring follow-up, in collaboration with colleagues;

  3. Ensuring internal ‘clinics’ on gender and social protection are organized and promoted widely, as well as exploring other innovative forms to get knowledge and learning shared across countries and regions;
  4. Researching and reviewing external and internal products for inclusion in a monthly newsletter;
  5. Leading on specific external learning events, for example on linkages between social protection and gender-based violence – collaborating with partners, leading logistics, shaping the choreography for the event and promoting, in collaboration with colleagues;
  6. Leading knowledge and information management including maintaining and updating content on our gender-transformative social protection sharepoint site, ensuring key information is stored and easily accessible. Improvement and promotion of this knowledge management platform and sharing content on other channels;
  7. Logistical, technical and knowledge management support for a face-to-face event for our community of practice in December (if COVID-19) allows, through which country offices can share learning relating to gender and social protection around the following themes:
  • Core design and implementation features
  • Cash plus
  • Social protection in fragile and humanitarian contexts
  1. Support UNICEF’s partnership on knowledge exchange and learning for gender-responsive social protection with the World Bank and FCDO, and wider partners

  2. Logistical and technical support on the Knowledge Exchange and Learning partnership with the World Bank and FCDO, including ensuring regular quarterly meetings, writing minutes, and contributing to shaping the agenda. Supporting specific learning events;

  3. Development of communication products that enable us to share promising practice and lessons we are learning with the social protection, gender, and other sectoral communities externally; and the wider public (including packages for particular moments in the social protection, gender and international development calendar – including UNGA; the Commission on the Status of Women).

  4. Creation of new KM content that will support gender-responsive/transformative practice in UNICEF

  5. Translating promising country practice into short, quality case studies that can be used for multiple purposes, including learning and communications and advocacy, through a combination of research/reviewing existing documentation, and collaboration with colleagues;

  6. Management of specific products linked to other sectors, depending on experience;
  7. Translation of evidence and practice on gender and social protection into accessible products that reach target audiences, for example translating academic papers/reports into bitesize practitioner-facing summaries.

Qualifications

Education

  • Advanced degree in social sciences, economics, gender, international development, or other related field;

Work experience

  • A minimum of three-five years of progressively more responsible and relevant professional work experience with gender, social protection, and knowledge management in international development;
  • Strong experience and a proven record of developing evidence-based communication and knowledge synthesis products and field tools and guidance;
  • Sound applied understanding of gender equality and gender issues in international development;
  • Experience implementing field programming / research in low- and middle-income settings
  • Demonstrated experience in understanding, translating and packaging research, data and evidence into communication products;
  • Previous experience developing and managing an evidence based communications portfolio;
  • Experience developing case studies, blogs, documenting lessons learned, etc. desired;

Competencies

  • Excellent communication skills, including the ability to work across different units and encourage collaboration; ability to explain complex concepts to different audiences; ability to communicate with all levels of management and staff, sensitivity for cultural differences;
  • Excellent writing and analytical skills, especially in synthesizing complex information for multiple audiences;
  • Excellent organizational skills and ability to handle multiple assignments with competing deadlines;
  • Fluency in English required; Knowledge of another UN language an asset.

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.

Added 2 years ago - Updated 2 years ago - Source: unicef.org