Entrepreneurship Coach Consultants

Contract

This is a National Consultant contract. More about National Consultant contracts.

Background

The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (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; and the achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security.

Empowering women in the economy and closing gender gaps are key to achieve the sustainable Development Goals, particularly Goal 5 on gender equality, and Goal 8 on promoting full and productive employment and decent work for all.

Economic empowerment is one of the priority areas of UN Women. UN Women works with Governments and multilateral partners to promote women’s economic empowerment and increase their access to economic opportunities, especially for those who are most excluded. The flagship programme contributes towards outcome 3 of UN Women’s strategic plan: women have income security, decent work, and economic autonomy through contributions to see that more women own, launch, and manage small, medium and large enterprises.

UN Women launched the Flagship Programme Initiative (FPI) on stimulating equal opportunities for women entrepreneurs in July 2018. The programme is implemented in UAE, as well as in South Africa and at a global level from UN Women’s headquarters. It is funded by NAMA Women Advancement Establishment, governmental entity in Sharjah, UAE and is implemented under the supervision of the UN Women Liaison Office (LO) for the GCC.

The FPI was designed as a research, capacity building, and advocacy programme to support women entrepreneurs through promoting Gender-Responsive Procurement (GRP) in the public and private sector, supporting women entrepreneurs to access these opportunities and to strengthen their access to finance. The programme takes forward the findings of the Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) which highlighted the benefits of inclusive procurement from women-owned businesses (WOBs).

The programme aims to foster WEE through entrepreneurship. The theory of change is that if organizations make concerted efforts to procure from WOBs and engage in gender-responsive supply chain and investment practices and if women business owners’ capacity to access finance and skills development is strengthened, then women will have access to a more equal share of the market and will be able to seize these new market opportunities to increase their sales, leading to their higher incomes and expansion of operations, thus creating jobs.

In response to a survey conducted by UN Women and NAMA in 2020 to which responded more than 1,000 women entrepreneurs from the UAE, they identified that they struggled with taking a business idea and creating a legally registered and fully operational business. It was also learned that businesses of more established entrepreneurs had plateaued after running their businesses for a certain number of years and needed support to reach the next level.

To address these two specific areas, we have created the following initiatives for different types of women business owners:

1. 16-week accelerator for women who are about to set up a business, or who have just set up a business, but are struggling to run it (3 cohorts)
2. A weekend growth workshop for women who have had their businesses for a while and want to grow their businesses further (2 cohorts)
3. Pitch day for investors events will be organised to bring together companies and potential investors over 2 X 1 day events through the programme

These initiatives are part of the capacity building plan that additionally include short online courses, mentorship, and networking events. The aim of the plan is to engage the UAE’s wide range of women entrepreneurs that are in various stages of maturity, with the overall objective to increase the number of women-owned businesses in supply chains.

With the objective to provide coaching support for women entrepreneurs for the above listed programmes, UN Women LO for the GCC therefore seeks to hire entrepreneurship coaches.

Duties and Responsibilities

These programmes will be run over the following dates tentatively:

16-Week Accelerator

• 26 September 2021 – 16 January 2022
• 6 February – 29 May 2022
• 4 September – 17 December 2022

Grow Your Business

• 4-5 March 2022
• 18-19 November 2022

Pitch days for investment

• 16-17 December 2021 and 17-18 November 2022

Following are the duties and responsibilities of each coach:

• Attend coach meetings with the lead coaches to plan and develop the content of each programme
• Track the progress and provide support to the assigned group of entrepreneurs in the programme
• Develop training content, in area of specialization to be used for the programmes
• Run online group coaching sessions
• Attend 2 x weekly Zoom training sessions
• Provide one-on-one support for participants if needed
• Attend regular admin meetings to track the progress of participants with lead coaches
• Deliver content online and in a pre-recorded format
• Be present and comment in the accelerator group online discussion forum to support participants
• Be physically present and attend the Grow Your Business weekends on 4-5 March 2022 and 18-19 November 2022. The location will be somewhere in the UAE.
• Be physically present and attend the pitch days on 16-17 December 2021 and 17-18 November 2022

About the 16-week accelerator:

• A 16-week fast-track programme to help women-owned businesses take control of their own future to create and launch a profitable business. This will be held three times throughout the programme duration.

Week’s themes of the accelerator programme include:

• Finding your customers, All about money, Systems, processes and automation to fast track your growth, Your launch and Mastermind webinar
• Participants: 30-40 participants per cohort

About the Grow Your Business Workshops:

Number of Participants will be 40 per workshop, these face-to-face weekend workshops will be organized in different locations in the UAE. Areas of focus include:

• Strategy and vision
• Managerial skills and decision-making
• Digitalisation of the business
• Creating robust systems and processes
• Understanding legal contracts and contract enforcement
• Getting ready for investment
• Access to finance
• Mindset and well-being

About “Pitch day for investors”

Two events will be held during the programme - Jan and Nov 2022

Deliverables:

• Successful implementation of the above events and programmes
• Provide monthly report for each of the above categories, with the support provided in each area
• Provide monthly agendas of accomplished capacity building events.
• Provide monthly list of entrepreneurs trained under each programme

Financial arrangements:

Payment will be disbursed upon submission of approved monthly progress report that contain follow-up on tasks and responsibilities mentioned in the TOR.

Travel:

The selected applicant will work remotely given the current restrictions in the UAE. The selected candidate may be required to continue the assignment in-person when it is feasible. No international travel needs are anticipated. For local business travel requirements for meetings and events across the emirates and if any international travel emerges, the UN Women LO for the GCC will organize the logistics of the travel including providing daily substance allowance and terminal fees as per UN Women travel policies.

Competencies

Core Values:

• Respect for Diversity
• Integrity
• Professionalism

Core Competencies:

• Awareness and Sensitivity Regarding Gender Issues
• Accountability
• Creative Problem Solving
• Effective Communication
• Inclusive Collaboration
• Stakeholder Engagement
• Leading by Example

Functional competencies:

• Strong writing skills, particularly the ability to present accessible, persuasive, coherent and well-founded arguments to a broad audience of policymakers, academics and activists.
• Reliably takes action to honor commitments; takes international outlook in decision-making.
• Demonstrates analytical rigor, intellectual creativity and contributes original ideas
• Contributes to team spirit, inspires, and motivates staff and colleagues at all levels
• Remains composed under stress
• Result driven and solution oriented.
• Makes efficient use of available resources

Required Skills and Experience

Qualification Education:

• Advanced university degree (master’s degree or equivalent) in communication, business administration, political science, economics, international development, gender, or related fields
• A first-level university degree in combination with two additional years of qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree.

Experience:

• A minimum of 7 years of experience in coordination with entrepreneurs, corporates, and public sector entities in UAE.
• Knowledge of the business environment in the UAE, worked as an entrepreneur for at least five years, ideally in the UAE
• Extensive knowledge of the UAE women entrepreneurship needs and challenges.
• Demonstrated interpersonal and communication skills suitable for collaborating with multiple stakeholders.
• Experience in coaching and training (Confidence in delivering coaching and training online over Zoom for the 16-week accelerator)
• Demonstrated experience in business skills development for the private and public entities in UAE -
• Ability to create training content for their sections of the accelerator and growth weekend workshops

Language requirement:

• Proficiency in written and spoken English, and preferably Arabic.

Submission of application:

Interested candidates are requested to submit electronic application by the deadline indicated in the post by submitting the following:

• CV
• Letter of Interest containing the statement on candidate's experience in the field of recruitment.
• All applications must include (as an attachment) the completed UN Women Personal History form (P-11) which can be downloaded from P11 form. Kindly note that the system will only allow one attachment. Applications without the completed UN Women P-11 form will be treated as incomplete and will not be considered for further assessment.
• Please note that only candidates selected for an interview will be contacted.