Home-Based Consultancy: Preparedness and Contingency Planning Tools for Humanitarian Coordination Consultant (160 working days between December 2021 and October 2022) - Office of Emergency O

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UNICEF - United Nations Children's Fund

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CH Home-based; Geneva (Switzerland)

Application deadline 2 years ago: Wednesday 17 Nov 2021 at 22:55 UTC

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Contract

This is a Consultancy contract. More about Consultancy contracts.

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

Background

Strengthening local and national capacity in preparedness, response, coordination, and contingency planning is one of seven core functions of the Cluster Approach. The unprecedented scale, impact and duration of the COVID-19 pandemic further underscored the important role preparedness plays to effectively respond when a crisis hits or worsens.

However, despite its importance, preparedness is recurrently considered the weakest core Cluster function as assessed by country Education Cluster and Child Protection AoR members. Feedback from country-level staff also highlights that while sectoral guidance on preparedness exist on paper, conducting consultation processes around preparedness, developing effective preparedness strategies and contingency plans, and periodically updating them remains a major gap.

While this is a longstanding issue, the COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the need for enhanced, contextualized support for preparedness work in all phases of the humanitarian response, including risk identification during needs assessment, risk-informed analysis and contingency planning to improve the coordinated education responses.

As such, it is critical to review, improve, and develop new, fit-for-purpose tools to strengthen Education and Child Protection preparedness approaches and contingency planning tools based on lessons learned and good practices, including from the education response to COVID-19 pandemic.

Against this backdrop, with support from the USAID Bureau for Humanitarian Affairs (BHA), the Global Education Cluster and Global Child Protection AoR will:

  • Develop fit-for-purpose preparedness tools to provide the basis for improved readiness to respond to new or worsening emergencies, including future health epidemics or pandemics.
  • Strengthen linkages between needs assessment and preparedness to enable education clusters and child protection working groups to more efficiently and predictably mobilize their members to respond to a sudden deterioration of the humanitarian situation, including health-related emergencies.
  • Build the capacity of national and local actors to develop effective preparedness plans, and periodically update them (linked with parallel capacity building efforts on needs assessments).

Purpose of the assignment

The consultant will lead the work as follows:

  • Undertake a mapping of current preparedness initiatives among Education Clusters and CPAoRs, using CCPM results, and lessons learned from recent health emergencies such as the COVID-19 and Ebola, with an emphasis on local and national capacities and leadership, to gain an overall picture of promising efforts to inform tools development. On the humanitarian-development nexus, clarify definitions around ‘preparedness’ as this often has linkages to contingency planning, disaster risk reduction (DRR) plans/activities and resilience, and clarify what these different terms mean as it then has implications with who to coordinate with.
  • Use learning from the mapping study to strengthen the education component of multi-sectoral preparedness tools including in health emergencies, post-disaster, and post conflict assessments.
  • Develop a package of tools on contingency planning for the education sector and child protection AoR that clarifies how contingency plans links with other contingency plans from partners such as OCHA/UNHCR/disaster management authorities, as well as individual organisational contingency plans, and education cluster strategies.
  • Support Education Clusters and CPAoRs to implement preparedness and contingency tools underpinned by improved needs analysis and evidence, resulting in 6 contextualized preparedness plans.
  • Incorporate risk analysis and preparedness considerations in the GEC needs assessment guidance and training delivered through this project.

Main tasks / Key Deliverables

1) Mapping study delivered through a four-pronged process:

  • The mapping will start with a literature review of global and country-specific preparedness guidance documents, templates and plans. The research will primarily study EiE and CP specific documentation on preparedness. Secondly it will review inter-sectoral preparedness documentation and tools as relevant for education in emergencies and child protection. The literature review will also focus on the specific implications of health emergencies on education preparedness processes by reviewing literature on the Ebola responses in West Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo, as well the response to COVID-19 in countries supported by the GEC and GCP AoR.
  • The findings of the literature review will inform a quantitative and qualitative survey circulated to a diverse set of relevant audiences, including: all education clusters and education/child protection working groups and their members; UNICEF regional offices; and the GEC and GCP AoR Strategic Advisory Groups as well as global partners.
  • The results of the survey will inform targeted key informant interviews to probe salient issues emerging from step 1 and 2 above. National and local members of the clusters and working groups will be prioritized for the key informant interviews to map national capacities, leadership, and contribution to preparedness activities for EiE and child protection.
  • The findings from the literature review, survey and key informant interviews will be distilled into a succinct mapping report, which also include actionable recommendations.

2) Building on the mapping study recommendations, the consultant will develop a practical preparedness and contingency planning package which will be incorporated into existing cluster and working group strategy guidelines, as well streamlined throughout the curriculum of our flagship core coordination trainings. This will enable GEC and GCP AoR to maximize dissemination and awareness among country teams and anchor the preparedness work in existing guidance and capacity strengthening efforts. The tools will guide clusters and working groups on how to:

  • Include risk and preparedness considerations in needs assessment and analysis, incl. content in the GEC NA package and corresponding training resources, linked to objective 1 and 2.
  • Facilitate consultations with cluster and working group members on context-specific preparedness priorities.
  • Develop cluster and working group contingency plans, linked to the various phases of the Humanitarian Programme Cycle and, where possible, informed by national sector plans.
  • Incorporate education and child protection contingency priorities from the cluster and working group preparedness plans into the overarching inter-sectoral preparedness plans led by national authorities and/or Humanitarian Programme Teams.

3) Develop training for the use and dissemination of the contingency planning package. The training will be piloted with six countries as a joint, global training, to familiarise education cluster and GCPAoR coordination teams and partners with the preparedness and contingency planning package.

4) Provide in country and remote support to six countries for the development of preparedness strategies and/or contingency plans anchored, informed by or integrated with governments’ national and sub-national needs assessment and preparedness management systems.

Work Assignment Overview

Tasks / Milestone******Deliverables / Outputs******Timeline / Deadline1) Inception report (deliverable 1)

Produce an inception report describing the methodology to be used for scoping out the work, defining the phases, the approaches laid out above (or others as suggested by the consultant) and will present a work plan with key deliverables and milestones.5 working days;

by 20 December 2021

2) Mapping study of education and child protection approaches, guidance and tools (deliverable 2)

The comprehensive mapping study will be delivered through a four-pronged process:

  1. Literature review of global and country-specific preparedness guidance documents, templates and plans.
  2. Survey of a comprehensive set of stakeholders and key actors.
  3. Key informant interviews
  4. Validation of the mapping report.

25 working days;

by 20 January 2022

3) Develop a set of preparedness and contingency planning tools/package to guide education clusters and CPAoR coordination teams and national stakeholders (deliverable 3)The preparedness and contingency planning tools to guide education clusters and working groups on how to:

  • Include risk and preparedness considerations in needs assessment and analysis, incl. content in the GEC NA package and corresponding training resources.
  • Facilitate consultations with cluster and working group members on context-specific preparedness priorities.
  • Develop cluster and working group contingency plans, linked to national contingency plans and inter-agency plans, as well as the Humanitarian Programme Cycle.

40 working days;

by 15 March 2022

4) Develop a training package for the dissemination and use of the contingency planning tools and to build skills of education cluster and CP/AoR coordination teams and of national stakeholders. Pilot the training package with six countries through a global training. (deliverable 4)Develop a set of modules for the various components and skills development for the use of the contingency planning package. The pilot will be used to refine the modules and finalise the package.30 working days;

by 15 May 2022

5) Provide support to six countries to develop country specific contingency plans or preparedness strategies. (deliverable 5)Support each country to develop country specific contingency plans, linked to government and inter-agency plans, where relevant, for the education cluster and CP/AoR.60 working days;

by 15 December 2021

Estimated Duration of the Contract

160 working days (between December 2021 and October 2022)

Consultant’s Work Place and Official Travel

The Consultant will be home-based.

Estimated Cost of the Consultancy & Payment Schedule

Payment will be made on submission of an invoice and satisfactory completion of the above-mentioned deliverables. Please indicate a daily fee based on 160 working days to undertake this assignment.

To qualify as an advocate for every child, you will have...

  • Advanced degree in International Affairs, Humanitarian Affairs, Education, Political Science, Management or other relevant field
  • Minimum of 10 years of work experience in the humanitarian sector and/or the education in crises sector, as well as Disaster Risk Reduction, risk informed programming, contingency planning, both at the country and global level.
  • Significant experience in conducting reviews, assessments and/or research of humanitarian issues.
  • Previous consultant experience on projects that require a highly iterative and consultative inter-agency process, with capacity to incorporate a range of feedback and perspectives in final products.
  • Knowledge of institutional mandates, policies and guidelines pertaining to humanitarian assistance, disaster risk reduction, preparedness, risk informed programming.
  • Fluency in oral and written English is essential, knowledge of French would be an asset.

For every Child, you demonstrate…

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

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.

Remarks:

Please include a full CV and Financial Proposal in your application. Additionally, indicate your availability and daily rate (in US$) to undertake the terms of reference above. Applications submitted without a daily rate will not be considered. 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.

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