Individual National Consultancy: Development of UNICEF Assessment Tool on School Nutrition Environments (ATSNE) - UNICEF Viet Nam (in collaboration with EAPRO)
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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 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, nutrition
Background:
Schools and nutrition are inextricably linked. The core business of schools is to maximize learning outcomes – this requires healthy, well-nourished children. Clear evidence shows that good nutrition is associated with improved cognitive development and higher educational outcomes. Schools are, in turn, an important and opportune setting for promoting healthy diets and nutrition.
Across the East Asia and Pacific, attention on the nutrition of school-age children has focused predominantly on undernutrition and nutrition services, including school feeding programmes, supplementation, and deworming. Whilst this is critically important, there has been insufficient attention on overweight, healthy diets and dietary practices. This is despite a rapid rise in the prevalence of overweight and obesity among school-age children across all countries within the region over the past decade. In 2016, an estimated 23% of school-age children in the region were considered overweight. The COVID-19 pandemic is likely to have exacerbated this, with limited access to healthy and affordable diets limited during this time.
UNICEF East Asia and Pacific Regional Office (EAPRO) and UNICEF Viet Nam are undertaking an initiative that aims to improve ‘school nutrition environments’ to prevent all forms of malnutrition, including overweight and obesity. The first step in this initiative is to better understand school nutrition environments (primary and secondary schools) across the region, including the policies and programmes in place, the key gaps, and priority actions to improve these environments and stakeholder perceptions related to existing school nutrition environments and the opportunities and challenges for improving them. This requires the development of a regional specific school nutrition assessment tool that can be used by government agencies and partners to assess and monitor school nutrition environments.
CSDE has meetings with school nutrition department of national institute of nutrition and department of physical activities, ministry of education and training on the tool. Both departments found that developing such practical tool, which is still lacking, is critical part of the school nutrition programme. The two departments were committed to support the development and testing of the tool, disseminate and use it to assess the school nutrition programme in Viet Nam.
Purpose/Audiences
The purpose of this consultancy is to provide technical support for the development of an assessment tool of the school nutrition environments that is context appropriate for Viet Nam and can be tested in Viet Nam. The consultant will work in close collaboration with UNICEF Viet Nam and UNICEF EAPRO.
The consultant will work closely with related stakeholders/line ministry agencies, especially the MOH/MOET during implementation of the work.
Location
The working location for the consultant/partner institution is based in Ha Noi, plus several trips to 03 selected provinces.
Specific objectives for the consultant
1. To collaborate with UNICEF EAPRO and UNICEF Viet Nam in the development of a tool that can be used by government agencies (e.g. key government ministries including MoET, MoH) in Viet Nam to assess and monitor school nutrition environments. The tool aims to:
- assess the status of school nutrition environments (primary and secondary schools), including government and local authority policies and programmes.
- establish critical gaps in policy and programming (including gender and inequality gaps among different EMs, if any).
- identify priority actions for improving school nutrition environments.
2. To test the tool in three selected provinces in different regions in Viet Nam.
3. To communicate findings from the project clearly and widely across the stakeholders in the country.
Research questions to answer:
Question 1: What is the situation of nutrition status that includes dietary intakes of school-age children in Viet Nam; what are the strengths, gaps and opportunities around the school nutrition environments in Viet Nam. (by desk review).
Question 2: What are the areas & questions that the EAPRO Assessment Tool for school nutrition environment will need to cover - building on the UNICEF HQ framework (In-depth Interview with stakeholders and Tool Development Workshop with UNICEF).
Question 3: What adjustments are needed to ensure the final school nutrition assessment tool is relevant to Viet Nam situation (testing the tool report back the results).
To address these questions, the local consultant will:
- participate in a comprehensive desk review.
- conduct in-deep interviews with related stakeholders.
- participate in the tool development workshop.
- test the tool in a few schools of different levels, and regions.
To ensure completion of above-mentioned overall tasks, the consultant is required to have a good knowledge and performance skills of qualitative research methods like:
- Desk review for gathering of the secondary data;
- Conduct in-depth interviews (and focus group discussions with) with key informants related, analyze the data, and reporting;
- Review and prepare the inputs on the tools;
- Pretest a tool in the field and skills to gather audience feedback, and prepare a report;
- The consultants will need provide key methods for this assignment in the proposal.
Deliverables as attached TOR Consultancy Notice Development of Asessment Tool for Nutrition School Environment.docx
Reporting:
This assignment will be undertaken under the supervision of the Nutrition Officer, UNICEF Viet Nam, in close cooperation with the head of nutrition team and the Child Survival, Development and Environment (CSDE) section.
The consultant shall work extensively with UNICEF Viet Nam, the EAPRO research team, and selected stakeholders from line ministries (MOET, and MOH), relevant agencies and selected schools in selected provinces. The consultant is expected to work independently, with consultation and support from UNICEF when appropriate.
For participation in meetings with UNICEF EAPRO team, UNICEF Viet Nam will inform the local consultant of the time schedule and discuss contents to ensure that the consultant is well prepared. For the fieldwork in selected research sites, UNICEF will be ready to provide support to liaise with local authorities & related sectors in the provinces where UNICEF has co-operation programme (Dien Bien/Ha Noi/Ha Tinh/Soc Trang).
Performance indicators for evaluation:
Quality of deliverables meet the standards set by UNICEF and specifications outlined in the contract.
Deliverables are submitted in a timely manner as indicated in the contract.
Technical assistance delivered in a contextualized and tactful manner, drawing on the inputs of the partners.
Performance evaluation will be completed at the end of the assignment.
To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have…
Qualification/Specialized Knowledge and Experience:
In view of the purpose, scope, focus of the work, UNICEF will sign a contract with the lead consultant for this exercise. This lead consultant will manage, supervise the member consultant himself/herself to support him/her throughout the exercise and will ensure the quality of the completed tasks and deliverables.
Team Leader
- Must hold at least a master’s degree or equivalent in public health, nutrition, early childhood development, education development & management, social sciences, development studies; public policy development, or related nutrition field is required.
- A minimum of 10 years of relevant professional experience in the public health/nutrition, school nutrition, maternal and child health; management, early childhood development; education development & management; food administration; policy analysis /research at the international level, including in low and middle-income countries and experience as team leader of research team and as main writer of research reports.
- Excellent knowledge and understanding of the country’s political context and government structure.
- Familiar with government system works, especially in Education and health sectors (MOET/MOH).
- Proven strong experience in conducting policy and programming analyses, analysing and synthesizing policy and programme information, and in conducting literature reviews on education, health and nutrition is a major asset.
- Excellent research, analytical, report writing skills and experience, especially in facilitating key informant interviews and focused groups discussions with various groups of stakeholders.
- Excellent communication and facilitation skills and ability to manage diversity of views in different contexts, especially in the finalization of research reports.
- Language: Excellent knowledge of written and spoken English.
Team Member:
- Must hold at least a master’s degree in relevant social science field (Public Administration, Public Policy, Economics, etc.)
- Minimum 5 years of experience providing professional advice in the area of public/health financing and socio-economic planning, budgeting, implementing and evaluation.
- Proven experience and skills on research, especially in facilitating key informant interviews and focused groups discussions with various groups of stakeholders; data collection and processing, data analysis and production of analytical research reports for different international development agencies preferably UN system in the field of health financing.
- Demonstrated familiarity with the Vietnamese social, economic and political contexts as well as government structure, in particular health and education sectors.
- Language: Excellent knowledge of written and spoken English and Vietnamese.
Assessment criteria:
For evaluation and selection method, the Cumulative Analysis Method (weight combined score method) shall be used for this recruitment:
a) Technical Qualification (max. 100 points) weight 70 %:
Must hold at least a master’s degree or equivalent in public health, nutrition, early childhood development, education development & management, social sciences, development studies; public policy development, or related nutrition field is required; 30 points.
A minimum of 10 years of relevant professional experience in the public health/nutrition, school nutrition, maternal and child health; management, early childhood development; education development & management; food administration; policy analysis /research at the international level, including in low and middle-income countries and experience as team leader of research team and as main writer of research reports; 30 points.
Familiar with government system work, especially in Education and health sectors at national level (MOET/MOH); 20 points.
Proven strong experience in conducting policy and programming analyses, analysing and synthesizing policy and programme information, and in conducting literature reviews on education, health and nutrition is a major asset; 20 points.
Financial Proposal (max. 100 points) weight 30 %
The maximum number of points shall be allotted to the lowest Financial Proposal that is opened/evaluated and compared among those technically qualified candidates who have attained a minimum 70 points score in the technical evaluation. Other Financial Proposals will receive points in inverse proportion to the lowest price.
The Contract shall be awarded to the candidate obtaining the highest combined technical and financial scores, subject to the satisfactory result of the verification interview if needed.
Submission of applications:
Interested candidates are kindly requested to apply and upload the following documents to the assigned requisition in UNICEF Vacancies: http://www.unicef.org/about/employ/
- Letter of interest and confirmation of availability;
- Technical proposal which clearly explains the outline on how to deliver the tasks and deliverables (less than 3 pages);
- Performance evaluation reports or references of similar consultancy assignments (if available);
- Financial proposal: All-inclusive lump-sum cost including consultancy fee, travel and accommodation cost for this assignment as per work assignment.
- CV/P11 form (UN Personal History Form) P 11 form.doc
For every Child, you demonstrate…
UNICEF's values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, and Accountability (CRITA) and core competencies in Communication, Working with People and Drive for Results.
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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:
Mobility is a condition of international professional employment with UNICEF and an underlying premise of the international civil service.
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.
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Source:
unicef.org
