Home-based consultancy

Home-based consultancy: develop an M&E framework & mechanism for data collection for Risk Communication and Community Engagement during COVID response

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, results COVID-19 is a global health crisis, an information crisis and increasingly a wider socio-economic crisis. One of the major learning of the past decade, from the West Africa Ebola outbreak to natural disasters and complex emergencies, is the critical need to engage communities from the very beginning of a response in order to minimize the impact of the crisis on the health and safety of populations. For humanitarian responses to be effective and have long-term positive impacts, humanitarian organizations need to work collectively to ensure a community-centered approach at all levels of a response. This means: facilitating access to life-saving information and essential services; proactively enabling the participation of affected communities in relief efforts; ensuring decisions at all levels within the humanitarian architecture are taken and adapted according to community feedback, concerns and priorities, as well as social insights; and supporting local responders to lead responses whenever possible. Such approaches help build trust with communities and local gatekeepers, increase the uptake of protective and health seeking behaviors, and ultimately ensure sustainability of humanitarian work. Living up to our 2017 IASC commitments on Accountability to Affected Populations as well as core protection and localization principles is now more critical than ever. The COVID-19 pandemic requires coordination efforts be accelerated to scale, to meet unprecedented challenges. To this end, the Risk Communication and Community Engagement (RCCE) ‘collective service’ was launched in June 2020 by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization (WHO), with support from the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN). The aims of the collective service are to strengthen RCCE coordination and practice, providing support at country, regional and global levels to adopt community-centered approaches in response to the pandemic. This approach was endorsed by the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) Principals in April 2020. How can you make a difference? The COVID 19 RCCE Global Strategy is currently being revised. It will have four strategic objectives summarized here: (a) strengthen coordination, (b) improve the quality of community engagement approaches, (c) generate evidence about community perspectives to inform decisions, and (d) reinforce local capacity and local solutions. In order to ensure proper monitoring and evaluation of the new RCCE strategy, the purpose of this consultancy is to expand on the M&E framework that has been developed to align with the Global RCCE strategy in consultation with IFRC, UNICEF, WHO at regional and global levels and GOARN. Since the establishment of the Global RCCE Collective Service, efforts have been focused on developing a framework that identifies standardized indicators for multi-dimensional social and behavioral variables that could be monitored globally, applying a results-based management approach. There are multiple critical challenges to ensure that this framework could be operationalized, which can be summarized around the following considerations:

Need for prioritization of investments to monitoring output and outcome level results, as well as processes that track performance and implementation. The current scope of existing indicators developed by the RCCE Collective Service, build on globally defined RCCE indicators from the Strategic Preparedness and Response Plan (SPRP) as well as the Global Humanitarian Response Plan (GHRP). These globally defined strategies while aiming to define monitoring indicators for RCCE raise the accountability profile for RCCE actions, there are gaps in strengthening the systemic and capacity requirements of the monitoring systems—of national governmental entities, international development partners, civil society, etc. This requires accelerating efforts that strengthen monitoring mechanisms and capabilities leveraging current opportunities that emphasize the relevance, effectiveness, and need for monitoring information for risk communication and community engagement programming.[1] (NB: The Global RCCE Collective Service will provide a full briefing on the on-going work conducted to develop a common M&E framework that aims to track awareness, risk perceptions and behaviors associated with COVID-19.)
Harmonization and accountability mechanisms for M&E framework- For the M&E framework to be useful and effective, it will need to be aligned and coherent with different M&E processes managed by multiple stakeholders, and the indicators will need to be kept to a realistic number to ensure they are properly and accurately monitored. Given that the collective service aims to deliver support to countries led by demand from the ground up, this M&E framework will aim to inform measure of RCCE intervention in all public health and humanitarian emergencies and will be adapted based on the development of operational methods and situational realities. Identifying opportunities for: 1) reducing redundancy within core monitoring functions, namely collection and reporting systems that enable triangulation where possible; and 2) establishing systems that could facilitate the aggregation of monitoring information and providing insights, and 3) leverage institutional capabilities, strengthening existing operational systems and capacities to support all partners.

In light of the progress to date, the Global RCCE has developed a framework that now includes an operational framework (monitoring processes) as well as a behavioral framework (monitoring behavior and social change) The framework could have a menu of options for a phased approach, with a phase 1 framework based on the current M&E efforts and a more elaborated one as a future vision. The purpose of the consultancy is therefore to:

refine the latest M&E framework common set of indicators (core and secondary) to reduce redundancy, enable better coordination and harmonize M&E efforts
develop a “common mechanism” for data collection and analysis, which will feed into a global dashboard (under development).

Key Tasks and Responsibilities Managed by Community Engagement and Accountability Specialist, EMOPS Geneva, and working very closely with the Collective Service for RCCE, the consultant will lead on the following deliverables:

Conditions of contract

Duration: The contract is expected to be for 40 days, within a 4 months period.
Duty Station: The consultant will be home-based.
Payment: The consultant will be paid per deliverable based on satisfactory and timely delivery of outputs.
Supervisors: the consultant will report to the Community Engagement and Accountability Specialist, EMOPS Geneva
Travel: The consultant may be expected to travel to Geneva once during the contract period for a week maximum (depending on COVID situation). UNICEF will cover the costs, based on the most direct and economical route. UNICEF will pay the daily subsistence allowance as per UN-approved rate. The consultant must be fit to travel, be in a possession of the valid BSAFE Security certificate, have a valid own travel/medical insurance and if required have obligatory inoculation(s) and an immunization/vaccination card. The dates for the travel will be determined in consultation with the supervisor.

To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have…

Master’s degree in relevant field, with at least 10 years of professional experience in humanitarian response and/or public health.
Technical knowledge and expertise in demography, statistics and data management, an asset.
Five years of experience with the principles and current approaches to monitoring and evaluation in public health and humanitarian programmes, using both quantitative and qualitative methods.
Professional expertise in the methodology of M&E, including models, data analysis and interpretation, developing recommendations and dissemination of M&E results, operational and systems implementation.
Experience in developing robust M&E frameworks for global health, emergency or development programmes
Experience with managing and conducting multi-stakeholder consultations at different levels.
Work experiences with the Red Cross/Red Crescent Movement and the United Nations desirable.
Excellent analytical skills with strong drive for results and capacity to work independently
Proficiency in written and oral English.

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. View our competency framework at http://www.unicef.org/about/employ/files/UNICEF_Competencies.pdf 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. To apply:

Letter of interest, including your approach to the assignment, availability and proposed daily fees (in USD) to undertake the above TOR. Kindly include your estimated travel costs. Applications without a proposed fee will not be accepted.
A CV and/or Personal history form (downloadable from http://www.unicef.org/about/employ/files/P11.doc). Alternatively, if a candidate profile in the UNICEF e-Recruitment System is available, you may download it and submit it as part of application.

Remarks: 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. Advertised: 29 Oct 2020 W. Europe Standard Time Deadline: 05 Nov 2020 W. Europe Standard Time Application link: https://jobs.unicef.org/en-us/job/535748/homebased-consultancy-develop-an-me-framework-mechanism-for-data-collection-for-risk-communication-and-community-engagement-during-covid-response-40-days

Tags: UNICEF