Background

Youth issues are of growing importance for the government in Bangladesh as they represent a growing constituency. Although representing a large section of the population they are however, often marginalised from mainstream political debate and under-represented in parliament and government. Collective youth voices are generally absent from important debates that affect social and economic life. Their interests generally are not high on the political agenda and can be over shadowed by more mainstream issues that affect other influential parts of the population or a deeply rooted patronage system dominated by specific interests. Sections of the youth demographic are also exposed to specific pressures in society that can be ignored by wider parts of the population leaving them feeling isolated from the mainstream and alienated and disaffected. Voter turnout is generally lower in younger age groups, particular sub-cultures can be misunderstood by older generations and a tendency to see youth as rebellious against a society’s structure of feeling can all leave a fissure between generations.

Mainstreaming the priorities of youth groups in the public domain and in policymaking spheres is essential. Not only do youth groups have their own priorities in social and economic life they are also the next generation of politicians, public figures and role models for future generations. As young citizens they are a core and growing constituency in Bangladesh and their mainstreaming in to society is an important source of creativity and continuity for communities. Isolation from social and economic opportunities and a lack of aspirations can exclude these age groups leading to alienation and disenfranchisement from important processes such as voting and community based civic activities where they build social capital. Increased inclusion will require the development of a stronger voice in the public sphere for these groups that can often have disparate interests and be under-represented in public debate despite them representing an estimated 40 percent of the population of 160 million people.

Youth employment is today one of the major challenges globally. The global economic downturn hit youth disproportionately hard, and even today, youth are three times more likely to be out of a job than adults. The Rio+20 Earth Summit has the potential to stimulate vast new investments in the green economy and generate good, green jobs for youth. South Asia is one of the developing regions where numbers of youth looking for work are high – generating green jobs for youth should be a national imperative. Structural change in the world economy and increased global competition means the job market is more competitive than ever before and the number of new jobs are insufficient to meet the rising demands of an increasingly educated young workforce. The lack of access to equal and equitable economic opportunity has become a serious challenge. A growing number of governments are developing policies to react to this challenge and have designed initiatives aimed at more support in job creation, training for youth and preparing these young people for the labour market by developing incentives for employers as well as better equipping potential employees to enter the workforce. As the size of the youth demographic grows so does their importance in policy debate.

The UNDP intends to assist strengthen the role youth have in shaping public policies and provide support to increase their access to opportunities in Bangladesh by developing a programme based on a number of outputs to increase the voice of youth in public life. These include 1) Enhanced capacity of young people to access jobs and opportunities through support to widening access to resources 2) enhancing their ability to produce evidence based material to assist youth groups identify and understand the key priorities of their generation to affect change in the public sphere 3) platforms supported to provide a forum for debate and facilities for youth groups to feed into national public policy debate 4) accessible lobbying tools created to assist youths form coalitions around key issues and promote a policy agenda in their interest 5) enhanced access of youth groups to community services and safe spaces. Integrity will be mainstreamed throughout the various outputs.

Duties and Responsibilities

Objectives of the assignment:

The aim of the assignment is to identify areas and outline in a project document the components of an intervention aimed to economic empowerment of youth in Bangladesh and also mainstream youth issues in local communities and national policymaking discussions. Using UNDP standard project design formats the consultants should provide a project document together with a detailed budget of outputs and activities to strengthen the position of youth groups both to influence policy making priorities as well increase their access to community services and safe spaces.

Specifically, the mission will consult with relevant stakeholders including government, youth groups, UN agencies, donors and civil society organisations to:

• Identify and map out key stakeholder groups and partners working in the area of youth issues;
• Analyse the context in which the project has to be executed and more specifically the priority of the youth and youth-led organizations;
• Collect data on the socio-economic and political aspects of youth;
• Suggest systemically monitor how much youth are benefiting from green jobs and provide assistance to national labour statistics agencies on tracking such programme;
• Identify possibility and opportunities in adding youth green bank programme existing banking system to support green entrepreneurs. Recent graduates to be trained and equipped to jump-start a green economy. Governments /NGOs / private sector can provide support to attract private capital for promising young green entrepreneurs. Banks can partner with community organizations, academic institutions and vocational training institutes to train youth in green skills and entrepreneurship. In Addition the trainings programmes may include interactive sessions on transparency, ethics and integrity;
• Recommend green jobs for youth a priority of existing community development initiative. This may take advantage of the micro-finance, climate change adaptation, low carbon initiatives, young women empowerment through green jobs programme;
• Discuss with counterparts/partners their potential roles in the project execution;
• Outline existing international support to youth groups in the field of employment, democratic governance and or social issues;
• Produce a project document and budget with clear outputs and activities supporting the desired outcome of the project intervention as well as the organizational and management arrangement with respect to the project execution;
• Provide a risk and work plan in an annex to this project document.

Timeframe:

The assignment will be for 20 working days (15 days in Bangladesh and 5 days from Home based), which includes the following works:

• Desk review;
• Meetings and consultations to be held in Dhaka, Bangladesh;
• Preparation of a mission report and a project document drafted according to UNDP requirements.

Deliverables:

• Conducting and leading a series of consultations with a wide range of stakeholders;
• Debriefing and submission of an aide-memoire for the mission to the senior management of UNDP on the last day of the field mission;
• Debriefing session with external and internal stakeholders to outline the main outputs and conclusions of the mission;
• Preparation and submission of the mission report;
• Preparation and submission of the project document in line with UNDP’s standard practices;
• Review comments on drafts of the project document and integrate these into the submission of a final project document;
• Budget for the project.

Reporting:

• The project formulation mission will consult and provide regular updates to the Programme Analyst, UNDP. In addition, overall supervision and guidance will be provided by the Assistant Country Director, UNDP Bangladesh.

Comprising of Team:

• UNDP Bangladesh is going to hire two consultants for this assignment. The team will be comprised of a team leader that will be an international expert and a national expert. The national expert will be assisting the international expert/Team Leader to complete the mission.

Competencies

• Independent and flexible;
• Ability to work under pressure in a challenging and complex environment;
• Excellent communication skills;
• Excellent writing, analytical and communication skills;
• Creative and result-oriented; and
• Client-oriented;
•  Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability;
• Highest standards of integrity, discretion and loyalty.

Required Skills and Experience

Academic Qualifications:

• Advanced degree in the social sciences, public policy, economics, public administration, business administration, international relations, MIS, a similar field or demonstrated experience working on youth issues.

Experience:

• At least 10 years of experience in the area of governance and Human Rights, and specific working experience on youth empowerment and youth rights issues;
• Experience of working in developing democracies in the area of public/private partnership and jobs and opportunity creation including areas such as youth entrepreneur schemes and vocational and education training initiatives;
• Experience of international development organizations and working in strengthening policy frameworks and systems for inclusive policy making that includes youth groups;
• Previous experience producing high quality project scoping and formulation documents especially in the field of youth empowerment and inclusion;
• Familiarity with the region, and/or the country’s overall governance needs and direction;
• Good understanding of contemporary thinking on development practices and youth issues;
• Knowledge of UNDP’s procedures and programming will be considered an asset.

Language Requirement:

• Fluency in written and spoken English.

Evaluation of the Candidates:

Individual consultants will be evaluated based on the following methodology:

Cumulative analysis:

The candidates will be evaluated through Cumulative Analysis method. When using the weighted scoring method, the award of the contract will be made to the individual consultant whose offer has been evaluated and determined as:

• Responsive/compliant/acceptable; and
• Having received the highest score out of a pre-determined set of weighted technical and financial criteria specific to the solicitation.

Only candidates obtaining a minimum of 49 points in the technical evaluation would be considered for Financial Evaluation.

Technical Evaluation Criteria (Total 70 marks)

• Educational Background - 10 marks;
• Working experience - 20 marks;
• Consultant competencies (including examples of previous work of similar nature) - 40 marks.

Financial Evaluation (Total 30 marks)

All technical qualified proposals will be scored out 30 based on the formula provided below. The maximum points (30) will be assigned to the lowest financial proposal. All other proposals received points according to the following formula:
                   p = y (μ/z)
where:
p = points for the financial proposal being evaluated
y = maximum number of points for the financial proposal
μ = price of the lowest priced proposal
z = price of the proposal being evaluated