UN WOMEN Jobs - 49175- International Consultant

International Consultant - Networking and Community Engagement

Advertised on behalf of

UN WOMEN

Location :

New York, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Type of Contract :

Individual Contract

Starting Date :

01-Oct-2014

Application Deadline :

18-Sep-14 (Midnight New York, USA)

Post Level :

International Consultant

Duration of Initial Contract :

30 working days

Languages Required :

English

Expected Duration of Assignment :

Duration of up to three months for consultancy to be completed.

UNDP is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality and culture. Individuals from minority groups, indigenous groups and persons with disabilities are equally encouraged to apply. All applications will be treated with the strictest confidence. UNDP does not tolerate sexual exploitation and abuse, any kind of harassment, including sexual harassment, and discrimination. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks.

Background

The Need

UN Women is mandated to serve as a knowledge hub on gender equality and women’s empowerment. This encompasses several dimensions around leveraging internal and external expertise and knowledge around “what” we should be doing and “how” we should be achieving our collective objectives, including:

Capturing and presenting intelligence, context around trends and emerging and pressing issues and making available knowledge on commitments;
Identifying what works, what doesn’t and why and related guidance and resources;
Supporting scale and replication and south-south and triangular cooperation;
Enabling peer support and collaboration;
Generating new knowledge, understandings and innovating;
Surfacing, showcasing and strengthening women’s knowledge, innovation and social entrepreneurship;
Engaging partners and grassroots women in new ways, facilitating dialogue, expanding voices and perspectives in conversations; and
Using the myriad of technologies, applications and methodologies available to these ends.

Realizing these functions will enable UN Women and the broader gender community to fully capitalize on intellectual capital; address inter-related issues; extend reach; better access resources and advice; learn, engage, build, and innovate more effectively; and promote more transformative change.

Though there are many components to achieving this, a central one is using networking tools and methodologies and developing internal and external engagement strategies so that we are more effectively connecting partners, experts, practitioners, women - and going beyond “the usual suspects” in all cases - for both discrete and ongoing interactions, sharing, direction setting, co-creating knowledge and fostering innovation and learning.

The Gap

At present UN Women does not have a corporate external knowledge portal nor a policy or defined approach around networking and collaboration. The organization hosts a number of knowledge portals managed by the thematic sections in the policy division, the UN coordination focused WomenWatch site, a gender training community of practice, a civil society extranet (private external), as well as a handful of collaboration sites on the Sharepoint platform, as well as websites around events and specific initiatives, some email networks and use of social media largely in the context of corporate communications. However, these are ad hoc and not connected and many face challenges with respect to generating engagement and momentum.

While successful engagement requires a supportive culture, availability of incentives, the right tools and the right people and objectives, there are strategies and methods for improving engagement under current circumstances while pushing for a stronger enabling environment.

Objectives

UN Women is therefore proposing a review of horizontal networking and engagement strategies and approaches in order to test different options for increasing collaboration among a diverse set of actors. It is anticipated that this can in turn lead to joint ownership of our collective agenda, improved learning, and the generation more innovative, nimble and effective responses to needs and opportunities.

The review will consider:

Approaches and methodologies that generate interest, engagement and momentum and include areas of learning, community building, iterative development, reflection and review, creative thinking and surfacing and supporting innovation, creation of micro-content to capture knowledge, peer support, and the like;
Technical Tools available such as networks, blogs, SMS, crowdsourcing, yammer, workspaces, social media (twitter, linkedin, facebook, etc), learning platforms and tools, innovation platforms (e.g. UNHCR spigot, idea marketplaces), infomediaries (where internet access poses a problem). UN women’s corporate platforms, SiteCore and Sharepoint, are the primary systems in place at present.

The review will detail types of engagement approaches that might be suitable for UN Women, in what contexts they work best (including knowledge objectives, external/internal, etc), success factors, lessons and other considerations. The options and recommendations should also tackle the oft cited barriers of information overload and competition for attention, time and resources.

Duties and Responsibilities

Process and Timeline:

Consultation with UN Women Staff on current networking and engagement practices, needs, opportunities and challenges. Review of current systems, tools and methods used;
Review of successful and cutting edge practices from outside the organization, particularly of organizations with comparable size, budget and with a development mandate;
Develop analytical paper that reflects immediate (do-able now) and longer term (with additional investment and/or addressing larger enabling environment) options.

Deliverables:

Analytical Options Paper;
Compilation of supportive resources for implementing recommended options;
Capacity Building Webinar on top options to be tested.

Duration:

The consultatncy will be for a period of 30 working days over a three month period.

Competencies

Core Competencies:

Cultural Sensitivity/Valuing diversity:

Demonstrating an appreciation of the multicultural nature of the organization and the diversity of its staff;
Demonstrating an international outlook, appreciating differences in values and learning from cultural diversity.

Communication:

Excellent communications skills; strong interpersonal skills;
Ability to prepare succinct, evidence-based analytical reports.

Teamwork:

Excellent interpersonal skills and ability to establish and maintain effective partnerships and working relations, both within the UN system and externally;
Ability to work in a multicultural and multi-ethnic environment with respect for diversity.

Knowledge Sharing / Continuous Learning:

Learning and sharing knowledge and encourage the learning of others.

Functional Competencies:

Knowledge management, organizational development and innovation;
Networking, community building and social networking.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

Minimum of Master's degree or equivalent in knowledge management, organizational management, Development studies or other related disciplines.

Experience:

A minimum of 7 years of professional experience in knowledge management and particularly networking and engagement strategies at an international level;
Experience with gender equality and women’s empowerment highly desirable;
Experience with UN work highly desirable.

Language:

Fluency in English is required;
As this assignment will require the identification of sources in other languages, proficiency in another UN working language will be an asset.