UN WOMEN Jobs - 58478- National Consultant/Interpreter to Evaluator for t

National Consultant/Interpreter to Evaluator for the Final Evaluation of the EU/UN WOMEN Project “Innovative Action for Gender Equality” (IAGE)

Advertised on behalf of

UN WOMEN

Location :

Home-based travel within Georgia, GEORGIA

Type of Contract :

Individual Contract

Starting Date :

01-Sep-2015

Application Deadline :

21-Aug-15 (Midnight New York, USA)

Post Level :

National Consultant

Duration of Initial Contract :

15 working days

Languages Required :

English

Expected Duration of Assignment :

15 working days in the period of 1 September – 30 October 2015

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

Starting from 2013, UN Women, with the support of the European Union (EU), has been implementing the project “Innovative Action for Gender Equality in Georgia” (IAGE), the overall objective of which is to adopt and implement relevant policies and legislation to address specific healthcare, social, and economic needs of women from excluded groups in Georgia. The specific objective is to support women’s initiatives aimed at confidence building and social stability through addressing healthcare, social, and economic needs of ethnic minority, imprisoned, IDP and conflict affected women and women living in remote mountainous areas in Georgia.

The project is aimed at realizing three interrelated outputs/results:

Capacity of gender equality and women’s rights advocates increased to advocate for integration of issues of excluded groups of women and girls in relevant policies and legislation;
Willingness and capacity of state structures increased to incorporate issues of excluded groups of women and girls in relevant policies, legislation and services on national and local levels;
Partnerships among the government and women’s civil society groups as well as women’s people-to-people diplomacy initiatives increased for promotion of social stability and confidence building.

IAGE achieved its expected results as spelled out in the project document that can be summarized as follows:

The project established important knowledge base through four baseline studies on the needs and priorities of the following groups of women in Georgia: 1) ethnic minority women, 2) imprisoned and former prisoner women, 3) women residing in isolated mountainous settings, and 4) single, elderly and disabled women among the groups of IDP, and conflict-affected women. In addition to the fact that the recommendations of these studies were used by the CSOs for advocacy and implementation of relevant projects and the government for development of relevant programmes and action plans, each of the study can form the bases for future projects aimed at addressing the needs of the above target groups. IAGE also developed two training manuals on Evidence-based Advocacy for civil society actors and on Gender Mainstreaming (GEM) for government officials, as a result of capacity development of CSOs and government officials respectively.

As a follow-up to the baseline study recommendations, IAGE:

Funded six innovative projects of civil society organizations (IAGE grantees) that included concrete advocacy plans aimed at addressing the needs of excluded groups of women.
Established a partnership with the Ministry of Corrections (MOC) and the Public Defender’s Office (PDO) to address the needs of prisoner and former prisoner women. In particular, technical assistance was provided to the MOC to develop an Action Plan on Female Prisoners, where 75% of study recommendations were incorporated. Support was provided to the PDO in developing a monitoring tool for female prisons in accordance with the United Nations Rules for the Treatment of Women Prisoners and Non-custodial Measures for Women Offenders (Bangkok Rules) and conducting respective monitoring.
TV and Radio talk shows were conducted on the problems and recommendations uncovered by the studies through both local and national media outlets. Four Public Service Announcements (PSAs) were produced focusing on the key problems identified in the studies. The PSAs are aired through regional and national media outlets.

IAGE established partnerships among conflict-torn societies through a summer school on Women’s Role in Confidence and Peacebuilding for youth from South Caucasus that resulted in jointly developed projects and their implementation; a Pen Marathon for Peace and Equality for Georgian, Abkhaz and South Ossetian writers (three from each region) both women and men resulting in writing and publishing of stories on each other’s experiences during the war; and retrieval from the National Archive of Georgia Abkhaz traditional folk songs and production of respective CDs that were distributed among the wide range of stakeholders, who have contacts and ties in Abkhazia-Georgia and were able to share the CDs with their Abkhaz counterparts.

As IAGE project is at its final stage of implementation, final external evaluation of the project will be undertaken as agreed with the project donor, the European Union. The final, end-of-project evaluation will be conducted by an independent, external, international consultant. The evaluation will assess programmatic progress (and challenges) at the outcome level, with measurement of the output level achievements and gaps and how/to what extent these have affected outcome-level progress. It will consist of a desk review, country visit, in-depth interviews with UN Women staff, and in-depth interviews with key stakeholders and beneficiaries. It will contribute to results-based management through a participatory approach that documents results achieved, challenges to progress, and contributions to the creation of a more conducive environment for addressing needs of 1) ethnic minority women, 2) imprisoned women, 3) women residing in isolated mountainous settings and 4) single, elderly and disabled women among the groups of IDP, and conflict affected women in Georgia.

IAGE established strong and meaningful partnerships with relevant stakeholders - government and civil society actors to enhance delivery of the project and ensure ownership of its results at the national level. The expectation from the final evaluation is to assess the success of the project results and to shed light on its challenges and lessons learned.

The Programme has established a very productive cooperation with the Gender Equality Council (GEC) of the parliament of Georgia, the chair of the GEC is a member of IAGE Steering Committee along with EU and UN Women representatives. Terms of Reference (TORs) of the four studies were developed in close consultation with the Chair of the GEC and representatives of the Ministries of Internally Displaced Persons from the Occupied Territories, Accommodation and Refugees (MIDPOTAR), Corrections (MOC), Labour, Health and Social Affairs (MOLSHA), Regional Development and Infrastructure (MRDI), Reconciliation and Civic Equality (MRCE), as well as the Public Defender’s Office (PDO). The approach contributed to increased ownership of the process and findings and recommendations of the studies, as the stakeholders were involved since their design stage. IAGE trained government officials on Gender mainstreaming into policies and thus developed a network of contact persons/focal points in the ministries/local administrations that has been utilized for work-related reasons throughout the IAGE implementation.

The Programme has established a very productive cooperation with the Ministry of Corrections (MOC) and provided technical assistance in developing an Action Plan on Female Prisoners, where over 75% of the study recommendations were incorporated. IAGE engaged in a fruitful cooperation also with the PDO and provided technical assistance in developing a women prison monitoring tool in accordance with the Bangkok Rules and also supported the PDO to conduct respective monitoring.

The project scope and expected results, as well as the TORs of the four studies, were also presented to the Civil Society Advisory Group of UN Women. As a result, forty-one civil society organizations (CSOs) working on gender equality and women’s rights voluntarily participated in the NGO capacity needs assessment in evidence-based advocacy and then in the follow-up capacity assessment undertaken by the IAGE project. These NGOs, together with additional twenty-nine CSOs, were trained in evidence-based advocacy and they eventually applied for participation in the small grants’ competition, a separate intervention of the IAGE aimed at the follow-up to the findings of the four studies of the different excluded groups of women. Consequently, IAGE signed Project Cooperation Agreements with five NGOs and one CBO: Women’s Club PEONI, Centre for Civic Integration and Inter-ethnic Relations (CCIIR), Fund for Women Entrepreneurs (FWE), Partnership for Human Rights (PHR), IDP Women’s Association “Consent”, and the CBO Shida Kartli Community Fund for Peace and Development.

Evaluation Objectives:

The specific evaluation objectives are to:

Analyze the relevance of the programmatic strategy and approaches exploited by the IAGE;
Validate the project results in terms of achievements and/or weaknesses toward the outcomes and outputs, with a critical examination of how/to what extent the project supported efforts and strengthened the capacities of civil society organizations in evidence based advocacy and relevant government entities to mainstream needs and priorities of excluded groups of women into the relevant policies and programmes;
Assess the potential for sustainability of the results achieved by IAGE;
Document lessons learned, best practices, success stories and challenges to inform future work of UN Women and EU in addressing gender equality within the context of addressing the needs of excluded groups of women; and

Document and analyze possible weaknesses in order to improve next steps of UN Women interventions in the area of provision of technical expertise aimed at gender mainstreaming into policies that target excluded groups of women in Georgia.

The information generated by the evaluation will be used by different stakeholders to contribute to building of the evidence base on effective strategies for addressing the needs of ethnic minority women, imprisoned women, women residing in isolated mountainous settings and single, elderly and disabled women among the groups of IDP, and conflict affected women and to facilitate UN Women’s strategic reflection and learning for programming on addressing their needs.

The evaluation will be conducted by the Evaluation Team, comprised of international evaluator and national consultant/interpreter in Georgia. Therefore, UN Women intends to hire the latter to provide assistance to the international evaluator during the process of project evaluation in Georgia

Duties and Responsibilities

The interpreter will work under the direct supervision of the international evaluator and will benefit from technical and operational support of UN Women Country Office in Georgia. In more specific terms, the assistant will be responsible for the following:

To provide assistance to the International Evaluator in the process of project evaluation in Georgia.

To fulfill the expected task, the assistant is expected:

To collect, review and provide outline/translation of all key documents from Georgian into English, as needed;
To support in arrangement of meetings, focus group discussions, interviews with key beneficiaries and stakeholders of the project together and in consultation with UN Women;
To participate in all the meetings, focus group discussions and interviews, provide interpretation, take notes and prepare minutes in English;
To be available if further clarification is needed by the international evaluator during the drafting and finalization process of the evaluation;
To prepare a brief narrative report on fulfillment of all the tasks assigned by this ToR.

Key Deliverables and Timeframe:

Outline/translation of all key Georgian documents, as needed collected, reviewed and provided to the international evaluator – 4 September 2015;
Meetings, interviews and focus group discussions as advised by the International Evaluator arranged – 9 September 2015
Translation provided in the meetings, interviews and focus group discussions, and relevant minutes prepared – 23 September 2015;
Input/clarifications provided to the evaluation report prepared by the international evaluator – 25 September 2015;
Brief narrative report on fulfillment of all the tasks assigned by this ToR submitted – 30 September 2015.

The timeframe for the work of the expert is planned for September-October 2015 for a total of 15 working days

Competencies

Functional Competencies:

Excellent writing, presentation/public speaking skills;
IT literacy.

Core Competencies:

Familiarity with UN and UN Women system;
Sound understanding of cooperating with different government, civil society and other external agencies for supporting RBM application on country or regional levels;
Demonstrate strong oral and written communication skills;
Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

Graduate university degree in English Language and Literature or in social sciences or equivalent working experience.

Experience:

At least 3 years of experience in the field of interpretation;
Proven track record in arranging and participating in focus groups and ability to get different views and help analyze them;
Experience and background in gender issues;
Proven experience of providing interpretation and translation services.

Language:

Fluency in English and Georgian.

Technical evaluation criteria (including minimum qualifications):

Graduate university degree in English Language and Literature or in social sciences or equivalent working experience (Max 30 points);
Proven track record in arranging and participating in focus groups and ability to get different views and help analyze them (Max 70 points);
Experience and background in gender issues (Max 70 points);
Proven experience of providing interpretation and translation services (Max 70 points);
Excellent writing and reporting skills with the ability to prepare minutes and document key findings of the meetings/consultations/interviews (Max 60 points);
Proficiency in English and Georgian (Max 50 points).

Maximum total technical score amounts to 350 points. Only candidates who have passed over the mandatory criteria and have accumulated at least 245 points under the technical evaluation will qualify to the next round of the financial evaluation.

Evaluation of submitted financial offers will be done based on the following formula: S = Fmin / F * 150:

S - score received on financial evaluation;
Fmin - the lowest financial offer out of all the submitted offers qualified over the technical evaluation round;
F - financial offer under the consideration.

Winning candidate

The Winning candidate will be the candidate, who has accumulated the highest aggregated score (technical scoring + financial scoring).

Management Arrangements

The contractor will work under the guidance of the International Evaluator and IAGE project manager and will benefit from technical and operational support of UN Women Georgia office.

Financial arrangements

Payment will be disbursed upon submission and approval of deliverables and certification by the Project Manager that the services have been satisfactorily performed:

Brief narrative report on fulfillment of all the tasks assigned by this ToR – 100%

Application Procedure:

All applications must include (as an attachment) the completed UN Women Personal History Form (P-11) which can be downloaded from http://www.unwomen.org/about-us/employment;
CV;
Proposed technical proposal explaining why candidate considers her/himself the most suitable for the work and providing a brief methodology concept-vision on how she/he will approach and conduct the work;
Financial proposal*– aggregated and with breakdown (total remuneration, travel expenses (per diems, tickets, lodging and terminal expenses- the proposal shall also include cost for professional editing, and layout);
Please group all your documents into one (1) single PDF document as the system only allows to upload maximum one document.

Each applicant will be required to submit an aggregated financial offer (“aggregated financial offer” is the total sum of all financial claims of the candidate for accomplishment of the task).

Only short-listed candidates will be contacted.