Background

The ACP-EU Development Minerals Programme is a three-year, €13.1 million capacity building program that aims to build the profile, and improve the management, of Neglected Development Minerals (industrial minerals; construction materials; dimension stones; and semi-precious stones). The program is an initiative of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group of States, financed by the European Union and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and implemented by UNDP.

The mining of Neglected Development Minerals has important implications for sustainable development, however, they have to date received inadequate attention for their potential to impact livelihoods; and few development programmes have provided support for this mining sub-sector. Often referred to as Low Value Minerals and Materials (LVMM) due to their low price as a function of their weight, and their relatively low value to international commodity markets, Neglected Development Minerals provide crucial inputs for domestic economic development (infrastructure, manufacturing, construction and agriculture to name a few) and have the potential to be high value in terms of national development. In comparison to the metals sector, Neglected Development Minerals have closer links with the local economy, and have the potential to generate more local jobs, with a greater impact on poverty reduction. This is partly because the sector is dominated by small and medium scale domestic businesses. However, the income generation potential of the sector often remains unrealized or under-realized. This is in part due to the uncertain legal and regulatory framework in which the sector operates and the lack of publicly available and easily accessible geological data, which exacerbates wasteful exploration and discourages investment in the sector. Furthermore, there can be significant social and environmental impacts associated with the mining of Neglected Development Minerals, with consequences on health and safety of workers in this sector and surrounding communities.

The ACP-EU Development Minerals programme will be implemented at the regional level (with participants from forty countries) and at the country level (focus countries include: Cameroon, Central Africa; Guinea – Conakry, West Africa; Uganda, East Africa; Zambia, Southern Africa; Jamaica, Caribbean; and Fiji, Pacific). At the regional level, the programme will conduct training activities. At the country level, it will include both training and other activities, such as small grants and partnerships to produce maps and databases on low-value minerals, development of regulations on environment and safety, organizing community engagement, addressing grievances, organizations of technology fairs and networking events, organization of public-private dialogues etc. The thematic areas of the programme activities are: 1) mine and quarry management; 2) environment, health and safety; 3) entrepreneurship skills; 4) market analysis and investment promotion; 5) geo-data and maps design; 6) community relations and addressing grievances. The project uses UNDP’s capacity development approach. The key stakeholders will include public stakeholders such as regulatory agencies and local governments; private stakeholders such as small-scale mining enterprises and associations, business development centers; and social stakeholders such as civil society organizations and community groups.

Duties and Responsibilities

The trainer will be selected to co-facilitate a 4-day regional training workshop on environment, community and health and safety with a representative of the ACP-EU Development Minerals Programme.

Objectives

The mining of Neglected Development Minerals can have significant social and environmental impacts with consequences for the health and safety of workers and surrounding communities. In order to improve the capacity of key stakeholders in the LVMM sector, the programme is regional training workshop on environment, community and health and safety in Accra, Ghana (15-18 March, 2016). The workshop will be attended by around forty participants from Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Togo, Senegal and Sierra Leone.

The workshop has the following objectives:

• Increase the awareness of environment, community, and health and safety issues and challenges;
• Facilitate south-south knowledge exchange on the practices and governance arrangements necessary for the sector to contribute to inclusive and sustainable development;
• Build the capacity of individual stakeholders through participation in the training workshop and the preparation of return-to-work plans.

Key Functions

Under the supervision of the UNDP Programme Technical Specialist the Training Consultant will:

• Prepare a draft outline of the training agenda;
• Adapt the existing training curricula (including presentations, activities and case studies) to the West African context;
• Deliver training in close collaboration with the program team;
• Assist the training workshop participants to formulate a return-to-work plan;
• Evaluate the effectiveness of the training and make recommendations for improvement;
• Prepare a workshop report capturing the key discussions and outcomes of the training including recommendations for further improvements based on evelaution results. 

Please note the logistics of the event itself will be organised by the UNDP programme team.

Participatory, adult learning methodologies will be used, including a mixture of technical presentations, participant knowledge sharing, case studies, a field visit, group discussion, role-plays, and guest speakers. Training participants will be selected by the UNDP programme team following a request for applicant (RFA) process. The training participants will reflect public, private sector and civil society stakeholders from West Africa. Future workshops will be held in other geographic regions of the ACP. The training consultant will analyse the RFAs to determine the pre-training needs of the participants and design the training curricula to respond to these needs.

Deliverables

Training agenda:

• Agenda and rationale on how the syllabus contributes to the objectives of the programme and the training workshop.

Adapted training materials:

• The existing training materials will include a mixture of technical presentations, case studies, reference materials and hand-outs and will be adapted to the West African context.

Training workshop delivery:

• The training workshop will be successfully delivered by the training consultant in collaboration with the UNDP Programme Technical Specialist.

Final report:

• The final report will capture the key discussions and outcomes of the training, as well as provide an evaluation of the training effectiveness and recommendations for improvement. The final report will provide a summary of the return-to-work plans initiated by the training participants.

Expected Outputs:

• Draft training workshop agenda;
• Draft adapted training content and materials (including presentations, activities and case studies) for review by the programme team and other experts;
• Final training workshop agenda;
• Final adapted training content and materials;
• Final report.

The timeline for delivering the above outputs will de discussed and documented in contractual documents.

Intellectual Property

All information pertaining to this project as well as outputs produced under this contract shall remain the property of the UNDP who shall have exclusive rights over their use. Except for purposes of this assignment, the products shall not be disclosed to the public nor used in whatever format without written permission of UNDP in line with the national and International Copyright Laws applicable.

Competencies

Corporate Competencies:

• Commitment to UNDP’s mission, vision and values;
• Sensitivity to cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age differences;
• Demonstrates integrity by modeling the UN’s values and ethical standards;
• Promotes the vision, mission, and strategic goals of UNDP;
• Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability;
• Treats all people fairly without favoritism.

Functional Competencies:

• Advanced skills in Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint;
• Ability to coordinate and manage complex projects;
• Produce high quality analytical outputs and in a timely manner;
• Strong organizational skills;
• Ability to work independently, flexibly and under pressure utilizing initiative;
• Sound judgment, strategic thinking and the ability to manage competing priorities;
• Flexibility in responding to changing priorities in a fast-paced environment;
• Strong analytical, teaching, research and writing skills and demonstrated ability to think strategically;
• Strong inter-personal, communications, negotiation and liaison skills;
• Excellent written and spoken communication skills in English. Working knowledge of French an advantage.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

• A Master’s degree or higher in geology, environmental science, occupational health & safety, development studies or relevant disciplines.

Experience:

• Minimum of 8 years of relevant professional experience in capacity building related to mining and sustainable development with a strong background in small-scale mining;
• Experience developing and delivering training curricula in a development context;
• Experience working on environment, community, health and safety issues as they apply to small scale mining (including the gender dimensions);
• Demonstrated experience of one or more of the following commodity subsectors an advantage:  construction materials; dimension stones; industrial minerals and semi-precious stones;
• Familiarity with international standards as well as industry best practice on mining governance, health & safety, environment and community considered an asset.

Language:

• Fluency in English required;
• Working knowledge of French an advantage.

Application Submission Process:

The application submission is a two-step process. Failing to comply with the submission process may result in disqualifying the applications:

Step 1: Interested individual consultants must include the following documents when submitting the applications in UNDP job shop (Please note that only 1 (one) file can be uploaded therefore please include all docs in one file):

• Personal History Form (P11), indicating all past experience from similar projects, as well as the contact details (email and telephone number) of the Candidate and at least three (3) professional references (the template can be downloaded from this link: http://sas.undp.org/Documents/P11_Personal_history_form.doc.
• A sample of previous training materials prepared by the candidate related to the thematic areas of the assignment.

Step 2: Submission of Financial Proposal

Applicants are instructed to submit their financial proposals in US Dollars for this consultancy to procurement.be@undp.org  using the financial proposal template available here: http://procurement-notices.undp.org/view_file.cfm?doc_id=45780. The proposals should be sent via email with the following subject heading: “Financial Proposal for Training Consultant, Accra Ghana latest by January 31st, 2016. Proposals to be received after the deadline will be rejected. In order to assist the requesting unit in the comparison of financial proposals, the financial proposal should be all-inclusive and include a breakdown. The term ‘all-inclusive” implies that all costs (professional fees, travel related expenses, communications, utilities, consumables, insurance, etc.) that could possibly be incurred by the Contractor are already factored into the financial proposal. 

Application Evaluation Process

Individual consultants will be evaluated based on the cumulative analysis methodology (weighted scoring method), where 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 technical and financial criteria specific to the solicitation;
• Technical Criteria weight: [70%];
• Financial Criteria weight:  [30%].

Only Individual Consultants obtaining a minimum of 70% on the Technical evaluation would be considered for the Financial Evaluation.

Technical Criteria - 70% of total evaluation – max. 100 points:

• Candidate holds a Master’s degree or higher in geology, environment, occupational health & safety, development studies or relevant disciplines -  5 points;
• Candidate has a minimum of 8 years of relevant professional experience in capacity building related to mining and sustainable development with a strong background in small scale mining – 20 points;
• Candidate has experience developing and delivering training curricula in a development context – 20 points;
• Candidate has experience working on environment, community, health and safety issues as they apply to small scale mining (including the gender dimensions) – 10 points;
• Candidate has demonstrated experience of one or more of the following commodity subsectors:  construction materials; dimension stones; industrial minerals and semi-precious stones – 10 points;
• Candidate has familiarity with international standards as well as industry best practice on mining  governance, health & safety, environment and community – 5 points;
• Interview inclusive of written sample of previous training materials developed by the candidate – 20 points;
• English and French language proficiency – 10 points.

Financial Criteria - 30% of total evaluation

The following formula will be used to evaluate financial proposal:

• 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.

UNDP is applying fair and transparent selection process that would take into account both the technical qualification of Individual Consultants as well as their price proposals. The contract will be awarded to the candidate obtaining the highest combined technical and financial scores. Please go the following link for the General Conditions of Individual Contracts: http://www.undp.org/content/dam/undp/documents/procurement/documents/IC%20-%20General%20Conditions.pdf    

UNDP retains the right to contact references directly.

Payments will be made only upon confirmation of UNDP on delivering on the contract obligations in a satisfactory manner.

Individual Consultants are responsible for ensuring they have vaccinations/inoculations when travelling to certain countries, as designated by the UN Medical Director. Consultants are also required to comply with the UN security directives set forth under dss.un.org

Due to large number of applications we receive, we are able to inform only the successful candidates about the outcome or status of the selection process.