Background

At approximately 11:56 a.m. local time—or 2:11 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time—on April 25, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck central Nepal at a shallow depth of approximately 15 kilometers (km). This has been followed by a series of aftershocks, including another earthquake measuring 7.3 in magnitude on 12 May, leading to significant loss of life, injuries and damage of buildings and infrastructure. The earthquake resulted in over 8,600 deaths and over 16,000 people injured. The earthquake destroyed over 500,000 houses and left large numbers of people internally displaced. As previous crises have shown, disasters also increase specific risks for women. Women and girls are more likely to become victims of various types of violence and/or discrimination especially in the context of resource limitations. Displacement, over-crowded internally displaced centres, lack of privacy, lack of lighting, limited and unsegregated wash facilities, and other factors often contribute to sexual violence against women.

Since the onset of disaster, the UN Women Nepal Office has been actively engaged in the humanitarian response to the earthquake. The aim of UN Women’s engagement in humanitarian action in Nepal is to ensure an adequate, consistent and sustainable integration of gender equality and women’s empowerment in identifying and addressing the needs and vulnerabilities of the crisis affected population across the humanitarian-development continuum. UN Women is leveraging its triple mandate – normative, coordination and operational – to ensure that gender equality and women’s empowerment are incorporated in humanitarian action and contribute to humanitarian effectiveness through integrating gender equality across the work of all clusters. The strategy responds to the urgent humanitarian and early recovery imperatives in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake in Nepal. It builds on the foundation of UN Women’s pre-existing coordination and programming role in Nepal on women’s leadership and participation, women’s economic empowerment, ending violence against women, governance and national planning.

A Communications Expert is required to strategize, lead and enhance advocacy, messaging and outreach activities of UN Women Country Office’s engagement in response to Nepal earthquake. The Communications Expert will support in developing high quality briefs and proposals for outreach as well as provide entry points for engaging with media outlets. He/She will work in close collaboration with the Communications Officer and the programme and operations teams.

Duties and Responsibilities

Objectives of the Assignment

The overall objective of the assignment is to execute the office’s communications strategy by:

• Increasing UN Women´s visibility through targeting messaging, social media and campaigns;
• Leverage partnerships with media, women’s groups, private sector and other key partners to strengthen visibility and dialogue about women’s issues and UN Women’s work, including the response to Nepal earthquake;
• Support resource mobilization opportunities form a communications perspective;
• Support the development of content (web, photo, video, etc.).

Scope of Work and Specific Tasks

Under the direct supervision of the Country Representative and in close collaboration with the Communications Officer and programme staff, the Communications Expert will be responsible for increasing UN Women visibility by enhancing the information flow about UN Women’s response, while highlighting gender equality and women’s empowerment issues at the centre of relief and recovery programmes. He/She will engage with electronic, social media and print media sources, support national efforts and local campaigns, and support the UN Women Nepal Country Office to strengthen UN Women's media presence.

The Communications Expert will be responsible for:

• Media outreach;
• Development of communications materials, such as stories, briefs, photos and video, including through the supervision of others;
• Social media management (in line with UN women’s social media policy and in coordination with UN Women Regional Office and HQ communications teams);
• Building/maintaining partnerships for communications;
• Capacity development.

Media outreach:

• Work with national and international media promote UN Women's work, as well as on issues facing Nepal’s women and girls in the response and recovery efforts;
• Assist in UN Women advocacy activities, including support to public events, visits of senior UN officials, field visits, workshops, and other UN and UN Women initiatives;
• Monitor international and local media for information about or relevant to UN Women's work in-country.

Development of communications materials:

• Draft press releases, fact sheets and other rapid response materials for use by UN Women HQ, Regional Office, and Country Office;
• Assist the UN Women Representative in preparing written materials, including speeches, talking points, articles, press releases, op-eds, and other;
• Support the documentation of UN Women’s experiences and roles in a humanitarian setting.

Social media:

• Provide UN Women Nepal CO support in ensuring a vibrant and interactive social media community (Facebook, Twitter) and regularly update with stories and images to increase UN Women visibility;
• Provide content, including print and video stories, for UN Women's websites.

Building/maintaining partnerships for communications:

• Participate in the inter-agency Communications Working Groups;
• Cultivate and maintain effective working relationships with government, donors,  civil society organizations and other relevant partners;
• Serve as a UN Women focal point for the Communication to Disaster Affected Community (CDAC)/Communicating with Communities (CWC) network;
• Support the Communications Officer to manage freelance writers and photographers engaged by UN Women.

Capacity development:

• Support the development of the capacity of the national communications officer through mentoring and coaching.

Other Duties:

• Perform other relevant duties as required by the Representative. This may include assistance with resource mobilization tasks from a communications perspective.

Expected Deliverables:

• Development and modification of Communications Plan/Strategy as necessary, and implement for UN Women’s response;
• Develop communication package which includes UN Women humanitarian response and partner programme activities, key messages, etc.;
• Develop key documents such as talking points, press releases, op-eds, briefing notes, mission briefs, etc.;
• Resource mobilization briefs including donor visibility;
• Communication outreach through electronic, print media and other sources;
• Update existing media database;
• Copy editing of web content as needed;
• Liaising with UN agencies, OCHA information team and  CDAC/CWC partners on on-going activities;
• Track mentions of specific UN Women activities in the media as needed;
• Any other tasks as required by the Country Representative.

Duration of assignment and duty station:

• The time required for the consultancy is six months. The main duty station for the assignment is Kathmandu, Nepal. Travel within the country is required. These include earthquake-affected districts where UN Women is working.

Contract Supervision:

• The Communications Expert will prepare a workplan for the assignment and report to UN Women Nepal Country Representative. 

Competencies

Core Values and Guiding Principles:

Integrity:

• Demonstrating consistency in upholding and promoting the values of UN Women in actions and decisions, in line with the UN Code of Conduct.

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.

Core Competencies:

Ethics and Values:

• Promoting Ethics and Integrity / Creating Organizational Precedents.

Organizational Awareness:

• Building support and political acumen;
• Developing and Empowering People / Coaching and Mentoring;
• Building staff competence, creating an environment of creativity and innovation.

Working in Teams:

• Building and promoting effective teams.

Communicating Information and Ideas:

• Creating and promoting enabling environment for open communication.

Self-management and Emotional intelligence:

• Creating an emotionally intelligent organization;
• Conflict Management / Negotiating and Resolving Disagreements.

Leveraging conflict in the interests of the organization & setting standards.

Knowledge Sharing / Continuous Learning:

• Sharing knowledge across the organization and building a culture of knowledge sharing and learning.

Appropriate and Transparent Decision Making:

•  Fair and transparent decision making; calculated risk-taking.

Functional Competencies:

• Substantive experience from communications, media;
• Familiarity  with the South Asia Region, and media campaigns in particularly;
• Proven ability to write briefs, concept notes and work on branding;
• Ability to multi task, work on many concepts at once, and work in a team.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

• Master’s Degree in Communications, Print/Broadcast Journalism or other related fields.

Experience:

• A minimum of 5 years of experience in communications, including on women’s rights issues and at the field level. Experience of communications in a humanitarian setting highly desirable;
• Demonstrated understanding of women’s rights issues;
• Experience in writing strategies, briefs, concept notes, press releases, op-eds, etc.;
• Experience of working with various media, including print, television, radio and online;
• Demonstrated editing and copy editing skills.

Language:

• Excellent written and spoken English skills.

Documents to be included when submitting the proposals

Interested individual consultants must submit the following documents:

• Expression of interest;
• Detailed financial proposal (which includes consultancy fees, travel, accommodation, subsistence etc.);
• UN P11 form (blank form can be downloaded from: http://www.unwomen.org/about-us/employment/).

Please scan all above mentioned documents and upload as one attachment only online through this website.

Evaluation Process:

The candidates will be evaluated according to minimum qualification, technical, interview and financial evaluation.

Technical evaluation criteria (including minimum qualifications):

• Criteria: A minimum of 5 years of experience in communications, including on women’s rights issues and at the field level. Experience of communications in a humanitarian setting (30%);
• Criteria: Demonstrated understanding of and familiarity with women’s rights issues (20%);
• Criteria: Experience in writing strategies, briefs, concept notes, press releases, op-eds, etc. (20%);
• Criteria: Experience of working with various media, including print, television, radio and online (10%);
• Criteria: Excellent written and spoken English skills (20%).

Maximum total technical score amounts to 100 points. Only candidates who have passed over the mandatory criteria and have accumulated at least 70 points under the technical evaluation will be considered for an interview. Top 3 candidates (with highest number of points in the technical evaluation) will be interviewed.

The maximum number of points assigned to the financial proposal will be allocated to the lowest price proposal among those candidates who have reached at least 5 points in the interview. All other price proposals receive points in inverse proportion.

Criteria

Technical Evaluation – documents based (70%).
Technical evaluation – interview based (10%).
Financial Evaluation (20%); Evaluation of submitted financial offers will be done based on the following formula: S = Fmin / F * 20
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.

Please note that travel costs should be covered by the consultant.

Qualified women and members of minorities are encouraged to apply. UN Women applies fair and transparent selection process that would take into account the competencies/skills of the applicants as well as their financial proposals.

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.