SWAPNO is a public-works and social transfer-based poverty graduation project that targets ultra-poor rural women who are widowed, divorced, abandoned or left with a disabled husband. The project does not only aim at lifting poor women out of poverty during the project period; it also helps them sustain with a higher income level after the end of project support. To achieve this goal, the focus is on future employability. The idea is that the set of skills learnt from training will help women invest their savings for productive purposes, which would yield a stream of income in years to come. In addition to self-employment, SWAPNO also helps place women in jobs in local Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and private sector companies in the formal and informal sectors. While SWAPNO has demonstrated success, lessons show that women risk falling back into poverty as they are malnutrition, vulnerable to climate and disaster risks, and can risk facing gender-based violence by participating in a project that can be perceived to be challenging social norms. At the same time, the project has successfully piloted public-private partnerships that improve the women’s skills and help place them in formal sector jobs; it also ran successful microplots that used mobile money for promoting financial inclusion and improving efficiency in the government-to-person (G2P) platform. The findings on mobile money will inform national policy on scaling up digital payments through G2P across Bangladesh. By integrating these lessons, this proposal outlines SWAPNO’s strategy to support women’s access to decent employment, ensure discrimination-free environment in public workplaces, develop adaptive livelihoods and access to financial services for sustainable graduation from extreme poverty, and develop local government capacity to implement pro-poor projects. SWAPNO will achieve the following results: - Outcome 1: Increased income and assets by expanding options
- Outcome 2: Enhanced human capabilities for exercising choices
- Outcome 3: Strengthened resilience to shocks including disasters and climate change
- Outcome 4: Enhanced financial inclusion for equitable opportunities
- Outcome 5: Improved policies and mechanisms for sustaining SWAPNO’s benefits
The Social and Gender Development Specialist will bear the responsibility of life-skills development and women empowerment component. S/he will ensure that the graduation strategy for core beneficiary women is implementable considering local gender conditions and engage in advocacy to remove obstacles and create a more congenial environment. Apart from Life-skills development interventions, s/he will advise on specific training needs of women UP representatives and devise training interventions accordingly. S/he will also support partnership development initiatives of the project and formal sector employment specialist with the corporate sector for employment and resource mobilization Social and Gender Development Specialist will also closely work with the UP-standing committee, local administration and District Legal Aid Committees to ensure safe job environment and access to legal support OBJECTIVES OF THE ASSIGNMENT The Consultant is to lead and implement the activities under Gender and Social Development component of SWAPNO project. The main objective is to create awareness on gender equality, equity and social development in project area to strengthening the women empowerment and prevention and precaution of Gender-based Violence. The specific objectives are: - To enhance the capacity of SWAPNO beneficiaries and its communities to address Physical Sexual Harassment Abuse (PSHA) and Violence Against Women (VAW)
- To facilitate ensuring decent workplace environment and awareness creation on workplace safety and Gender Base Violence (GBV) in formal sector.
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