Background

UN Women, grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, works for the elimination of discrimination against women and girls; the empowerment of women; and the achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security. Placing women’s rights at the center of all its efforts, UN Women will lead and coordinate United Nations system efforts to ensure that commitments on gender equality and gender mainstreaming translate into action throughout the world. It will provide strong and coherent leadership in support of Member States’ priorities and efforts, building effective partnerships with civil society and other relevant actors.

UN Women Bangladesh is beginning its 2017 to 2020 Strategic Plan and in that context needs to develop a communications strategy and plan and a stakeholder engagement strategy for the office as a whole, and under those overall strategies, action plans for new projects.  At the same time, there are several events of strategic importance to UN Women’s mandate in February and March, including International Women’s Day and the Commission on the Status of Women.  For these events to have the most impact they need to be results-focused, involve strategic partners and include effective communication before and after the events.  UN Women Bangladesh is therefore seeking a Strategic Communications and Stakeholder Engagement Consultant.

The Consultant will work under the guidance the Country Representative and direct supervision of the Programme Specialist and in close collaboration with Country Office programme teams and communications colleagues at the UN Women Regional Office for Asia-Pacific.

Duties and Responsibilities

The consultant will be responsible to:

• Develop a communications strategy for UN Women Bangladesh in alignment with the Bangladesh Country Office Strategic Plan for 2017 to 2020 and UN Women corporate guidelines on communications;
• Develop a plan to implement the communications strategy in 2017, aligned with the 2017 Annual Work Plan; 
• Advise the Country Representative on strategic communications opportunities;
• Draft a stakeholder engagement and partnership strategy for UN Women Bangladesh drawing on good practices and lessons learned in UN Women and elsewhere and aligned with the Strategic Plan 2017-20;
• Identify and develop substantial programmatic content for the UN Women Bangladesh Country website and social media outlets;
• Prepare / update guidance notes, make presentations and coach Country Office staff on capturing content and key campaigns ideas for website and social media outlets, strategically increasing the visibility and profile of the page and handle and engaging influencers such as bloggers and online journalists;
• Provide coordination and technical assistance for high-profile events and campaigns related to the Commission on the Status of Women, International Women’s Day/Week and launch of new programmes, with a focus on strengthening stakeholder engagement and effective communication for advocacy and visibility;
• Support programme / project teams to integrate specific communications actions into their implementation plans;
• Prepare a campaign plan and provide technical assistance for high profile campaign events for ‘Building Capacity to Prevent Violence against Women (BCPVAW)’;
• Provide technical assistance and support on effective stakeholder engagement to the programme team and partner(s) implementing ‘Career, Capital and Confidence: Empowering women workers in the ready-made garment sector’.

Duration of the assignment:

The total duration of the contract assignment will be 44 working days within a period from 22 January 2017 to 31 March, 2017.

Deliverables:

• Communications strategy for UN Women Bangladesh;
• Communications plan for UN Women Bangladesh for 2017;
• Stakeholder Engagement and Partnership Strategy for UN Women Bangladesh;
• Submission of post event or post campaign result reports, at minimum one for CSW, one for IWD/W;
• Submission of campaign plan for BCPVAW;
• Completed five social media packages for UN Women Bangladesh for the months of February, March, April, June and July based on international days and thematic priorities;
• Report outlining stakeholder engagement strategy, implementation to date and next steps for project empowering women RMG workers.

Institutional Arrangements:

The consultant will receive overall guidance from the Country Representative with direct supervision of the Programme Specialist and work closely with the Monitoring and Communications Officer, Gender and Climate Change.Duty station:

Duty Station:

The consultant will be required to be based in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Performance evaluation:

Contractor’s performance will be evaluated based on: timeliness, responsibility, initiative, communication, accuracy, and quality of the products delivered

Competencies

Corporate Competencies:

• Demonstrates integrity by modeling the UN’s values and ethical standards;
• Promotes the vision, mission, and strategic goals of UN Women;
• Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability;
• Treats all people fairly without favoritism;
• Fulfills all obligations to gender sensitivity and zero tolerance for sexual harassment.

Functional Competencies:

• Ability to pragmatically apply in-depth knowledge and experience of issues and practices in the fields of Strategic Communications and Stakeholder;
• Strong communications skills, and experience in presenting evidence and ideas for policy and programme;
• Consistently approaches work with energy and a positive, constructive attitude;
• Demonstrates openness to change and ability to manage complexities.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

• A post-graduate degree (Master’s Degree) or equivalent in communication studies, preferably with some demonstrable results or qualifications in online communications achievements;

Experience

• 05 (Five years) of communications experience, with expert writing skills, the ability to work under pressure with tight deadlines within an international setting;
• Experience developing, implementing and monitoring stakeholder engagement strategies for national or international organizations, preferably involved with gender equality and/or international development;
• Demonstrated ability to build capacity for communications and/or partnership development with colleagues and partners (civil society and government);
• Highly creative with experience in identifying strategic objectives and audiences and devising communications and social media strategies that engage, inform and motivate.

Language

• Excellent command of English

Application Process:

Candidates are requested to send their cover letter, CV’s, P11 and an indication of their daily fees to Bangladesh.registry@unwomen.org .Please use ‘Communications Consultant for UN Women Bangladesh’ as the subject heading of your application.

All applicants must include (as an attachment) the CV, P11and financial proposals. Applications without financial proposal will be treated as incomplete and will not be considered for further assessment.“Personal History Form - P 11” which can be downloaded from http://www.unwomen.org/en/about-us/employme