UNV Jobs - 71266- 0078963: Consultant for Trust Fund Applications

0078963: Consultant for Trust Fund Applications

Advertised on behalf of

UNV

Location :

Home-based, with missions to Panama

Type of Contract :

Individual Contract

Starting Date :

10-Apr-2017

Application Deadline :

03-Apr-17 (Midnight New York, USA)

Post Level :

International Consultant

Duration of Initial Contract :

April to July 2017

Languages Required :

English Spanish

Expected Duration of Assignment :

3 months

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

The UNV programme

The United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme has been in existence since 1971 and contributes to peace and development through volunteerism worldwide. UNV works with UN agencies and other partners to integrate qualified, highly motivated and well supported UN Volunteers into development programming and promote the value and global recognition of volunteerism. UNV is active in around 130 countries every year with field presences in over 80 countries. UNV is administered by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and reports to the UNDP Executive Board.

Since its establishment more than 40 years ago, UNV has evolved greatly with increasing recognition of the role of volunteerism to contribute to peace and development. The organization has expanded from an initial mandate focused on individual volunteer service to providing support for the achievement of results and outcomes through all forms of volunteerism. UNV pursues global recognition of volunteers for peace and development, encourages the integration of volunteerism into development programmes, and promotes the mobilization of increasing numbers of volunteers with greater diversity who contribute to peace and development. UNV helps countries to foster and develop volunteerism as a force for sustainable development. This is achieved in part by providing strategic advice on the role and contribution of volunteerism and options for civic engagement in development programmes. Additionally, UNV helps countries to improve public inclusion and participation in social, economic and political development, and support the growth of volunteerism within communities as a form of mutual self-help.
UNV partners with governments and UN agencies as well as non-profit and private sector organizations in order to support development programmes. UNV delivers a prompt, efficient and value-added service to identify and engage professionals who can deliver services and fulfill a wide range of specialised tasks. This results in the direct mobilization of approximately 7,000 national and international UN Volunteers every year, with 80 percent coming from the global south, and more than 30 % volunteering within their own countries. These volunteers are assigned within UN programmes, projects and initiatives at country level.

The contribution of volunteers and volunteerism to development and peace building has been specifically identified in relation to the contributions volunteerism has made to the MDGs and can make towards achieving Agenda 2030. The important role of volunteerism was supported by UN General Assembly resolution 67/138 adopted in December 2012. This resolution acknowledged the contribution of UNV as well as volunteerism in general and resulted in the development of the Secretary General report “Integrating Volunteering in the Next Decade: The 10 Year Plan of Action 2016-2025” .

The UNV Strategic Framework 2014-2017 advocates for the effective enhancement of the capacity of UNV Field Units based at the country level with high quality programme advisory support through regional offices. The Strategic Framework directs UNV technical expertise and global programme resources in the five priority areas: a) Access to Basic Services, b) Community resilience for environment and disaster risk reduction, c) Peacebuilding, d) Youth and e) National capacity building through volunteer schemes. Under this context, the main objectives of UNV regional offices are to promote the development of regional and national projects and programmes, strength partnerships with regional and national actors, identify opportunities of resource mobilization, and provide the FUs with technical support in terms of programming and volunteer mobilization.

UNDP’s regional intiative - Advancing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Sustainable Solutions for the Amazon
The Amazon basin is an area of immense socio-environmental diversity of global importance, in a process of rapid change. It covers an area of 7.8 million km2, shared by eight countries: Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela plus French Guyana. The Amazon is home to around half of the planet's biodiversity, is a major provider of ecosystem goods and services, making it critical for climate and ecosystem functioning at the local, regional and global levels. The region has a population of about 33 million people, including 385 groups of indigenous peoples. Human development levels are generally lower than national averages, and even more pronounced in rural areas. The Agenda 2030 represents a vital opportunity for the Amazon to combine environmental stewardship with socioeconomic development.
Currently, climate change and human intervention is leading the Amazon to a critical moment, as there are high rates of deforestation and pollution in the region. The main causes of deforestation are major infrastructure projects, livestock and agricultural expansion, and unsustainable extraction of natural resources such as mining, oil exploitation and illegal logging. All these factors combined with high levels of poverty, generate a continuous pressure on the natural resources of the region. At the same time, there is a growing commitment by governments and civil society of Amazonian countries to develop more sustainable patterns of development. There is progress in terms of reducing deforestation rates, creating systems of Protected Areas, advances in land tenure for indigenous peoples and substantive improvements in human development indicators in many of the Amazon´s sub regions.
In this context, and responding to the limited regional level information on the Amazon, UNDP, in 2015, supported by its country offices, and in consultation with national authorities, conducted national level studies on the situation of the Amazon region in eight of the respective countries: Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela. Based on the results of the consolidation process, a regional project proposal was developed in order to identify opportuntities for resource mobilization and to define an intervention to promote and build solutions to the sustainable development challenges in the Amazon under the 2030 Agenda.
The objective of the project proposal “Advancing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Sustainable Solutions for the Amazon” is to catalyze in a participatory manner, the dissemination of knowledge and mobilize actors to foster sustainable solutions for the Amazon, respecting the rights and vision of the indigenous and traditional people of the region. The uniqueness of this project is that it addresses the whole Amazon Basin; while there are many national and local initiatives there are no regional projects addressing the challenges of the Basin as a whole. This initiative will accomplish this by enhancing SDSN-Amazon’s efforts to map and disseminate scientific knowledge and practical solutions, engaging different actors and fostering dialogue with decision makers.
UNV’s contribution and opportunity for submission of a joint proposal to the IKI

Within the frame of an opportunity of collaboration with the UNDP Regional Centre for LAC, the UNV Panama Regional Office is currently elaborating a programmatic component based on volunteerism which will be aimed to add value and contribute this UNDP regional initiative. This collaboration originates from the potential contribution and outreach of UNV and volunteerism to support and complement UNDP’s existing and ongoing projects at the national and regional levels in the Amazon region (i.e. GEF, SGP, REDD+, among others) by incorporating components directed towards increasing community resilience, promoting sustainable solutions and systemizing experiences at the local level, particularly from indigenous peoples and local communities. Since 2015, UNV has held meetings with the Sustainable Development Cluster of the UNDP Regional Center for LAC in order to define the lines of intervention of its contribution.
Since 2016, the UNV Headquarters in Bonn has promoted the development of a corporate proposal to be submitted to the International Climate Initiative (IKI) which was advised to incorporate the topics of youth, volunteerism, the private sector, climate change and biodiversity in the Latin America and Caribbean region. UNV has been in contact with this funding mechanism administered by the German Government. UNDP and UNV agreed to submit a joint proposal to the IKI, considering the regional initiative “Advancing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Sustainable Solutions for the Amazon” as the main framework. Hence, the UNV programme reoriented its efforts to develop a programmatic component which will complement and add value to this UNDP regional proposal to the ultimate end of preparing a single joint project document. The UNV Headquarters has planned to hire an international consultant to adapt the joint proposal of UNDP and UNV to the formats of the IKI call.
As volunteerism represents an instrument that propels citizen participation, people’s empowerment, social cohesion and community engagement, the UNV programmatic component will seek to add value to the UNDP regional initiative by proposing national components that facilitate and leverage the increase of community resilience, the capitalization and promotion of sustainable practices, the support of local/traditional knowledge, the articulation of initiatives between the institutional and community level, the raising of awareness, and the strengthening of academic, research and volunteer platforms. These lines of intervention aim to contribute to the conservation of the Amazon region and the participation of people in their own development process under the 2030 Agenda, with special focus on local communities and indigenous peoples.

Duties and Responsibilities

OBJECTIVE
The objective of this assignment is to develop a full project proposal for the International Climate Initiative (IKI) with all supporting annexes and documents required according to IKI’s selection procedure and criteria. In addition, the consultancy will lead to the development of a generic project proposal addressed to identify other opportunities of resource mobilization.

SCOPE OF THE WORK
Under the supervision of the UNV Panama Regional Office and in coordination with the UNV Bonn Headquarters and the UNDP Panama Regional Centre for LAC, the consultant will perform the following tasks:

Elaborate a work plan, methodology and strategy which will be used during the development of the consultancy. These documents will be validated by UNV and UNDP;
Review and provide technical support for ensuring the quality and consistency of UNV’s programmatic component and other documents based on volunteerism (i.e. concept notes, papers) which will be mainstreamed in the UNDP regional initiative and the IKI full proposal;
Conduct research of primary and secondary sources of information and when necessary consult institutional counterparts, UNV and UNDP’s staff (i.e. regional and country offices), consultants and national experts.
Organize and undertake meetings and working sessions concerning the development of the present consultancy with UNV and UNDP’s staff in Panama. If any other specific field mission is required, this will be informed, evaluated and financed separately to the consultancy;
Produce baseline, analysis situations or any other relevant information (i.e. outcomes, outputs, activities, budget, work plans, risk analysis, among others) in order to reinforce and leverage UNV’s programmatic component, UNDP’ regional initiative and the IKI full project proposal;
Identify and review the work of GEF, GCF and other environment projects currently implemented in the Amazon region by other agencies and institutions for the identification of common actions and synergies that contribute to the scope of the project proposal;
Provide advice and technical support in IKI’s logic, proposal organization, procedures, support areas, cross-cutting themes and funding;
Ensure that the IKI project proposal is aligned with the UNV Strategic Framework 2014-2017, the Community Resilience global programme and UNDP’s global, regional and national strategies. The IKI full proposal must address the spirit of the collaboration between UNV and UNDP;
Draft the first version of the IKI project proposal following UNDP and UNV’s guidance based on the UNDP project document “Advancing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Sustainable Solutions for the Amazon” and the UNV programmatic component and relevant inputs;
Prepare the final version of the IKI project proposal with all supporting documents and annexes, also including all the comments, findings and feedback provided by UNDP, UNV, institutional counterparts and all the actors involved;
Present the final version of the project proposal for submission to the IKI in a meeting with UNDP and UNV’s staff, and other relevant counterparts. Carry out final revisions of the documentation of the project proposal;
Elaborate a UNDP/UNV generic project proposal for resource mobilization. This document will include and adapt the logic, spirit and content of the IKI proposal using a generic template and structure;
Prepare a final report of the consultancy. This document will address the main outputs, findings, contact lists of key actors, lessons learnt, recommendations and conclusions obtained during the collaboration. All the deliverables will be included in the annexes.

EXPECTED RESULTS AND KEY DELIVERABLES
Deliverables

Work plan, methodology and strategy prepared and validated for development the international funding proposal. Timeline; within 10 days.
First draft of the IKI joint proposal completed and validated, accompanied by annexes and documents based on IKI’s requirements and criteria. Time line, by Week 4.
Final IKI joint proposal completed and validated, accompanied by annexes and documents based on IKI’s requirements and criteria. Timeline, by Week 8.
Full UNDP/UNV generic proposal for resource mobilization completed and validated. Timeline by week 8.
Final report of the consultancy delivered. Timeline by Week 12.

COORDINATION AND SUPERVISION

The coordination and supervision of the work of the selected consultant will be under the UNV Panama Regional Office direct responsibility. The delivered products must have direct technical support of the UNDP Panama Regional Centre and the UNV Headquarters in Bonn.
The consultant will keep permanent coordination with the supervision for effective implementation and development of ordered deliverables from this consultancy. In addition, the consultant will provide information as requested under the present terms of reference.
The administrative and operational aspects of this consultancy will be supervised by the UNV Panama Regional Office and the UNV Headquarters in collaboration with the UNDP Panama Regional Centre.
For the proper development of the consultancy, the supervision will provide to the consultant the relevant inputs required and all available information as well as the contacts of the key partners and counterparts involved. It is the responsibility of the consultant to obtain primary and secondary information from other sources, if relevant.

PLANNED WORKPLACES AND TRAVEL

The expert will conduct this consultancy under a home-based modality. However, At least two missions to Panama must be held in order to prepare a group of meetings and work sessions towards the development of the present consultancy. The missions and its agendas must be coordinated with UNV/UNDP and the duration of each visits should be 3 working days. The costs related to these activities must be included in the financial offer;
UNV/UNDP could determine the conduction of other field missions in specific countries according to the context, development and demand of the present consultancy. The expenses related to these field missions will be covered by UNV/UNDP.

Competencies

Knowledge of the Amazonian region reality and of key actors at national and regional levels.
Experience and demonstrated understanding of volunteerism in a development context.
Strong analytical, writing and communication skills.
Strong record in fundraising for international organizations.
Excellent ability to engage and communicate with a variety of stakeholders.
Experience in working and coordinating with UN agencies at the regional and national levels is considered an asset.
Solid knowledge of information technologies, in particular the Microsoft Office suite (particularly Word and Excel).
Demonstrated expertise in convening stakeholder consultation and participatory approaches to project development with excellent interpersonal and facilitation skills.
Capable of working with sharp and frequent deadlines, managing many tasks simultaneously.
Able to work independently and remotely with minimal supervision.
Exercise the highest level of responsibility and can handle confidential and politically sensitive issues in a responsible and mature manner.
Capacity to submit high quality deliverables under time constraints.

Language requirement:
Fluency in professional written and spoken English. Spanish is a relevant asset.

Required Skills and Experience

The present assignment requires extensive expertise in the area of fundraising for international organizations, especially for IKI. Specific experience in environmental matters is incredibly valuable. The following is a list of the required qualification, experience and competencies:
Qualifications:

Minimum of an advanced university degree (Master´s degree equivalent or above) in sustainable development, poverty reduction, natural resources, environmental management, economics, international development studies or related fields.

Experience:
At least 8 years of working experience in the sustainable development field, preferably in the thematic areas of mitigation and adaptation to climate change; conservation, restoration and sustainable use of natural carbon sinks, or biodiversity conservation.

Proven knowledge and experience with the International Climate Initiative (IKI) and other environment/climate trust funds, in particular developing and submission of project proposals.

EVALUATION CRITERA

The selection of the best offer will be based on the combined scoring method. The technical and professional qualifications and methodology will be weighted as 70% and will be combined with the price offer which will be weighted as 30% to calculate the total score.
Technical:

Evidenced experience in the sustainable development field, preferably in the thematic areas of mitigation and adaptation to climate change; conservation, restoration and sustainable use of natural carbon sinks, or biodiversity conservation (20%)
Proven knowledge and experience with the International Climate Initiative (IKI) and other environment/climate trust funds, in particular developing and submission of project proposals (30%).
Demonstrated track record in trust fund applications (20%).

Financial:

Financial proposal (30%).

OBLIGATIONS
The selected consultant has the obligation to:
1. To be granted with the security permissions to travel to the countries where their services are required, before any trip. These permits can be obtained through www.undss.org.

2. To have a signed contract by UNV/UNDP before starting the consultancy and before undertaking any trip. If the professional makes any tour and starts work without having signed the contract, the work will be at the risk of the professional. The contract template including the Terms and Conditions can be viewed at the following link:

3. All deliverables produced and information gathered by the expert are the property of UNV/UNDP. For the use of all or part of the documents for another consultancy, the expert must obtained a written permission from UNV/UNDP.

APPLICATION PROCEDURE
Applicants must provide a technical and financial proposal.

Qualified candidates must apply online via the UNDP Job shop. Interested candidates are advised to carefully review this TOR and ensure that they meet the requirements and qualifications described above. A sample contract can be viewed at the link below:

https://www.unv.org/sites/default/files/Sample%20IC%20Contract-UNV.pdf

Applications should contain:

A brief cover letter, indicating your motivation for applying and a short summary of relevant qualifications and past experiences related to complex, strategic evaluations.
A technical proposal; The technical proposal shall briefly describe potential methodologies and approaches to fulfill the required deliverables as well as outline the major components of its implementation (maximum 5 pages).
A financial proposal. The financial proposal must indicate the daily fee which should be all inclusive. “All inclusive” implies that the proposal consists of consultancy fee, costs of living, costs for insurance, and cost of travel to and from the identified field visits. Please use the information included in the Section 2/Deliverables to estimate fee including working days and expected travel. It should also be understood that the travel included in this TOR is an estimate. Final travel details will be determined during the development of the inception report. Any changes to travel requirements will result in an adjustment to the travel portion of the Terms of Reference and individual contract. Candidates must complete the Confimation of Interest (COI) form, which includes the part for the financial proposal: https://www.unv.org/sites/default/files/COI%20and%20Submission%20of%20Financial%20Proposal.docx. The completed and signed COI form must be sent seperatley to email; procurement@unv.org, with '0078963-Financial Proposal-Consultant for Trust Fund Applications-Your surname' in the subject line.
A current completed and signed P11 form/ UN Personal History Form in English. Blank form can be downloaded from www.sas.undp.org/documents/p11_personal_history_form.doc.
Please also include your current CV.
Contact details for 3 references including e-mail, company name and title and telephone number.

Incomplete applications will not be considered. Please make sure you provide all requested materials. Any queries should be sent in a separate e-mail and addressed to: procurement@unv.org clearly marking '0078963-Consultant for Trust Fund Applications' in the subject line.

Interested candidates are advised to carefully review this TOR and ensure that they meet the requirements and qualifications described above before applying. The successful candidate will be expected to submit a certificate of good health and immunization by their medical Dr. candidates 62 and over will be expected to go through a full medical (non reminbursable).

UNV looks forward to receiving your application