Background
Cambodia is a vibrantly young and growing nation where two-thirds of the country’s population aged under 30 years. Youth constitute about 43% of the total working age population. Moreover, the country is undergoing a rapid demographic transition, with birth rates falling, and the proportion of elderly dependents remaining relatively low. This demographic dividend can be used to further boost economic growth and bring about positive social transformation in Cambodia. Yet the country’s ability to realize these benefits in the future is dependent on youth’s access to decent and higher value jobs, their capacity to start and sustain their own enterprises, and their ability to adapt to rapid technological change driven by the arrival of the fourth industrial revolution.
As a part of solution to address above critical issues, UNDP formulated the Promoting Decent Youth Employment Project with three key objectives:
Contribute to the improvement of sectoral and national policies related to youth skills development and employment through policy-oriented researches and advocacy which includes an analysis of the threats and opportunities presented by Industry 4.0 for youth employment and a co-design of appropriate policy responses following the analysis;
Increase human capital for decent and better employment to support Cambodia’s Industry 4.0 transition through enabling young working age Cambodians to participate in the dynamics of rising income from higher value-added manufacturing and services.
Increase young entrepreneurs’ capability by equipping them with entrepreneurial skills that will allow them to start-up businesses in both rural and urban areas that are responsive to changing industry needs and coordinate efforts and leverage resources from key stakeholders including government, development partners and private sector to promote social impact investment by young entrepreneurs.
Promoting entreprenship development has been identified by the Royal Government of Cambodia and development partners as one of the key policies for economic diversifications and sustaining the country’s economic growth. Enterprenership and start-ups ecosystem have recently been studied relatively extensive and a number of training programs and support inititaitives by organizations and intitutions have emerged in th last 3 years, noticeably in tech-startups. These include the implementation of community based enterprise development programs, university-based entreprenership training courses, incubation programs, acceleration programms, networking and pitching events, and business idea completitions. Despite these interventions, the support programs, training methods, modules, and avaialbe materials are relatively fragmented and less accessible with limited focus on youth and technologies. To contribute to addressing this specific issue as well as achiving the third objective of the project which is promoting enterprenership development among young Cambodians, a training package or modalities on entrepreneuship skills, build on existing training package/toolkit, will be refined and developed to accommodate the need of young people inspired to start and sustain their strat-ups in context of emerging digtal economy.
Comprehensive understanding of the existing training packages is necessary for redesigning and advacing the new training package that is holistic and tailored to the needs of young enterpreneurs. Therefore, a quick and reliable assessment on the subjects is required.
Duties and Responsibilities
The seleced consultant will 1) assess the relevance and gaps of exiting entrepreneuship training packages, modules and programs in preparing the young entrepreneurs to adapt and growth in the context of emerging digital economy, and 2) identify effective approaches for designing of entrepreneuship training package and programs that are responsives to needs of youth (aspired) entrepreneurs in the context of industry 4.0.
Interested offeror must read the Individual Consultant (IC) Procurement Notice, which can be viewed at http://procurement-notices.undp.org/view_notice.cfm?notice_id=59792 for more detail information about term of references, instructions to offeror, and to download the documents to be submitted in the offer through online.
Competencies
Functional Competencies:
Strong research and networking capability with the private sector, startup community, and government agencies and ability of conduct training/workshops in English and with diverse participants.
Ability to produce quality report independently.
Corporate Competencies:
- 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;
Required Skills and Experience
Education:
Master’s Degree in Entrepreneurship, Social Enterprise, Business Administration, Economics, Training Curriculum Development, Development Studies or other related disciplines.
Experiences:
Minimum 5 years of relevant experiences in the field of employment, entrepreneuship or economic researches;
Advanced knowledge of the business environment, youth employment, digintal economy, and entrepreneurship ecosystem in Cambodia.
Language Requirement: Fluency in English
Interested individual offeror must submit the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications:
Explaining why they are the most suitable for the work
Samples of research reports from relevant previous assignment
Financial proposal
Personal CV including experience in similar projects and at least 3 references.
Interested Offerors are required to submit application via UNDP jobsite system as the application screening and evaluation will be done through UNDP jobsite system. Please note that UNDP jobsite system allows only one uploading of application document, so please make sure that you merge all your documents into a single file. Your on-line applications submission will be acknowledged where an email address has been provided. If you do not receive an e-mail acknowledgement within 24 hours of submission, your application may not have been received. In such cases, please resubmit the application, if necessary. Please combine all your documents into one (1) single PDF document as the system only allows to upload maximum one document.
Any request for clarification/additional information on this procurement notice shall be communicated in writing to UNDP office or send to email sereyvattana.chan@undp.org and cc procurement.kh@undp.org . While the Procurement Unit would endeavor to provide information expeditiously, only requests receiving at least 5 working days prior to the submission deadline will be entertained. Any delay in providing such information will not be considered as a reason for extending the submission deadline. The UNDP's response (including an explanation of the query but without identifying the source of inquiry) will be posted in Individual Consultant (IC) Procurement Notice page as provided above. Therefore, all prospective Offerors are advised to visit the page regularly to make obtain update related to this Individual Consultant (IC) Procurement Notice.