Historique

The main objective of the Joint EU-UNDP Rural Development Programme is to establish flexible, strategic mechanisms to build critical organizational and human resource capacities across Abkhazia’s 7 districts. This initiative will coordinate development initiatives across districts, engage and empower local rural communities and organizations to contribute to designing and implementing district-specific rural development strategies, and enable a bottom-up response to various local challenges, issues, and priorities.
The project strives to achieve 3 outputs:

• Establish a “Center for Agriculture and Rural Development” (CARD) to coordinate rural development initiatives across all 7 districts of Abkhazia and provide technical, consultative and referral support and coordination services to beneficiaries and rural communities;
• Establish 3 Local Action Groups (LAGs) through mobilizing stakeholder support, identifying potential group leaders and building their capacities; create meeting spaces; empower local populations to articulate their needs and rural development opportunities and to prepare district-specific development strategies and projects;
• Establish policy and technical basis for the development of a forest health program comprising: prevention of the introduction of new forest pests, early detection of new invasive species; control and management of established forest pests.

This project is implemented within the framework of the ENPARD. It’s is a European Union Programme, which aims to promote inclusive growth and stability in the neighbourhood (including e.g. Moldova, Armenia). It recognizes the potential importance of agriculture in terms of food security, sustainable production and rural employment. Within the ENPARD framework, this project will take stock of best practices and lessons learned across Europe over the past decade, in particular the LEADER concept adopted by EU countries. For the Abkhazia component, ENPARD II is aiming to support small-scale agricultural development and the diversification of the rural economy, with a view to improving living conditions and access to basic services in rural areas.

Devoirs et responsabilités

Inception Report:
Under the direct supervision of the Programme Manager, Head of Office in Abkhazia, the hired Expert will deliver the Inception Assessment on the set-up of the Centre for Agriculture and Rural Development. This action will begin with a baseline survey to determine and assess the following issues to guide the overall strategy implementation to establish CARD and its operations:

• The appropriate legal status of the CARD (and Local Action Groups, if possible);
• The optimal management structure and operating requirements;
• Prevailing rural development trends and activities;
• Development preferences and attitudes of SMEs;
• Communication channels for CARD public relations and communications;
• Assessment of the rural community training and support service needs of a wide variety of public and private stakeholders at the Abkhazia-wide and district levels;
• Evaluation of existing rural development and SME support policies with situation analyses and findings and recommendations to all major stakeholders engaged as a final result;
• Assess CARD’s technical and organizational capacity requirements. The Project will assess all technical requirements to set up CARD’s operations, including the requirements for office space, furniture, IT equipment, the production of marketing materials, etc. Similarly, the assessment will address the organizational capacity needs of the staff and its ability to design and manage CARD programs and services. Additionally, the assessment will also identify specific areas of technical training required by CARD experts.

The final report of the Inception Assessment will summarize the issues above. The structure of the Assessment will be discussed and approved by the Programme Manager, Head of Office in Abkhazia before the field trip.
This part of the assignment will total to 20 days of expert work – 10 in Abkhazia, and 10 work from home on report finalization. The mission should take place as soon as possible, and the work must be conducted before the end of summer 2017. The financial proposal should assume that 10 working days envisage two additional days of stay in Abkhazia (weekend; non-fee days with DSA only).

Design of services:
After hiring the personnel and set up of CARD premises, the expert will conduct the second visit to Abkhazia to support CARD and UNDP to develop the services, which will be provided by CARD. Services must be relevant, effective, efficient, attractive to end users/customers. It is expected that this mission will take place in the end of 2017 or beginning of 2018. The design of services will include detailed description of services, target clients/beneficiaries, the protocol on service delivery, reporting, results accountability, assessment of the cost of the service. In addition to above, the design of services should identify – considering the capacity of CARD staff – gaps in knowledge and skills, and support capacity building of CARD staff. The end result of the work should be well-structured document presenting services provided by CARD staff. 
This part of assignment envisages 24 days of stay (20 working days) in Abkhazia with CARD staff and partners, and 4 days of work from home to finalize the design of services reports. The work may include a short training for CARD staff on services design, principles of service design, pitfalls and challenges, best practices etc. The Expert will also – during his stay in Abkhazia – provide advisory services on fine-tuning the initial recommendations made in Inception report (which take into consideration possibly changed reality), and define issues which should be addressed by the project. S/he will provide on-job support to CARD staff on issues that are raised by them.

Summary of Key Functions:

• Inception report on possible CARD legal framework, its institutional affiliation/networking and sustainability strategy. This part of assignment includes one visit to Abkhazia and work from home.
• Detailed catalogue of services and modalities of their delivery of the CARD staff, and on-job support and training to CARD staff. This part of assignment includes on visit to Abkhazia and work from home.

Compétences

Core Competencies:

• Ability to produce analytical reports/assessments in written;
• Skills for providing quality trainings to local peer experts;
• Good communication skills.

Functional Competencies:

• He/she should have strong communication and analytical skills;
• Proven strong professional abilities and knowledge in local economic development and institution building and service delivery;
• Ability of interpretation, development and analyses of related documentation;
• Ability to work under pressure with several tasks and various deadlines;
• A pro-active approach to problem-solving;
• IT literacy.

Qualifications et expériences requises

Education:

• MA or higher in Business Administration, Economics, Social Sciences and similar fields

Experience:

• Al least 7 year working experience in local economic development with focus on supporting institutional design of advisory or other institutions, and in designing services for development organizations (similar to CARD specialization – agriculture, rural tourism development, small and medium size entrepreneurship development, strategic planning);
• At least 2 prior international assignments, which ended with assessments of institutional development (reports might be requested to assess qualifications of the candidate)
• Track record in establishing development institutions in post-crisis environment and developing environment (Europe and CIS countries experience highly desirable)

Language Requirements:

• Excellent command of English. Working knowledge of the Russian language is an asset.

Evaluation:

Individual consultants will be evaluated based on Cumulative scoring analysis, against combination of technical and financial criteria. Technical evaluation stage encompasses desk review of offers and interviews. Offerors not meeting any of minimum technical qualification requirements will be automatically excluded from the list of offerors for further technical evaluation.
Maximum obtainable score is 100, out of which the total score for technical criteria equals to 70 points (70%) and for financial criteria 30 (30%). Offerors who pass 70% of maximum obtainable scores as a result of technical evaluation (i.e. 70 x 70% = 49 points) will be considered as short-listed Offerors.

Financial Proposal:

Short-listed Offerors will be requested to provide financial proposal. The financial proposal shall specify a total lump sum amount, and payment terms around specific and measurable (qualitative and quantitative) deliverables. The payment will be performed in two installments – 1st tranche will be paid after the delivery of Inception Report (20 working days), and 2nd tranche will be paid after the design of services report (24 days) Payments are based upon output, i.e. upon delivery of the services specified in the TOR. The financial proposal shall include a breakdown of this lump sum amount (including travel, living allowance, etc.).

Travel:

All envisaged travel costs must be included in the financial proposal. UNDP will not accept travel costs exceeding those of an economy class ticket. Should the Consultant wish to travel on a higher class he/she should do so using their own resources.

Deliverables:

• One written Inception Assessment Report on the CARD;
• A package of services to be provided by the CARD with detailed description of content, approaches, cost, beneficiaries etc.

Description of deliverables, timelines and corresponding percentage of payment due per output:

• Analysis of the project document and preparatory conversation with Programme Manager (from home); draft of initial structure of the Inception Report - 1 day
• First field visit to Abkhazia to collect data and information for Inception Report - 12 days (10 working days with fee, and 2 days of weekend stay – only living allowance applies, without fee)
• Report drafting and finalization (10 working days)
• Second field visit to Abkhazia to design services and support CARD staff (in revising the operational modalities, advising the strategy of CARD operation, on-job training) – 26 days (20 days with fee, and 6 days of weekend, during which only living allowance applies without fee).
• Finalization of the services package – 3 days (work from home)

Accordingly, the financial proposal should be submitted for the 44 days of fee-paid expert work and 38 days of living allowance.
The Consultant must send a financial proposal based on lump-sum amount (with indication of specific sub-components of the payment, including daily fee, travel costs, living allowance, etc.). The total amount quoted shall be all-inclusive and include all cost components required to perform the deliverables identified in TOR. Payment will be made in installments (presented above and work days certified by Programme manager, with amounts defined in financial proposal) upon satisfactory completion and submission of respective deliverables and approval by the Programme manager.