Background

As the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (GEWE), UN Women's vision is a world in which women and men have equal opportunities and capacities, where women are empowered and where principles of gender equality are firmly embedded in all efforts to advance development, peace, and security. Globally, UN Women works to make the vision of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) a reality for women and girls and stands behind women’s equal participation in all aspects of life, focusing on four strategic priorities: women lead, participate in and benefit equally from governance systems; women have income security, decent work, and economic autonomy; all women and girls live a life free from all forms of violence; and women and girls contribute to and have greater influence in building sustainable peace and resilience, and benefit equally from the prevention of natural disasters and conflicts and humanitarian action. At the national level, UN Women Ethiopia Country Office (ECO) works in all four priority areas.

Under the Women lead, participate in and benefit equally from governance systems thematic area, UN Women ECO works to ensure women have increased participation and effective representation in leadership through interventions that aim to change social norms; to create enabling environment for women to become able leaders while at the same time enhancing the transformative leadership capacity of women leaders for social change. The four-year program “Increased Participation and Representation of Women in Leadership in Ethiopia: The road to equitable development” works towards enhancing the effective participation and equal representation of women leadership and decision making in Ethiopia particularly focusing on the executive and legislative branch of the government. Launched in September 2017, the program is so far being implemented at the Federal level and in Amhara and Oromia regional states. The program has the following expected outcomes:

1. A pool of interested, diverse and capable women leaders and decision makers is formed;
2. Women are perceived as equally legitimate and effective political leaders as men; and
3. Women are promoted as leaders in gender sensitive political institutions.

To achieve the expected outcomes, the program is implementing capacity building and mentorship; awareness promotion, community mobilization, and advocacy; and data collection and analysis to support evidence-based policy decision making. In the past two years, the program has been implementing capacity building interventions at the Federal and Regional levels with various stakeholders to enhance the leadership competencies of women leaders through institutionalized capacity development initiatives. In addition to women leaders, engendering the media has been one of the focus areas of the program to ensure women are promoted as equal and legitimate leaders as men by the media. As part of its programmatic learning objectives, UN Women ECO works to generate data and knowledge by tracking the progress of program participants. 

In this regard, UN Women ECO is seeking the service of a national consultant to document the program achievements through individual and institutional impact stories/human interest stories that capture the journey, lessons, and status of selected individuals and entities that were part of the different programmatic interventions conducted to enhance women’s leadership capacities.

Duties and Responsibilities

By harvesting individual impact stories, the consultant(s) is expected to work on the following tasks:

• Prepare interview guideline that will be used to document the impact stories;
• Document and produce ten impact stories of 500 - 750 words for each story, documenting the journey, achievements and lessons learned from programe participants per the program objectives;
• Prepare print-ready material of the ten impact stories. The consultant(s) needs to ensure the grammatical and structural correctness of the stories as well as the inclusion of relevant photos with high resolutions.
• Produce short video clips and all raw footage video featuring five impact stories, showcasing the journey, achievements and lessons learned from program participants. The video should include program staff from UN Women and other relevant implementing partners.

Competencies

Compliance with UN Core Values

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

Required Skills and Experience

Qualifications

• University degree in journalism, communications, knowledge management, impact evaluation or related field.

Experience and skills

• A minimum of five years of work experience as a journalist or freelance writer with a record of producing impact stories/human-interest stories/case stories;
• A demonstrated ability (through previous similar assignments) to collect, analyze, compile and synthesize information in coherent and succinct formats; 
• Experience in public relations, communications or/and storytelling would be an asset;  
• Knowledge of the work of UN. Women and women’s rights and women’s empowerment issues would be an asset
• Previous experience in similar assignments with development agencies is an added value

Communication

• Outstanding writing skills;
• Good interpersonal, networking and communication skills;
• Willingness to contribute and work as part of a team;
• Flexible and open to learn;
• High level of creativity in story writing and storytelling;
• Need to be fluent in both Amharic and English languages. Knowledge of other local languages is an asset.