Deadline: 12-Oct-21
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is calling for proposals for the Design and facilitation of a co-creation workshop for radio broadcast assets championing girls’ and women’s education in COVID-19 recovery through community radio in Lao PDR.
The project is jointly implemented by UNDP Lao PDR and UNESCO Bangkok, in partnership with the Ministry of Information, Culture and Tourism, the Ministry of Education and Sports, and Plan International Laos. It is being carrying out in alignment with, and under the umbrella of UNDP’s ongoing project “Enhancing People’s Participation through Community Radio”, which has a particular focus on ethnic women living in remote villages with limited access to information and who have low literacy.
The project aims to support community-led advocacy by young women and girls to ‘keep girls in the picture’ in COVID-19 education recovery efforts. Activities will be implemented within the framework of the #LearningNeverStops campaign of the UNESCO Global Education Coalition on COVID-19 education response and its media and information literacy campaign #ThinkCriticallyClickWisely.
The participating young women will be empowered with enhanced media and information literacy and advocacy skills to promote gender equality, and strengthened knowledge on the situation of, and barriers and enablers to girls’ education in Lao PDR. They will be engaged using community radio to locally contextualize and amplify the messages of the campaign geared at safeguarding progress made on girls’ education, ensure girls’ learning continuity during school closures, and promote girls’ safe return to school once these reopen. The ideation, creation and production of the broadcast content will be led by young women community radio volunteers and community radio station staff in the targeted communities.
Objective
UNESCO Bangkok seeks the services of an organization to facilitate a workshop with 30 community radio volunteers in Lao PDR on creative content design and messaging for the production of radio broadcast assets. The radio broadcast assets will be a mix of public advocacy and information messages targeting parents, families and communities at large as to the importance and value of girls’ learning; the relevance of gender equality in and through education and the media, and the barriers to its achievement; and the ways in which girls, families and communities can together overcome those barriers to better support girls and women to access education, quality information and continue their learning in the recovery from COVID-19.
Outcomes
The project aims to achieve the following outcomes:
- Young women from three rural districts in Lao PDR have increased knowledge on gender equality in and through education and the media, increased technical skills in content adaptation for community radio and strengthened advocacy skills for championing girls’ education; and
- Ethno-linguistic minority communities from three rural districts in Lao PDR benefit from increased access to gender-responsive, information and education content that promotes gender equality and girls’ education and empowerment, available in local languages, disseminated via community radio.
Deliverables
The deliverables for this work assignment shall be the following (submission dates provisional):
- Concept note and draft agenda for the co-creation workshop by 29 October 2021
- Final contract close-out report covering all activities covered under the contract (maximum 25 A4 pages), including on the outcomes of the social and gender norms analysis workshop as well as the co-creation and asset design workshop, by 30 December 2021.
Duration of Contract
The contractor will be required to work for a period of 11 weeks during the period October to December 2021.
Location and Travel
- The contractor will be home based in Lao PDR with the exception of local travel to and from Vientiane for the 2 workshop activities specified, as needed.
- It is expected that the contractor will be available to meet with the UNESCO team and UNDP Lao team (online) during their respective office hours of Bangkok/Vientiane. No duty travel or physical presence at the UNESCO Bangkok office is expected.
Qualifications
- The institution:
- Required:
- Must have minimum 3 years of related professional experience at regional or national level in working with community-led or other civil-society organizations.
- Must have subject matter expertise in one or more of the following: community development, youth development, education, gender equality, human rights, social inclusion and social justice.
- IT infrastructure, software and devices to support remote meetings, communication and online/digital data collection, as appropriate.
- Desirable:
- Previous experience working with the UN and/or other multilateral, bilateral and civil society development partners.
- Previous experience in working with youth-led/serving organizations
- Required:
- Personnel:
- Team Leader Required:
- Advanced degree in any of the related areas: media and communication, public relations; education, gender, human rights, development studies, public policy, social work or other social sciences;
- Professional knowledge and experience (minimum 5 years) in relevant technical areas, including from among the following: communication for development (C4D); youth development; gender equality and social inclusion;
- Demonstrated experience in the design and delivery of community mobilization and capacity building interventions, including through collaborative learning and consultative approaches;
- Excellent creative writing and communication skills including the production of written/oral advocacy content for both targeted and general audiences;
- Fluency in spoken and written Lao language
- Strong command of the English language (oral and written).
- Desirable:
- Experience working with ethnolinguistic and minority communities and an understanding of the social and political sensitivities associated with gender equality, girls’ education, youth sexual and reproductive health and rights; is preferred;
- Previous work on using information and communication technologies (ICTs) for rural community development is an asset.
- Team Members (at least 2)
- Required:
- Must have an advanced university degree and minimum 2 years of experience in a field related to the creative industries, media and communication or social sciences;
- Demonstrated experience in creative content development and skills-building for creative design and co-creation: from ideation through to production and dissemination.
- Demonstrated workshop facilitation skills, using innovative creative approaches;
- Fluency in spoken and written Lao language.
- Desirable:
- Competency in ethnolinguistic minority languages (other than Lao PDR) would be an asset.
- Previous experience in communication for development (C4D) tools and approaches.
- Required:
- Team Leader Required:
Eligibility Criteria
The assignment is open to suitably qualified institutions working in Lao PDR.
For more information, visit https://bit.ly/2WNpk3E