Call for Proposals: Women’s Empowerment for Inclusive Growth Project (Bangladesh)

Deadline: 15-Jan-24

UN Women is implementing a Joint Programme (JP) entitled Women’s Empowerment for Inclusive Growth (WING) project in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), funded by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Bangladesh to promote women’s economic participation at the local level.

The WING JP seeks to foster skills that create dignified and formal participation of women as employees and entrepreneurs in local economies.

The overall goal of the programme is to ensure that women have sustainable improvements in income and economic security at the local level with more women having wider access to local economic opportunities, private and public financial services as well as income-generating activities.

Objectives

• UN Women seeks to partner with a Civil Society Organization (CSO) to lead, coordinate, and implement this initiative under the WING JP in close collaboration with UN Women, sister UN agencies, the private sector and relevant government ministries and departments to increase women’s economic participation.
• The specific objectives are:
  • Provide technical and capacity-building support to women entrepreneurs to build their leadership capacity for enhancing the economic participation of women.
  • Provide technical support to select private sector agencies to mainstream the Women’s Empowerment Principles in their policies and procedures.
  • Establish linkages between larger scale enterprises, business associations, private sector, and financial institutes with local WEPs signatory enterprises for gender-responsive procurement and supply chain.
  • Build capacities of local government representatives and WDF members on GRPB guideline at the Upazila and District level.
  • Strengthen women-led entrepreneur’s advocacy capacities to influence policies on women’s economic empowerment.

Funding Information

• The budget range for this proposal should be BDT 9,000,000 – 10,000,000 maximum.

Time Frame

• The implementation period is for 7 months with starting date from 1st February 2024 to 31 August 2024.

Components

• Two key components of the WING JP include:
  • Establishing linkages among the private sector for gender-responsive practices.
    • WING has oriented private enterprises with Women Empowerment Principles (WEPs) to enable gender-responsive workplaces, marketplaces, and communities. The Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs) are a set of Principles that offer guidance to businesses on how to advance gender equality and women’s empowerment in the workplace, marketplace and community.  It was established by UN Women and the UN Global Compact.
  • Strengthening implementation of gender-responsive planning and budgeting in select local government institutions 
    • WING has been working to strengthen the capacity of local government institutions (LGIs) to institutionalize GRPB as a tool for local-level participatory budgeting for enhancing women’s economic opportunities. To institutionalize GRPB at the local level, a guideline was drafted by the Ministry of Women and Children’s Affairs (MoWCA) with technical support from UN Women.

Outcomes

• Building on the results achieved in the last three years, WING will focus on a few key activities in line with the following outcomes.  UN Women is the convening agency of this joint programme and leads outcome 2. However, all three outcomes are interrelated and have synergies between the activities that are critical for the achievement of project results.
  • Outcome 1: Improved implementation and enforcement of policies supportive of women’s economic empowerment.
  • Outcome 2: Women’s participation in local economic development activities is increased.
  • Outcome 3: Women-led enterprises unlock and access a larger volume of domestic capital to expand their economic space.
• This call for proposal focuses on Outcome 2: Women’s participation in local economic development activities is increased, and will contribute to the delivery of the following outputs:
  • Output 2.1 Enhanced capacity of women entrepreneurs, women’s business associations/chamber of commerce, and Women Development Forum (WDFs) to participate in local economic development decision-making process.
  • Output 2.3 Private sector bottlenecks and barriers to women’s economic empowerment are identified and strategies to promote the integrated role of the private sector for women’s economic activities and to expand women’s access to markets are developed.

Expected Results

• Output 2.1 Enhanced capacity of women entrepreneurs, women’s business associations/chamber of commerce, and WDFs to participate in local economic development decision-making process.
  • Output Indicator 2.1a: Number of women receiving technical support in participating in the local economic decision-making process.
  • Output Indicator 2.1b: Number of local authorities (local government representatives and officials) received training on GRPB guideline from WING Upazilas under 5 Districts.
  • Output Indicator 2.1c: Number of ToT courses conducted on GRPB guideline with LGIs/government officers.
  • Activity 2.1.1 Conduct five reflective dialogues on leadership for the members of the Anondomela Platform in collaboration with UNDP
  • Activity 2.1.2 Organize five capacity development workshops on GRPB guideline developed by MOWCA with the technical assistance of UN Women
  • Activity 2.1.3 Organize ToT on GRPB guideline for the Local Government (LG) training institutes
  • Activity 2.1.4 Provide technical and capacity-building support to LGIs for mainstreaming Gender using GRPB guidelines into their institutional mechanism.
  • Activity 2.1.5 Organize a national workshop for adopting Gender Responsive Planning and Budgeting (GRPB) guideline and monitoring tool for women’s economic empowerment.
• Output 2.3 Private sector bottlenecks and barriers to women’s economic empowerment are identified and strategies to promote the integrated role of the private sector for women’s economic activities and to expand women’s access to markets are developed.
  • Output Indicator 2.3. Number of entrepreneurs promoted through involvement with the private sector (including media) and the programme-supported local women’s business associations.
  • Activity 2.3.1 Conduct WEPs orientation sessions and technical support to follow up on WEPs implementation with the enterprises that received support under the WING project.
  • Activity 2.3.2 Organize one media advocacy workshop on accessible and inclusive markets and improved business environment for women entrepreneurs. (Selected RP to work with UN Women Communications consultant on the design of this workshop). The estimated number of participants is 30-35.

Competencies

• Technical/functional competencies required
  • Technical/Functional competencies required:
    • Experience in developing and implementing advocacy, capacity building, and strategies on gender equality issues including economic empowerment of women.
    • Experience in working on women’s economic participation with a strong focus on women-owned Cottage, Micro, Small and Medium enterprises (CMSME) and Small and medium Enterprises (SME) at the national and local level.
    • Demonstrable expertise in planning and executing capacity development initiatives on gender equality, including at the organizational level.
    • Thematic expertise on WEE and Gender Responsive Planning and Budgeting is an asset.
    • Previous work experience with the Women Development Forum (WDF) and local government would be an added advantage.
    • Relevant experience in partnership with UN Women or other UN Agencies, government, and other development actors would be an advantage.
• Team Composition
  • Proposed Team composition – (1) Programme Coordinator with strong expertise in women’s economic empowerment (2) Gender Expert (consultant) with a background in capacity development on GRPB (3) Reporting and Documentation Officer and (4) field officers with proven expertise in facilitation and conduct training on women’s economic participation at the local level.

For more information, visit UN Women.