Deadline: 20 July 2025
The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women seeks to partner with a national women-led CSO consortium to implement Using Storytelling as a Tool for Leadership and Advocacy on Women’s Political Participation across six divisions of Bangladesh.
The initiative will empower women, especially young and marginalized groups, with political leadership skills and foster inclusive public participation.
It provides strong and coherent leadership in support of national priorities and efforts, building effective partnerships with governments, civil society, development partners, and other relevant actors. Globally, UN Women focuses on integrated approaches to addressing the root causes of inequality.
Scope
- The initiative will engage women political leaders in eight project districts, especially those from socially excluded groups. It will include those who have held political office at the local level as well as those aspiring for political office in the upcoming elections (including young women); to understand the barriers they face(d) in their political life, as well as the build on their lived experiences to identify opportunities for creating an enabling environment for womens political participation, representation and leadership by addressing underlying social norms. The initiative will directly engage 40-45 storytellers (women leaders) and 10 artists.
Objectives
- The DRIP project aims to foster a more inclusive and participatory democratic and electoral process in Bangladesh, where diverse voices, especially those of women, youth, and socially excluded groups, are meaningfully represented in political, governance, and change-making processes.
- The objective of the storytelling initiative is to inform advocacy efforts aimed at strengthening inclusive electoral and democratic processes, with a view to enhancing the meaningful participation, representation and leadership of women, especially from excluded groups.
- The specific objectives of this storytelling initiative are:
- To enhance social-emotional capacities for critical speaking, listening and narrative skills for womens meaningful participation, representation and leadership in political life.
- To strengthen advocacy efforts by enabling women leaders to share their stories.
- To engage with diverse artists, using different art-forms to amplify the voices and experiences of women leaders, with the aim of influencing policy advocacy and shaping public discourse to strengthen womens meaningful participation, representation and leadership in political life.
- To achieve the above objectives, the RP is expected to implement the following activities in close coordination with key stakeholders including women leaders, collectives of artists, as well as networks representing excluded groups:
- To enhance social-emotional capacities for critical speaking, listening and narrative skills for womens meaningful participation, representation and leadership in political life: Design and organize an empowering storytelling process to support women leaders.
- Suggested activities: Design and organize a safe, structured, creative-expression-based empowerment and leadership component through storytelling:
- Facilitate a series of guided empowerment and leadership activities for participants. This phase will provide 40-45 participants with a safe, inclusive, and respectful space to explore personal experiences.
- Each activity should be designed to support emotional clarity, foster peer connection, and build a foundation for voice and leadership.
- To strengthen advocacy efforts by enabling women leaders to share their stories: Design and facilitate initiatives to strengthen the public speaking and storytelling skills of women leaders, enabling them to effectively advocate for inclusive political participation and democratic reforms using feminist pedagogy.
- Suggested activities: Design and implement two four-day residential workshops to build public speaking and storytelling skills among women and excluded groups:
- Facilitate the workshops with collaborative, inclusive, safe workshop facilitation methods drawing on feminist pedagogy.
- Guide participants in refining their stories for public delivery, focusing on key techniques to enhance engagement, pacing, and emotional connection with an audience.
- Facilitate reflective mentorship process to inspire personal storytelling and strengthen leadership narratives among women and excluded groups:
- Support participants to identify and engage in reflective conversations with a personal or public role model/mentor (such as a community leader, teacher, activist, or family member).
- Facilitate the recording of interviews (audio or video) where feasible, ensuring informed consent is obtained for use in documentation and/or public platforms.
- To engage with diverse artists, using different art-forms to amplify the voices and experiences of women leaders, with the aim of influencing policy advocacy and shaping public discourse to strengthen womens meaningful participation, representation and leadership in political life: Engage diverse artists to visually interpret and capture reflections inspired by the interviews between selected storytellers and their chosen role models.
- Suggested activities: Facilitate engagement of artists with the storytellers:
- Facilitate sessions between the participants (storytellers) and assigned artists to share key insights, emotions, and themes from the interviews that can inform the visual artwork.
- Provide ongoing support to artists during the creation process to ensure alignment with the project’s feminist and inclusive values, while respecting the integrity of participants stories.
- Support artists to develop 10 original performance art pieces that portray lived experiences of women and excluded groups, created in collaboration with artists from diverse artistic and cultural backgrounds:
- Coordinate with UN Women to identify impactful stories of change that will form the foundation of the performance pieces.
- Finalize the concept for 10 performance pieces through a process of stakeholder conversations, and field visits (as relevant), followed by creative dialogue and ideation.
- Organize three divisional and one national level exhibition to showcase the artworks with a focus on highlighting the stories of women and excluded groups to advocate for womens participation, representation and leadership in public life.
- Development of a pop-up book that creatively showcases personal journeys of courage, agency, and leadership:
- Archive all interviews, artworks, performance art pieces, the digital pop-up book, photographs and other related materials on digital platforms, including a dedicated microsite hosted on the main website (to be maintained by the RP), as well as through social media channels (Facebook and X) to increase accessibility and foster greater engagement.
- Develop and execute a strategic dissemination plan for the communication products, leveraging public events for maximum outreach.
Funding Information
- The budget range for this proposal should be Min: 1,21,60,000 BDT and Max: 1,45,92,000 BDT (approx. USD 100,000 USD to 120,000) USD.
- Duration: The project will be implemented from 1 September 2025 to 30 November 2026 (14 months).
Expected Outcomes
- To contribute towards Research and evidence are generated and utilized to empower citizens in advocating for transparency, accountability, and inclusive electoral processes, Awareness and political consciousness of institutions and diverse communities enhanced to address practices and norms that hinder participation and inclusion in electoral and political processes and systems, a feminist storytelling initiative is planned.
- To raise awareness and political consciousness among institutions, policymakers, civil society, and the public to address norms that hinder participation and inclusion in electoral and political processes.
- To capitalize on current opportunities, the Project will prioritize comprehensive range of outreach efforts, including public awareness campaigns, workshops, and media to inform policy design and strategic outreach to civil society and the broader public.
Eligibility Criteria
- UN Women is soliciting proposals from Civil Society Organizations (CSOs). Womens organizations or entities are highly encouraged to apply.
For more information, visit UN Women.