‘Dare to Care’ Programme to promote Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (Morocco)

Deadline: 20-May-2024
UN Women is inviting applications to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment using as a starting point the involvement of men and boys in unpaid care and domestic responsibilities.

UN Women in the Arab States region launched the implementation of an exciting and unique three-year regional program titled “Dare to Care” (DTC) aimed at transforming patriarchal social norms and masculinities, in focusing on Morocco, Egypt and Jordan. The program must also contribute to changing discriminatory social norms and breaking stereotypes that hinder women’s participation in paid employment and the public sphere.

The regional “Dare to Care” program is funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), the German International Development Cooperation Agency (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit, GIZ) and the Basque Development Agency. Cooperation for Development. It aims to achieve the following three outcomes:

• Outcome 1: Societies in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region demonstrate greater involvement of men and boys in care and domestic responsibilities and greater empowerment of women and girls;
• Outcome 2: Key institutions effectively transform patriarchal masculinities and social norms, with a focus on promoting the care and household responsibilities of men and boys and the economic empowerment of women and girls;
• Outcome 3: More men and boys can assume their share of care and domestic responsibilities through more supportive laws and policies that encourage their care and household responsibilities, as well as paternity leave.

The program places a strong emphasis on mobilizing youth to transform patriarchal masculinities and social norms, and it builds this work on partnerships with youth-led CSOs, women’s rights CSOs working with youth, national women’s mechanisms and youth-serving institutions of the national governments of the countries targeted by the program.

Objectives

• Reduction of the gap between men and women in target communities in time spent on unpaid care and domestic work, through the implementation of the community model. Goal: 60 minutes.
• Extent to which the pattern of change in social norms in target communities contributes to increasing gender equality and women’s economic empowerment (qualitative indicator).
• Increase in the percentage of the population of target communities with better attitudes towards gender equality, namely: 1) the involvement of men in care and domestic responsibilities; 2) women’s participation in the labor market; 3) the participation of women in public decision-making; and 4) the belief that intimate partner violence is never justified (disaggregated by gender, age, location).
• Increase in the percentage of populations in target communities who believe that other men should participate in care and domestic responsibilities (disaggregated by gender, age, location).
• Decreased percentage of men in target communities who believe others will judge them negatively if they participate in care and domestic responsibilities (disaggregated by age, location).

Funding Information

• The budget range for this proposal must be between 2,000,000 and 2,500,000 MAD.
• Duration
  • This project is a two-year implementation project. The implementation period for the five phases of the Dare to Care model is two years.
  • The project is expected to begin on June 1, 2024 and end in June 2026. The final report will be submitted up to two months after project completion.

Required Services/Results

• The selected implementing partner will implement the two-year intervention model, the Dare to Care Handbook: A Model for Engaging Men and Boys in Unpaid Care and Household Responsibilities in Communities in the Arab Region in a target community and across the five phases of the model:
  • Phase 0: Onboarding and staffing
    • The selected partner must make staff available to the project (full-time or part-time). This will include 1) a Dare to Care project manager, 2) a monitoring and evaluation specialist, as well as 3) administrative, financial and human resources support (which could be integrated into the existing administrative structure of the organization). The recruitment process as well as familiarization with UN Women should take place before the start of phase 1.
    • Duration of phase 0: up to 8 weeks
  • Phase 1: Delineation of the implementation area and buy-in from the target community:
    • Detailed description and socio-economic demographics of the target community.
    • Identification of influential people in the region and presentation of a methodology to generate buy-in to reduce barriers to implementation.
    • Strategy for navigating legal and institutional frameworks that would affect implementation.
    • Develop a methodology to encourage community members and influential people to actively and positively participate in the intervention.
    • Where applicable, the implementing partner and UN Women will take into consideration the findings of the IMAGES study in the Rabat-Salé-Kénitra region on levels of acceptance and positive/negative attitudes in order to balance the ” needs” and expectations for success.
    • Duration of phase 1: up to 8 weeks
  • Phase 2: Recruitment and capacity building of “community facilitators”:
    • (Community facilitators are paid individuals recruited and employed by the implementing partner who have close ties to the community, ideally members of that community. They serve as a direct point of contact for awareness raising and facilitation of activities).
    • The implementing partner will recruit 10 to 12 community facilitators and equip them with the necessary knowledge, skills and tools, with entry points for community mobilization. This will include training on gender and masculinities, orientation on community engagement and family identification, as well as journaling and documentation. The remuneration of community animators will be included in the project budget.
    • Duration of phase 2: up to 10 weeks
  • Phase 3: Formation of community groups:
    • The implementing partner will form three or four parallel community groups over the duration of the project, with each group comprising 10-12 families and supported and managed by 2-4 community facilitators.
    • The implementing partner, through community facilitators, will engage families through regular visits and activities at the family and group level.
    • Duration of phase 3: 6 to 8 weeks
  • Phase 4: Engagement of community groups:
    • The 4th phase is the main and longest phase of the intervention, during which the community participants who constitute the community groups are engaged in social activities and actions that present healthy relationships and encourage men’s unpaid care work. During this phase, the implementing partner, through community facilitators, will play an important role in ensuring that participants remain engaged and motivated, and in documenting progress and the steps.
    • This phase will include knowledge building and learning of community members, audits of unpaid domestic work, goal setting and behavior change, community challenges and learning camps.
    • Duration of phase 4: 24 to 26 weeks
  • Phase 5: Expansion to the community level
    • The project needs to expand and involve more community members by creating new cohorts of community groups and implementing new action projects. This will be based on the principle of peer influence using members of the Phase 4 community as activists and mobilizers of action and promoters of change.
    • By the end of Phase 5, six to eight new community groups will have been engaged and organized to implement new action projects.
    • Duration of phase 5: 36 weeks

Eligibility Criteria

• Technical/Functional Skills Required
  • Proven experience in the area of gender justice, masculinities, men’s and boys’ engagement, and women’s economic empowerment.
  • A CBO or CSO that has strong ties to local communities and a proven track record of community engagement initiatives and projects.
  • A strong financial management and administration structure capable of recruiting new staff, managing large budgets, delivering training and capacity building activities and managing data and knowledge products.
  • Strong skills in secure archiving and data management.
  • A well-structured governance system (e.g., a board of directors, a well-defined organizational chart, well-defined management and administrative roles, etc.)
  • Ability to conduct qualitative and statistical contextual analyses.
  • Complies with all legal and registration requirements of the Government of Morocco.
• Other skills, which, although not required, may be an asset in service delivery
  • An established relationship and presence within a particular local community that could fit the “Dare to Care” model.
  • A CBO/CSO with a strong mandate in favor of young people and/or women.
  • Experience in initiatives to engage men and boys in gender equality and women’s economic empowerment.
  • Experience in initiatives related to the participation of men and boys in unpaid work.
  • A CBO/CSO with internal policies and practices that support masculine allyship and work-life balance to facilitate staff in their unpaid care work, such as parental leave, arrangements flexible working arrangements, childcare services, a code of conduct focused on gender equality, etc.

For more information, visit UN Women.