UN Women Call for Proposals: WeEmpowerAsia (WEA) Programme

Deadline: 25-Aug-21

UN Women in partnership with the European Union is inviting proposals “Promoting Economic Empowerment of Women at Work in Asia –WeEmpower Asia (WEA)” to enhance business opportunities and leadership within the private sector to advance sustainable and inclusive growth.

UN Women, grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, works for the elimination of discrimination against women and girls; the empowerment of women; and the achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security.

Placing women’s rights at the center of all its efforts, the UN Women will lead and coordinate United Nations system efforts to ensure that commitments on gender equality and gender mainstreaming translate into action throughout the world.

Funding Information

• The budget range for this proposal should be CNY 453,180 – CNY 517,920.

Activities

• Design a training module for women entrepreneurs on enhancing market access
  • Develop a training module with UN Women branding for women entrepreneurs in order to enhance their market access. The module may include how to improve marketing skills, how to pitch for procurement opportunities, enhancing the knowledge of bidding process, etc. A consultation meeting with women entrepreneurs and procurement focal points of companies will be organized before the development of the training module.
• Provide capacity development sessions for women entrepreneurs
  • The capacity development will mainly include two parts:
    • training modules developed to enhance women’s market access, and
    • Knowledge on gender equality and women’s empowerment principles (WEPs).
  • The RP is expected to conduct an offline pilot training targeting 40-50 women entrepreneurs. Based on the feedback from the pilot training, further revisions may be needed to finalize the training module.
  • Then the RP is expected to provide a series of online trainings to women entrepreneurs based on the module developed. Through the pilot offline training and the online training sessions, at least 1,000 women entrepreneurs should benefit from the trainings as proved by post-training surveys. The mechanism of training of trainers can be adopted, as needed.
  • The recruitment of women entrepreneurs is the responsibility of the RP.
• Promote gender sensitive procurement
  • Organize a training session for at least 10 procurement focal points of large companies to increase their awareness of gender sensitive procurement, based on a training module UN Women Regional Office for Asia Pacific has already developed.
  • 50 companies (both large companies and companies of women entrepreneurs) are expected to sign the WEPs. The recruitment of these large companies to participate in the project is the responsibility of the RP.
• Organize one pitching event between women entrepreneurs and large companies
  • Organize at least one pitching event such as ‘marketplace’ between women entrepreneurs and large companies. The participating women entrepreneurs will be selected from those who have completed all the trainings, based on a one-page application; the selection criteria will be developed.
• Document the results achieved
  • Document the results achieved under these activities, for example, women entrepreneurs have enhanced skills, companies have integrated gender into procurement polies, etc.

Outputs

The programme is expected to achieve the following three outputs:

• Output 1: Women’s networks, public institutions and the private sector in the EU and Asia share expertise and knowledge to advance an enabling business environment for women’s economic empowerment.
• Output 2: Women-owned business and entrepreneurs have increased capacity to engage with governments and private sector companies in policies and dialogues for advancement of women’s economic empowerment.
• Output 3: More private sector companies implement the WEPs, including the gender-sensitive business culture and practices in EU and the country.

Competencies

• Technical/functional competencies required:
• • A legally registered non-governmental organization;
  • Minimum 2 years of experience in providing training for entrepreneurs;
  • Broad network with women entrepreneurs;
  • Experience in training module development;
  • Experience in organizing conferences or events
• Other competencies, which while not required, can be an asset for the performance of services
  • Knowledge and/or experience in gender and WEPs are a plus;
  • Experience with multi-national organizations, inter-governmental organizations, or United Nations agencies are an advantage.

For more information, visit https://bit.ly/2T0ED70