Women’s Voice and Leadership Indonesia (WVL Indonesia)
1. Background
Global Affairs Canada’s assessment of the Indonesian women’s rights movement concluded that it is fairly strong and vibrant, particularly since the country transitioned to a democratic government in 1998. However, while new spaces and freedom have opened up for women to advocate for and exercise their rights over the past two decades, equality and full freedom for women still remain distant goals in Indonesia. The Indonesian women’s movement is not unified, with most women’s rights organizations (WROs) divided around political, religious, and identity affiliations. WROs also face a critical gap in developing a second generation of feminist leadership, particularly at the grassroots level. The largest WROs in Indonesia act as umbrellas for their local membership-based organizations when advocating on issues with government. However, they do not link up their advocacy strategically or horizontally with the national or international women’s movement, or with other social movements. While their geographic networks around the country are wide and their membership bases large, they lack capacity in effective messaging, communication, advocacy, and influence, including engaging with men and boys, to effectively challenge patriarchal, discriminatory attitudes against women and girls. Also, few have the financial capacity, accountability mechanisms, and procedures in place to diligently manage external funding.
And, a third project with a strong international non-governmental organization (NGO) with the experience, absorptive capacity, and reach to have a complementary and catalytic effect in strengthening the women’s rights movement in Indonesia:
It is important to highlight that of the three projects described above, only two are supported under the WVL funding envelope (the Hivos and Pekka projects).
The goal of the Women’s Voice and Leadership Program is to support the capacity and activities of local and regional women’s organizations and movements seeking to empower women and girls, advance the protection of women’s and girls’ rights and achieve gender equality. This includes increasing funding to local and regional women’s rights organizations and movements, recognizing the global funding gap that they face. In doing so, Women’s Voice and Leadership aims to assist these organizations and movements in their efforts to eliminate discrimination and rights violations in policy and legislation (including implementation) and the provision of services, as well as harmful social beliefs and practices.
Women’s Voice and Leadership Program is characterised by the following four types of support to local/regional women’s rights organizations: (1) Multi-year funding; (2) Fast, responsive funding for discrete activities and short projects to allow for nimble, timely and strategic responses to unforeseen events, and to pilot innovative ideas; (3) Institutional capacity-building support; and (4) Network and alliance building for movement building to amplify the voices of local women’s rights organizations and to foster an enabling environment in which broader collective action can coalesce.
Women’s Voice and Leadership Program Outcomes:
- Improved management and sustainability of local women’s rights organizations.
- Enhanced performance of women’ rights organization’s programming and advocacy to advance gender equality and empower women and girls.
- Increased effectiveness of national and sub-national women’s rights platforms, networks and alliances to affect policy, legal and social change in Afghanistan.
The project will consist of four broad components:
- Multi-Year Funding of four to five years to 10 to 15 sub-national WROs for their programs, including a mix of networks and stand-alone organizations. Predictable multi-year funding would support core funding and activities such as service provision, advocacy, feminist research, policy dialogue and public campaigns. Participating organizations receive targeted capacity building support based on needs assessments that will improve the effectiveness and efficiency of existing funding. There will be no geographic limitation to support
- Rapid Response Fund to provide short-term funding in the form of grants to fund rapid responses to unforeseen events (such as court decisions, rights violations, discriminatory statements made by officials etc.) and to pilot innovative ideas and approaches, including research on emerging gender equality issues. The Rapid Response Fund will be made available to partners selected for multi-year funding support as these partners will have already undergone a due diligence assessment prior to receiving project funding. To access the Rapid Response Fund, WROs will need to partner with another emerging WRO.
- Network and Alliance Building – one WRO would be competitively contracted to manage all logistics related to the network and alliance building learning events that will facilitate collective action, amplify the voices of local organizations and foster an enabling environment. Bringing WROs together to work in a harmonious, inclusive and non-discriminatory fashion to support women’s rights are key results that would stem from this project in light of Indonesia’s growing religious conservatism in recent years.
- Technical capacity-building for the WROs receiving multi-year support. A local WRO, selected through a competitive process, would implement a capacity development program for WROs based on assessed needs, such as administrative, financial and human resource management, conflict sensitivity, networking and advocacy skills, communication and media (both traditional and social), constituency-building and sustainability strategies.
2. Objectives
Canada announced the Women’s Voice and Leadership (WVL) Program as part of its Feminist International Assistance Policy (FIAP) in June 2017 to respond to the needs of local women’s organizations in developing countries. To address a significant funding gap experienced by women’s rights organizations and networks, the program provides them with direct funding and institutional support so that they can promote women’s rights and advance women’s empowerment and gender equality in developing countries.
The WVL Program is strongly positioned to provide evidence related to the FIAP premises that priority focus on gender equality and women’s and girls’ empowerment and on feminist approaches to doing development are key to poverty reduction. It is also strongly positioned to contribute to global evidence, generated through similar programs funded by other bilateral donors, foundation and women’s funds, around what works and what doesn’t when implementing funding mechanisms to support women’s movements. This requires a robust strategy to monitor and learn from the results and impacts of the WVL program. The specific objectives of the consultancy are:
- To assess project performance, including results, as well as strengths and weaknesses, and make recommendations concerning course corrections.
- Produce two (2) annual monitoring reports, based on detailed analysis of quantitative and qualitative project data.
- Participate in learning events and workshops that will aim to examine WVL program-level results, including lessons learned.
- Contribute to the preparation of Longitudinal Case Studies and other documents, such as best practice guides.
3. Description of services
With the aid of WVL program and project level monitoring tools, the Project Monitor (Consultant) will review information to assess if the projects are on track and to identify problems, challenges, and/or gaps; recommend adjustments and capture lessons learned.
Tasks will include:
- Become familiar with the details and key documents related to the projects (approval documentation, contractual agreements, project implementation plan, annual work plans, narrative and financial reports); as well as Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy (FIAP) and related documents on WVL more generally;
- Monitor the performance of the project against the Project Logic Model and propose adjustments to GAC, as well as to implementing partners and WROs if required;
- Monitor the project using the Project Performance Measurement Framework, including the indicators (and their targets) and the collection method and frequency and suggesting to GAC updates as appropriate;
- Assess and analyze documents produced by the Implementing Organization, such as the Project Implementation Plan (capacity-building plan, monitoring & evaluation plan), Annual Work plans, financial and narrative reports to review the project performance and capture lessons learned;
- In collaboration with project partners:
- Identify the extent to which overall program design (the four pillar areas of work, the local model and standard indicators) is fit for performance purpose;
- Identify areas where the integration of crosscutting themes (governance, environment) in the planning could exist and assess the overall success rate of the project in terms of effective integration of these themes;
- Collect relevant data from women’s rights organizations and stakeholders, by working with WROs, to assess and verify findings included in project reports;
- Assess the environment or context, including risks, within which the projects operate and keep GAC abreast of actual and potential changes in context;
- Participate, at GAC’s request, in roundtables, seminars or monitoring events, as may be coordinated through the WVL Program, and make recommendations concerning the nature and results of learning and knowledge exchange from these events;
- Share information and lessons learned, as required, with monitors responsible for Women’s Voice and Leadership projects in other countries in Asia and possibly elsewhere.
- Propose ways, in consultation with key stakeholders, in which feminist principles (ownership, participation, inclusiveness) can be concretely applied within the monitoring framework.
Other Possible tasks:
- Provide technical support to the implementing partners to measure the quality of activities and results (including participation as may be appropriate in the Project Steering Committee - PSC)
- Monitoring and assessing the extent to which partners and stakeholders are appropriately involved in planning, decision-making, implementation and monitoring
- Provide recommendations on contributing to the sustainability of WROs and fostering strong networks of WROs
4. Required Skills and Experience
- More than 15 years of professional work experience, as technical expert and advisor in gender equality in development programs and projects.
- Completed at least two independent monitoring assignments related to international development assistance projects that are similar in scope (budget and duration) and nature in the following sectors: gender equality, advancing the rights of women and girls, organizational capacity building of civil society organizations, non-governmental organizations or networks and partnerships (within the last 10 years).
- She/he must have experience in policy formulation, monitoring, and evaluation of gender equality projects and programs, as well as project planning and design of gender-specific projects;
- Experience in conducting program or project monitoring using feminist methodologies or approaches;
- Proven experience designing, implementing or monitoring programming related to feminist organizational capacity development and women’s rights;
- Experience working with civil society organizations, preferably women’s rights organizations, to review, innovative, develop, or design organizational programming;
- Demonstrated track record of using participatory and informal adult-education methodologies to coach learners;
- Knowledge of gender sensitive and feminist MEL in development/humanitarian settings; and
- Knowledge of Global Affairs Canada policies and priorities is an asset.
5. Educational Background
The consultant must have a degree from a recognized university, preferably a Master’s degree or higher, in gender and/or feminist studies, human rights, sociology, political science, or related.
6. Language Requirements
The working languages are both English and Indonesian. All formal correspondence and reporting will be in English. Field work will be conducted in Indonesian and possibly other local languages. The consultant must possess the following levels in English and Bahasa:
Oral = 4 – Advanced Professional Proficiency
Reading = 4 – Advanced Professional Proficiency
Writing = 4 – Advanced Professional Proficiency
7. Duration of the Contract
The estimated level of effort required for this monitoring contract is approximately 180 days. Monitoring, including field missions, is expected to be carried out between September 2021 and December 2022. The final monitoring report must be submitted to GAC on or before February 1st, 2023. The Consultant is expected to start in September 2021.
How to apply:
Interested individual consultants must include the following documents when submitting the applications to admin@fssproject.com latest by September 10, 2021:
- CV indicating all past experience from similar projects, as well as the contact details (email and telephone number) of the Candidate and at least three (3) professional references.
- Brief statement as to why the individual considers him/herself as the most suitable for the assignment.
- Financial Proposal shall be submitted in the following format:
- The financial proposal should specify an all-inclusive daily rate for up to 180 working days;
- The financial proposal must be all-inclusive and take into account various expenses that will be incurred during the contract, including: the daily professional fee and any other relevant expenses related to the performance of services under the contract, including travel
Qualified women are encouraged to apply.
Due to the large number of applications we receive, we are able to inform only the successful candidate(s) about the outcome or status of the selection process.
For more details about this posting including the Deliverables and Evaluation criteria and how to apply, please go to: https://cowater.sharepoint.com/:b:/s/JobAdder/Ec5M6jsJfixFmEo9yjbAA2gB8rVJh-tQGBolJ92kosxjWQ?e=12b7Vn
ABOUT US
With more than 35 years’ experience, Cowater International is Canada’s global leader in management consulting services specializing in international development and has managed the implementation of over 800 projects in more than 80 countries around the globe. We work with governments, partner organizations, communities and civil society to design and implement sustainable solutions that generate lasting social, financial and environmental impacts. Our adaptive approach to management has led to our award-winning work and recognition as one of Canada’s Best Managed Companies in 2017, 2018 and 2019. Headquartered in Ottawa, Canada, Cowater International also has corporate offices in Montreal, Quebec; London, United Kingdom; Nairobi, Kenya; and Brussels, Belgium, in addition to project offices in a wide variety of other locations across Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.
We thank you for your interest in building a better tomorrow with Cowater International.