Background
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 womenโs rights at the centre of all its efforts, UN Women leads and coordinates United Nations system efforts to ensure that commitments on gender equality and gender mainstreaming translate into action throughout the world. UN Women provides strong and coherent leadership in support of Member Statesโ priorities and efforts, building effective partnerships with civil society and other relevant actors.
UN Women in Bangladesh supports the government to implement commitments to international normative standards on gender equality and womenโs human rights. The new UN Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework (UNSDCF) for 2022-2026 was launched in 2021 and the corresponding UN Women Bangladesh Strategic Note (2022-2026), defining UN Womenโs strategic engagement in Bangladesh, has also been finalized. The country strategy focuses on strengthening the national structures and mechanisms for gender mainstreaming in policies, plans and budgets; supporting efforts to prevent and eliminate violence against women; promoting womenโs access to decent and safe work; promoting policies and government investment in womenโs empowerment and resilience building in the context of climate change, humanitarian crisis as well as other threats to peace and security; and supporting Rohingya refugee crisis (outcome 5). UN Women works with a range of stakeholders in Bangladesh including the government, civil society and womenโs organizations, youth, UN agencies and donors, to promote gender equality and womenโs empowerment.ย
Regarding Womenโs Economic empowerment, UN Women Coxโs Bazar has been running livelihood training in the Rohingya camps since 2018, and over the course โ it has expanded the range of skills-development and life-skills trainings, small-scale productions and some livelihood projects that also include a womenโs market set-up in the camp settings. Together with its partners, UN Women aim to strengthen its livelihoods projects in both Rohingya Camps and host communities, including on handicraft. Handicraft sector has been prioritized as one of the most potential livelihood options for the Rohingyas, by various assessments done by different NGOs. As such, UN Women through its partners have been providing training to women and adolescent girls on tailoring, embroidery, block-printing amongst others.ย
To ensure employment and income generation, UN Women seeks to strengthen the capacities of the women artisans as well as teams in partners organization and within UN Women. The required capacity transfer is to develop the required skills to produce the products and services across textile products, basketry, recycled products, accessories etc.ย
With a view to achieve this, UN Women would like to commission an expert to facilitate the project beneficiaries to develop various products, prototypes, and identify market linkages by being a reliable source of business-related information and scopes within the policy framework in Bangladesh, particularly, for the Rohingya community.
Purpose:
To provide technical and information support, guidance and assistance in product and catalogue design and development, capacity building of partner and women artisans including on product diversity and a comprehensive list of business contracts for market linkage.ย
II. Duties and Responsibilities:
Under the direct supervision of the โProgram Analyst: Womenโs Economic Resilience and Livelihoods and in consultation with the program team, the consultant will undertake the following tasks:ย
Provide creative product design and development services along with required training/mentoring to women artisans, trainers, and livelihoods team of partner NGOs.ย Develop prototypes together with the artisans, ensuring quality, good design, reflection of tradition, color combination, etc, across primarily below categories:ย-ย ย ย ย ย Textiles: clothing; office merchandizes; home furnishing; fashion accessories
-ย ย ย ย ย Skills: Tailoring, Embroidery, Block-prints, Macramรฉ, Weave craft etc.ย
Provide training to trainers and women artisans to produce range of samplesย Support in sourcing required materialsย Support in costing of such products Develop a catalogue of product samplesย Suggest technology up gradation for bulk productionย
2. Oversee productions
Oversee productions, support in quality control, support for deliveryย Build capacity of relevant team in partner NGOs to manage productionsย
3. List of business contract for market linkages support
Prepare a list of business contacts in Bangla and Rohingya language that includes local, national and exporters contractIII.ย Expected Deliverables and Payment schedule S.L. List of deliverables Suggested date and timeline Payment Schedule 1. A range of prototypes of various textile-based products are readied, covering as many skills as possible.
10 working daysย
40% of total SSA Fee shall be paid upon submission of deliverables-01 and 2 up on acceptance by the Contract Administrator 2. A catalogue of such products is developed4 working daysย
IV. Duration of Assignment:ย
25 days within 2.5 months period (tentatively over the period of 01 May ย to 30 June 2025)
V. Duty Station: Coxโs Bazarย
VI. Supervision and performance evaluationย
National consultant will be under the direct supervision of the Programme Analyst- Program Analyst: Womenโs Economic Resilience and Livelihoods, Coxโs Bazar
VII. Travel and DSA:
No DSA will be paid at the duty station. Travel to the duty station, to and from Dhaka will be paid one-time as per UN Women policy, upon prior agreement/approval. Any other unforeseen, additional travel shall be UNWOMEN expenses and the individual contractor/SSA shall receive a per-diem not to exceed United Nations daily subsistence allowance rate in such other location(s).
VIII. Academic Required qualificationย
Bachelorโs degree in Business Administration, Textile and Apparel, etc.ย Possesses a minimum 5 yearsโ experience in creative industries, like handicrafts, fair trade, etc. with Solid Experience in products (handicraft) design and development, working with women, overseeing production with strong knowledge on fabric, color and design, etc. Experience in market linkages with local, domestic actors and exporters.ย Excellent proficiency in computer operating and communication with internal and external stakeholders.ย Experience in accomplishing similar job in camp settings will be an asset.ย Good command in written, spoken English and Bangla, and knowledge of Chittagoninan preferred Ability to work with women with limited literacy, and travel frequently to field locationsย
VI. Corporate Competencies:
Demonstrates integrity by modeling the UNโs values and ethical standards; Promotes the vision, mission, and strategic goals of UN Women Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability; Treats all people fairly without favoritism; Fulfills all obligations to gender sensitivity and zero tolerance for sexual harassment.VII. Functional Competencies:
Ability to pragmatically apply in-depth knowledge and experience of issues and practices in the fields of gender equality in Bangladesh; Strong communications skills Graphics skills Consistently approaches work with energy and a positive, constructive attitude; Demonstrates openness to change and ability to manage complexities.Language: English, Bangladeshi and Chittagonian would be asset
Nationality: Bangladesh
VIII. Evaluation:
Applications will be evaluated based on the Technical Qualification to be informed by:
relevant experience, samples of work andย performance during the video interview.ยย
IX. Technical qualification evaluation criteria:
The total number of points allocated for the technical qualification component is 100 based on below:
ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย Technical Evaluation Criteria Obtainable Score Educational Qualification and diversificationย 10% Solid Experience in products (handicraft) design and development, working with women, overseeing production etc. 60% Experience in market linkages with local, domestic actors and exporters.ย 20% Excellent skills in computer, communication skills. 10% Total Obtainable Score 100 %