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Project Officer Local Self Governance |
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| UNDP (INR 98K/PM) |
| Varanasi (Uttar Pradesh) |
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Apply by:
28 August 2012
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Background:
UNDP approaches gender equality and women’s empowerment from a human rights perspective and as a key strategy to achieving the Millennium Development Goals. With the aim to bring about a transformational change in the lives of women, UNDP in 2009, entered into a five year partnership (2009-2013) with IKEA Foundation to launch a pilot on integrated women’s empowerment across 500 villages of Uttar Pradesh with an outreach of 50,000 rural women.
The project’s strategy was rights-based and founded on the recognition that an integrated approach towards women’s empowerment covering all dimensions –social, economic, political and legal, can transform cyclic poverty by equipping women to realize their untapped potential by collectivizing, earing incomes, and accessing rights and government services. The experience of this project revealed that application of an integrated approach towards women’s empowerment triggered a process of individual and societal transformation, facilitating women to initiate and own changes in their social, economic, and political spheres thus, defining their own path of empowerment. The project demonstrated that women have the potential to transcend the cycle of poverty when they realize their untapped potential as a collective.
Based on the successful implementation of this strategy in UP. UNDP now plans to replicate the Integrated Women’s Empowerment Model in 10,000 villages across seven districts of Gujarat (Banaskantha, Patan), Maharashtra (Jalna, Wardha, Yavatmal) and Rajasthan (Dungarpur, Udaipur).
The project’s immediate objective is to mobilise and capacitate, by the end of 2017, women from the project districts to take up collective action to enhance self-worth and reduce social inequalities; to initiate and undertake economic activities and access livelihood infrastructure; and to resist all forms of violence and injustice, participate effectively in local decision making, demand their rights and entitlements and access quality public services.
The project will impact the lives of 1 million women and their families through strategies that include – (i) improved targeting; (ii) organisation of women for collective action; (iii) value-chain based enterprise development; (iv) development of local capacities and cadres; (v) engagement of other stakeholders; and (vi) convergence with existing development programmes. In implementing these strategies, the project plans to form/strengthen women’s groups and build capacities of at least 170,000 self-help group members, and seven SHG federations. The project will demonstrate at least ten women-centred livelihood prototypes by training at least 50,000 women in sector-specific skills, enterprise management and financial literacy, benefitting at least 100,000 women through involvement in different stages of the value chain including 15,000 women-in-distress. The project will enhance women’s political participation by making at least 900,000 women and their families rights- and election-aware, and training at least 15,000 elected women representatives on transformational leadership. It will facilitate legal empowerment of women by informing at least 1 million women and their families about women-related laws and their entitlements, and developing a cadre of 134 para-legal workers who will generate awareness about laws, rights & entitlements and also facilitate institutional response to human rights violations.
In order to achieve its objective, the project will also invest in the development of a number of other resources such as women empowerment centres at the local level, community resource persons, community change agents, business development service providers and vigilance committees.
The project will be managed by a full time Project Management Team which will be accountable to UNDP. The Project Management Team will be led by a Project Manager and will comprise three specialists on enterprise development, local self-governance and gender, and a Monitoring & Evaluation Officer, a Finance Associate and an Administrative Assistant.
Duties and Responsibilities:
The incumbent will carry out the following tasks:
Lead the detailing and operationalizing of the project strategy on political and legal empowerment
Assess the local environment on the status quo of women’s political empowerment and legal awareness and identify constraints as well as opportunities for increased role for women in political spheres and their legal empowerment
Provide technical advice to field implementing partners on design and implementation of strategies, processes and interventions that increase women’s participation and decision making in political processes and institutions of local self-governance
Provide technical advice to field implementing partners on design and implementation of strategies and interventions, as well as selection of appropriate implementing partners that strengthen awareness of laws, rights and entitlements amongst women’s groups and their elected representatives
Commission the development of training and knowledge materials using the services of resource institutions and conduct training of trainers sessions, assist in the implementation of trainings, workshops, etc. as and when required;
Conduct repeated training and experience sharing sessions for the trainers, MNGOs and government partners on the subject of political and legal empowerment;
Advise Community Facilitating Organisations (CFOs) and their field teams on political and legal empowerment issues;
Establish partnerships with key government departments, training organizations, civil society organizations
Develop a sustainability plan and exit strategy for the component on political and legal empowerment in consultation with women’s groups, field implementing partners, project team members, government and other key stakeholders
Proactively identify opportunities for convergence with government programmes and schemes and linkages with state and district training institutions for elected representatives
Build and regularly update a database of resource organizations/experts on local self governance, political and legal empowerment
Document lessons learnt and collate good practices of relevance to the project from within the state, outside and other countries and share them with project partners (incl. the GoUP, district collectors, community organizations and UNDP);
Work with members of the project team to ensure effective linkages between the different dimensions of women’s empowerment - social, political and economic
Monitor project progress through field visits, analysis of project data, organization of periodic reviews and regular correspondence with field partners to ensure that the full potential of the material is used at field level;
Provide substantive inputs to the development and implementation of annual work plans with effective operational strategies, clear deliverables, annual targets with indicators and milestones
Provide inputs to standard reports: Annual and Quarterly Work Plans, Quarterly and Annual Progress Reports (substantive and financial), list of issues and risks
Provide inputs to documents and reports for the meetings of the Project Steering Committee and the advisory group
Organize/facilitate workshops and consultations, thematic reviews and monitoring missions
Provide substantive inputs towards preparation of communication material financed with project funds (i.e. reports, newsletters, films, fact sheets, manuals, brochures, etc.)
Represent UNDP and the project at local, state, national and international level, if required
Carry out any other work assigned by the Project Manager or UNDP.
Functional Competencies:
Building strategic partnerships: Establishing, maintaining and utilizing a broad network of contacts, building partnerships and strategic alliances, and leveraging resources from co-financing partners
Client Orientation: Ensuring overall provision of timely quality services.
Job knowledge and technical expertise: Demonstrating and applying professional and/or technical expertise/knowledge required of the post.
Promoting Accountability and Results based Management: Monitoring and promoting practices, procedures and systems that support accountability and results-based management.
Managing/Mentoring the team to perform professionally and deliver targets as per schedule: Plan, assign, and activities among the team, monitor and support the progress in activities. Should be able to coordinate with all other stakeholders. Resolve conflicts if any within team members and with other stakeholders.
Documentation skills: Possess very good skills to prepare documentation, review documentation of very high quality.
Logical Framework Analysis: Should be familiar with project management/project implementation/ monitoring tools such as LFA.
Educational Qualification and Work Experience:
Masters degree or higher degree in relevant fields – political science, public administration, rural development / management, law, public policy.
Minimum 8 years of relevant experience of in the areas of rural local self governance (Panchayati Raj Institutions) at management or advisor level;
Candidates with experience in working on women’s legal empowerment interventions will be preferred.
Relevant project experience in the Government or NGO sectors in Uttar Pradesh contributing to medium to large scale development projects is strongly desired;
Experience in capacity development of elected representatives and community leaders is strongly desired;
Successful experience in managing women’s empowerment programmes are advantage.
To Apply
Please visit the Link
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Apply by: 28 August 2012
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