Supporting young people’s leadership in crises contexts/situations of fragility

TERMS OF REFERENCE

Consultancy Information

Consultancy title: Supporting young people’s leadership in crises contexts/situations of fragility

Department /Unit: YOA Global Platforms Secretariat

Supervisors: Anjana Luitel, Mary Ndiritu and Edwina Morgan-Bodo

Duration: 4 months

Starting Date: 9th of November 2020

Duty Station: Online

Located at: Remote

Additional information: Interested consultant(s) can bid on the task individually or with one co-consultant. If the bid involves two consultants, please outline how the tasks will be divided. Deadline for bids is 23rd of October 2020.

Background and Context

For the past years, ActionAid has been working with developing youth leadership in crises contexts through different projects for example: Empowering Youth-led Volunteering at Local Level as part of an EU Aid Volunteers program (YLVO), Global Platforms Project , AA’s network for youth led activism supporting capacity development initiatives and youth organizing, DANIDA funded humanitarian programs and recently with COVID-19 youth led response and Youth Compact Champions. The latter is a joint project under the multi-stakeholder initiative, the Compact of Young People on Humanitarian Action. This has immensely contributed to a lot of diverse youth engagement and perspectives on the importance of ensuring young people’s leadership in crises contexts and led to learnings generated at the local, national, and global levels.

ActionAid’s Humanitarian Signature focuses on women’s leadership, shifting power and accountability to affected communities, with resilience as a cross-cutting theme. This approach to humanitarian work demonstrates a strong commitment to localization and bringing forward youth leadership, particularly of young women, in humanitarian work.

The ActionAid/Restless Development report published in 2019 “Shifting Power to Young People” indicates that young people are in fact among the first responders in any humanitarian crises, and the reports coming out on the COVID-19 pandemic response show the same trend. However, most of the organizations engaging young people in humanitarian work are limiting youth engagement to response work and not building their leadership to deliver throughout the humanitarian program cycle and crises response.

The “Shifting Power to Young People” report also highlights that “young people are impacted by crises and disasters in many different ways depending on their relationship with power and privilege, and intersecting identities including race, gender, sexual identity, class, religion, physical ability and refugee status”. In addition, The Compact on Young People in Humanitarian Action has demonstrated that young people’s needs in crises are often overlooked. A set of youth programming guidelines, produced by the compact, are currently under consideration by the IASC as best practice guidance. It is hoped that these guidelines will shape youth programming in the coming years, also including ActionAid’s Denmark programming. The following projects have been conceptualized and implemented based on the recommendation listed on the report.

The EUAID YLVO project developed capacities of around 180 youth volunteers in five different countries. This supported in bringing youth leadership in at the forefront of humanitarian programming. Also, to address the inequalities perpetuated by COVID-19, these core volunteers have lifted response work by using different tools and methods imparted through this project.

The Global Platforms Project- a network for youth led activism has also developed young people’s capacities in humanitarian response and reconstruction work. Building on its experience and learning from governance work, the Global Platforms have facilitated youth led spaces and capacity development- including Palestinian and Syrian refugees, facilitated peer learning between young people from Palestine and Tanzania. And has extensively used social media for accountability in both emergencies and protracted crises and to influence policy change and shift in harmful traditional practices that affect effective responses to crises.

Based on the recommendations from report on “Shifting Power to Young People”, Youth Compact Champions project aims to provide technical support to young people (20)- from all parts of the world by linking them with 5 tasks forces within the Compact for Young People in Humanitarian Action. In addition to this, a youth fund has been launched to support youth led organizations/initiatives to carry out their COVID- response work. This project has facilitated collaboration among young people and different agencies and supported young people led initiatives within youth actors and non-youth actors as well.

ActionAid Denmark is now looking to pull together all these different pieces into a toolkit that can empower young people to take on further leadership roles in crises contexts. It aims to provide tools, learnings and recommendations on youth programming, volunteering, and leadership in crises contexts.

Purpose of the Assignment

The overall objective of the assignment is to:

• Gather learnings and best practices from AA Denmark supported youth engagement in crises context and develop a toolkit to support organizations aiming to promote young people’s leadership in crises context

Scope of work

The consultancy will document best practices in the form of a toolkit on ActionAid Denmark supported projects focused on young people and their leaderships in crises context or fragile situations. It will basically cover five projects namely EUAID- YLVO project, COVID-19 response, YCOI youth fund, Youth Compact Champions and Global Platforms Project. The consultancy will focus on documenting learning and best practices from the projects mentioned above; compile lists of tools/methods/approaches implemented to promote youth leadership and prepare case studies to validate the best practices. The consultancy will also support ActionAid Denmark in identifying added value of its projects and, where possible, what ActionAid Denmark contribute to Action Aid’s Humanitarian Signature.

The consultancy will require having conversations with project managers, project partners and most importantly young people from Action Aid Denmark supported projects.

Deliverables

• Methodology for assignment
• A youth-friendly toolkit consisting of:
• Introduction (0,5 page)
• A short overview of the youth activities that has taken place in the abovementioned programmes (2 pages)
• 3 cases studies outlining inspirational practices on localized youth leadership and organizing in humanitarian aid also with a focus on young women’s leadership including young people from different communities selected from abovementioned programs, including from YLVO activities (5 pages)
• Main learning and good practice emerging from the abovementioned programmes and cases selected (5 pages)

• A compilation list of tools that have been tried and tested on promoting young people’s leadership in crises response, where the Shifting the Power report and the Youth Compact’s youth programming guidelines have been used. Activity suggestions and Reflective questions inspiring action (15 pages)

• The toolkit is targeted towards youth practitioners as well as young people from affected communities themselves who have some training already on human rights, youth volunteering, and some experience in collective action.

The toolkit cannot exceed 30 pages in total.

Qualifications of the Successful Consultant(s)

Qualifications:

• Proven experience working with young people in humanitarian and protracted crises.
• Proven experience working in different geographical contexts.
• Technical expertise in communication and documentation of tools and skills from diverse contexts.
• Technical expertise in gathering participatory tools and methods in developing young people’s leadership in humanitarian settings.
• Relevant educational background, e.g. in Social Sciences, Humanities, Law, Governance, Leadership, Human Rights, Development, Gender Studies, or similar disciplines preferred.

Institutional arrangements

The following institutional arrangements will apply:

• The consultants will have a contract with AA Denmark
• The consultant will be directly supervised and supported by YOA and colleagues will provide technical support where needed
• The technical expert will work from home and use their own laptop, phone etc. All work will take place online

Criteria for Selection of the Best Offer

The following criteria for selection of the best offer will apply:

• Demonstrated experience working with young people, and the ability to engage with, listen to, and analyse their diverse experiences, and translate this into a toolkit.
• Experience with collecting, documenting, and analysing stories from diverse contexts.
• Demonstrated expertise in applying an intersectional lens to analysis and programming
• Excellent communication skills, and necessary skills to ensure the toolkit reaches a wide audience.
• Knowledge and experience with qualitative and quantitative approaches such as interviews, focus groups discussions, observations, surveys etc.
• Demonstrated experience and understanding of humanitarian contexts in the Global South
• Demonstrated experience of working with youth organizing in humanitarian contexts in the Global south