WEEmpower Consultant

SCOPE OF WORK FOR STTA

Supporting businesses/cooperatives to participate in the value chain and access capital from the Bank for Social Policies to promote Women’s Economic and Environmental Empowerment (WEEmpower) Initiative in Lao Cai, Thanh Hoa and Quang Nam provinces

A. DAI ORGANIZATION AND VALUES

DAI is a global development company with corporate offices in the United States, the United Kingdom, EU, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Palestine and project operations worldwide. We tackle fundamental social and economic development problems caused by inefficient markets, ineffective governance, and instability. DAI works on the frontlines of global development. Transforming ideas into action—action into impact. We are committed to shaping a more livable world.

DAI and its employees are committed to confronting racism and holding ourselves accountable for positive change within the company and in the communities, cultures, and countries in which we live and work.  DAI is committed to attracting and retaining the best employees from all races and backgrounds in our continued effort to become a better development partner.

DAI upholds the highest ethical standards. We are committed to the prevention of sexual exploitation, abuse, and harassment as well as other ethical breaches. All of our positions are therefore subject to stringent vetting and reference checks.

B. PROJECT BACKGROUND

The USAID Sustainable Forest Management Project (the Project) will work with the Government of Vietnam (GVN) to reduce carbon emissions associated with deforestation, the degradation of natural forests, and poor plantation management. The Project will implement a “Green Prosperity” approach that strengthens local communities’ ability to protect their natural resource base and reduce emissions while building a strong foundation for sustainable livelihoods and equitable economic growth.

The Project will work in seven provinces (Lao Cai, Son La, Hoa Binh, Thanh Hoa, Nghe An, Quang Tri, Quang Nam) and focus on five objectives:

1. Improve and expand community forest management
2. Increase conservation-friendly enterprises in forest-dependent communities
3. Increase functionality of law enforcement system for forest crimes
4. Improve production forest management practices
5. Mobilize domestic resources for forest management and protection

The Project will be implemented during the period 2020-2025 by DAI in collaboration with RECOFTC and Preferred by Nature as partners, with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) as the counterpart and the Management Board of Forestry Projects (MBFP) as project owner.

C. DESCRIPTION OF CONSULTANCY SERVICE:

1.     Background

Under Objective 2 (Increase Conservation-Friendly Enterprises in Forest Dependent Communities), there are two main tasks as follow:

1. Identify Target Value Chains, Barriers, and Opportunities
2. Strengthen Conservation-Friendly Value Chains in sustainable forest management (SFM) Landscapes

The Women’s Unions of Lào Cai, Thanh Hóa và Qu?ng Nam organizes various activities for women’s economic empowerment and startup initiatives. WUs is commissioned by the Vietnam Bank for Social Policies (VBSP) to manage the trust fund for the poor and vulnerable women. VBSP in these provinces has also been coordinating with mass organizations (e.g. Women's Union, Farmers' Union, Veteran's Union and Youth Union) to entrust loans to the poor and disadvantaged. In addition, the Government of Vietnam (GVN) at all levels also has a number of programs to promote women's economic development, including the program on "Supporting women to start a business in the period 2017 - 2025" of the GVN; "Activities to promote women's economic development". in the innovation startup ecosystem for the period of 2018 - 2025 plan of the relevant provinces.

However, based on the survey results to assess the capacity on accessing capital for micro, small and medium enterprise conducted by the Green Annamites project in Quang Nam and Thua Thien Hue provinces and through rapid consultation with the VBSP, the Women's Union of Quang Nam province in 2019 shows that there are still some barriers/gaps related to: i) capacity of women in business development planning, business development services, alternative income generation activities; ii) connecting markets for potential products to improve competitive advantages; iii) many women, especially those from ethnic minority communities or living in remote and mountainous areas, have little access to commercial loans; and iv) some women are not confident in accessing loans from the trust funds (provided by VBSP and operated by provincial Women’s Unions) to create alternative livelihoods. These challenges, if addressed, would contribute to improving incomes, reducing pressure on forests and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

To address these limitations, the Project will work with the VBSP and Women's Unions in the provinces to establish a "tripod" partnership to empower women (priority is given to female owners of business, SMEs, growing small businesses, vulnerable women) through entrepreneurship promotion, value chain enhancement, access to finance (including microfinance). It is expected that this partnership will contribute to (i) creating conditions for the development of small and medium-sized enterprises, production and business establishments, cooperatives (preferably female owners) and/or apply entrepreneurship and improve business (for example, the tool on Start Up and Improve Your Business, or SIYB); (ii)  building capacity for management board members of the loan and savings groups from the Project communes (priority is given to communes located in areas at high risk of deforestation and forest degradation according to the results of the Project DDRT Report conducted in 2021); (iii) accessing to financial and environmental benefits to women; and (iv) mobilizing financial resources from microfinance programs and/or trust funds to support women's start-ups and/or investment to scale up environmentally friendly production and business , create jobs, improve incomes, contribute to reducing pressure on forest resources/ecosystems.

To minimize the identified barriers/gaps and contribute to achieving the above targets, the Project recruits 01 (one) consultant to support enterprises/cooperatives to participate in the value chain and access preferential capital from the VBSP to promote the Women Economic and Environmental  Empowerment (referred to as WEEmpower Consultant) in Lao Cai, Thanh Hoa and Quang Nam provinces.

This activity would directly contribute to these main indicators: ID1 – Number of people trained; ID4 – Amount of investment mobilized.  In addition, this activity might also contribute to ID5 – Number of people receiving livelihood co-benefits (in 11 indicators of the Project) in Lao Cai, Thanh Hoa and Quang Nam provinces.

2.     Purpose of the consultancy assignment

The WEEmpower Consultant will support to promote women economic and environmental empowerment for business owners (priority is given to business entities with environmentally friendly activities owned or managed by females) through facilitating proactive start-ups, improved management capacity, enhanced value chains, and better access to finance to improve production and business capacity in six target districts of three provinces (Lao Cai, Thanh Hoa and Quang Nam).

3.     Expected results

1. At least 90 production and business entities/cooperatives, of which at least 35% are female owners/managers, have improved capacity in entrepreneurship and/or improved production and business capacity;
2. At least 150 members of the management board of loan and savings groups from 15 communes have been strengthened in loan and savings group management and microfinance lending;
3. At least 450 women have access to microfinance to start/expand the scale of environmentally friendly production and business; and
4. Mobilize at least VND 13.5 billion from microfinance programs and/or trust funds to support women in starting a business and/or investing in expanding production and business, creating jobs, improve incomes, contribute to reducing pressure on forest resources/ecosystems.

4.     Locations

Activities will be implemented in 15 communes (average 2-3 communes/district, priority is given to communes at high risk of deforestation and forest degradation) in six districts of three project provinces, including: Bac Ha and Van Ban districts, Lao Cai province; Thuong Xuan and Ba Thuoc districts, Thanh Hoa province; and Dong Giang and Tien Phuoc districts, Quang Nam province. These are the priority districts for implementation and will expand to the remaining districts if success and available resources of the Project.

5.     Tasks

The WEEmpower Consultant is expected to conduct the following tasks:

1. After signing the individual consultancy agreement (ICA), study the secondary documents and work with the Project assigned staff, the VBSP, the Project Management Boards and the Women's Unions of the 3 provinces involved to prepare a detailed work plan;
2. Develop an Inception Report, including, but not limited to, key findings, detailed work plan to implement activities on promoting women economic and environmental empowerment;
3. Work with the assigned project staff to arrange and organize the kick-off meeting with the participation of the Provincial VBSP and the Provincial Women's Union and other stakeholders;
4. Coordinate with VBSP and Women's Unions of three provinces to organize 15 training courses (5 courses in each province) for at least 150 participants on loan application and loan portfolio management for the Management Boards of Savings and Credit Groups (MB-SCGs) in 15 communes of 06 related districts;
5. Work with the VBSP and Women's Unions of 3 provinces to track and document data of at least 450 borrowers from VBSP and other financial service providers (thanks to the consultation and support provided by the MB-SCGs after participating in the Project's training indicated in the task 4 above).
6. Organize 03 training courses on improving entrepreneurship and improved your business improvement (the ILO SIYB tool can be applied) for at least 90 women representing production and business entities (priority is given to female owners or women-led business entities), with the cooperation of technical instructors/or technical consultants of the Project.
7. Coordinate with the Provincial Women's Union to organize 03 Start-up events and select at least 06 most suitable female-led business models to support for the implementation:
8. Provide technical support for 06 start-up models (01 model in each district) of female owners/ women-led entities selected for better planning, organization, implementation, monitoring and evaluation; including better access to finance and marketing in partnership with the Provincial Women's Union, financial service providers and the Project staff.
9. Collaborate with the Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI) Specialist, Communication Specialist and Project Monitoring and Evaluation Manager to ensure that all regulations on gender, communication and monitoring and evaluation are followed; and
10. Prepare training reports and the final completion report for the consultancy services provided.

6.     Supervision and reporting

The WEEmpower Consultant will perform all assigned tasks and responsibilities in the three provinces under the overall supervision of the Chief of Party (COP) and Deputy COP of the Project, and the direct supervision of the Sustainable Non-Timber Forest Product (NTFP) Specialist.

7.     Anticipated Level of Effort (LOE) and Deliverables

The estimated LOE for this assignment is 70 (seventy) person-days, from March 15, 2022, and ends up on September 30, 2022. All final deliverables must be prepared in Vietnamese (see table below). The specific deliverables and timeframe are presented in the following table.

8.     Qualifications

• Having a bachelor's degree or higher in agronomy, forestry, agricultural economics, rural development, business administration and development, or other disciplines consistent with the service's objective.
• Having at least 5 years of experience in capacity building, implementing livelihood/income generating activities, agribusiness, cooperatives, social enterprises, corporate social responsibility, microfinance, etc.
• Having experience in networking in the private sector.
• Having experienced in working with the VBSP and Women's Unions at different levels.
• Having knowledge and understanding of Vietnam's institutional environment for agro-forestry development and the engagement of the private sector in livelihood development.
• Having knowledge and experience in promoting women economic empowerment of vulnerable women through entrepreneurship promotion, value chain enhancement, financial access and microfinance in Vietnam.
• Understanding the local socio-economic and environmental development context.
• Being good communication skills in Vietnamese and English, experience working with government organizations, NGOs, private sector, cooperatives and local communities.

9.     How to apply and requested documents

Interested candidates are requested to submit:

• A CV in English and Vietnamese
• A cover letter in English
• Scanned copy of highest related degrees
• Short technical proposal in English and Vietnamese on approach to this assignment (methodology and work plan), and list of relevant completed assignments

via email to our recruitment email at [email protected] [1]. 

Please quote the position title in the subject line: “Candidate’s full name _ WEEmpower Consultant”

Deadline for application: 5.00 p.m. (Hanoi time), February 17, 2022

To learn more about DAI, please visit our website www.dai.com [2].

DAI is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer with a commitment to diversity. DAI does not discriminate in employment on the basis of race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy and gender identity), national origin, political affiliation, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, genetic information, age, parental status, veteran status, or other non-merit factor.