Consultancy To Review Existing Standards And Guidelines For Care Services In The Early Childhood Development Programme
Location: Kigali
Type of Contract: Local/SSA
Languages Required: English and Kinyarwanda
Duration of Contract: 30 days
Starting Date: Immediate effect
Background:
Care work is fundamental for human wellbeing as well as essential for a vibrant, sustainable economy with a productive labour force. Yet, around the world women and girls shoulder a disproportionate share of care work that is unpaid, often unrecognized and undervalued. Prior to the COVID-19 crisis, women already did on average three times as much unpaid care and domestic work as men. This varies widely, particularly for women living in rural areas, and those with limited access to basic services such as energy, water and sanitation. Furthermore, illness in the household or other crises can increase the time spent by women and girls on caregiving and domestic work. This has been brought into sharp focus by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has exacerbated the care demands on women and girls due to pandemic related measures and lockdowns or illnesses in their families. Addressing unpaid care work is particularly relevant in sub-Saharan Africa where access to basic services and decent work is limited and women’s employment options are significantly constrained by societal expectations.

From cooking and cleaning, to fetching water and firewood or taking care of children and, the sick and the elderly, women carry out at least two and a half times more unpaid household and care work than men. As a result, they have less time to engage in paid labour, or work longer hours, combining paid and unpaid labour. Women’s unpaid work subsidizes the cost of care that sustains families, supports economies and often fills in for the lack of social services. Yet, it is rarely recognized as “work”. Unpaid care and domestic work is valued to be 10 and 39 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product and can contribute more to the economy than the manufacturing, commerce or transportation sectors[1]. With the onslaught of climate change, women’s unpaid work in farming, gathering water and fuel is growing even more. Policies that provide services, social protection and basic infrastructure, promote sharing of domestic and care work between men and women, and create more paid jobs in the care economy, are urgently needed to accelerate progress on women’s economic empowerment.
The Government of Rwanda has developed a Comprehensive Early Childhood Development (ECD) Policy of 2016 that birthed the 2017 National ECD Programme, aligned to the National Strategy of Transformation 2017-2023 and the Under the Ministry of Gender and Family Promotion (MIGEPROF), the government further developed “Minimum Standards and Norms for early childhood development services in Rwanda” in 2016. Investment in ECD goes beyond a nation’s human capital development to Africa’s Agenda 2063 on shared values of development of its people and aligns to global Sustainable Development Goals.

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Further, the Government of Rwanda revised the National Gender Policy in 2021 with an overall goal to improve gender equality and equity in various sectors while increasing women’s access to productive economic resources and opportunities and ensuring that women and men are free from any form of gender based violence and discrimination. One of the objectives of this policy is to ensure equal access and control of productive resources and economic opportunities for women and men, boys and girls.
Participation of women in entrepreneurship and business development remains low due to lack of business-related specific skills and capacities, inadequate access to finance and start-up capital as well as heavy involvement of women in domestic activities including unpaid care work, limited use of alternative sources of energy for cooking restraining women to devote more of their time into other productive activities
In order to address the inequities in unpaid care, UN Women has developed a multi country programme dubbed ‘Transformative approaches to recognize, reduce, and redistribute unpaid care work in women’s economic empowerment programming’ programme (‘3R Programme’) to be implemented in Rwanda, South Africa and Senegal. The overarching goal of the programme is to remove the structural barriers to women’s full and equal participation in the economy by recognizing, reducing, and redistributing unpaid care work. In order to contribute to this overarching goal/impact, the programme aims to contribute to the following two outcomes:
1. National and local governments develop/strengthen laws, policies and services that recognize and address the disproportionate share of unpaid care work by women and girls
2. Women’s cooperatives and other organizations provide transformative care services in rural and/or urban areas to reduce and redistribute unpaid care work.
Justification
UN Women in partnership with the National Child Development Agency (NCDA) wish to review exiting standards, tools and guidelines for care service and care infrastructure in the Early Childhood Development programme. The review will aim at rendering the documents more gender sensitive and more specifically recognizing, reducing and redistributing care work in the provision of care services.
Scope of Work:
1. Review project documentation (proposal, log frame, theory of change etc.), policy documents, guidelines and tools and other related existing evidence,
2. Write inception report including methodology and workplan and discuss schedule with the NCDA and UN Women teams,
3. Report back to the team progress against the duties and responsibilities,
4. Organize an internal validation meeting and support in the organization of an external dissemination workshop,
5. Produce summary brief ready to be disseminated (by UN Women and NCDA) to end users,
Objectives of the Assignment
1. The objective of this assignment is to provide technical assistance for the review of existing document (ECD Pocket Guide “National Building from the start: A pocket guide on early childhood development” developed in June 2019, Parenting Curriculum, ECD Models Guidelines, Parenting Guide on Men engage in ECD, IZU Guidelines) models and guidelines that aim to enhance care services that are timesaving, climate-resilient with environmentally sustainable infrastructures.

Duties and Responsibilities
Under the overall guidance of the National Child Development Agency leadership, UN Women seeks to contract a consultant to undertake the following tasks;
1. Review the effectiveness of existing standards and guidelines for care work services including early childhood development in relation to gender responsiveness, timesaving, climate-resilience and environmentally sustainable infrastructure,
2. Refine and update the current standards and guidelines including to ensure the integration of priorities related to unpaid care work, men engagement and other key gender considerations accordingly while updating the same with current information, harmonizing policy provisions,
3. Capacity development needs for the effective application and use of standards and guidelines,
4. Propose models to scale-up care services carried out with the support of public institutions, NGOs, private sector, CSOs, women’s self-help groups, communities and other initiatives,
5. Prepare an audio/app version of the revised ECD pocket guide,
6. Prepare a summary brief of the teaching/training materials and the guidelines and standards,
7. Collaborate with NCDA & UN Women and relevant stakeholders for the validation including the dissemination of updated tools, models and guidelines.

Deliverables
The deliverables will be the following;
1. Inception report,
2. A 2 pager report that provides a map of the existing guidelines and standards for care services, analyses their effectiveness, takes stock of the promising models and initiatives as well as recommendations of key proposals for action by stakeholders,
3. An annex that outlines capacity development strategies for the use and effective implementation of the guidelines and models,
4. Updated versions of Parenting Curriculum, ECD Minimum Standards, ECD Models Guidelines, ECD Pocket Guide, IZU Guidelines models and guidelines including with an audio App version of the ECD pocket guide,
5. A summary brief to (be disseminated) to end users for each document,
The consultant is required to submit technical and financial proposals.
Competencies

Core Values:
• Respect for Diversity
• Integrity
• Professionalism
Core Competencies:
• Awareness and Sensitivity Regarding Gender Issues
• Accountability
• Creative Problem Solving
• Effective Communication
• Inclusive Collaboration
• Stakeholder Engagement
• Leading by Example

Required Skills and Experience
Education:
• A Masters University degree in Gender Studies, Child Development, social work or other related social science fields is required;
• A first-level university degree in combination with 2 additional years of qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree.

Qualification & Experience:
• A minimum of eight (8) years of experience in education, Gender, care work with significant field experience working on ECD interventions, Care Work, unpaid care work, women’s rights and empowerment, gender equality in technical and/or coordination role
• Demonstrated experience in developing Care work; ECD (plans, programmes and budgets and strategies);
• Ability to work collaboratively as part of a team in a challenging and highly fluid and complex environment, flexibility and ability to handle ambiguity and constant change;
• Ability to work under pressure to tight deadlines;
• Relevant experience in a cross-sectoral ECD coordination role in a UN system agency or similar organization is considered as an asset;
• Experience of working with government institutions specifically those in the care work services, and ECD;
• Good analytical skills and knowledge of quantitative, qualitative and participatory research methodologies and analysis on care work and ECD;
• Excellent facilitation, organization and planning skills;
• Proven information management and data skills (Excel, PowerPoint, MS word) in the areas of multi-modal, cross-sectoral data collection, data visualization, including mapping and M&E.
• Proven skills and knowledge of project management/cycle and family engagement for care work and ECD.

Language Requirements:
Fluency in English and Kinyarwanda is required; Demonstrated experience in written and oral communication skills and the ability to clearly and accurately convey information in both languages is a key asset. Understanding of Kinyarwanda is an advantage for conducting the assignment.
Mode of application
Interested candidates are requested to submit their detailed CVs, technical proposal and intent letter to rwanda.offers@unwomen.org not later than 23 November 2022. Only pre-selected candidates will be notified.
UN WOMEN is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality and culture. Individuals from minority groups, indigenous groups and persons with disabilities are equally encouraged to apply. All applications will be treated with the strictest confidence