ActionAid has been working in contexts of protracted crises for many years. This rootedness is reflected in the new ActionAid International strategy: “The rights of women and other groups made vulnerable by disasters, and protection from violence, exploitation and abuse in times of crises will also be strengthened through community-based protection mechanisms and improved accountability of humanitarian actors. We will build the resilience of rural and urban communities to climate change, disasters and conflicts through transformative actions from the local to the global level, led by women living in poverty and exclusion. The active engagement of young people will be priority to prevent the worst effects of emergencies.”
The new AAI Strategy has identified ’building resilient livelihoods’ as a one of the key intervention areas to support women and youth living in poverty and contexts of protracted crisis. Resilient livelihoods are important as they provide a stable source of income that will improve people’s food security, enable people to thrive and act as a buffer in times of shocks and stresses. Building resilient livelihoods also allows us to link humanitarian with development programming.
ActionAid has an extensive humanitarian and resilience programme that promotes resilient livelihoods. The initiatives are wide and varied but currently lack the evidence base on what makes a livelihood programme ‘resilient’. This issue becomes even more evident if we want to identify solutions for resilient livelihoods in protracted crises or fragile contexts. These contexts tend to be politically unstable and see weak governance, limited basic service provision and limited economic opportunities for its citizens. The question then arises how ActionAid and other actors can support poor women and youth in these contexts to build resilient livelihoods that prevent them from depending on humanitarian aid and ideally build a better life for themselves and their families.
This consultancy assignment will support ActionAid to better understand the scope of our existing work and that of others; exploring what works and what doesn’t in building resilient livelihoods of women and youth in protracted crises; and how women and youth can have meaningful engagement in the process. This will feed into the development of a manual or handbook to guide our work in the future.
This consultancy piece of work will run concurrently with a similar piece of work on women-led protection in protracted crises with the aim of, towards the end of the year, looking at the connectivity between the two areas of work.
ActionAid has been working in contexts of protracted crises for many years. This rootedness is reflected in the new ActionAid International strategy, from 2017: “The rights of women and other groups made vulnerable by disasters, and protection from violence, exploitation and abuse in times of crises will also be strengthened through community-based protection mechanisms and improved accountability of humanitarian actors. We will build the resilience of rural and urban communities to climate change, disasters and conflicts through transformative actions from the local to the global level, led by women living in poverty and exclusion. The active engagement of young people will be priority to prevent the worst effects of emergencies.”
In addition, at the World Humanitarian Summit, one of the commitments made in the Grand Bargain was to ‘Increase social protection programmes and strengthen national and local systems and coping mechanisms in order to build resilience in fragile contexts.’ In recognition of the need for more investment in this area globally.
While ActionAid is committed to work on women led community based protection, this is currently under-resourced and we have been unable to meet the external and internal demands for technical support and guidance, despite our own commitments to integrate protection into all humanitarian programming.
To ensure women’s leadership and active youth engagement in our protection programming we need to better understand the scope of our existing work, and develop technical guidelines that will support this work into the future.
This consultancy piece of work will support these efforts, and be run concurrently with a piece of work on resilient livelihoods in protracted crises with the aim of, towards the end of the year, looking at the connectivity between the two areas of work.
The overall project that this consultancy will feed into (primarily focusing on outcomes 2 and 3) has the following outcomes:
Outcome 1: Increased levels of understanding and organisational capacity to design resilient livelihood programmes for and with women and youth in fragile contexts and to influence external stakeholders on the issue.
Indicators:
At least 3 strong case studies are developed on resilient livelihoods best practices.
Agreement among key country staff on key best practices on resilient livelihoods in fragile contexts.
Resilient livelihood handbook/guide/manual developed and disseminated.
Outcome 2: The role of women and youth in community based protection work and access to and participation in gender responsive services is agreed with countries in protracted crises and shared widely.
Indicators:
At least 3 strong case studies are developed on best practice of women led protection mechanisms and supporting women and youth to access gender responsive services (ideally showing humanitarian as well as development context)
Protection manual includes protracted crises as a context and provides more technical guidance on protection programming.
Outcome 3: Increased understanding of how protection programming intersects with resilient livelihoods programming in fragile contexts.
Indicators:
Discussion between key countries and incorporation into project guidance.
The Country Director provides vision, leadership, management and effective high-level national representation for ActionAid International in OPT, in line with the established policies, principles and operating practices of ActionAid International, as well as good management practice and the political, social, cultural and economic environment of the country. The Country Director is also responsible for overseeing the implementation of the ActionAid Palestine Country Strategy Paper (CSP). The CD role requires broad organizational experience to develop and manage a growing team well as deep knowledge of OPT to make significant improvements to policies and processes that lead long-term success of ActionAid in OPT
