“Promoting Women’s Inclusion in Peacebuilding” & “Empowering Civil Society” – Participatory Community Stakeholder Mapping & Conflict Scan Consultant

As part of the two projects, Search is seeking to hire a consultant that will train and support project staff and prime beneficiaries in conducting a Participatory Community Stakeholder Mapping (Under project 1) & Conflict Scan (Under project 2).

1. Context

The Projects

1) Empowering Civil Society: Search is implementing this project with an aim to advance the role of civil society organisations (CSOs) to lead sustainable, conflict- and gender- sensitive, and equitable stabilization and social cohesion of target communities. This will be done through a capacity building program and coaching sessions, stakeholders mapping, community dialogues, collaborative actions plans and subgrants, community committees, and shared learning workshops. Search will be implementing this project in partnership with a local partner who will be closely working with 12 selected CSOs in order to implement local dialogue processes with community members, establish community committees, and design collaborative and inclusive action plans that will be implemented through subgrants.

2) Promoting Women’s Inclusion in Peacebuilding: Search is implementing this 12-months project with the objective of increasing trust and cooperation across diverse communities, to create opportunities for strategic alliances between women’s rights actors and leaders. Under this project, Search seeks to compensate for the lack of equal representation of women’s national political process by including key bodies established to facilitate the country’s transition towards peace.

2. Goal and Objectives of the Consultancy

Participatory Community Stakeholder Mapping is aimed at unpacking the involvement, direct and indirect, of diverse stakeholders in the conflict, peace, security and social cohesion by identifying and calibrating the type of influence they have on the issues- conflict, peace, security, social cohesion- their power and the relationships among them. This will lead to the project seeing where there might be allies and champions to ignite support and the opportunity to transform those more negatively influencing the conflict, peace, security and social cohesion dynamics.

Conflict Scans

Given the specific nature of the methodology of the research (See section 5: Methodology and Data Collection Tools) the consultant will be also required to develop and provide training and coaching sessions on research methodologies that specifically aim at increasing the capacity and the skills of the project participants (CSOs for the mapping and Insider Mediators for the conflict scans) and Search’s focal points on research practices based on Search’s Conflict scan and Listening & Learning toolkit which will be utilized while conducting both activities. The training is also expected to strengthen leadership skills of the participants by building stronger relationships with members of their communities, and analyzing the local conflict dynamics by integrating a strong gender lens to capture needs and opportunities for equal participation and inform gender-sensitive programming approaches.

The trainer is expected to work in close collaboration with Search’s team to ensure that the training and coaching are participatory and the resulting reports are relevant to the context, gender-sensitive, clear, concise and ready to use in the following project activities.

As part of the two projects, Search is seeking to hire a consultant that will train and support project staff and prime beneficiaries in conducting a Participatory Community Stakeholder Mapping (Under project 1) & Conflict Scan (Under project 2) with the following objectives:

Identifying a diverse set of influential community leaders relating to peace, security, and social cohesion that can influence social norms around women and men’s role in society and positive masculinities.

Identifying key issues in their communities, initiatives and collaboration opportunities, emerging from key triggers and events with special focus on issues that disproportionately affect women and girls. The focus will be on experiences and perceptions of community members on these issues that affect women and girls.

Creating actionable recommendations to address identified priority issues in a participatory and conflict sensitive way.

3. Key Questions

Participatory Community Stakeholder Mapping

• Who are the existing community influential leaders (Men and Women) in the targeted locations? Who among these are the likely facilitators and spoilers of peace?
• What is the power and influence of, and relationships among stakeholders?
• What is the existing and potential engagement of key stakeholders in transforming conflict?
• How peacebuilding initiatives can best harness the potential of facilitators of peace and transform those more negatively influencing the conflict?
• What are the networks of relationships that exist on which project stakeholders can grow their influence on?
• What is the current role of these leaders within the local community?
• What are their key interventions in the field of peacebuilding and shifting social norms around women and men’s role in society and positive masculinities?
• Can you provide examples of how successful these interventions/efforts have been?
• What were the (or what are the remaining) gaps/challenges to shifting/influencing social cohesion and peace security in targeted communities?
• What are the common gender norms present in all of the targeted areas?
• What is the most prevalent understanding of gender and gender roles in targeted communities?
• What do they know about gender equality, MenEngage and Masculinities?
• Are they aware of initiatives (that were implemented in the previous 2 years) aimed at changing the traditional roles of men and boys, supporting gender equality or reshaping understanding around gender either directly or indirectly?
• Have these efforts trickled-down to influence a positive shift of social and gender norms? Or have they had an opposite effect?
• What are their needs and grievances?
• How will the project engage (stakeholder engagement strategy) with the identified stakeholders (facilitators and spoilers of peace) for the benefit of the project and enduring peace outcomes in the community?

Conflict Scans

• What are the conflicts that currently exist, and which of them is the most prevalent, violent and prone to endangering the future of the community, particularly with regards to gender equality and inclusivity in peacebuilding ?
• What are the key driving factors, triggers and events that contribute to conflict? Which of these factors are most enduring and likely to exist in the long term?
• How does gender dynamics feed the conflict? What role does gender play in shaping conflicting ideologies?
• Are there serious conflicts that threaten gender equality and inclusivity, and the overall future of the community? Which types of conflict?
• How do you traditionally solve conflicts in your community?
• Who are the spoilers and facilitators of peace? What level of influence do they have over the system? What are the challenges?
• What currently promotes gender equality and women inclusion in peacebuilding? Where are the challenges?
• What are the existing initiatives and collaboration opportunities, emerging from key triggers and events with special focus on issues that disproportionately affect women and girls?

4. Geographic Locations

• The Participatory Community Stakeholder Mapping and Conflict Scans are expected to provide quantitative and qualitative information, gender-age disaggregated data in a strategic country in the Greater Levant.

5. Methodology and Data Collection Tools

• The participatory methodology can give the participants an opportunity to put their newly acquired knowledge and skills into practice all the while building initial trust with community stakeholders.

Participatory Community Stakeholder Mapping: The 12 CSOs (2 representatives from each CSO) will be trained to use Search’s “Listening and Learning” methodology to conduct qualitative research in the selected area of this project (See Section 2: Objectives of the consultancy) to conduct a gender analysis based on the mapping. The “Listening and Learning” (L&L) method is based on conversations to capture individual perspectives and experiences. L&L shifts the act of gathering information from a one-sided interview where only subjects share intimate and private information, to an exchange of experiences where the researchers themselves participate in the sharing of personal views, experiences, and emotions in a non-adversarial manner. The research will involve Key Informant Interviews (KIIs) with civil society, religious, governance, and tribal leaders as well as Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) with community representatives including vulnerable groups in the target areas.

Conflict Scans: The 45 Insider Mediators will be trained to use Search’s Conflict Scan methodology and tools. The Conflict Scans are medium in scope. They are defined around an event’s triggers of a conflict to analyze selected risks and opportunities for peace, important trends and/or track specific indicators and highlight how it changes over time. Scans should outline: updates to the context, opportunities for peace, and a narrow selection of other important factors shaping conflict dynamics. This research will apply a qualitative approach consisting of secondary data collection thorough literature review of available and related materials, And primary qualitative methods of data collection mainly Focus Group Discussions (FGDs). The aim of these Conflict Scans is to allow the IMs to draft actionable recommendations that answer directly to one of the conflicts presented in this exercise, These recommendations will then be the blueprint for the design of community-based activities which will be funded by the project.

As outlined in section 2, the research will be participatory. The key factor to that is that beneficiaries (Researchers: CSOs and Insider Mediators) play a leadership role in all stages of design (create data collection tools), data collection, data analysis, data validation and results sharing under the supervision of the consultant, and write a clear concise report.

Therefore, the consultant will be responsible for; 1) reviewing and summarising available literature focused on local conflict dynamics particularly as these relate to issues surrounding gender equality and women’s rights, 2) utilise Search’s Conflict scan methodology and the L&L toolkit to design the training work plan on topics outlined above of which participants researchers will be trained on; 3) utilise the methodology and the toolkit to design the final methodological framework of the research in collaboration with the targeted beneficiaries in a participatory manner, including the development of data collection tools; and 4) ensuring high quality data collection and the overall quality of the final reports.

Under the supervision of the consultant, the primary beneficiaries (CSOs and IMs) will collect primary data by utilizing KIIs and FGDs with selected adult stakeholders by using a snowball sampling technique. The respondents for the FGDs and interviews will be selected based on purposive sampling in the target locations to meet the required sampling criteria and to ensure inclusivity of the community diversity. The consultant should closely follow-up on the data collection process through daily debriefs with the primary beneficiaries which will be followed by data analysis and reporting in a participatory manner.

The Inception report will also include sampling strategies associated with the proposed methods, methodologies for data analysis outlined with justifications and reasoning for any key methods mentioned, Do No Harm strategies, and suggested dissemination plans. Search will review and validate the proposed methods, tools, and data storage plans prior to data collection.

6. Deliverables

Stakeholder mapping deliverables:

• Search expects the following deliverables from the external consultant(s):

Conflict scan deliverables:

• A stakeholder matrix detailing stakeholders, locations, levels of influence, relationships among stakeholders, and proposed engagement strategy in the project as well as how peacebuilding initiatives can transform negatively inclined stakeholders to be allies to the intervention.
• Desk review of available literature focused on local conflict dynamics particularly as these relate to issues surrounding gender equality and women’s rights and Search’s Conflict scan methodology and the L&L toolkit to design the training materials.
• Based on the desk review, produce an inception report detailing the methodology and the planning of a training on research methodologies and approaches. Annexes to the inception report must include a summary table chronologically listing the key literature reviewed and a matrix of key issues identified from the key literature reviews. This should include relevant ethical and safeguarding protocol; training Methodology and agenda; sample data collection tools, clear objectives and expectations of each session, based on Search’s Conflict Scan Methodology Community Dialogue Approach modules, and in consultation with the project management team;
• Deliver six virtual training workshops (1 for Search’s focal points, 3 for IMs, and 2 for CSO representatives) and coaching sessions on the participatory community mapping and conflict scan methodology/tools;
• Coach and supervise the trainees during the data collection and research processes (data collection process, oversight of the data coding process, submission of the databases to Search, analysis of the data collected, etc.);
• Submit a report on the training and coaching sessions, in line with Search’s reporting requirements and standards; and
• In close collaboration with the beneficiaries, produce three conflict scans reports in English (15 pages max in length, excluding appendices for each report) and six Community Stakeholder Mappings.

7. Ethical Considerations

• In line with the ethical codes and guidelines of research, the consultancy should take into consideration the Do No Harm, Conflict sensitivity, and inclusion principles throughout the processes of designing, implementing, and finalizing the proposed assignment. The consultant is required to respect the following ethical principles:
• Comprehensive and systematic inquiry: The consultant should make the most of the existing information and a full range of stakeholders available at the time of the review. The consultant should conduct systematic, data-based inquiries. They should communicate their methods and approaches accurately and in sufficient detail to allow others to understand, interpret, and critique their work. They should make clear the limitations of the review and its results.
• Competence: The consultant should possess the abilities and skills and experience appropriate to undertake the tasks proposed and should practice within the limits of their professional training and competence.
• Honesty and integrity: The consultant should be transparent with the contractor/constituent about: any conflict of interest, any change made in the negotiated project plan, and the reasons why those changes were made, any risk that certain procedures or activities produce misleading review information.
• Respect for people: Consultant should respect the security, dignity, and self-worth of the respondents, program participants. The consultant has the responsibility to be sensitive to and respect differences amongst participants in culture, religion, gender, disability, age, and ethnicity.
• Safeguarding: Remain alert and responsive to any child safeguarding risks, acquire relevant knowledge and skills which will enable promoting strong safeguarding practices, understanding the child safeguarding policy and procedures.

8. Data Quality Assurance and Management

The consultant will be responsible for ensuring data quality and to define all the measures taken into account to ensure that ethics is ensured in data management and storage.

• The consultant shall observe ‘’Do No Harm’’ principles and protocol while carrying out the youth led research and ensure protection of respondents and youth researchers. The consultant shall supervise the youth researchers all along the data collection. The consultant shall oversee data quality issues during data collection, management and report writing.
• The consultant is expected to enhance and implement international ethical standards and principles for research, as well as ethical principles of working with youth, including considering all risks, protection and accountability issues related to this exercise.

All deliverables will be reviewed and approved by the Project Manager and the MEAL Manager prior to the acceptance of the final product.

9. Timeline

• This assignment will be launched in the first week of June 2022 until the end of August 2022.

10. Budget

• The budget available for this consultancy is 10,000 USD

11. Requirements of Consultant

• The following skills and experience are expected by Search for the consultant:
• Bachelor degree in social sciences, peace building studies, public health, international relations, gender and development, social sciences, peace building studies or other relevant fields;
• Minimum of 5 years’ experience in research community dialogue, community capacity building, conflict transformation, conflict/gender sensitivity, negotiation and/or mediation approaches;
• Minimum 5 years’ experience as a trainer;
• Experience doing remote data collection and stakeholder engagement in volatile and conflict affected parts of Greater Levant countries such as Iraq and Syria;
• Has benefitted from a previously held Common Ground Approach ToT;
• Knowledge of Common Ground Approach’s tools and materials;
• Previous experience in delivering remote/online trainings;
• Solid understanding of the project cycle phases and tools;
• Proven experience in the design, development, and delivery of similar trainings and developing evaluation forms and pre and post-tests;
• Ability to tailor training modules to the specific needs of trainees;
• Experience in raising awareness and mobilising disadvantaged communities;
• Flexibility in terms of working hours based on the needs of the selected trainees CSOs;
• Excellent interpersonal skills;
• Previous experience in working with international organisations; and
• Training will be conducted in Arabic – Reporting will be conducted in English.