Trainer For Workshop On Community Mobilising And Engagement

    Terms of Reference Training workshop on community mobilising and engagement Oxfam Lebanon Programme Background Strong community participation, often channelled through beneficiary groups or committees, is the backbone of Oxfam’s approach to humanitarian programming.  It facilitates community-led project design, implementation and monitoring, and encourages participation and accountability. Working with committees also allows us to work effectively with large populations and leave a footprint for activities to continue after end of programmes. In addition to seeing the potential for vulnerable segments of the population to take actions on some of their needs and concerns, Oxfam also believes the ongoing humanitarian programmes should implement approaches that reduce and possibly prevent tension within and between communities. Oxfam’s protection work in Lebanon has seen our teams, as well as other organisations’ and partners’, passing relevant information about basic and protection services to refugees so that they would know where to go for assistance.  After doing these for more than two years, we moved to a subsequent step whereby refugees were supported to develop the necessary skills and be organised so that they can sustain the link with various service providers and themselves seek action or refer community members directly for assistance.  The awareness of various organisations’ mandate and services, plus the support in referrals has somewhat contributed to communities gaining confidence to seek action themselves, while also possibly appreciating their potential to seek action of service providers in solving issues that the larger community face. On the other hand, the set up of the humanitarian response system over the past three years hasn’t focused sufficiently on understanding group dynamics, power holders, and on actively engaging the target populations, be it refugees or Lebanese population. Engaging with beneficiaries’ population, including with authorities and power-holders at different levels, mobilising members of the communities we work with requires a set of skills and techniques that has been only partially developed by the teams that were engaged in community mobilisation so far. Organising groups of people is seen as a viable approach to enhancing community participation and developing seeds for empowerment of crisis-affected populations.  It is also seen as a way to bring together different sectors of the population may be facing common issues and challenges, and help them dialogue and work together in seeking help and solution from power holders, authorities or service providers. Ultimately in order to contribute to sustaining community-led actions. Purpose This capacity building initiative, stems in particular from the protection programme, that has a strong focus on community-based protection. The approach used by Oxfam for this component of its protection programme can be described as a combination of the two definitions below: A method used to better engage communities in their own protection (Work with community groups to map threats, undertake a safety audit, create a ‘problem tree,’ create an action plan) Protective action that originates within and is led by communities to protect (eg. Existing community mechanism’s leadership, decision making supported) This training workshop aims at addressing some key questions and introducing a better and more structured knowledge of how to work within communities (more or less structured) and how to mobilise and engage target population groups. This should be done building on the experience developed by team members in Oxfam and partners’ organisations so far.   Methodology and Process   The trainer(s) will be expected to lead on the development of the training format and of all the materials required to before and during the training. The training shall build on strategies, approaches and field experiences of team members’ developed so far, and build on those. The skills and techniques proposed will need to fit the purpose of the community engagement strategy and activities of Oxfam and partners involved. In addition, the trainers should produce a reference tool, based on the learning developed during the training that can be used by training participants as well as other team members in future.   Timeline Oxfam is expecting the completion of the consultancy tasks as described in this ToR over a maximum period of 6 days. Preferred time period is the week of 18-23 April. If these dates are not available, alternative dates can be discussed, but in any case ending no later than 23 April 2016. Applicants are kindly requested to indicate in their offers the actual required number of days versus team size involved and the financial rates and their availability.                                               Outputs -          Development of training methodology and agenda -          Development of training curriculum, handouts and training material -          Delivery of training for up to 30 participants -          Documentation of learning into guidelines/recommended approaches -          Report of activities, including recommendation for areas requiring further capacity development on the subject matter   Management of the consultant The consultant will be contracted and managed by the Oxfam GB Lebanon Protection Coordinator. Oxfam will cover the cost and provide support for the identification and contracting of training venue, printing of training materials, and related logistics.