Call for Consultant - Community Initiatives Ideation and Designing

Assignment: Community Initiatives Ideation and Design Consultant

Requirement: Lead on ideation and design workshop and supporting organizations in development and production of community-based tools

Project: UNDEF

Time Frame for this assignment: July 2025 till December 2025

Duration: 6 months

Location: Beirut

Type of consultancy: training- capacity building – designing

ABOUT ABAAD

ABAAD– Resource Center for Gender Equality is a UN ECOSOC accredited organization that aims to achieve gender equality as an essential condition to sustainable social and economic development in the MENA region. ABAAD advocates for the development and implementation of policies and laws that enhance women’s effective participation, through a rights-based approach that would bring about tangible change to gender justice. With the purpose of ending gender-based violence, ABAAD adopts a holistic care approach to provide protection and support services to GBV survivors/right holders during times of peace, war and disasters since 2011.

ABOUT THE PROJECT

Engaging civil society and youth in gender inclusive citizenship and leadership project is four years project, that aims at promoting active and inclusive citizenship particularly amongst the country’s civil society and future change-makers: youth. It contributes to advancing gender equality and will be achieved by engaging and capacitating youth and CSOs to take part in reformative grassroots-level movements. By fostering and consolidating essential allyships within local communities, a multi-stakeholder’s approach is cultivated with the goal of advocating for essential reform, combatting GBV, and forging violence-free societies.

OVERALL GOAL OF THIS ASSIGNMENT

The consultant will deliver an ideation and design workshop to support selected CSOs in developing gender inclusive, civic engaged initiatives. They will also lead the co-design and production of tailored tools and materials through participatory sessions, ensuring cultural relevance, quality, and timely delivery, while building CSOs’ ownership and capacity to use the final products.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Conduct a 5 days’ workshop and develop training material in Arabic on ideation and design in collaboration with ABAAD Team for local CSOs in Lebanon. The consultant shall:

1. Ensure the learning materials are accessible and rooted in a participatory active learning approach that incorporates discussions, case studies, demonstration sessions and group activities;
2. Create a creative thinking environment by carrying out five days ideation and design workshop that will enable CSOs to:

• Map out the problem through a gender lens and chose an important priority area to focus on
• Generate new and innovative gender sensitive solutions that fall under their respective mandates;
• Ideate and sketch out different initiatives that can respond to and address the issue;
• Learn how to anticipate any potential challenges and accordingly identify mitigation actions.
• Deliver Coaching and mentoring online sessions afterwards, to assist in the actual development of the ideas.

1. Co-develop tools, visual resources, and digital products with CSOs through inclusive and context-sensitive design processes, including online participatory sessions.
2. Technical Support: Design branding and communication materials while ensuring all outputs are high-quality, functional, and aligned with community needs and cultural relevance
3. Submit a final report detailing achievements, challenges, lessons learnt and main takeaways along with any notable success stories;

• SKILLS REQUIRED

Both individual consultants and consultancy firms are eligible to apply. In the case of firms, the proposed team must collectively meet the requirements listed below. Individual applicants must also fully meet these same criteria:

• A university degree (BA or MA) in project management, social sciences, or a related field
• Proven experience in facilitating ideation workshops and design sprints
• Prior experience working in the development sector, with demonstrated engagement with local communities
• Strong knowledge and understanding of the socio-political and cultural context in Lebanon
• Excellent communication skills in Arabic (spoken and written)
• Demonstrated experience working in culturally sensitive settings and adapting methodologies to local contexts