Consultancy for Scaling Education Solutions At UN High Commissioner for Refugees

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is offering a home-based Individual Consultancy within the Education Section in the Division of Resilience and Solutions, Copenhagen.

UNHCR is a global organization dedicated to saving lives, protecting rights and building a better future for refugees, forcibly displaced communities and stateless people. Every year, millions of men, women and children are forced to flee their homes to escape conflict and persecution. We are in over 125 countries, using our expertise to protect and care for millions.

Organizational context

The Humanitarian Education Accelerator (HEA) was created to generate evidence that supports the design and delivery of high-quality education innovations at scale for children affected by humanitarian crises, whilst also building internal capacity of implementers to identify and sustainably scale what works. The HEA does this by undertaking research that includes process evaluations and outcome assessments of programmes that are scaling. By documenting the enabling and inhibiting factors of scale, the HEA has started to build out key recommendations that innovations can use to scale sustainably, be delivered through or in support of national systems and achieve impact on learning outcomes for children and youth in emergency and crises settings. The HEA provides a unique model of support for grantees, blending mentorship by experts, peer-to-peer learning, and capacity building support to strengthen internal monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) and scaling processes, with a long-term approach to evaluation and evidence building. The HEA was established in 2016, through an initial partnership between UNHCR, UNICEF and the UK Department for International Development. The second phase of the HEA, led by UNHCR and funded by Education Cannot Wait (ECW), was launched in December 2020 across five countries: Chad, Ethiopia, Jordan, Lebanon, and Uganda.

Phase 2 concentrates on:

1. Supporting an innovation from HEA Phase 1: the proposed innovation for this support is Can’t Wait to Learn (CWTL), implemented by War Child Holland. The added value of HEA funding here is not the expansion of project delivery, but in the bespoke engagement with generating and sharing evidence about scale.

2. Bringing on board a new cohort of innovations: the HEA will support new innovations that have already reached a proof of concept stage, but do not have rigorous evaluations to draw on to further develop their scaling models. A stage-gated process will be established to select three innovation teams that will receive funding and scaling capacity building and mentorship support to follow their trajectory of scale.

The HEA is designed to generate evidence that can support the design and delivery of high-quality education at scale for children affected by humanitarian crises, whilst also building internal capacity of country operations and implementers to identify and sustainably scale what works. The HEA will address the evidence gap by conducting rigorous research evaluations, supporting selected innovation teams to adapt and meet the scale of the education challenges, improving internal M&E capacity gaps and the HEA will nurture a network of specialist humanitarian actors with expertise in scaling innovations, monitoring and evaluation and research. Through this network, the HEA will aim to improve collaboration, sharing of expertise and knowledge about ‘what works’ and how to manage scale and replication in education in emergencies and protracted crises.

Occupational Safety and Health Considerations

To view occupational safety and health considerations for specific duty stations, please visit this link: https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel

Specific Occupational Safety and Health Considerations to this assignment (if applicable): Covid-19 restrictions

Duties and responsibilities

UNHCR has committed to provide funding and mentorship to the HEA innovation teams, to strengthen internal M&E capacities and develop solid framework and advice for scaling up their pilot innovations. As such, UNHCR requires experts in scaling innovations in humanitarian context, specifically education innovations. The consultant will provide 5 days of support to the Connected Education team to mainstream lessons learned on scaling through the HEA. The deliverables of this assignment have been identified as the following:

1. HEA Innovation Team cohort- Stage 3 (2022)Tailored mentoring session to final 3 innovation teams Needs based mentoring identified in partnership with the final 3 innovation teams. Conduct reviews of the innovation team’s scaling strategy and spend an average of 3 days support with each team. (Number of days: 9)
2. HEA Community of Practice Bootcamp (2022)HEA Community of Practice Mentor: Manage and facilitate a workshop on humanitarian scaling with 3 implementing partners. (Number of days: 10)
3. HEA Technical Support (2022)Conduct a technical review of the HEA’s M&E pillar, including reviewing external evaluations, policy papers and the HEA’s global public goods. (Number of days: 6)
4. Connected Education Technical Support (2022)

Mainstreaming HEA lessons on scaling to help inform the business case for scaling Connected Education within UNHCR aligned to the Digital Transformation Strategy. (Number of days: 5)

Total: 30 days

The Consultant will also be expected to:

• Attend and prepare sessions for relevant HEA project activities (activities to be finalised by UNHCR at time of hiring)
• Provide updates to UNHCR, as requested, on the support at the different HEA Stages
• Attend calls as needed with the HEA project team (UNHCR) to provide updates on progress of the 3 teams
• Any documentation that would be conducive to the final meta- evaluation report should be shared.

Essential minimum qualifications and professional experience required

• At least 10 years of experience working within the areas of innovation and scaling strategy and at least 2 years of experience specifically related to scaling humanitarian education interventions
• Experience providing mentorship and strategic guidance to project teams on sustainable scaling within humanitarian contexts
• Experience designing and delivering workshop sessions on scaling strategy and implementation of scaling plans on the ground
• Academic background in the theory of scale, particularly sustainable scale and the application of that theory on the ground.

Location

The successful candidate will be working home-based with mission travel to Kenya/East Africa (to be confirmed).

Conditions

The consultancy is planned to be home-based.

Duration: 30 working days starting as soon as possible until 31 December 2022