Call for consultant – GBV CMiE Course Update

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

“Strengthening Civil Courage” (SCC) is a project led by a four-member consortium funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It is comprised of organizations which focus on the promotion and advancement of human rights. These include, Netherlands-based PAX and Amnesty International, ABAAD as well as Defend Defenders which operates in the African East and Horn sub-regions. SCC’s primary aim is to integrate civilians in peace-making and peacekeeping processes and support them in countering human rights violations.

Course Overview

In 2016, ABAAD launched its Gender-Based Violence Case Management in Emergency Settings (GBV CMiE) Online Learning Course, which is currently available in English and Arabic.

Originally, the course was produced within the scope of ABAAD’s Cross-Border Programme operating across Syria, with the primary objective of making such information and capacity building opportunities widely available to humanitarian actors who would otherwise be unable to access such knowledge and training. The course was designed in a manner that took emergency contextual challenges into consideration, including but not limited to internet connectivity gaps, slow internet, or limited bandwidth; irregular electricity availability; and inability to dedicate consistent or regular efforts due to security challenges, instability, displacement, and heavy workloads. This was done through creating the course as downloadable PDF versions of the modules instead of having a web-based interactive system, which allows users to read the material on their own time even without an internet connection.

The training course, which is self-administered, is hosted on an online platform and is available free of charge to all interested stakeholders, especially GBV front-liners, academics, and human rights advocates.

The course comprises the following six modules:

MODULE 1 Sex, Gender, and Equality

MODULE 2 Gender-Based Violence

MODULE 3 Holistic Care Approach and Identification

MODULE 4 Assessment and Planning

MODULE 5 Implementation and Follow Up

MODULE 6 Review and Closure

Each module contains supplementary materials, as well as a quiz (multiple choice, matching, fill in the blanks) which course takers must pass with a 100% score before moving on to the next lesson. After completing the 6 modules, course takers must also pass a final exam, following which the system automatically issues a dated personalised certificate of completion in the course taker’s name.

Course Update

ABAAD is seeking a company with the necessary qualified experts who can undertake a full update of the course as follows:

Technical and Content Update

The existing modules were primarily developed for the Syrian and Lebanese contexts. The new version must have an expanded scope which applies both regionally and globally, and should be relevant for use by front-liners in various emergency settings across the globe. This would require a desk review of existing materials and integration of relevant course materials and examples/scenarios into the modules. The quizzes and final exam would also need to be updated accordingly. The modules should be redeveloped in English for review and approval by ABAAD. Any requested reviews and changes must be integrated by the consultant.

Required Expert Profile:

• At least 15 years of experience in the fields of Gender and GBV, including in adverse settings (emergency, natural disasters, war…).
• Strong knowledge of/experience in case management.
• Proven experience developing training manuals and online learning materials.
• Strong English and Arabic language skills. French, Spanish, Ukrainian, and/or Russian a plus.

Module Translation

The six course modules, including supplementary materials and examination materials, will need to be translated to Arabic, French, Spanish, Ukrainian, and Russian. ABAAD roughly estimates the word count to be a total of 130,000 words.

Required Expert Profile:

• Experienced translators from English to 1) Arabic, 2) French, 3) Spanish, 4) Ukrainian, and 5) Russian.
• Knowledge of technical humanitarian terminology associated with gender, gender-based violence, and case management.

Website Redevelopment

The current website was developed in 2015 and requires a full update and maintenance to ensure improved functionality and smooth, bug-free user experience. It currently supports English and Arabic, but will need to be redeveloped to integrate new language interfaces. After development, the website will need to undergo testing to ensure full functionality. The developer will need to address any issues identified through their own and ABAAD’s testing before launching. Following the finalisation and launch of the website, ABAAD will require the developer to provide 20 hours (over 2 years) of ongoing technical support and debugging. The developer will also be responsible for ensuring that all elements of the website are translated into the 6 languages by providing an Excel sheet with all the headings/text for translation.

The admin console allows the administrator to view user data and issue statistical/analytics reports (gender, age, country, job titles, etc), manually pass/fail/delete registered users, and view user profiles and progress. Additionally, the administrator is able to add/delete/modify uploaded course documents and translations across the different language interfaces.

Required Expert Profile:

• At least 15 years of experience with PHP and MySQL.
• Proven track record of building and maintaining scalable web applications with emphasis on security and handling of sensitive user data in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation of the European Union (GDPR).
• Comfortable working with existing undocumented codebases.
• Experience in JavaScript – plain and jQuery, as well as experience with the Vue.js framework.
• Experience in building front-end layouts and writing CSS.
• Experience in cloud infrastructure setup and maintenance through AWS (networking, load balancing, and data storage) and properly configuring Linux servers.

Coordination of Work

ABAAD expects the applicants to have one focal point who will be responsible for coordinating all the work and liaising with ABAAD to submit the deliverables.

Required Coordinator Profile:

ABAAD does not have specific technical requirements for this position, but the coordinator needs to:

• Possess strong project and time management skills.
• Be able to liaise between the different consultants involved in the production of the course to coordinate a smooth and timely workflow.
• Have efficient communication skills (English).
• Be able to provide timely progress updates to ABAAD, in a format to be agreed-upon with ABAAD’s Project Manager during the inception phase.