Consultancy assignment for facilitating Asia Advocacy and Campaign team retreat and planning workshop

Terms of Reference for facilitating Asia Advocacy and Campaign team retreat and planning workshop – March 2024

Overall purpose of the assignment: Plan and deliver 4-day workshop comprising on retreat/team building and planning for the year 2024-25 of Asia advocacy and campaigns team in the light of regional operating plan and Asia influencing strategy.

Background

Asia regional and advocacy team currently comprises on 11 colleagues (2 working on gender justice, 3 on private sector engagement, 1 on climate justice, 1 on ASEAN engagement, 1 working on digital rights, 2 on media and communication and 1 head of the team). This team is externally focused and engages with multiple partners, entities, social movements, and media organizations. This team also interacts internally with country teams in Asia, Asia based affiliates, Oxfam international and affiliates based in global north. It is diverse team located at multiple stations and meeting via virtual forums. Since Covid-19, team only had a brief chance to physically meet in August 2022 prior to the sign off regional influencing strategy and since then there has been some changes in the team and more changes are anticipated in this fiscal year.

Oxfam in Asia has co-created regional influencing strategy in 2022 together will all the country teams and affiliates based in Asia. The strategy focuses on two themes climate justice and Gender Justice, all our advocacy and campaign plans must be guided by the strategy. Importantly, regional advocacy and campaign plan must be aligned with regional strategy as well as synchronized with country advocacy priorities and contribute to global campaign moments.

Purpose of the workshop

The four-day workshop is scheduled in the light of above background with two main purposes:

• Create a space for team building for better understanding the dynamics, capabilities, skills of different members, improve future communication, build the trust, and better relationship leading towards higher results, creativity and problem solving.
• Celebrate, reflect upon the year 2023-24 and co-create the team plan for the year 2024-25 keeping in mind regional influencing strategy goals, country priorities and identify the skill and capacity gap to deliver on the plan.

The workshop will be organized from 26-29 March 2024 in Thailand

Specific task for the assignment

Oxfam would like the services of experienced consultant who can perform following specific tasks:

• Design the four-day workshop in consultation with head of advocacy and campaigns keeping in mind above objectives.
• Design innovative team building exercises to generate interest of the participants and re-energize the team.
• Lead the process to trigger true and honest reflections.
• Design the methodology for developing concrete plan for the year 2024-25 and challenge the assumptions, linkages and focus of the plan.
• Challenge participants by asking critical questions to push for deep reflection and provoke thoughts.
• Provide a brief reflection note on the workshop at the end.

Timeline and Milestones
Timeline: Milestone
Last week of February: Contract signed
Early March First draft of the workshop agenda (To be reviewed by team and provide comments)
Mid March: Final workshop schedule
26-29 March: Workshop delivery
31st March: Submission of short reflective note

Duration of the assignment

It is anticipated that assignment will be completed in 10 working days including travel and to be completed from las week of February till 31st March.

Required Skills and Experience

The Consultant should have detailed knowledge and skills to deliver on team building and planning process. He/she should be experienced in coaching, mentoring, and carrying out team building exercises and have also led the diverse teams to bring the experience of team dynamics and characteristics of high performing teams. The consultant should also have experience of annual planning processes at regional level and with multiple organizational entities/actors. It is desired if consultant have an experience of working with social movements, think tanks and CSOs in Asia region and understands the context.