Consultancy: Intent to bid – WS477705582 – Consultant for GESI Assessment At Mercy Corps

Program Overview

The Bolstering Agriculture Systems’ Ability to Invest, Nourish, and Employ (BASATINE) consortium, led by CARE International with Mercy Corps, Al Majmoua, George N. Frem Foundation, Berytech and LOST, is implementing a 38-month intervention to support farmers and other market actors in areas of Bekaa and Akkar, focused on the production of wheat, legumes and vegetables, seeking a territorial approach and promoting linkages with other value chains. Through complementary interventions designed in alignment with the humanitarian-development-peace nexus, the project will immediately address food insecurity and provide needed income and technical support to farmers to survive the current economic crisis , as well as improve the capacity of food systems to maintain employment and growth in the longer term via stronger domestic production and system linkages. This will ultimately contribute to greater economic stability, particularly for women, improved rural development, and more positive social cohesion between host/refugee communities at a local level.

To achieve the overall objective (impact) of sustaining the capacity of the Lebanese agriculture to produce food for the local market and create and maintain jobs, in an effort to contribute to the prevention of tensions between host communities and refugees, the consortium has designed a multi-pronged approach based on the following Theory of Change in direct alignment with MoA’s most recent National Agriculture Strategy (NAS):

IF agriculture market system actors adopt more climate-adaptive, profitable, and sustainable farming methods and are supported to restore livelihoods and productive capacity, and IF the efficiency of agriculture market systems and the viability and competitiveness of locally-produced agricultural outputs are improved, THEN this will contribute to more resilient and sustainable local agriculture market systems that create and maintain income generation and employment opportunities for more resilient, socially-cohesive, inclusive and food-secure host communities and Syrian refugee households.

Project Location: Lebanon

Consultancy duty station: Ideally in Lebanon (depending on travel restrictions and security context) for the data collection period with the possibility of remote work for desk, analysis, and follow-up work. International firms/individuals are required to work with a local consultant/firm for data collection if presence in-country is not possible.

The purpose of the GESI assessment is to provide insights into the ways in which gender, age, ability, citizenship, marital/social status, and other identity and vulnerability factors impact power dynamics, social relationships and access and control over resources, particularly with relation to agriculture, and within the targeted value chains.

The assessment will inform activity design and implementation, to ensure that women, and particularly vulnerable and marginalized women, including those with disabilities, are able to equitably access project benefits and meaningfully participate in the intervention. It will also inform any changes to the BASATINE Gender Action Plan (GAP) activities, indicators, and targets.