Consultant – Inspiring Youth Changemakers Training Program Review (Revision & Development)

ChildFund Timor-Leste welcomes applications from qualified applicants both residing in Timor Leste and overseas.

Organisational context

ChildFund Timor-Leste is the representative office of ChildFund Australia – an independent international development organisation that works to reduce poverty for children in developing communities. With a focus on maternal and child health, early childhood development, school readiness, youth empowerment and protection, and child rights, ChildFund Timor-Leste aims to demonstrate effectiveness and accountability in its program activities and add value to the efforts of its partners through quality programs that are respectful, responsive, and relevant in helping children in poverty, their families, and communities. ChildFund Timor-Leste is working with rural communities to build a new, stable and prosperous future for what is one of the world’s youngest nations.

Background

ChildFund Timor-Leste partnered with Ba Futuru, a leading national not-for-organisation that designs and conducts life-enhancing training programs, to implement the two-year ‘Inspiring Youth Changemakers’ project in communities in Bobonaro and Covalima Municipalities. The project commenced in July 2018 and concluded in June 2020 and was funded under the Australian NGO Cooperation Program (ANCP). Working with 120 mostly out-of-school youth aged between 15-25, the project focused on those who are unemployed or in vulnerable employment, are in a stage of their lives where they are at greatest risk of being left behind by their peers, face significant challenges and potential adversity, need support to develop resilience, self-worth and a sense of purpose and/or require support building confidence to take leadership roles addressing some of these challenges. In each year of the project 60 Changemakers were recruited and received intensive training in peace building, leadership, economic empowerment, life skills and theatre training and script development. Following their training, each cohort of Changemakers worked in smaller groups collaboratively designing, planning and implementing theatrical showcases at community festivals and in schools, as well as participating in monitoring and evaluation activities to measure the community impact of their outreach.

In 2020, the opportunity arose for ChildFund Australia to enter into a Negotiated Partnership with ChildFund New Zealand as part of the latter organisation’s successful grant application to the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) to fund the ‘Impact Programme’ in the Pacific region. The Impact Programme contains projects that focus on the sectors of social and emotional wellbeing, child protection and disaster risk reduction. One of two projects that focus on social and emotional wellbeing within the Impact Programme is the five-year Inspiring Youth Changemakers project in Lautem Municipality, Timor-Leste, from July 2020 to June 2025 – the project’s design broadly mirroring the earlier two-year, ANCP-funded project in Covalima and Bobonaro Municipalities and once again in partnership with Ba Futuru. The project is expanding its focus to include training and capacity strengthening for Youth CSO’s in the municipalities. The new project has done a review of the Youth Changemakers training program, collecting feedback from previous youth changemakers from Covalima and Bobonaro, interviewed Ba Futuru’s former IYC project coordinator, and input from youth CSO’s in the new project area, as well as other NGO’s and Youth focused organisations. As a next step we look for a consultant to provide leadership to lead the next steps to strengthen existing modules were needed and to develop additional components in the Changemakers training program.

Purpose

The training program review seeks to ensure that the Changemakers training program is: • Of quality • Relevant to the needs and priorities of youth in Timor-Leste and reflects a youth-led approach • Based on lessons learned from previous use of the existing training program • Incorporating SEL best practice/ have consistent and comprehensive links to educational and programmatic theories underpinning social and emotional learning (SEL).1 • Aligned with the Timor-Leste National Youth Policy (2016) and informed by the findings made on youth wellbeing in the Timor-Leste National Youth Development Report: Planning the Opportunities for a Youthful Population (2018) • Complementary of extant Secretariat of State for Youth and Sports (SSYS) endorsed curriculum while making an original and meaningful contribution to youth-focused curriculum in Timor-Leste

Scope of the training program review

The review will take place between October 18, 2021 and through January 19, 2022 and will be led by the Consultant with support from ChildFund Australia Social and Emotional Learning Technical Advisor, ChildFund Timor-Leste and Ba Futuru staff. The final products of the training program review include: • Updating/enhance the existing Changemakers modules where needed i. Leadership (Recently updated) ii. Peacejam (Recently updated) iii. Life skills iv. Economic empowerment v. Theatre training and script development (We expect that the review work would mostly focus on Life skills and Economic empowerment modules, possibly incorporate other existing modules –TBD based on assessment) • Develop the training package for youth group leaders on group dynamics and leadership • Develop the capacity building resource for youth-focused CSOs on the topics of governance, strategy development, design, implement and evaluate projects and initiatives which may focus on the social and emotional wellbeing of young women and men, but not limited to other youth-led initiatives.