Women Leading Theatre for Peace Researcher & Writer | Lebanon based

Terms of Reference

Women Leading Theatre for Peace Researcher & Writer | Lebanon based

Supported by: Women’s Peace and Humanitarian Fund

January-March 2024

Organization: SEENARYO

Project title: Empowering women and their communities to facilitate peace and inclusion through participatory theatre and civic leadership

Project Location: Lebanon (Bekaa)

Consultancy Duration: Up to 25 days of work between January and March 2024

Assignment Duration: approx. 2 months

1.Introduction

Having reached over 100,000 children, youth, women, and teachers since 2015, Seenaryo believes in the power of theatre to equip people with the tools to collaborate, think critically and build transferable skills – supporting them to be powerful agents of their own lives and positive contributors to their societies. While making theatre, Seenaryo is continuously training up facilitators, trainees, and youth leaders to lead the work themselves, with the aim of enhancing our participants’ employability and opening up income-earning opportunities.

2. Project Summary

In partnership with the Syrian-led feminist organisation Women Now for Development, Seenaryo is coming to the end of an 18 month project funded by the Women’s Peace & Humanitarian Fund (UN Women) targeting women’s empowerment, women’s political participation and decision-making, as well as community peacebuilding and gender equality. Using a variety of community-based and evidence-driven interventions, we have brought together a diverse group of women and equipped them with empowered leadership and decision-making skills, to engage community members in dialogue surrounding women’s rights and inclusion, and to engage community leaders in learning about and advocating for women’s rights in their work on the ground. An empowering, participatory theatre process has served as a launching pad to boost women’s confidence and facilitate social cohesion, setting them up for success to become active participants, peacebuilders, and leaders in their communities.

The project targeted 80 local Lebanese and refugee women living in the Bekaa, as well as 25 community leaders from local municipalities and CSOs. Women participated in a 3-month participatory theatre workshop, the creation and performance of an original play touching on themes of women’s rights and participation, a Civic Leadership Training, and a Theatre Leadership Training with the opportunity to apply their newly learned skills through mini-workshops in their own communities with an additional 400 young female participants. Through these activities, the women built well-being and self-esteem, as well as social, vocational, and leadership skills that will allow them to become community participants, leaders, and advocates. Furthermore, performances included dialogue sessions with the audience, providing community members a platform to challenge their own social norms and beliefs and engage in productive discourse around peacebuilding and women’s rights and inclusion.

3. Purpose and Objective of Assignment

Seenaryo has been collaborating with Women Now for Development to create theatre with under-served groups of women since 2017 – way beyond the start of this project in 2022. Seenaryo has created eight women’s theatre productions with Women Now in Lebanon since 2017, in addition to four productions through this current project, and a further three women’s theatre productions with other partners in Jordan.

Seenaryo has an extensive theatre facilitation guide, the Seenaryo Cookbook, which includes a diverse array of activities, workshop plans, top tips, theoretical background and safeguarding/behaviour management guides, all aimed at empowering individuals to lead theatre with groups of marginalised children, youth or women in a participatory, multi-disciplinary way. Seenaryo’s plays are collaboratively written by the participating writer-performers, and we aim to create powerful, imaginative and truthful theatre.

Our Cookbook has sections that focus on delivering theatre with children, but does not have a section highlighting the specificity of working with women in a gender-sensitive way that empowers the participating women. It also does not include a section on the value of theatre for peacebuilding, and the role of women in supporting the peacebuilding process.

Therefore, the consultant is contracted by SEENARYO to draw on their experience of theatre, women’s empowerment and/or conflict transformation, to create a booklet provisionally entitled “Women Leading Theatre for Peace”. This booklet will be published widely both in print and online as a standalone guide, and it will also be incorporated into the Seenaryo Cookbook and distributed to Seenaryo’s hundreds of trainee theatre facilitators each year.

The workplan for this consultancy begins in January 2024 and we expect to achieve all deliverables by early March 2024, ready for a PR campaign to take place in late March to provide visibility for this resource. If however the project start date is delayed, timelines can be negotiated and adjusted accordingly.

The consultant will be managed by Programme Manager Siel Devos and will work in close collaboration with project staff and in coordination with Seenaryo’s Senior Management Team. An ability to be self-starting and to work independently, and an ability to collaborate and communicate effectively with others is essential.

The objectives of the consultancy include:

1. Interviewing xx Seenaryo facilitators and Seenaryo and Women Now project team members to understand the theatre making process. Attendance of a small number of workshops may be possible, and interviews with women participants in the project can be arranged if helpful.
2. Reviewing Seenaryo’s Cookbook and the available literature on participatory theatre led by and for women, and/or aimed at peacebuilding.
3. Write a short booklet in English (probably between 5 and 20 pages) including guidance, activities, some theoretical background and some case studies. The booklet will be finalised, ready to be translated into Arabic and designed ready for publication.

4. Consultancy Deliverables & Timeline

January

• Interviewing facilitators, Seenaryo/Women Now teams and other stakeholders
• Reviewing Cookbook and brief literature review

February

• Writing the guide (first draft to be ready by 23rd February)

March

• Finalising the guide (final version to be ready by 10th March)

5. Candidate Qualifications

We are looking for one consultant to carry out the assignment outlined above. The consultant should have the following skills and experience:

• Diverse and solid experience working on theatre programmes, ideally with a participatory or community outreach element (required)
• Experience working on women’s empowerment projects, ideally arts-based women’s projects (required)
• Experience working on peacebuilding and conflict transformation initiatives (preferred)
• Experience conducting research and writing reports related to arts (required)
• Experience writing facilitation or theatre directing guides (preferred)
• Experience working with small NGOs or CBOs and a demonstrated interest in this field of work (preferred)
• Based in Lebanon with extensive knowledge of the context (preferred)
• Fluent in English and Arabic (required)