Consultant for capacity building for youth-led entities and digital content creators on digital CSE, emphasizing gender-transformative content

Background:

UNFPA works across the Asia-Pacific region to ensure adolescents and youth have access to age-appropriate comprehensive sexuality education in and out-of-school settings. Doing so equips young people with essential information and skills to have healthy relationships, promote gender-equitable social norms (including positive masculinity), and make informed decisions about their body and rights. 

Young people increasingly turn to online spaces, technologies, and social media/digital content creators for information about sexual and reproductive health, gender equality, and other issues. However, the rise of technologies has created a ‘double-edged sword’: it can accelerate access to comprehensive content 24/7 and offer tools to create high-quality content, but also increases risks of misinformation and biases, harmful content, deep fakes, and other forms of technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TfGBV). There is an urgent need to equip young people with more advanced digital literacy skills, a stronger grasp of how technological advances influence their access to sexuality education content, and safe/ethical ways they themselves can amplify reliable content for other young people, while staying safe online themselves. Moreover, in a climate of SRHR pushback, youth voices and perspectives are crucial for shaping what is at stake for their rights, choices, and bodily autonomy.

How you can make a difference:

UNFPA is the lead UN agency for delivering a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe and every young person's potential is fulfilled.  UNFPA’s strategic plan (2022-2025), reaffirms the relevance of the current strategic direction of UNFPA and focuses on three transformative results: to end preventable maternal deaths; end unmet need for family planning; and end gender-based violence and harmful practices. These results capture our strategic commitments on accelerating progress towards realizing the ICPD and SDGs in the Decade of Action leading up to 2030. Our strategic plan calls upon UN Member States, organizations and individuals to “build forward better”, while addressing the negative impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on women’s and girls’ access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights, recover lost gains and realize our goals.

In a world where fundamental human rights are at risk, we need principled and ethical staff, who embody these international norms and standards, and who will defend them courageously and with full conviction.

UNFPA is seeking candidates that transform, inspire and deliver high impact and sustained results; we need staff who are transparent, exceptional in how they manage the resources entrusted to them and who commit to deliver excellence in programme results.

Purpose of consultancy:
The purpose of this international consultancy is to develop, launch, and facilitate a virtual and interactive capacity-building effort that equips youth-led entities and content creators to connect, develop and amplify reliable comprehensive sexuality education content with their online communities. 
 

Scope of work:

The consultant’s work will help empower youth-led entities and creators to access digital comprehensive sexuality education, to critically assess misformation vs. accurate content, to create relevant and reliable youth-oriented digital CSE content, to use technology and digital platforms ethically, and stay safe from online harassment. 

Specifically, the consultant will be responsible for developing, launching and facilitating a virtual, interactive capacity building initiative that will foster a community of youth-led entities and content creators for SRHR/CSE. This work will be an important component of a broader portfolio that leverages innovative CSE models and approaches for SRHR and GBV prevention (especially TfGBV), builds young people’s digital literacy and skills for SRHR, and sparks needed conversations on young people’s rights and bodily autonomy.

Detailed tasks include:

• Lead the conceptualization and development of a virtual short-course on the intersections of young people’s SRHR, GBV (including TfGBV), and digital literacy and technological advances
• Develop the needed curriculum, modules, communications assets, and/or adapt relevant content to create the bespoke programme and learning journey for the youth participants
• Within the curriculum, emphasize skills building for young people to develop engaging CSE content and messages for their audiences, focusing on gender equality, positive masculinities, and healthy relationships
• Incorporate youth empowerment within the course to develop their online voice and presence, and to advocate for change.
• Incorporate key tenets of safety by design and ways to preven