ASEAN Foundation Job Consultant: Writer For The Sre Community Forum Report - Jakarta, Indonesian

Terms of Reference
Consultant Writer for the ASEAN Foundation S Rajaratnam Endowment
ASEAN Community Forum Report

BACKGROUNG
During the 27th ASEAN Summit, the ASEAN leaders adopted the ASEAN 2025: Forging Ahead Together document as the reference for the next chapter of ASEAN community building efforts. The document contains the blueprints of the ASEAN Political Security Community (APSC) 2025, the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) 2025, and the ASEAN Social Cultural Community (ASCC) 2025 which essentially serve as the roadmap towards an ASEAN Community 2025. As surmised in ASEAN 2025 at A Glance, the focus of the ASEAN community building in the next 10 years will be, among others:

• Greater emphasis on the peoples of ASEAN and their well-being;
• Enhance awareness of ASEAN and its Vision of a politically cohesive, economically integrated and socially responsible Community;
• Engage all nationals of ASEAN Member States through effective and innovative platforms to promote commitment and identification with ASEAN policies and regional interests;
• Ensure fundamental freedoms, human rights and better lives for all ASEAN peoples.

The above goals are in principle shared and understood by ASEAN at the institutional/elitist level, but limited at the community and grassroots levels. It remains to be seen whether peoples of ASEAN know about them, really understand and share what is being envisioned and captured in the ASEAN 2025. As pointed out in the ERIA report (2015), there are two distinctions of ASEAN identity, i.e. institutional identity and communal identity. The former is reflected by all ASEAN institutions, programmes and initiatives, and processes; while the latter is about peoples’ participation in the initiatives and processes, and about the sentiments of the “we feeling”, the “ours feeling” and “we are in this together”. Nevertheless, as stated above, the disconnection between these two identities unfortunately remains a challenge.

Responding to such challenges, the ASEAN Foundation has been mandated to perform as a platform to forge more people-to-people engagement/connectivity outside the circles of the inter-governmental institutions. In this regard, through the support from S. Rajaratnam Endowment, the ASEAN Foundation will be organising three (3) ‘S. Rajaratnam Endowment - ASEAN Community’ Forums, within the period of March 2017 – April 2018, that are aimed to assist in narrowing the gaps between ASEAN’s institutional identity and ASEAN’s communal identity. The Forums will not only evolve around forging people-to-people engagement, but it will do so in a manner that will also contribute concretely to the ASEAN’s key issues and blueprints that matter for the well-being of the ASEAN peoples.

The first forum of the S Rajaratnam Endowment – ASEAN Community Forum was organized on 9-10 March 2017 in Singapore. Focusing on the three thematic areas namely Women Economic Development, Rural Development, and Micro-Small-Medium-Enterprises (MSMEs), it brought together 42 Civil Society Organization (CSOs) from Rural Development, Women Economic Development and Micro-smalls – medium enterprises (MSMEs). This forum has allowed the CSOs to develop their work plan, and gained knowledge of how the ASEAN’s 2025 blueprints will impact CSOs nature of works across ASEAN.

JUSTIFICATION
The ASEAN Foundation’s report on S Rajaratnam Endowment – ASEAN Community Forum outlines the overall objectives of the forum covering reported activities result against the programme agenda. The report includes all result from the two-day forum both at the plenary and world café sessions.

The production of the SRE – ASEAN Community Forum helps the ASEAN Foundation to attain effective and efficient use of resources and be more accountable to donors and other stakeholders and Civil Society Organization (CSOs) participants who participated the forum. This is to build credibility for the organisation and to inspire confidence that the organisation is worthy to receive the contribution and investment, made.

DESCRIPTION OF THE RESPONSIBILITIES
Under the supervision of the Programme Manager and overall guidance of the Executive Director, and in close collaboration with relevant staff, the consultant will perform the following tasks:

• To develop the concept of the ASEAN Foundation report which address objectives of the S Rajaratnam Endowment – ASEAN Community Forum.
• To formulate its draft content by extracting and collecting information from the forum proceedings including presentations of guest speaker, thematic resources persons, the CSOs action plans, and post forum evaluation report.
• To extract key information from presentation materials during the plenary session.
• To incorporate the information from the post forum evaluation report into the forum’s report.
• To prepare the first draft, subsequent drafts and final version of the S Rajaratanam Endowment – ASEAN Community Forum Report; including fact-checking and proof-reading (including after the report goes to the designer)
• To identity relevant photos, graphics, etc from the ASEAN Foundation’s library to go with the text
• To liaise with graphic designer on a regular basis on the development of the S Rajaratnam Endowment – ASEAN Community Forum report
• To deliver the S Rajaratnam Endowment – ASEAN Community Forum S Report

OUTPUT

• Final text as word document, including table of contents, photo caption and credit information, for the S Rajaratnam Endowment – ASEAN Community Forum Report.
• Proof Reading of design layout to ensure text and graphic are error free

EXPECTED RESULTS/DELIVERABLES

• First draft of the forum report submission : 20 April 2017
• Final draft of the S Rajaratnam Endowment – ASEAN Community Forum submission : 27 April 2017

TIME FRAME AND RENUMERATION

The consultant will work for ten working days spread out from 11 to 21 April 2017. It is noted that due to the nature of the project, there will be periods of time when no actual writing will occur because the writer will be waiting for either text clearances from ASEAN Foundation and/ or layout from the designer.

QUALIFICATIONS AND SKILLS

• University degree in communications, social sciences or other related fields
• At least over five years of progressive work experience in a relevant field
• Previous experience in writing the high level forum report writing experience
• Previous experience in copy-editing and fact-checking
• High level proficiency in standard computer software, in particular, Microsoft word and Excel.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills in English, of publication standard
• Persistence in follow up, tact and diplomacy
• Demonstrated ability to meet deadlines

All interested applicants to send application, stating the position with the following documents to procurement@aseanfoundation.org 

• Application letter and time table on how the assignment will be carried out completed with clear deliverables
• Curriculum vitae
• Samples of writing
• Financial proposal specifying a total lump sum amount highlighting deliverables.

DEADLINE FOR APPLICATION: 14 April 2017