Palladium Job Vacancy: Consultant Gender Equality and Social Inclusion in Community Forest Business, Jakarta

Job Description
Consultant: Gender Equality and Social Inclusion in Community Forest Business

Fourth Multistakeholder Forestry Program, Indonesia

Background

DFID has appointed Palladium, in collaboration with Systemiq, to deliver the fourth phase of the Multistakeholder Forestry Programme in Indonesia (MFP4).

MFP4 is supporting Indonesia to achieve its ambitions on sustainable timber and community forestry. The programme is operating for an initial period of 3 years, with a possible extension to 5 years. MFP4 builds on earlier programme phases to deliver an ambitious set of results on coverage of timber licences, export volumes of sustainably sourced timber, area under community forest management, and number and value of community forest businesses.

To deliver these results, the consortium members have established a joint technical assistance facility in Jakarta, drawing on their respective experience in facilitating forest governance reforms, collaborating with Indonesian ministries on community forestry polices and enabling investments in forests and sustainable land use. The MFP4 facility directly supports the Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry (MoEF) to deliver two core workstreams:

• Sustainable and legal timber: Ensuring the sustainability of Indonesia’s governance reform in the timber sector through the national timber legality assurance system ‘SVLK’, which underpins FLEGT licencing; and
• Community forest business development: Facilitating the expansion of community forest businesses through increased access to skills, finance, knowledge and services for business development and forest stewardship.

Under Workstream B, MFP4 partners with ‘Market Access Players’: businesses that buy products from communities and sell them onto the market. Many forest based communities lack the economies of scale, logistical and processing capacity, and technical know-how to bring products to market themselves. In these cases, market access players can bridge the gap – aggregating communities’ outputs and selling them to the market. Importantly, market access players distinguish themselves from normal intermediaries by integrating the full value chain from farmer to market. They also uphold social and / or environmental values as core objectives for their business, as well as commercial profit. This means that communities gain more returns for their business, as their products do not have to travel through long value chains with many ‘middle men’ steps as they try to access markets.

MFP4 is partnering with five high potential Market Access Players in the forestry sector. These are players that do business with community-based forest enterprises to produce and trade forest commodities, in order to support the restoration of forest ecosystems and provide inclusive benefits for the communities they work with.

Purpose of the Position
The primary responsibility of the Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI) Consultant is to support MFP4 in delivering specific results related to Gender Equality and Social Inclusion within Workstream B. In 2020 our two objectives are:

• Objective 1: To enable one of MFP4’s Market Access Player partners to implement improvements to their business practices that support inclusive leadership roles for women and / or marginalised group members in forest-based communities that are operating in their supply chain.
• Objective 2: To develop recommendations to improve the design of one relevant policy within the MOEF Directorates are tasked with supporting community forestry. These recommendations should enable these Directorates to better support women and / or marginalised group members in forest-based communities to take leading roles in local enterprises.

Travel to remote field sites in Indonesia will be required.

Primary Responsibilities

Specifically, the GESI Consultant will: Lead on the delivery of Objective 1: Supporting inclusive leadership roles in business.

• Work with the MFP4 Team to identify Market Access Players in the MFP4 portfolio that present the highest potential for delivering greater social impact, should specific changes in their business operations be successfully implemented.
• Visit community-based forest enterprises and processing sites in the supply chains of one or more Market Access Players, interview stakeholders to understand the business model and operational procedures. Assess potential to enhance the delivery of positive social impact.
• Propose clear, costed and actionable recommendations for one or more Market Access Players to implement changes in their business practices that would lead to improved impacts for gender equality and / or social inclusion.

Lead on the delivery of Objective 2: Supporting GESI institutionalisation within the MOEF community forestry support system.

• Assess a selection of relevant MOEF policies among the Directorates that are responsible for supporting the successful expansion of community forestry in Indonesia. This is in order to identify the highest potential opportunities to implement changes that would increase the positive impact of MOEF support in terms of Gender Equality and / or Social Inclusion for forest dependent communities.
• Issue clear, action-oriented recommendations to update a specific policy, regulation or procedure within the MOEF that would increase the positive impact of MOEF support in terms of Gender Equality and / or Social Inclusion for forest dependent communities.
• Organise technical working group and / or workshop(s) to discuss the implementation of GESI recommendations with key stakeholders, including the MOEF’s Gender Working Group (Pojok Gender).
• Organise trainings on the implementation of this policy change, if successful (potentially in 2021).

Input level
A maximum of 40 input days is allocated for each of these objectives, over the course of 2020 (total of 80 for both objectives).

Palladium is open to engaging separate consultants for each of the two objectives listed above. If you would like to apply for a single objective, please specify this in your covering letter.

Skills required

• Demonstrable experience in supporting private sector companies to adapt their policies and business practices to enable greater social or environmental impact.
• Experience in working on Gender Equality and / or Social Inclusion issues – either in a development setting or from other fields (private sector is of a particular interest here)
• Experience in supporting the Government of Indonesia to implement GESI-related policy changes.
• Experience in supporting rural community development in Indonesia
• Fluent Bahasa Indonesia, strong English language skills
• Excellent presentation skills – conciseness and the ability to community to a business audience will be highly valued

Applying for this role
Applicants are asked to submit the following documents:

• A short CV (no longer than 2 pages) in English
• A page covering letter (no longer than 3 pages), detailing:
• What makes you interested in this role
• How you bring the right skillset to help MFP4 deliver its GESI objective(s)
• Your proposed methodology to deliver Objectives 1 and / or 2.
• Your daily fee rate (in Indonesian Rupiah, exclusive of tax)
• Palladium is open to engaging separate consultants for each of the two objectives listed above. If you would like to apply for a single objective, please specify this in your covering letter.

Please submit your applications via email to Junita.Silalahi@thepalladiumgroup.com

The deadline for application is Sunday 23rd February 2020.