KNCV Tuberculosis Foundation

KNCV Tuberculosis Foundation is an international non-profit organization dedicated to the fight against tuberculosis (TB), the first deadliest infectious disease in the world. KNCV is an international center of expertise for TB control that promotes effective, efficient, innovative and sustainable tuberculosis control strategies in a national and international context.

We are an organization of passionate TB professionals, including doctors, researchers, training experts, nurses and epidemiologists. We aim to stop the spread of the worldwide epidemic of TB and to prevent the further spread of drug-resistant TB. We operate from a central office in The Hague in the Netherlands, a regional office in Central Asia and country offices worldwide. KNCV raises funds from private, institutional, corporate, and government donors.

Background

Ethiopia is a high TB burden country missing a third of estimated TB cases each year. KNCV will be implementing an innovative project focusing on engaging local indigenous associations called Iddirs in mobilizing women volunteers to support TB Preventive Treatment (TPT) initiation and monitoring treatment completion among under-five children in three zones/sub-cities in Addis Ababa and Southern Nations Nationalities Peoples Region. Empowering women and girls will be an integral component of the project with focus on women-only Iddirs aimed at building women’s capacity to improve their children’s health and enabling women to take a lead role in the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the interventions.

During the entire project cycle, women and girls empowerment will be the main theme of the project and two key cross-cutting activities in this regard will be:

1. Establishing gender taskforces at zonal levels that meet on a quarterly basis.
2. Conducting gender assessment at baseline and designing interventions accordingly

In addition, the project monitoring and evaluation system will have strong emphasis on gender, and age and gender dis-aggregation will be the minimum requirement for any beneficiary recording and reporting. Gender will be a standing agenda item for all project review meetings and progress monitoring activities. Any gender inequality identified during the review processes will be taken as a critical item for subsequent actions. Also, empowerment of women and girls will be assessed as a key parameter both in the baseline and end-project assessments.

Using this project as entry point, KNCV and its local partner, Love in Action, will collaborate with other community-based initiatives to further empower women and girls by establishing a multidisciplinary gender-task force at each zone where participants from education, agriculture, health and justice systems will be represented. The task-force will meet at baseline and then every quarter to review progress in the implementation of the project with particular focus on gender equality. Each taskforce member will take its share of responsibilities to provide additional support.

Purpose of the consultancy

KNCV is looking for a Gender Consultant who will lead the initial gender assessment and analysis in the project implementation sites.

Position in the organization

The Gender Consultant will report directly to the Project TB Officer, and will work in close coordination with M&E consultant, Technical Director, and KNCV Senior Epidemiologist and Country Representative.

Scope of the Consultancy

The Gender Consultant will:

• Develop the Gender assessment tool to carry out the gender assessment in the project implementation sites (Addis Ababa/Addis Ketema subcity; Gamo and Gofa zones);
• With the project staff, select sites (districts) to conduct the assessment
• Coordinate and lead the gender assessment in the project implementation sites;
• Conduct desk review of key documents related to TB prevention and control in the project implementation sites/zonal health departments, selected district health offices
• Conduct in-depth interview with key informants (TB and Gender policy makers at federal level, TB and Gender program implementers at regional, zonal/subcity, and district levels)
• Conduct sample focus group discussions and/or facilitate selected community consultations on gender
• Carry out critical analysis of data obtained from the gender assessment
• Furnish a final report on gender assessment with documentation on key gender concerns and put forth appropriate strategies (in form of gender action plan) to tackle the gender concerns

Deliverables

• Facilitated community consultations and documented gender considerations
• Report on key gender assessment findings
• Gender action plan