Duration: 30 Days
1. About FEMNET.
The African Women’s Development and Communication Network (FEMNET) is a pan- African, feminist and membership-based network based in Nairobi, Kenya with over 800 individual and institutional members across 50 African countries and in the diaspora. FEMNET envisions a society where African women and girls thrive in dignity and well-being, free from patriarchal and neoliberal oppression and injustices.
Over the years, FEMNET has strategically positioned herself as a convener, organizer and facilitator of critical dialogues around women’s economic justice and rights; transformative women’s leadership; sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR); climate justice and natural resource governance as well as, ending all forms of violence and harmful/ discriminatory practices against women and girls.
FEMNET continues to be intentional in influencing decisions made at national, regional and global levels, constantly ensuring African women voices are amplified and their needs, priorities and aspirations are prioritized in key policy dialogues and outcomes that have direct and indirect impact on their lives. FEMNET mobilizes African women to hold their States accountable to women’s rights and gender equality commitments. For more information about FEMNET’s work, visit our website: www.femnet.org.
2. Background of the Project.
FEMNET, with support from UNICEF, is implementing a regional programme aimed at strengthening the leadership, influence, and sustainability of women and girl-led organizations (WLOs/WGLOs) in ending harmful practices and gender-based violence (GBV) across Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA).
Harmful practices including Child Marriage, Female Genital Mutilation, and other forms of GBV remain widespread across the region, disproportionately affecting women and girls and undermining their rights to health, education, bodily autonomy, and economic participation. These practices are deeply rooted in patriarchal social norms, gender inequality, poverty, and structural discrimination, and are often exacerbated in fragile and conflict-affected contexts.
While many countries in the ESA region have made significant progress in establishing legal and policy frameworks to address GBV and harmful practices, implementation gaps persist. Limited financing, weak accountability mechanisms, and insufficient prioritization within national development agendas continue to constrain impact. In many contexts, interventions remain project-based and donor-dependent, limiting sustainability and scale.
There is growing global and regional recognition that ending harmful practices and GBV is not only a human rights imperative but also a critical development and economic priority. Evidence demonstrates that these practices impose substantial economic costs on societies including increased healthcare expenditure, lost productivity, reduced educational attainment, and intergenerational poverty. However, this evidence is often not translated into accessible, actionable investment arguments that can be used by WLOs/WGLOs to influence decision-makers.
Women and girl-led organizations are at the forefront of prevention, response, and norm change efforts. They play a critical role in community mobilization, survivor support, advocacy, and accountability. Despite this, they remain under-resourced and under-recognized, particularly in influencing financing decisions and shaping national and regional investment priorities.
This programme seeks to address these gaps by equipping WLOs/WGLOs with the tools, knowledge, and strategies needed to build compelling investment cases that demonstrate the value of investing in ending harmful practices and GBV. By strengthening their ability to engage in budget advocacy, policy dialogue, and resource mobilization, the programme aims to shift financing patterns toward more sustainable, locally led responses.
The programme is being implemented across nine priority countries: Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda, Somalia, South Sudan, and Zambia.
One of the key outcomes of the programme is the development and dissemination of evidence-based, user-friendly tools and resources that strengthen WLO/WGLO capacity to influence investments. There is a need for a toolkit that bridges the gap between technical economic evidence and grassroots advocacy practice, enabling organizations to translate data into powerful, persuasive investment cases.
This consultancy will therefore support the development of a practical, feminist-informed toolkit that can be used by WLOs/WGLOs to make a case for the need to invest in ending violence against women and girls, positioning them as key actors in shaping financing and policy decisions.
3. Objective/ Purpose of Assignment
The overall objective of this consultancy is to develop a high-quality, practical, and context-responsive toolkit that will equip advocates, civil society organizations, women’s rights organizations, girl led organizations, policymakers, development partners, and other stakeholders with the knowledge, tools, methodologies, and compelling evidence needed to demonstrate the economic costs of harmful practices and GBV, as well as the benefits and returns on investing in prevention, response, and survivor-centered interventions. The toolkit should support evidence-informed advocacy, resource mobilization, policy influence, and strategic engagement with governments, donors, and private sector actors to increase investments towards the elimination of harmful practices and GBV.
Enables women and girl-led organizations (WLOs/WGLOs) to effectively build and communicate investment cases for ending harmful practices and gender-based violence (GBV).
Specifically, the consultant will:
3.1 Develop a user-centered and practical toolkit
Design a toolkit that is accessible, adaptable, and easy to use by WLOs/WGLOs operating at grassroots, national, and regional levels. The toolkit should simplify complex economic and policy concepts into actionable steps that organizations can apply in real-world advocacy and fundraising contexts.
3.2 Strengthen capacity for investment case development
Ensure the toolkit provides clear guidance on how organizations can generate and present evidence-based arguments that demonstrate the social, economic, and human rights costs of harmful practices and GBV, as well as the benefits of investing in prevention and response.
3.3 Integrate feminist, intersectional, and survivor-centered approaches
Ensure the toolkit reflects feminist principles, including power analysis, intersectionality, and survivor-centered approaches. It should guide organizations on how to center lived experiences while maintaining ethical standards and safeguarding considerations.
3.5 Ensure contextual relevance across diverse settings
Ensure that the content in the toolkit that is adaptable across different country contexts within Eastern and Southern Africa, including fragile, conflict, and humanitarian settings, where harmful practices and GBV are often exacerbated.
4. Scope of Work and Terms of Reference.
The consultant will be responsible for the end-to-end design, development, validation, and finalization of the toolkit.
The consultant will:
- Conduct a comprehensive desk review of:
- Existing global and regional toolkits on GBV and harmful practices
- Investment case frameworks (economic costing, ROI models, public finance tools)
- Relevant data and evidence from ESA countries
- Analyse gaps in existing tools, particularly in relation to usability by WLOs/WGLOs
- Engage FEMNET to refine expectations and align on approach
- Develop and submit an Inception Report, including:
- Detailed methodology
- Workplan and timelines
- Proposed toolkit structure and content outline
- Approach to stakeholder engagement and validation
- Develop Draft Toolkit
- Finalize the toolkit incorporating all feedback
- Ensure the toolkit is delivered in editable format (Word)
5. Required Qualification, Skills, and Competencies.
The call is open to consultant/s able to demonstrate the following skills, knowledge, and experience.
Academic Qualification.
- Master’s degree in Gender Studies, Public Health, Social Sciences, International Development, Human Rights, Law, Social Work, or a closely related field.
- A Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field, combined with 5 years of demonstrated experience in harmful practices, GBV programming, and toolkit development, is an added advantage.
- Specialized academic or certified training in GBV case management and referral systems, social norms change, child protection, safeguarding, monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL), or humanitarian protection is a strong asset.
- Demonstrated academic grounding in rights-based and survivor-centred approaches, including familiarity with regional and global frameworks relevant to harmful practices and EVAWG.
Experience.
- Minimum of 7 years’ progressive experience in designing and implementing programs addressing harmful practices (FGM and child marriage), Gender-based violence (GBV), and Ending Violence Against Women and Girls (EVAWG), preferably in Eastern and Southern Africa.
- Demonstrated experience developing practical resources and capacity-strengthening tools for civil society actors, including toolkits, training manuals, standard operating procedures (SOPs), facilitation guides, and ready-to-use templates.
- Proven experience applying Pan-African feminist principles and rights-based, survivor-centered, and do-no-harm approaches in program design, implementation, advocacy, and movement-strengthening initiatives.
- Strong experience in social norms change, community engagement, coalition-building, and policy advocacy, engagement with adolescents and youth, women’s rights and feminist organizations, community gatekeepers, traditional and faith leaders, service providers, government stakeholders, and regional policy processes.
- Demonstrated experience working with multi-sectoral referral and coordination mechanisms related to harmful practices and GBV, including across diverse legal, cultural, political, humanitarian, and security contexts.
- Strong stakeholder engagement and partnership management skills, with the ability to collaborate effectively across multiple countries, organizations, and time zones, and to facilitate participatory consultation, validation, and feedback processes.
Technical Expertise.
- Advanced technical knowledge of harmful practices, including FGM and child marriage, and their intersections with GBV/EVAWG, gender inequality, and broader social norms.
- Strong expertise in survivor-centered, trauma-informed, safeguarding, ethical documentation, confidentiality, informed consent, risk assessment, and risk mitigation approaches.
- Demonstrated ability to design, adapt, and operationalize social norms change and community engagement approaches, including strategies for addressing backlash, resistance, and gatekeeper engagement.
- Strong understanding of multi-sectoral service delivery systems, referral pathways, case management considerations, and coordination mechanisms relevant to harmful practices and GBV.
- Proven ability to produce high-quality, modular, user-friendly, and context-responsive guidance materials, tools, and job aids that can be adapted across diverse countries and humanitarian settings.
6. Duration of Assignment.
This is a 30-day assignment from August 2026.
7. Liaison, Coordination and Reporting.
The consultant will report to the SRHR and EVAWG Lead at the FEMNET secretariat.
8. Selection of Consultant
The consultant shall be contracted by FEMNET. The contract will include a Withholding Tax (WHT) deduction in line with the laws of contracting where FEMNET is headquartered. A WHT certificate will be issued to the consultant. Payment will be made through bank transfer to the consultant bank account. FEMNET will not meet the costs of bank charges. The payment schedule will be agreed upon with the consultant upon successful selection. In the case of team/firm applicants, a designated assignment contract manager will be the contact between FEMNET and the team and responsible for all deliverables.
9. Intellectual Property Rights.
The consultant expressly assigns to FEMNET any copyright arising from the outputs produced while executing the service contract. The consultant may not use, reproduce, disseminate, or authorize others to use, reproduce or disseminate any output produced under the service contract without prior consent from FEMNET.
10. Terms of Service.
This is a non-staff contract and therefore the consultant is not entitled to insurance, medical cover or any other status or conditions as FEMNET staff.
11. Application Process.
Interested applicants should send the following:
- Technical proposal including methodology and financial proposal of not more than 3 pages.
- CV/ CVs of not more than 3 pages which includes names and contacts of 3 professional referees
- 1 Sample work from relevant assignments (applications without sample work will not be assessed).
- Bi-lingual (French, Portuguese and English) is an added advantage
Applications are by e-mail only, sent to: recruitment@femnet.or.ke. Please indicate the reference on the subject line as ‘FNT/EOI/27/2026 – Consultancy to develop a toolkit on addressing harmful practices tailored for WLOs and GLOs.’’.
The deadline for submission of applications is on 15th July 2026.
Please note: FEMNET is committed to the prevention of any type of unwanted behavior, including sexual harassment, exploitation, abuse, and lack of integrity as well as other ethical breaches. All staff and consultants are expected to share this commitment through our code of conduct and Safeguarding Policy. Offers of employment will be subject to satisfactory references and appropriate screening checks, which can include criminal records and fraud.
We welcome people from the widest possible diversity of backgrounds, cultures and experiences. We will make any practical adjustments to enable people with disability to participate fully in an inclusive working environment. By submitting your application, you acknowledge that you have given consent to the collection, use and/or disclosure of your data by us for the purposes set out in this job description.
Only complete applications will be reviewed, and applicants who have been shortlisted will be contacted.