The National Consultant will report to the Head of Programmes while working closely with the Communications, M&E, and ICT units.

• Conducting a situational analysis to understand the organization’s current communication, visibility and advocacy landscape, including strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT analysis).
• Identifying key stakeholders within and outside UN Women, including decision-makers, influencers, allies, and opponents, and mapping their interests, positions, and levels of influence to gather insights and perspectives.
• Assessing the political, social, and cultural context to identify relevant issues, trends, and opportunities for advocacy.
• Undertake key audience analysis for UN Women Malawi.
• Developing a comprehensive communications, visibility and advocacy strategy incorporating innovative and creative tools and tactics for UN Women for the next five years that are relevant to the implementation context. This will include goals, target audiences, key messages, channels, activities, and indicators of success (aligned to the country office strategic note communications objectives)
• Developing clear messaging aligned with the organization’s goals and values, tailored to different target audiences and communication channels and incorporating the use of gender statistics as a cross cutting and integral element of UN Women’s work ad mandate
• Generation of creative tools that can be applied, replicated, and modified as needed by communications as well as non-communications personnel where applicable.
• Recommending suitable communication, visibility and advocacy strategies and tactics notably for effective media engagement, digital campaigns including website products and social media, grassroots mobilization, coalition building, and lobbying efforts. These strategies should incorporate guidance and recommendations on visuals and visualization including data visualization while also articulating opportunities for conventional (e.g., stories and briefs) and contemporary and multi-media products (animations, video, infographics, GIFs, photography, and others) based on the messages and target audiences.
• Developing monitoring and evaluation mechanisms to track and assess the reach and impact of communication, visibility and advocacy efforts and make necessary adjustments.
• Providing recommendations for resource allocation, capacity building, and monitoring and evaluation mechanisms to support the effective implementation of the strategy and achieve the envisaged outcomes.
• Develop detailed implementation plan of the strategy for the Country Office
• Finalization of the Communications, Visibility, and Advocacy strategy based on the CO comments of draft submitted by consultant.
• Submission of final Communications, Visibility, and Advocacy Strategy, related annexes and implementation plan

Deliverables

• Inception report and Work plan
• Report of first consultation meetings
• First draft of Communications, Visibility and Advocacy Strategy
• First draft of Implementation plan
• Second draft of Communications, Visibility and Advocacy Strategy and implementation plan
• Approved Communications, Visibility and Advocacy Strategy and implementation plan

Requirements:

• Master’s degree or equivalent in communications, public relations, journalism, marketing, or any related field is required
• At least 7 years of progressively responsible experience in communications, advocacy or business development is required
• Proven experience in developing communication strategies for similar organizations or projects
• Experience in gender equality and women’s empowerment
• Experience working on similar assignment with civil society organizations, international institutions and donors.
• Experience working on a similar assignment in the UN system is an asset.