Terms of References

For Process Documentation of National Level Advocacy for Haor.

Concern Worldwide Bangladesh

1. Concern Worldwide in Bangladesh:

Concern Worldwide is a non-governmental, international, humanitarian organisation dedicated to the
reduction of suffering and working towards the ultimate elimination of extreme poverty in the world’s
poorest countries.
Concern has been operational in Bangladesh since February 1972 after the Liberation War. Concern
commenced its work with relief and rehabilitation programme to address the need of internally displaced
people due to war. Since then, Concern programmes gradually expanded across the country both in remote
rural and urban areas. To respond to the needs of the society and the people and to cope with development
changes, Concern shifted its approaches from relief operation towards development, direct delivery to
partnership with government and non-government organizations for broadening the lasting and deeper
impact of the intervention on the lives of the extreme poor people.
Concern Worldwide Bangladesh started working in Haor areas through responding to the Floods in 1988 with
relief and rehabilitation program. Subsequently, realizing the need for development program in Haor,
Concern started implementation of long term development programs since 1990.
2. Collective Efforts for National Level Haor Advocacy and its Chronology:
Concern does acknowledge that the root causes of poverty and vulnerability cannot be addressed by service
delivery activities alone. Advocacy can play an important role in tackling some of these root causes. In
addition, Concern has built up a wealth of experience at the ground level over the past four decades and
there is a feeling that we should use our position to speak out to have more of an impact on the causes of the
problems we are attempting to address. Advocacy enables us to have this larger impact—for example, if we
manage to contribute to a national policy change, this could affect the lives of many more people than we
could reach with service delivery alone.
The role of NGOs has also been changing as we have learnt lessons from our work over the years. There is a
movement toward INGOs attempting to facilitate more sustainable impact with empowered communities
demanding their rights and duty-bearers fulfilling them. This shift has been formalized in the human rights-
based approach to development which many organizations have adopted, including Concern Worldwide.
Advocacy in Concern is not separated from programmes. With a view to establish rights of the extreme poor
people in decision making process and to create an institutional environment that understands and responds
to the rights of extreme poor people, we do advocacy. The ways we do advocacy are by ensuring rights
holders’ participation through people’s institution building, enhancing capacity of local partners and forging
diversified partnership, strengthening different local structures and committees under local government
structures, influencing in government institutions and influencing in developing pro-poor policies by the
government.

Despite having potential opportunities in the Haor areas, Haor people in Bangladesh are facing many
problems and becoming marginalized in terms of socio-economic development initiatives. Though the
constitution of the republic of Bangladesh has pledged a special attention to the disadvantaged community
such as the Haor people, they are yet to enjoy the full access to essential services. The Haor Basin in north-
eastern Bangladesh is subject to very peculiar conditions and suffers from extensive annual flooding. This
makes livelihoods extremely vulnerable and limits the potential for agriculture production and rural
enterprise growth. For 6 to 7 months of the year, the cropped land is completely inundated and strong wave
action adds to the vulnerability as it washes away the land and poses a major threat to many villages in the
Haor. Rural extreme poor households have to depend upon fisheries and off-farm labor. The communication
infrastructure is poorly developed with submersible rural roads providing some connectivity during the dry
season and boats being the main source of communication during the flood season. The poor communication
network limits the incentives for increasing production, discourages rural growth, limits access to markets
and off-farm employment opportunities and limits access to existing social services particularly health and
education. Protection of villages against flood action, proper management of the fishery resources and
securing existing livelihoods such as crop and animal production are critical needs for the poor rural
households living in the Haor region

In order to address peoples’ swelled sufferings in Haor region, many organizations including Concern
Worldwide, ActionAid, CNRS, NSS, CARE, Oxfam …... have been working for long and doing advocacy on their
own. A new dimension of forginig advocacy in a concerted effort began since 2006 engaging the local,
national and international development organizations, civil society groups, local activists including
development actors in haor that created pathways of organizing national level stronger advocacy in order to
influence policy decisions. This collective effort helped successful organization of 1st National Haor
Convention in, 2008 and 2nd National Haor Convention in 2012 and finally enthused formation of a national
level Advocacy Platform for haor making relevant organiztions on board. . Facilitating this collectiveness for
last 7 years, recently developed HAP - a multi-stakeholders’ platform. HAP has been developed to bring most
of the actors under single umbrella. Collectiveness is an urge of today’s development discourse and this is
more special specifically to Advocacy. Without raising the collective voices, without creating a huge chaos
through generating echo, for the purpose of bringing change for disadvantaged people living in haor is really
difficult. At last, outcomes of such combined advocacy efforts becoming evident – special allocation of 50
crore tk for Haor in the National Budget 2013-2014 and finalization of Haor Development Master Plan are
few of evidents due to this collective movement.

Against this backdrop and comprehending the importance of capturing the process, challenges and learnings
in facilitating advocacy both at national and strategic levels ensuring active participation and engagement of
diverse group of stakeholder for the common purpose influencing pro-poor policies, , Concern Worldwide
Bangladesh is looking for a consultant for process documentation of Haor advocacy at national level.

3. Objectives of the proposed task:

• To capture the collective efforts made bringing different actors under single umbrella (1st &
2nd haor Convention, HAP formation, activities between two mega conventions and post
convention)
• To capture the process followed in generating this momentum of collectiveness.
• To capture the result of each event and achievements of total collective efforts.
• To publish the process documentation and disseminate among actors for further
strengthening the current movements.

4. Scope of works:
• To coordinate, collect & collate the information related to the process of generating the
collective momentum.
• To capture different events in-details (mostly to be focused on 1st and 2nd Haor Convention,
HAP, but not limited to these events) including process, communications, meeting minutes,
communication materials, presentations, photos, media exposure of events.
• To capture the chronology of collective efforts.
• To capture the result of each event and achievements of collective efforts.
 • To compile all these information and prepare a high quality document ready to publish.

5. Role of Consultant and Concern Worldwide Bangladesh:

The Consultant should ensure the tasks as mentioned in the scope of work. Concern Worldwide will provide
necessary support and inputs.

6. Expected deliverables:
Two copies (soft) of high quality ready to publish final version of the process document (completed content
& design part ie to submit the make-up copy in CD) and one hard copy (colour print)

7. Submission of Proposal:
Qualified interested consultants should send the followings as along with the proposal:
• One Page write-up about Haor.
• An Outline of the content of documentation capturing advocacy discourse at national level.
• An Action Plan.
• Team Composition (might be one or more than one person)
• List of Publications (books/process documentation) using following format
Name of Publications and Year Written by whom

• One copy of CV of the Team Leader

• Sample publications
• Budget for the task.

8. Time line:
The consultant should complete the task latest by 15th December 2013

9. Key skills, knowledge & experience required:

• Academic qualification: Masters in Journalism/English/Development Studies/Development
Communication
• Direct/Indirect involvement with development sector or orientation on development sector in
particular on Haor.
• Active involvement in any campaign or knowledge in the discourse of successful campaigns in
Bangladesh
• Experience in publications
• List of published books /documents written by him/her or by a team.

10. Competitive process:

The consultant will be assigned for the task following a competitive process. The evaluation is to be done on
the basis of merit of submitted proposal.

11. Reporting and Feedback

The consultant/ team of consultants will report to the Head of Technical Unit of Concern Worldwide
Bangladesh for the task.