Location: Dhaka, Bangladesh
Application Deadline: 28 May 2021 or until filled
Type of contract: Consultant
Language(s) required: English (native/fluent writing and oral skills)
About the Organization
WorldFish is an international, nonprofit research organization that harnesses the potential of fisheries and aquaculture to strengthen livelihoods and improve food and nutrition security. Globally, more than 1 billion people obtain most of their animal protein from fish and 800 million depend on fisheries and aquaculture for their livelihoods. WorldFish is a member of CGIAR, a global research partnership for a food-secure future. The WorldFish mission is to strengthen livelihoods and enhance food and nutrition security by improving fisheries and aquaculture. We pursue this through research partnerships focused on helping those who stand to benefit the mostpoor producers and consumers, women and children.
Background
Enhanced Coastal Fisheries in Bangladesh II (ECOFISH II) is an on-going project funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Jointly implemented by WorldFish and the Department of Fisheries (DOF), ECOFISH II has been built upon the previous work of the original ECOFISH-BD project regarding hilsa shad and other coastal fish production in the Meghna River ecosystem. ECOFISH II is supporting host-fishing communities in the USAID Zone of Resilience (ZOR), Cox’s Bazar-Teknaf areas, coastal fishing communities in the Meghna River Ecosystem (MRE) areas and the Nijhum Dwip Marine Protected Areas (MPA).
Both ECOFISHBD and ECOFISH II focused in highly vulnerable fishing communities where 80-90% of households earn USD 1.25 or less/day. One of the prime activity to reach the goal of the projects is to enhance the community resilience and women’s empowerment through creating community saving groups. Community savings have the objective to reduce the dependency of communities on external micro-credit providers and avoid unfavorable repayment terms. Each Community Savings Groups (CSG) has on average 30-40 fisher-women. These women’s are provided training about saving management and leadership. It is believed that CSGs have created resilience in the intervened fishing communities and had a positive role in empowering the fisherwomen and reduced the hunger, GBV and child marriage. This pro-women approach has also provided the women in the fishing communities in playing their pro-active role in decision making, especially improving the compliance on hilsa and biodiversity conservation. These successes have yet to be captured and properly understood and for this reason a thorough study should be launched hiring a competent consultant.
Research Objectives
The study aims to address research questions:
Rationale for Conducting the Research to Analyze the Impacts of CSGs
It is expected that with increasing social capital and cohesion, and livelihood options, of poor fishing communities’ resilience of Hilsa Fisher communities have been enhanced through the Community Saving Groups (CSG). At this stage, it is decided to consider a study for CSG for impact assessment of community savings on empowerment, livelihood, saving strategies as well as nutrition and food consumption practices of fisheries households. The research findings will also highlight the achievements ECOFISH-BD and ECOFISH II projects regarding gender equity and women’s empowerment in MRE area. Thus, WorldFish would like to hire a consultant for 40 working days (spread over 15 June 2021 to 15 September 2021) under ECOFISH II project to develop the research methodology and tools, to collect and analyze the data, and to prepare a comprehensive report and manuscript with findings and recommendations.
Scope Of Work