Inclusive Local Decision-making (ILD) Technical Tool Development

Overview

Sightsavers as part of its Inclusive Citizenship strategic area, and with funding from Irish Aid, is implementing inclusive local governance projects in Cameroon and Senegal. Through our government and organisation of people with disabilities (OPD) partners we are rolling out our Inclusive Local Decision-making (ILD) approach which promotes the meaningful participation of people with disabilities in local governance, predominately at local council level.

Inclusive Local Decision-Making is a rights-based approach that enables people with disabilities to participate meaningfully in local governance and decision-making processes, ensuring their needs and priorities shape policies, plans and budgets. It strengthens local government systems to mainstream disability inclusion across all sectors and services by building the capacities of both duty-bearers and people with disabilities, and by embedding inclusive practices throughout the full cycle of local public policy and project development.

ILD positions people with disabilities as rights-holders, representatives and decision-makers, advancing democratic participation and accountable, inclusive local governance. Through the capacity strengthening, guidance, advocacy and engagement of the ILD approach we have strengthened disability inclusion in 27 local councils in Cameroon and Senegal and are working with national ministries of local government to scale the approach nationwide.

See the following website for further details of the Inclusive Citizenship work: www.sightsavers.org/citizenship.

Please see full Terms of Reference for details

Purpose of the consultancy

The consultancy aims to strengthen the consistency, quality, and scalability of the Inclusive Local Decision-Making (ILD) approach by developing a suite of practical, evidence-based technical resources for use across different country contexts.

The consultant will lead the design and production of these resources, building on existing guidance, programme learning, and emerging evidence. This work will be undertaken in collaboration with the Global Technical Lead and Sightsavers country teams in Cameroon and Senegal to ensure the resulting tools are context-informed, user-friendly, and suitable for wider application and replication.

Sightsavers seeks to appoint a consultant with experience in strengthening representative local governance systems to complete four deliverables/four pieces of work:

Develop a concept note and theory of change for the ILD approach outlining the key aims, objectives, activities and indicators, and summarising the existing evidence and learning. The concept note and theory of change should consider the Sightsavers Inclusive Citizenship strategy and programme design documents from similar Sightsavers programmes.

Develop a three-day training toolkit to orientate local councils, people with disabilities and organisations of people with disabilities on the ILD approach and how to implement it; based on the existing ILD guide and consolidating existing training materials, learning and evidence. The training toolkit should ensure accessibility standards and use interactive tools and approaches such as role play, discussions, group activities, case studies, etc, to support participants to put ILD into practice.

Draft a terms of reference for the role of disability inclusion focal points in local councils, especially in terms of their role in cascading disability inclusion capacity building, awareness and guiding the implementation of inclusion within local councils.

Based on the discussions and analysis to develop the above tools, write a concise final consultancy report on the outcomes of the consultancy, focusing on recommendations for future ILD programming to strengthen the implementation, scalability, and sustainability of the ILD approach. The final report should include an annexed repository of resources.

Skills and Experience...