Consultancy – Learning and Community Manager , Other/Accelerator Lab

Background

The UNDP Strategic Plan 2018-2021 embraces the complexity of development and commits the organization to helping countries find faster, more durable solutions to achieve Agenda 2030. Important development trends like urbanization, climate change, and inequality pose significant challenges on our path to achieve the 2030 agenda of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

UNDP has begun incubating a number of strategic initiatives aimed at ensuring UNDP is ‘fit for purpose’ to deliver a new generation of solutions in line with the challenges the world faces. One such key strategic initiatives is the Accelerator Lab Network. The initiative is a recognition that increasingly interrelated development challenges require going beyond business as usual and single point, linear and silver bullet responses in development. Instead, they call for an interdisciplinary approaches and non-linear solutions that crowd in the collective efforts of variety of partners and tap into local insights and the knowledge of people closest to the problem and the solutions.

We are building the largest and fastest learning network of Accelerator Labs with 91 labs covering 114 countries embedded within UNDP’s global architecture. The new offering builds on the latest thinking from the fields of complexity science, lead user innovation and collective intelligence to accelerate development impact. This suíte of methods allows us to mobilize different actors – creating partnerships at all levels (national, regional, international) in areas such as research, entrepreneurship, identify and tap into local solutions, harness the potential of real-time data, learn quickly by understanding what works and what doesn't through hypothesis formulation and testing.

We onboarded a first cohort of 60 labs in 2019 and a second cohort of 31 labs in 2020. The presence of two cohorts is a critical configuration and momentum in several ways, on the one hand it allows for the integration, lessons learned and learning experiences of the first cohort to benefit the second, on the other hand there is a challenge in terms of alignment, and most importantly, for all cohorts, the opportunity to effectively contribute to one of the major goals of the labs, namely to learn quickly about emerging problem spaces and their potential solutions and opportunities.

The network is currently “firing on all cylinders” and we have set out an ambitious learning strategy. Yet we see a need and opportunity to facilities and strengthen lateral and vertical knowledge flows across the network (lab teams, cohorts, regions), UNDP as an organization, our partners and broader development ecosystem in order to accelerate toward Agenda 2030. The Accelerator Lab Global Team is looking for a Learning and Community Manager Specialist to help us further build the community of labs, solidify relations, strengthen its network and organizational learning capacity, enabling collaboration, new partnerships and collective learning.

Duties and Responsibilities

The consultant will play a pivotal role in implementing the Accelerator Lab network learning strategy. In this capacity, the consultant will support and develop collective learning activities, build and manage a “learning community” and adjacent partnerships, develop knowledge outputs that helps us socialize our learnings and make it actionable.

For the purposes of this assignment, it will be important to have:

A comprehensive understanding of the mission of the Accelerator Lab Network, including its methods and protocols
State of the art knowledge as well as hands on experience with organizational and network learning (e.g. collective intelligence, sensemaking, knowledge brokering) and community management.
Strong soft skills and able to perform in fast moving, dynamic and culturally diverse environment – being comfortable with ambiguity and operate in “uncharted territory”.

Against the above background, the Consultant will perform the following Learning and Community Management tasks:

Developing, testing and improving programmes of collective learning activities that enable and accelerate network learning.
Convening Accelerator Lab teams and other stakeholders, both internal and external, around specific development challenges (e.g. informality, climate resilience). Facilitate such convenings with the intent to elicit (tacit) knowledge, instigate knowledge flows and enable the network to learn as a collective.
Produce knowledge products – think beyond reports – that consolidates a body of knowledge on a specific subject as well as developing creative ways to socializes this knowledge in order to inspire action, inform decision making and help us learn faster as a collective.
Develop guides, toolkits for design and facilitation of the “collective learning sessions”.

Expected outputs and deliverables:

Output Description

Projected completion date

Projected No. of working days

Review and Approvals

% of payment

Deliverable No 1

Activities plan to accelerate and support the implementation of the “collective learning sessions”.

31 Dec 2021

30

Accelerator Labs Lead Learning Designer based in Istanbul and the Regional Advisor for Africa

20%

Deliverable No. 2

Roadmap to help foster interaction between labs and to increase lab members engagement

31 Jan 2022

30

Accelerator Labs Lead Learning Designer based in Istanbul and the Regional Advisor for Africa

20%

Deliverable No.3

Knowledge products (not limited to reports), resulting from learning on subjects, practices, and experiences, etc, to take forward Africa learning activities and some global ones.

31 Mar 2022

60

Accelerator Labs Lead Learning Designer based in Istanbul and the Regional Advisor for Africa

30%

Deliverable No 4

A guide, toolkit or playbook for the facilitation and implementation of sharing and learning sessions

31 May 2022

60

Accelerator Labs Lead Learning Designer based in Istanbul and the Regional Advisor for Africa

30%

The Consultant may be expected to participate in one or more workshops with representatives from the UNDP Accelerator Lab global events, and other relevant partner organizations.

Competencies

Can lead and set out a programme of activities in a dynamic and fast paced environment with continuously shifting priorities.
Can mobilize a diverse group of stakeholders and enable/empower them to work towards a common goal.
Is able to stimulate and enable collective knowledge creation (around a specific development challenge). Note, we’re not looking for traditional “knowledge managers”, but instead, we’re looking for someone who can bring tacit and explicit knowledge to life and let it “flow” across a global network and beyond.
Can design and facilitate (face to face and remote) workshops, sessions and conversations that deal with a diverse group of participants (backgrounds, culture, expertise) create a safe space for collective learning and reflection.
Has experience with innovation methods – that operate in the space of complexity and collective learning, sensemaking, reflection and action (e.g. systems thinking, collective intelligence, learning design, co-creation).
Can produce compelling knowledge outputs/products (think beyond the usual reports) that helps to socialize knowledge/insights beyond the network, and inspires action, mobilizes talent and people, communicate strategic opportunities in a compelling way,
Can codify an emerging practice, method or way of working.

Required Skills and Experience

Academic qualifications:

Master's Degree in communication, social or organisational sciences, information/communication design, innovation management, international affairs and development or related areas, Required

Experience:

At least 5 years of relevant experience in supporting learning activities, community and network management, and practice related to sustainable development. Required
At least 5 years of experience and expertise on leveraging network learnings and its translation into knowledge products and their socialization. Desirable
At least 5 years of experience and in-depth knowledge of communities of practice, networks, and their management. Desirable

Language:

Fluency in written and spoken English is required.
Working knowledge of another UN language would be an asset.