📋 Tender Overview
Title Three digital toolkits tailored to regional contexts.Programme objective To foster communication with and within communities as part of the regional C4C Connectivity for Communication with Communities Community Engagement and Consultative Processes initiative.Dates October 2020 to March 2021.Population groups Refugees displaced people asylum-seekers stateless people migrants and host communities.Partners Multiple including United Nations agencies international non-governmental organizations NGOs and volunteers from the region and specific to each platform.PROGRAMME OVERVIEWThe United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees UNHCR Regional Bureau for West and Central Africa WCA has created three online platforms the CoronaWestAfrica.info community engagement tools platform the community mobilization and engagement platform and the gender-based violence GBV awareness and community engagement platform.3 The platforms seek to foster communication with and within communities in the region including forcibly displaced migrant and host communities.These platforms are simple websites containing resources video audio and written that are easy to use interesting and fully tailored to local contexts in both their form and content. UNHCR and its partners are already using these resources to better communicate with communities and strengthen their accountability to these communities.CONTEXTThree considerations led to the creation of these three platforms.1. In the WCA region there are several major challenges to accessing forcibly displaced and stateless persons to UNHCRarmed conflicts and insecuritylack of infrastructurevast territoriesmixed population movements migration and forced displacement via inaccessible routesissues with the representativeness of community leaders and community outreach workersrestrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic.2. UNHCRs Age Gender and Diversity AGD Policy4 prioritizes accountability to populations affected by forced displacement. However it is not easy to communicate and discuss effectively with communities. The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted The absence or inadequacy of communication contextualization and adaptation to target audiences and in particular to the profiles representations needs and aspirations of these audiences. Information overload. UNHCR has produced and disseminated a number of standard operating procedures including COVID-19 manuals notes and guidelines. Despite the undeniable usefulness of these documents many people in WCA both within UNHCR and among the affected populations have been overwhelmed by their sheer number. This situation highlights the need to summarize this information and make it concrete and usable.3. There is an urgent need to diversify the communication tools of humanitarian and local actors and to improve their accessibility. This was highlighted by a UNHCR study5 on connectivity for forcibly displaced and stateless persons and their communication needs which was conducted following the launch of the C4C initiative in July 2020.
