Over the last decade, Bangladesh has experienced remarkable economic growth and human development. Despite progress, fragile employment and the growing frequency and intensity of disasters and climate hazards are impeding progress. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated inequality and forced millions of people into poverty in Bangladesh. Women are facing the burden of these complicated issues, and the pandemic primarily had gendered consequences, slowing or even reversing much of the progress made toward gender equality.
SWAPNO (Strengthening Women’s Ability for Productive New Opportunities) is a gender-based social security project that aims to lift poverty-stricken rural (divorced/separated/widowed/having a husband with disability) out of economic insecurity by providing them with productive and sustainable livelihood opportunities. In addition to self-employment, SWAPNO also helps place women in local Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and private sector companies in the formal and informal sectors.
Since its inception, SWAPNO has benefited 12,492 beneficiaries in five districts. Among them, SWAPNO II has covered 3564 in Jamalpur, Lalmonirhat, and Gaibandha districts. The project has aided economically disadvantaged women in developing their talents, linking them to services and the local market, and ensuring their financial inclusion. This has ensured their survival, improved their resilience to shocks, and provided them more power.
Based on the success of the project and the experience gained, SWAPNO II aspires to implement the project across the 12 districts of Bangladesh – Lalmonirhat, Nilphamari, Rangpur, Gaibandha, Jamalpur, Sherpur, Gopalgonj, Bagerhat, Pirojpur, Patuakhali, Cumilla, and Chandpur. SWAPNO will specifically target women group from 18 to 30 years and 31 to 45 years to ensure employability and sustainability of project outcomes. The project will maximize the possibilities for financial inclusion while also emphasizing future employability by improving industry skills for job placements in the formal sector and local SMEs. Additionally, SWAPNO will aim to attract investors for social enterprises that offer commercially viable solutions for social problems, encourage environment-friendly business, create employment, and collaborate with the private sector. The project will put further emphasis on the importance of disaster resilience and climate change adaptation and train women to develop their life and soft skills.
In this backdrop, this Implementation Plan outlines SWAPNO’s strategy to support women’s access to decent employment, ensure a discrimination-free environment in public workplaces, develop adaptive livelihoods, establish localized Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), access to financial services for sustainable graduation from extreme poverty, and develop local government capacity to implement pro-poor projects. SWAPNO II will contribute to achieve the following results:
- Outcome 1: Strengthen Institutional Capacity for Sustaining SWAPNO Benefits
- Outcome 2: Increased Income and Assets Engaging Local Economy and Skill Development
- Outcome 3: Strengthened Human Capabilities and Resilience Capacity
The E-Commerce Coordination associate will work under the leadership of the National Project Manager (NPM) and coordinate with other project teams as required.
The E-commerce Coordination Associate will be responsible for the digital transformation of existing and new entrepreneurs of the project. S/he will be primarily responsible for promoting digital entrepreneurship development, creating a digitally enabled environment for SMEs, and managing the Anondomela digital marketplace. S/he will report on work progress and work plans accordingly.
Summary of Key Functions:
The incumbent shall carry out the duties given below to achieve the mission:
Capacity development on digital literacy
- Design and plan for digital literacy and develop modules for capacity building of beneficiaries and women entrepreneurs.
- Capacity development of the entrepreneurs on e-commerce operation, business promotion, and customer acquisition and aware them on digital risk and risk mitigation initiatives
- Monitoring and effective follow-up for credentialing/certifications/acknowledgment linked with capacity development.
Strategy development for e-payment, partnership development for payment gateway
- Identify the right organizations and develop partnerships to process digital wage payment (G2P) for beneficiaries, manage the partnership and facilitate the payment process, and ensure disbursement.
- Maintain strong collaboration within the team, internal and external stakeholders, and digital service providers to ensure the wage payment and minimize all kinds of associated.
- Establish a digital payment gateway for the eCommerce platform and ensure the financial services for the SMEs to boost sales.
Provide strategic support and facilitate digitally enabled small business environment.
- Engage with policymakers, key policy influencers, and ecosystem stakeholders to advance policies enabling marginalized women and disadvantaged entrepreneurs’ easy access to eCommerce which will benefit the project.
- Develop and advocate facilitating mechanisms for effective use of gender-sensitive budgeting at the local government level.
- Provide inputs to key operational stakeholders to increase efficiency in enabling women-led businesses’ participation in e-trade.
Develop the growth strategy of the eCommerce platform of UNDP and establish a competitive social business digital hub for women SMEs.
- Identify the gap and prepare an effective growth strategy to establish a most vibrant digital marketplace for women SMEs.
- Provide the right direction and initiate capacity development to the stakeholders to achieve the business plan and SME’s aspiration.
- Follow up with the stakeholders and entrepreneurs, provide business development service, troubleshooting, increase digital efficiency, customer acquisition and entrepreneurs profit maximization.
The incumbent performs other duties within their functional profile as deemed necessary for the efficient functioning of the Office and the Organization.
Core competencies:
- Achieve Results: LEVEL 1: Plans and monitors own work, pays attention to details, delivers quality work by deadline.
- Think Innovatively: LEVEL 1: Open to creative ideas/known risks, is pragmatic problem solver, makes improvements.
- Learn Continuously: LEVEL 1: Open minded and curious, shares knowledge, learns from mistakes, asks for feedback.
- Adapt with Agility: LEVEL 1: Adapts to change, constructively handles ambiguity/uncertainty, is flexible.
- Act with Determination: LEVEL 1: Shows drive and motivation, able to deliver calmly in face of adversity, confident.
- Engage and Partner: LEVEL 1: Demonstrates compassion/understanding towards others, forms positive relationships.
- Enable Diversity and Inclusion: LEVEL 1: Appreciate/respect differences, aware of unconscious bias, confront discrimination.
Cross-Functional & Technical competencies
Business Management
- Project Management: Ability to plan, organize, prioritize and control resources, procedures and protocols to achieve specific goals.
Business Direction and strategy
- Strategic Thinking: Ability to develop effective strategies and prioritized plans in line with UNDP country objectives, based on the systemic analysis of challenges, potential risks and opportunities creating tangible solutions; Ability to leverage learning from a variety of sources to anticipate and respond to future trends; to demonstrate foresight in order to model what future developments and possible ways forward look like for UNDP.
- Entrepreneurial Thinking: Ability to create clarity around UNDP value proposition to beneficiaries and partners and to develop service offers responding to client needs based on UNDP’s organizational priorities and mandate.
Digital & Innovation
- Innovation ecosystem curation: Ability to identify key players in an ecosystem, engage with them and mobilize them to build a community and over time a movement around a common mission that can bring about changes at the system level. Ability to give sense of purpose and build trust, develop programmes of activities and platforms to build and strengthen relationships.
Partnership Management
- Relationship Management: Ability to engage with a wide range of public and private partners, build, sustain and/or strengthen working relations, trust and mutual understanding.
Digital & Innovation
- Social Media: Knowledge of social media and ability to advise the use of social media for development outcomes.
Business Development
- Human-centered Design: Ability to develop solutions to problems by involving the human perspective in all steps of the problem-solving process.
- Secondary Education is required.
- University degree (bachelor’s degree) in Business studies/Finance/MIS/Business Information Technology or any other related field from any recognized University will be given due consideration but is not a requirement
- Minimum 7 years (with Secondary education) or 4 years (with Bachelor´s degree) of experience in E-commerce website development, IT system management, Social media marketing, E-commerce operation, E-commerce product content
- Experience in capacity building initiatives in the area of e-commerce, digital trade /online marketing is an asset.
- Experience in stakeholder engagement, including working with SMEs, private sector in the area of e-commerce is an asset.
- Experience in proactively organize and manage entrepreneurial skill development activities to support economic empowerment is an asset.
- Experience in high quality report preparation is an asset.
- Proficiency with Microsoft Word, Power-point and other relevant software.
- Experience in working with women entrepreneurs in e-commerce sector is an asset.
- Good communication, coordination, and facilitation skills.
- Consistently ensures timeliness and quality of Project work.
- Establishes lasting relationships and substantive dialogue with clients.
- Treats all people fairly without favoritism.
- Strong oral and written communication skills.
- Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality, and age sensitivity and adaptability.
- Demonstrates integrity by modelling ethical standards.
Required Competencies:
- English and Bengali