Purpose of consultancy:

UNFPA Serbia CO and the Ministry of Tourism and Youth have a long term close partnership, which has been additionally strengthened in recent years through cooperation in youth policy framework development and implementation of specific project activities related to youth wellbeing, empowerment and increased participation in various processes at national and local level.
In the last two years, the Ministry led a broad and inclusive consultative process for improving youth policy framework, which was finalized by adoption of the new comprehensive Youth Strategy for period 2023 - 2030 in January 2023, and its first Action Plan 2023-2025 in July 2023. The new Youth Strategy set as an overall goal to improve the quality of life of young people and five specific objectives related to standardization of youth work, provision of youth friendly spaces, increased youth employment, improvement of spatial capacities and services, active youth participation, equal opportunities for young people to fulfill their potentials and improved conditions for healthy and safe environment and social welfare. The Action Plan, operationalizes the goal and objectives of the Youth Strategy, defining priority activities, responsible actors, time frame and necessary resources for the implementation of activities and measures set to achieve the Strategy objectives. In parallel with the development of the policy framework, the Ministry of Tourism and Youth and the UNFPA started developing the Youth Wellbeing Index, a composite Index whose structure corresponds to the structure of the Strategy and will enable monitoring of the
status of youth and year to year progress in implementation of the youth policies at national and local (municipal) level.
Given the complex multisectoral nature of the Strategy and Action Plan which require the active engagement and significant budget allocations of various stakeholders and partners in the implementation of activities, a detailed monitoring of the implementation of the multisectorial Action Plan is of key importance for depicting the real state of affairs related to youth. For that reason, UNFPA Serbia CO and the Ministry of Tourism and Youth partnered to support the monitoring of the Action Plan implementation by various stakeholders, focusing on the development of mechanisms and tools which would track the
real-time progress in the Action Plan implementation and allocated resources.

The purpose of this consultancy is to support the efforts of the Ministry of Tourism and Youth to improve the mechanism for daily monitoring and follow up of activities implemented and funded by various stakeholders involved in the Youth Strategy/Action Plan implementation. The consultancy will include creation of the repository of documents, knowledge products, reports, tools and other types of resources created during activities implementation, that will be available to all stakeholders actively working with youth. In addition, the consultant will support planning of new and implementation of ongoing joint activities of the Ministry responsible for youth and UNFPA Serbia Country Office.

The consultant will perform planned tasks during the period of six months, from 5th March to 4th September 2024.
A detailed working schedule will be agreed upon at the start of the assignment in consultation with the Ministry of Tourism and Youth and UNFPA Country Office.

Qualifications and Experience:

Consultant should fulfil following criteria:

● University degree in social-humanistic, natural-mathematical or technical-technological sciences (equivalent to 240 ESP points)
● At least 3 years of relevant experience in policy documents implementation, monitoring and evaluation;
● Knowledge of national policies and procedures, regulatory frameworks and best practices in policy monitoring;
● Strong quantitative and qualitative skills in data collection and analysis and interpretation,
● Well-developed written and oral communication skills to effectively engage with stakeholders, present findings and write reports;
● The ability to meet deadlines and dates and to prioritize multiple tasks;
● Proven and demonstrated broad knowledge of and ability to utilize principles, methods, techniques, and systems of working with youth;
● Ability to work independently and to meet deadlines;
● Excellent written skills in Serbian and English

Applicants should send their resume (CV) to vacancies.serbia@unfpa.org no later than 10 March 2024.

For more information, download the full Terms of Reference.