Organization Mission

UNDP operates in over 170 countries and territories, working to eradicate poverty while protecting the planet. We support countries in developing strong policies, skills, partnerships, and institutions to help sustain their progress.

The UNDP Regional Bureau for Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (RBEC) operates through its Istanbul Regional Hub and works in close collaboration with 18 Country Offices across Europe and Central Asia.

Context

To address systemic challenges, UNDP is diversifying its way of supporting governments, policymakers and partners by applying the portfolio approach. Portfolios are designed to provide expanded options (diverse yet coherent interventions), and development intelligence for decision-making (channeling resources, generating insights to adapt, and strategic direction). Working on system transformation is the cornerstone of the new Strategic Plan, and around 20 UNDP COs are already applying the portfolio approach.

Within the Eurasia region, two key initiates are applying the ‘portfolio approach’ to help Mayors and cities better deal with the complex urban challenges faced today: the City Experiment Fund, and the Mayors for Economic Growth (M4EG) Facility.
This assignment will focus on the latter where the selected candidate will help with specific workstreams within M4EG. The candidate will focus on the discovery phase of the portfolio approach where they will support the design research and community listening process that will be carried out in the selected cities in the Eastern Partnership countries – Armenia, Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia.

Key Responsibilities

Support is sought with the following tasks related to the design research and community listening process:

• Review and analyse the interview transcripts from diverse stakeholders from 2-4 cities (each with 25-35 interview transcripts) to examine and interpret qualitative data from each city
• Synthesize the qualitative data from the interview transcripts to draw patterns on stakeholder needs, challenges, opportunities, perspectives on specific topics related to urban transformation and the city
• Create a report on the patterns, findings and insights for each city
• Create a report on the patterns, findings and insights across cities
• Support the production of visual representations of the data, process and research
• Carry out additional research tasks on urban transformation to support the data synthesis from the process above

Although tasks are time sensitive, the successful candidate can be working from another time zone than Istanbul and work remotely and independently on the given tasks.

Required Skills and Experience

• Minimum of a bachelor’s degree in international development, social studies, design studies, urban studies or equivalent. Master students in relevant studies are encouraged to apply.
• Experience working with local authorities or civil society organizations on urban issues is an advantage.
• Previous experience in working with qualitative data is an advantage
• Previous experience of working in this region is an advantage
• Some exposure to the development side of the United Nations is an advantage.
• IT skills: Knowledge and a proficient user of Microsoft Office productivity tools. Proficiency in virtual collaborative applications, e.g. Miro or similar needed. Proficiency in Canva and other visualization tools will be an advantage.