Free to be Me – Community of Action facilitator

Period: 2023 – 2025, starting with a one-year contract

Scope: country, focus on national level, but with regional and international linkages

Location: Tunisia

Hours: full-time

JOB CONTEXT:

Free to be Me puts LGBTIQ+ people and their organizations in the driving seat. Local LGBTIQ+ organizations are best placed to indicate their needs, opportunities and risks. Enabling them to effectively lobby and advocate for their own rights, is our best chance to achieve long-lasting impact. This is what makes our program unique: we bring the principles of local ownership, gender equality, diversity, and inclusion into practice.

Our consortium brings together a wealth of experience with enhancing LGBTIQ+ leadership, and many rightsholders are already organized in a diversity of ways. They are aware of their human and economic rights and ready to join forces with their peers and allies, to improve these rights. Free to be Me goes beyond local ownership of the program: we support LGBTIQ+ activists in strengthening and taking this ownership, working from their own safe space, the Community of Action (CoA). Our regranting system is participatory, rightsholders are represented in our governance system and we will be as accountable to them as they are to us.

The Free to be Me alliance consists of six diverse and experienced organizations that are strongly committed to improving the lives of LGBTIQ+ people worldwide. For many LGBTIQ+ organizations, Hivos was the first funder thanks to our support since the 1990s. Rooted in regional hubs, Hivos regrants and connects to creatives, techies and data specialists. Positive Vibes improves the well-being, resilience and ‘coming to voice’ of activists, communities and organizations, while ILGA World is the global network of LGBTIQ+ organizations, with 1654 members in 162 countries, and an influential voice at the international level. Technical partner Sogicampaigns has a wealth of experience in supporting LGBTIQ+ activists to positively influence public opinion, the Global lnterfaith Network knows how to engage religious leaders in dialogues with LGBTIQ+ people of faith, and Workplace Pride brings in its valuable networks and understanding of how to involve (multinational) companies in workplace inclusion.

The Free to be Me alliance will work in fourteen countries globally.

The program

We will bring LGBTIQ+ people and organizations from all parts of the LGBTIQ+ rainbow together in inspiring Communities of Action (CoAs), and empower them to strengthen or build a movement. Within our overarching Theory of Change, LGBTIQ+ communities will decide about objectives, strategies and activities to engage key actors and convince duty bearers to improve their human and economic rights.

Resilient and self-confident activists are at the core of the strongest and most successful LGBTIQ+ organizations. Where necessary, we will support LGBTIQ+ individuals and groups to increase their (personal) well-being and become well-prepared advocates, cooperating in inclusive LGBTIQ+ civil society organizations. Based on this sound foundation for movement-building, and supported by expert working groups, Free to be Me will assist CoA participants to increase public support for LGBTIQ+ people and issues, lobby for legal and policy changes and remove key obstacles to social justice and economic development.

Free to be Me will be the first program of its kind to pave the way for targeted lobby and advocacy to get SOGIESC issues mainstreamed in economic development programs. The CoAs will focus on improving the economic inclusion of LGTBIQ+ people in their respective countries, while our trailblazer approach will map, connect and inspire key actors, help them develop a strategic global action plan and initiate pilot research to find out what strategies work best.

The five-year program started April 1st, 2021 and is funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, under the Strategic Partnership Fund, which is part of the Strengthening Civil Society subsidy framework.

Main goal of the job

The Community of Action (CoA) facilitator is the linking pin between the different organizations and groups that participate in the CoAs. She/he/they is able to bring organizations and groups together, stimulate collaboration, motivate groups to share experiences, to build LGBTIQ+ joint advocacy plans and to undertake coordinated and collaborative advocacy action to improve the lives and context of LGBTIQ+ rightsholders. She/he/they bring good and positive energies, can create a safe environment, and is responsible for upholding Free to be Me values and principles and translating them into practice.

The CoA facilitator is a leading person in facilitating the development and implementation of a localized Theory of Change (ToC), as well as in organizing and facilitating inspiring and useful CoA-meetings that focus on the fulfillment of the ToC. She/he/they will facilitate and support the development and implementation of organizational level and joint project proposals and reports, in line with Free to Be Me guidelines. In doing so, she/he/they will closely work together with relevant consortium-staff, particularly with the project officer of Hivos.

The CoA facilitator is preferably from the LGBTIQ+ community. She/he/they will be connected with the other CoA facilitators to exchange experiences and learn together. Throughout this process she/he/they will be coached, supported and mentored by the consortium partners.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

REQUIREMENTS

This position is for nationals or residents of the concerned country. The CoA-facilitator:

• Has expertise in and a passion for working on LGBTIQ+ inclusion and rights, for example through advocacy.
• Has a progressive and positive view on LGBTIQ+ rights and inclusion, sees inclusion of LGBTIQ+ people from an intersectional perspective and understands how exclusion works for a range of groups marginalized in their country context.
• Believes in Free to be Me values and is accountable to them.
• Is keen on ensuring ownership by local LGBTIQ+-led, organizations, and in finding innovative and creative solutions to realize goals.
• Is keen on ensuring that all parts of the LGBTIQ+ rainbow benefit from the Free to be Me program.
• Gets energy when she/he/they can bring people and organizations together around a shared goal.
• Has the confidence to manage and facilitate groups and loves to do so.
• Is able to establish productive and innovative collaborations, including between organizations, groups and persons that maybe do not always work together.
• Is a good communicator, with strong inter-personal skills and empathy.
• Is self-aware and possess a comfort with their own identity.
• Is committed, able to build trust in others, keep confidences, and takes responsibility for personal performance.
• Flexible attitude, creative, innovative, sense of humor.
• Ability to work and think at an abstract level.
• Minimum of three to five years of relevant working experience on LGBTIQ+ issues, and/or in program design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation.
• Experience with or an appetite for working in international teams.
• Lived experience as a part of the LGBTIQ+ community is an asset.
• Full professional proficiency in English and language(s) relevant in the respective country context.