Objective: To improve institutional capacities and personal empowerment of women to enable their increased economic participation in Liberia’s health workforce. As such, the EWH aims to improve the career opportunities of women in Liberia’s health sector. This entails support for equitable access of women to education and career development along the career ladder as well as making the general HR planning, development and management systems for the health workforce more gender responsive. The EWH seeks to empower individual women and foster institutional change.

Content: In order to make pre-service education for health sector professions more accessible to women and more responsive to their needs, the EWH aims to strengthen the gender responsiveness of selected health-training institutions. The GIZ identified that there is a need for and significant scope to strengthen the gender responsiveness of this in terms of institutional capacities (policies and services) and human capacities (gender competencies of staff and students).

In partnership with evaplan, Health Focus will deliver the assignment “Strengthening the gender responsiveness of pre-service education and HR management of Liberia’s health workforce”, to improve the gender responsiveness of health training institutions (HTIs) as well as the Ministry of Health. The project is comprised of the following three key components:

1. Supporting four HTIs to conduct participatory gender audits
2. Delivering gender responsiveness training at four HTIs
3. Providing gender responsiveness training to key Ministry of Health staff

The project will focus on the five counties in south-eastern Liberia: Grand Gedeh, Grand Kru, Maryland, River Gee and Sinoe.

• Provision of international short-term experts
• Preparation and submission of inception report based on findings from inception visit
• Preparation and delivery of gender audit workshops at four HTIs.
• Preparation and delivery of gender responsiveness training sessions at four HTIs.
• Preparation and delivery of gender responsiveness training (esp. regarding gender responsive health workforce planning, development and management) for key MoH staff, including individual coaching sessions.
• Development, refinement and submission of toolboxes for conducting: gender audits at HTIs; gender responsiveness training at HTIs; and gender responsiveness training at the MoH.
• Select and establish close working relationships with local partner(s) to develop and implement the training sessions and workshops.
• Project administration, monitoring and supervision in line with the GIZ instruments;
• Provision of technical backstopping;

Regular coordination with and reporting to client and partners.