Tuesday, February 07, 2012

Centre for Rights Education and Awareness job in Kenya

Call for Applications

Centre for Rights Education and Awareness

Title: Research Consultancy

Introduction

Centre for Rights Education and Awareness (CREAW) is a non-governmental, non- partisan organization. Our Vision is a just and free society in which women and men exercise equal and full rights and opportunities, and our Mission is to transform the Kenyan society through the promotion and expansion of women's human rights, rule of law and social justice.

The much ignored link between the barriers to women's and girls' ability to exercise their sexual and reproductive rights and the persistent gender-based violence becomes clear in the education sector where violence engaged in within schools is usually sexual abuse.

Prosecutions of teachers for having sexual relations with their pupils, or for sexual assault or rape are rare. The few that are followed up take years to progress through the courts and further, they do not often end in dismissal. There is a lack of political will to tackle the issue
and much shifting of responsibility from one government office to another (HRW, 2001; Leach et al., 2003).

Cumbersome bureaucracy, a backlog of cases at the Teacher Service Commission and a reluctance to confront the problem has had the result that the only punishment a teacher found guilty of sexual abuse is likely to suffer is transfer to another school. In the absence of a readily accessible databank of deregistered teachers , teachers dismissed for sexual abuse easily seek and gain re-employment in private schools.

The Teacher Service Commission which is the largest employer of teachers in Kenya manages over 250,000 teachers and is responsible for disciplining teachers and also carrying out awareness programs on gender issues.

However ,while part of its strategic objectives under its strategic plan 2005-2010 include enhancing discipline in the teaching sector and enhancing processing and dispensation of discipline cases, it has failed to use its structures to create awareness to teachers country wide on the Code of Regulation for Teachers and on fundamental gender concerns for adolescents particularly in the face of increased cases of teacher student sexual violence.

In this regard CREAW has been implementing a program with the TSC which seeks to interogate root causes of teacher student sexual violence and design and implement interventions that will adequately address the scourge.

CREAW now wishes to carry out a study of around issues of teacher student sexual violence that will add to the existing body of knowledge but also fill in gaps that other previous researches havent touched on.

While most researches have ( Action Aid ), Amnesty International etc are largely quantitative and have looked at the WHAT (what are the numbers of students abused, what are the structures and policies that deal with teacher student violence, what are the challenges etc ) there is not much information in terms of the WHY?

Terms of Reference

1. To conduct research on the extent to which cultural elements, socialization factors and flawed masculinity play in perpetuating teacher student sexual violence in schools.

2. In addition the study will seek to better understand why parents and community members do not actively seek accountability from school administrations and demand for safer school environments and what challenges school administrations face with developing and implementing systems that create safe school environments for children.

3. The research will focus on accounts of head teachers, teachers, students, TSC officials, health workers, police and local administration officers and members of the community surrounding the schools. The research is intended to be largely quantitative to enable a thorough interrogation of underlying factors that contribute to the cases of teacher student sexual violence and factors that complicate prevention mitigation and response.

4. The geographical areas of the study shall be Makueni, Kisumu, Naivashsa, Gatanga and at the Coast and the consultant shall be expected to
  • prepare comprehensive research instruments for the said research project and the training of the research assistants.
  • spearhead the collection and statistical analysis of data which must be analyzed qualitatively along the set themes. Content and descriptive analysis following the lines of emerging themes and direct quotations must be developed and used in report writing while the basic demographic data shall be subjected to SPSS and basic frequency tables and charts generated.
  • prepare report ready for a validation and to take partners through/ facilitate the validation workshop.
  • work on any amendments after the validation workshop and thereafter prepare the research report ready for publication.
5. The study will be carried out for a period of 30 days.

Expected output

A report detailing the root causes of teacher student sexual violence which outlines critical new or unexplained factors contributing to the same and make recommendations and propose models that can be implemented by GOK, The ministry of education , community members , TSC and civil society organizations to prevent mitigate and respond to the rising incidences of teacher student sexual violence.

Remuneration:

The consultant's fees shall be on a negotiated rates, based on proven expertise and subject to statutory deduction

Terms and Conditions of application

The applying candidate must provide a detailed proposal that shall
  • demonstrate expert knowledge and experience in conducting research on sexual and gender based violence with particular focus on children
  • demonstrate an understanding of international regional and national laws and policies relating to child protection
  • demonstrate knowledge of education sector in Kenya and relevant institutions including the Teacher Service Commission, Ministry of Education, Department of Children Services etc
All applications must be addressed to the selection panel -CREAW and submitted via electronic mail to vacancies@creawkenya.org latest by close of business 16th February 2012
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