The Lesotho Council of NGO’s (LCN) was established in May 1990 as an umbrella body for Lesotho NGO’s. The main objective for which LCN is established is to provide supportive services to Civil Society Organisations in Lesotho through coordination and representation and lobbying and advocacy work. The Council’s mission is to stimulate, promote and build capacity within Lesotho NGO’s so that they are stable, democratic, transparent, skilled, empowered, sustainable and responsive to their beneficiaries’ needs and those of the voiceless and marginalized.

LCN is organized into sectoral commissions for effective coordination and management of members’ programmes. The main objective of establishing the Commissions is to group NGOs with similar programmes or objectives together in order to facilitate the work of coordination by LCN Secretariat and networking among member organisations. The following are the current Commissions:

i. The Agriculture, Environment and Natural Resources
ii. Disaster and Humanitarian Relief
iii. Democracy and Human Rights
iv. Training and Human Resources Development
v. Business and Commercial Development
vi. Women and Children

LCN Board of Directors controls and directs the Council, and is made up of the Executive Committee and six sectoral commissions. The Executive Committee of the Council is made up of the President, Vice-President and Treasurer.

The Council operates through its Secretariat, which has offices in Maseru. The Secretariat of the Council is responsible for the implementation of the programmes and the current programmes include the following:

i. Information and Publicity Programme
ii. Democracy and Human Rights Programme
iii. Civil Society Support Programme
iv. Agriculture, Environment and Natural Resources Programme
v. Financial Management Programme

Training of Trainers on Policy Development and Analysis
The mandate of civil society is to monitor the state performance in policy formulation and implementation; therefore they require skills in policy analysis that would enable them to have some evidence based research in terms of facts on national policies. Through policy research skills they would be able to engage the Policy Makers to align policies in pro-poor strategy to respond to the needs of the marginalised in society.

In pursuit of its mandate of policy advocacy and lobbying, LCN has found it essential to engage the training institute/an individual to train 25 NGOs in policy research and analysis as training of trainers for the NGO community in Lesotho.

The proposed training is part of the Civil Society Support Programme and targets Civil Society Organisations that would want to deepen their skills in research, lobbying and advocacy. The participants of the training will be drawn from a wide range of NGOs with diverse interests and priorities in policy arena. After the training it is expected that participants would be able to transfer their acquired knowledge and skills to other Civil Society Organisations in the country.

The contents of the training include:

• Concept of Policy Development
• Understanding of Policy Analysis from the perspective of the Civil Society Organisation
• Analysis of Social Policy at theoretical and practical levels
• Policy Research and Analysis methods (from the stages of formulation up to the implementation stage)
• Pro-poor policy analysis
• Participatory Action Oriented Research Methods
• Linking and interpreting Policies with the Budgets on district and national levels
• Lobbying and Advocacy methods (= Different strategies to influence and engage the policy makers and evidence based advocacy and lobbying methods)
• Facilitation and Presentation Skills

Outcomes
As outcomes of the training the participants should:

•  have a solid understanding of Policy Research Analysis and Advocacy
• have acquired basic skills in evidence based approach in pro-poor policy analysis and research
• are able to develop strategies that can be used to engage in policy matters
• are able to transfer the knowledge in policy issues within their work environment
• have developed a work plan to implement the training

Requirements
The bidder is expected to draw a proposal that will clearly indicate the following aspects in relation to the work that he/ she proposes to undertake the assignment.
The proposal consists of

• Course modules in line with the proposed contents and outcomes as described above
• Outline of the training including the timeframe
• Necessary equipment and training materials
• The full proposal with some fees
• The bidder is expected
• To have an appreciation of the role of the Civil Society in Lesotho
• To present the proposal to the LCN Management Committee

In case of a Training Institute, it should have experience in training policy related issues especially in the Civil Society environment

In case of an individual have a minimum qualification of Masters Degree in Social Policy, worked within the NGO sector and proven experiences in training and facilitation

Deadline
The closing date for the submission of proposals is the 19th May, 2006