Senior Consultant - Women Leadership Program

About ICBA

ICBA is an international, non-profit agricultural research center established in 1999 through the visionary leadership of the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB), the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) Fund, the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development (AFESD), and the Government of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Originally focused on the problems of salinity and using saline water for irrigated agriculture, ICBA has evolved over the years into a world-class modern research facility with a team of international scientists conducting applied research and development to improve agricultural productivity and sustainability in marginal and saline environments.

In 2013, the Center developed a new strategic direction that takes innovation as a core principle and the Center's multi-pronged approach to addressing the closely linked challenges of ensuring water, environment, income, and food security, includes research innovations in the assessment of natural resources, climate change adaptation, crop productivity and diversification, aquaculture and bio-energy and policy analysis.

Currently, ICBA is working on a number of technology developments, including the use of conventional and non-conventional water (such as saline, treated wastewater, industrial water, agricultural drainage, and seawater), water and land management technologies and remote sensing and modeling for climate change adaptation.

Capacity Building at ICBA

Improving the generation and dissemination of knowledge is an important strategic objective of ICBA and the Center is focusing on establishing itself as a knowledge hub on sustainable management and use of marginal resources for agricultural production and environmental protection in marginal and saline environments. With the help of its partners, ICBA innovates, builds human capital, and encourages learning that is fundamental to change.

Capacity building is central to ICBA’s activities and spans geographical domains, research areas and methods. ICBA believes that improving the skills of its partners and stakeholders is key to addressing the challenges affecting agriculture in marginal and saline environments.

ICBA’s capacity-building opportunities are open to an array of audiences that can benefit from the expertise of the Center’s international team of experts in soil, crop, water, policy and socio-economic research, as well as the various modern research and training facilities.

Tamkeen Program

Targeting young Arab women working on food, nutrition and water security issues in the Middle East and North Africa countries, the Tamkeen program will help to improve their research and leadership potential to become future leaders in their respective fields.

The program will initially launch in Jordan and Tunisia. However, fellows from Arab countries can participate in any of these two hubs.

The program will facilitate knowledge exchange and networking among women working on food, nutrition and water security issues throughout the region by empowering groups of young Arab women champions and building a critical mass of pathfinders, visionary leaders, and change agents, ultimately contributing to better and more women-centered solutions for improved food security and nutrition.

As a leadership program, Tamkeen will respond to the capacity- and skill-building needs identified by Arab women working on food, nutrition and water security issues and through benchmarking with leading best practice competency frameworks. Within this context, the skill-building element of Tamkeen’s framework will be based on the Vitae Researcher Development Framework, which fully matches development needs reported by young Arab women. Tamkeen will obtain an organizational membership with Vitae for all participating fellows, which will provide Tamkeen with access to Vitae’s high-quality training programs that will form the basis of all Tamkeen’s online and training content.

Tamkeen program phase 1 final report

Program outputs

Skill-building will be delivered to Tamkeen fellows through both virtual and classroom-based training programs. The virtual training will provide a unique learning opportunity that responds to fellows’ needs of flexible learning and work-life balance. Vitae training content will be converted by ICBA to online courses offered on specific themes to Tamkeen fellows. Each online course will be broken down into 5 modules to ensure fellow learning is paced out and delivered in a focused manner. Additionally, a 1-hour webinar on each of the online courses will be delivered – and recorded for post-webinar access - by respective trainers to offer fellows an opportunity to address learning gaps or topic-related questions. The following five courses will be delivered online:

O1: Research Methods 1 - Theoretical Knowledge (Online)

O2: Research Methods 2 - Practical Application (Online)

Both online courses are designed to present fellows with the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of the nature of different research methodologies and approaches, and of the methodological steps involved in the research process. Participants will acquire the necessary skills to plan research projects, and to critically analyze, evaluate and review current research and scholarship.

O3: Information Literacy and Management (Online)

This online course offers an introduction to the principles, concepts, and practices of information literacy, including the critical thinking skills necessary to identify, evaluate, and use diverse information sources effectively.

O4: Professional Conduct in Research (Online)

This online course is designed to help fellows deepen their knowledge of ethical research and responsible conduct in research. Topics covered include research and professional conduct; responsible authorship and publication; mentor-mentee relationships; conflicts of interest; peer review; intellectual property; data acquisition and management; ownership of data and biological samples; and research involving human and animal subjects.

O5: Public Engagement and Impact for Researchers (Online)

This course will introduce fellows to concepts of research impact (i.e. change and/or benefit to the economy, society, culture, environment, or quality of life) and public engagement (defined as the various ways in which the activities of research can be shared with the public). Participants will also gain skills associated with planning for impact within the context of public engagement and will be introduced to impact planning tools and examples.

In addition to the online courses, Tamkeen classroom-based training will offer three unique opportunities to young Arab women working on food, nutrition and water security issues including:

C1: Mentoring Orientation Workshop (Classroom)

This three-day course will help to clarify roles and expectations of both mentors and mentees; establish a productive working relationship centered around three career goals in leadership and technical skills and create a supportive and collaborative network among mentors and mentees.

C2: Leadership Excellence & Creativity for Young Arab Women (Classroom)

This six-day course will focus on providing a safe environment for candid conversations about specific leadership challenges that women face, and encourage participants to explore responses that are sensitive to gender and diversity. In addition, the course will include several different aspects of creativity, some more traditional than others. Theoretical elements will be presented and discussed, but the development of cognitive abilities will be the primary focus of this course.

C3: Research Management, Communications and Funding (Classroom)

This five-day course will offer an introduction to research management through a series of interactive modules and will equip participants with the skills required to write effective research proposals to raise funds from different donors.

In addition to the online and classroom courses, Tamkeen will give the opportunity to each fellow to have access to Vitae online training programs, have membership in scientific associations.