POSITION TITLE: Apparel Sector Expert (Consultant)

PROJECT OR DIVISION: iDE Innovation Lab

REPORTS TO: Project Lead

DURATION: 10 - 15 days 

LOCATION: Cambodia 

START DATE: March 17th, 2025

Project Background 

Cambodia's garment industry is a significant driver of the country's economy, employing a large number of women. However, female garment workers face various challenges that affect their health, economic opportunities, and overall quality of life. It is essential to understand these challenges in a nuanced way to design effective interventions that address their specific needs.

Under the flagship program, CARE Cambodia and iDE Innovation Lab with the support from CARE Impact Partners (CIP) have worked together to dig deeper into the root causes of the problems within the two target factories in Cambodia. We  then validated and prioritized the challenges, and co-created the solutions with both the factory workers and management team. We also tested the prototypes with both workers and management team to make sure that they are what will work best for the users and respond to solving the identified challenges in the factory. After all of these iterative steps, we came up with the human-centered design based solutions for implementation called “Flagship Bundle”: 

1. Gender Awareness: Create equitable workplaces by incorporating a gender lens into thinking and actions (through policies and processes)
2. HCD for Co-creation: Build management capacity to apply gender awareness and participatory approaches effectively
• Identifying HCD champions and building HCD practitioner capabilities 
• Experimental application of HCD tools in worker-management dialogues in the test areas (health facilities and grievance channels)

As a next step, CARE Cambodia, CIP and iDE discussed and agreed to continue the collaboration to bring the HCD for Co-creation forward to further develop, test and implement in 2025.

Objectives of the Position

The main objective of the Factory Expert is to bring technical expertise from the lens of the factory sector to the solution design, testing and implementation. The knowledge of the local context and the sector will add a great value to maximizing the positive impact of our solutions among the two target factories. 

Requirements

What You Will be Doing

The consultant will be joining a team of 3 members from iDE and 3 members from CARE to work on this assignment. The role of consultant is going to be more involved in the steps of ideation, designing, testing and implementation monitoring. You will be required to work on tasks as stated below:

• Participate in the ideation session to brainstorm and agree on the elements within the Human-centered Design (HCD) guide for the target factories
• Contribute to the design of different components of the solutions with the iDE team
• Provide inputs and advice on how to execute the HCD guide for the factories 
• Provide inputs to the monitoring plan for the HCD guide implementation
• Participate in meetings (with the factory management team) and join in field observation/monitoring as needed 
• Contribute in providing inputs to the created solutions (HCD guide) after testing and launching
• Attend regular project check-in meetings with the iDE and CARE team when required
• Advise on any inputs that the consultant think would be beneficial to the project 

* The support from the consultant will be started as soon as possible and will tentatively be ended by the end of October 2025. 

Expected Deliverables 

1. Show the successful contribution to the design of solution components.

2. Show the successful contribution in providing inputs and advice to the execution plan and during the execution of the HCD guide (solutions).

3. Show the successful contribution to the field observation and monitoring.

Your Qualification and Experience

• Someone with at least 5 years of experience working in the apparel sector in Cambodia
• Knowledge of how factories in Cambodia operate
• Experiencing and understanding well on how to work and communicate with the factory management team including Cambodians and non-Cambodian nationalities and other key actors including unions, staff representatives and workers.
• Experience and knowledge of Cambodian laws and regulations for factories
• Experience and knowledge of the international standards for factories 
• Experience and knowledge of workplace safety and security 
• Experience working across diverse cultural environments and backgrounds

• Solid experience in collaborative working with team members 
• Experience in capturing learning and sharing with the team
• High proficiency in English (reading, writing and speaking)

Ideally, we would love to find someone that

• Is highly professional, responsible and accountable 
• Is a passionate, positive, dynamic, curious and caring person 
• Is an autonomous problem-solver 
• Is driven by a social mission 
• Has cultural sensitivity and respect towards unfamiliar contexts
• Has a flexible mindset, is agile and adaptive, and at the same time takes into account their capacity, deadlines and limitations
• Has excellent time management skills
• Can embrace uncertainty and manage stress
• Have knowledge of current technology 

Benefits

We Cover

• Our intention is to pay our consultant a competitive compensation benchmarked with market pay scales, and commensurate with experience.
  

Who You Will be Working for

You will be working with the iDE Innovation Lab, we are located within iDE’s country offices in Cambodia and Zambia with a mission to practice, coach, and promote design and innovation processes as a co-creative, power-shifting problem-solving approach to address complex systemic challenges by understanding user needs, motivations, and behaviours and developing new interventions to power entrepreneurs. 

The iDE Innovation Lab functions as a strategy and innovation consultancy working in focus areas of water, sanitation & hygiene, clean energy, conservation, agriculture, and maternal health & nutrition. Over the years we have worked with a portfolio of international development organizations such as Care International, Hellen Keller, USAID, UNICEF, World Bank Group, Plant and Food Research, Save the Children, and SNV.

iDE is a global organization spanning offices in 14 countries, employing over 1,000 people directly, and indirectly enabling income, and opportunities for our rural audience of focus through market-based approaches across different sectors. Find out more about iDE here!

Diversity Statement

iDE takes pride in our talented and diverse workforce. Minorities, women, men, and individuals with disabilities are encouraged to apply. Hiring, promotion, and compensation of employees are

conducted without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual

orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, or age.

Would You Like to Apply?

• Write to us at Workable attaching the following:

1. CV 
2. Portfolio with your previous projects, with your compensation expectation to iDE Cambodia. We will accept application materials through 10th March 2025.