Designer/Illustrator to support ‘Powerful Futures: A Girl-led research project’

ActionAid is a leading international development organisation, working with over 15 million people in 45 countries for a world free from poverty and injustice. ActionAid has over 40 years’ experience in sustainable, community-based development. We have an established track record in the countries we work in and are the only international development organisation with a head office in Africa as part of our commitment to shift power to the global south. 

ActionAid UK, ActionAid Ethiopia, ActionAid Bangladesh and ActionAid Yappika are collaborating on ‘Powerful Futures: a girl-led research project’. 

This girl-led research project aims to do the following:

• provide an opportunity to understand how girls' lives have been shaped by the COVID crisis, what their priorities are for the future, and how organisations like ActionAid, as well as other institutions, can best support them
• understand whether/how girls and young women are mobilising for change, and what role intergenerational movement building (with women’s rights networks, etc) can play in this
• use a power analysis to understand how the inequalities adolescent girls face are structured and sustained, and ways we can challenge the power imbalances that shape girls’ lives.

During this next analysis and dissemination stage, we are looking to work with an illustrator/designer who can support these girls' groups with visuals that help to tell a compelling story about their research findings. 

The designer/illustrator/artist will do the following:

1. Respond to a design brief from each team of young researchers in Ethiopia, Bangladesh, and Indonesia to create a visual/communications product of their research findings that they can use for sharing their research findings with peers and other community members (3 visuals/communications products in total).

2. Draw on key research findings in each location, create a series of illustrations/graphics to accompany the main research report (some of which may be drawn from the visuals for each location).

3. Use photos provided, create an illustration of each person involved in the research process to include in the report’s acknowledgments page.

4. Respond to up to two rounds of feedback on the 3 visuals and the illustrations/graphics for the main report.

The designer should be available to carry out the work between 18^th October 2021 and 30^th November 2021.  Work is estimated to take up to 12 days.

Due to the project’s nature of centering the voices of girls and young women, and ActionAid’s commitment to shift power to feminists in the Global South, we have a preference for young women candidates from the Global South.

We are also looking for an illustrator/designer with the following key skills and experience:

• a portfolio of work that is bold, colourful, and creative

• a portfolio of work that celebrates women and girls in all their diversities

• evidence of previous experience of working with NGOs, and particularly of creating visuals for communications, and for research and policy reports

• works flexibly, and responds to feedback

• commitment to feminist principles and ways of working. Find out more about our feminist principles.

• a financial proposal that offers value for money

For further information please click here:

Interested candidates are requested to send a one page cover letter (including how fit the person specification, how they would approach the task, and citing other examples of relevant work they have done); a link to their portfolio and/or examples of at least two relevant pieces of  work; and a proposed budget. If you haven't worked with Action Aid UK before, please also complete this new supplier form:

Applications should be submitted via email to commercial@actionaid.org, katy.chadwick@actionaid.org and Pranita.choudhry@actionaid.org  by 4^th October 2021.