Country: Sudan
Closing date: 15 Dec 2018
Reports to: MEAL Coordinator
Position: OFDA Summative Evaluation Consultant
Location: East Darfur & South Darfur
Timeframe: 35 working days
Deadline to Apply: December 15, 2018
Tentative Start Date: February 1, 2019
Organizational Background
The American Refugee Committee (ARC) Sudan Program started in 2004 in response to the emergency needs of war-affected IDPs and host populations in the Tulus and Gereida corridors in South Darfur. The program has evolved over the years. In 2014, ARC expanded services into underserved villages in the East Darfur. Currently, ARC implements health, nutrition, WASH, and shelter programming, reaching over 550,000 IDPs, refugees, and host community members across East and South Darfur. This summative evaluation will be for the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) projects implemented in South and East Darfur over the past three years.
Project Background
ARC obtained funding from the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) to provide primary health care, nutrition, WASH, and shelter services for the populations affected by conflict and displacements in South and East Darfur states.
The program currently supports the delivery of primary health care services at 25 primary health care clinics (PHCCs). The PHCCs provide a full package of preventive and curative health services, reproductive health (RH) services, immunization of children for all vaccine preventable diseases and integrated nutrition services. Nutrition projects are implemented through 24 Therapeutic Supplementary Feeding and 23 Outpatient Therapeutic feeding centers and three in-patient nutrition stabilization centers. Both RH and nutrition services are an integral part of the primary health care services. WASH interventions cover environmental health, hygiene promotion, sanitation and water supply as part of an integrated and inter sectoral complement to health and nutrition services. The project components include operation and maintenance of water supply systems, environmental health, hygiene promotion, sanitation infrastructure and WASH NFIs. As a component of its lifesaving support services, ARC provides shelter services in Kalma IDP Camp to create safe and clean spaces for extremely vulnerable households.
This evaluation will cover two project periods, from July 1, 2016 to June 30, 2018, and then July 1, 2018 to March 31, 2019.
ARC is seeking a proactive, highly-motivated individual to conduct end of project evaluation for the two states. The consultant will engage ARC staff and external stakeholders, including government authorities like State Ministry of Health (SMoH), Water Environment and Sanitation (WES) Department, Rural Water Corporation (RWC) and Humanitarian Aid Commission (HAC); UN agencies such as WFP, UNICEF, and WHO; and community members such as project participants, community leaders, and opinion makers in these states to ensure that the final report reflects the true picture of the project outcome.
Project Objectives
– To improve the health status of the target population with focus on provision of high quality maternal and child health services.
– To reduce morbidity and mortality associated with acute malnutrition in South and East Darfur States through improved access to quality Community-based Management of Acute Malnutrition (CMAM) services and prevention of undernutrition.
– To achieve sustainable improvement in access to quality water supply, sanitation conditions and hygiene practices among IDPs and host communities in East and South Darfur states of Sudan.
– Ensure minimum decent living conditions for vulnerable families affected by floods and other environmental factors though provision of transitional shelters and NFI kits.
Evaluation Objectives
– Conduct a performance evaluation and determine if ARC fulfilled its promise to deliver multi-thematic interventions in health, nutrition, WASH, and shelter & settlement services.
– Evaluate the strategies pursued in the project, the objectives achieved, and contributions of OFDA to the results achieved.
– Determine lessons learned and document best practices and recommendations to improve the design and management of future projects.
Specific areas for evaluation shall include the following, but are not limited to:
– Relevanceand quality
Were the project strategies/design and project components appropriate in the context, in addressing the project objectives, participants’ expectations and preferences?
– Efficiency & Effectiveness
Did the project adopt the most efficient approach in implementation to achieve its intended results and objectives?
To what extent were the project objectives achieved and have the program participants experienced changes in their lives as a result of implementing the program?
– Cooperation/Coordination
How far was the project integrated with other sectors/ projects within the partner programs and with other external stakeholder programs such as the Government and other NGOs?
Assess the level of cooperation and coordination with partners, government authorities, communities and other stakeholders.
– Immediate/intermediate Outcome & Sustainability
Have the anticipated results and outcomes been achieved (i.e., increased access to adequate delivery of health and nutrition services and access to clean water, sanitation and hygiene services, etc.)?
To what extent will the results and outcomes have a lasting positive impact including their sustainability?
– Constraints
Analyze any factors that have exerted an influence on the project implementation; such as the operational environment, managerial, institutional, socio-economic policy issues and other external factors unforeseen during implementation taking into consideration the risks and assumptions included in the log frame and whether they held true.
Scope of Work
– The consultant will engage ARC staff, external stakeholders such as government authorities including, but not limited to, SMoH, Water Environment and Sanitation (WES) Department, Rural Water Corporation (RWC) and Humanitarian Aid Commission (HAC), UN agencies such as WFP, UNICEF, WHO and community members such as project participants, community leaders, and opinion makers in these states to ensure that the final report reflects the true picture of the project outcome.
– Undertake the evaluation in South and East Darfur state localities in all catchment areas of the targeted project activities and IDP camps under the OFDA project.
– The evaluation will utilize both quantitative and qualitative research methods.
– Develop a sampling methodology, detailed data collection, management and quality assurance protocol.
– Develop data collection tools, including, but not limited to household questionnaires, key informant interviews, guidelines, FGD pointers, etc.
– Recruit and train enumerators/ interviewers.
– Pre-test and finalize data collection tools
– Conduct supervision visits during implementation of data collection to ensure quality of data being collected
– Create a tabulation plan of indicators being collected, as well as variables that will be used to disaggregate findings (i.e. sex, age groups and geographic areas etc.) This will describe the major findings of the survey and provide guidance concerning the most important indicators presented in the evaluation.
– Create a database to enter data.
– Collect data, edit, clean, and enter data using suitable software.
– Analyze and interpret findings.
– Produce and submit an evaluation report.
Deliverables
1)Desk review of project documents, strategy documents, and relevant secondary information (relevant reports/studies, etc.) Estimated consultancy days – 3
2)Develop an inception report detailing process and methodologies to be employed to achieve the objective of this consultancy (see above) as well as a detailed work plan including the design, sampling methodology and computation plan, evaluation protocol, data collection methodology, data analysis plan with details steps on how qualitative data will be analyzed and organized will be required to be fully developed at this stage. Develop a work plan for the whole evaluation exercise. The report and work plan will be reviewed and approved by ARC Sudan and global technical team. Estimated consultancy days – 4
3)Develop data tools: Develop a set of data collection tools and an enumerator questionnaire guide to be reviewed by ARC Staff. The data collection tools should be provided in English as well as local language (Arabic). Hire and train enumerators/ interviewers. Estimated consultancy days – 4
4)Field work: Recruit and train enumerators. Visit the field locations for data collection, household interviews, focus group discussions, key informant interviews, feedback, etc. Supervise all field data collection. Estimated consultancy days – 14
5)Data analysis: Conduct all data entry and analysis. Estimated consultancy days – 5
6)Draft Report: Prepare and present a draft evaluation report and lessons learned to ARC and for review, comments, and discussions. The first draft report must be submitted to ARC within 12 days of completion of field work. It will be reviewed within 5 days from time of receipt from the consultant(s). Estimated consultancy days – 2
7)Debriefing: Conduct a debriefing presentation on evaluation findings, recommendations, lessons learned, good practices, and conclusions to senior ARC Sudan staff. Estimated consultancy days – 1/2
8) Final Summative Evaluation Report: Comprehensive evaluation report should be written in English (40 pages) (excluding the annexes) with practical recommendations based on the finding plus a separate summary report of no more than six pages. Feedback on the draft report from ARC representatives should be incorporated. Content of the report should meet the requirements of the donor and ARC Monitoring and Evaluation Policy and Standards and be analytical in nature. It should be structure around issues, related findings, lessons learned, and recommendations. The final report should include the following:
– Title page Table of contents
– Abbreviations/acronyms page
– Executive Summary: Introduction, study background and rationale, methodology, key findings, and program implications (2 pages)
– Section One: Evaluation background and rationale, description of program interventions. .
– Section Two: Field Work: Methodology of the evaluation and details on the field workplans.
– Section Three: Findings: Detailed evaluation findings and observations: Overall findings and each respective state including Most Significant Change findings and field observations.
– Section Four: Specific conclusions and actionable recommendations for project strategies and activities to enhance project impact. Should include good practices, lessons learned, and analysis of opportunities to provide guidance for future programming
– Annexes: Quantitative and qualitative tools, including sampling frames; Case studies, etc. – This will be over and above the 40-page report
– The final report should be submitted within 15 days after submitting the 1st draft report.
Estimated consultancy days – 2.5
9) Hard copies and a soft copies of the report, the raw data and data set, and the cleaned data-base (qualitative and quantitative, including transcriptions for all FGDs and KIIs should be submitted together with the report. ARC has sole ownership of all final data and any findings shall only be shared or reproduced with the permission of ARC. Estimated consultancy days – 1
Timeline
The evaluation is expected to start on February 1, 2019 for an estimated duration of 35 consultancy days. This will include desk reviews, field work, reporting writing, and presentation on findings. The consultant will compile and submit the draft report, make a presentation to ARC, incorporate comments and submit a final report within 15 days after first submitting first draft.
Logistics Arrangements
All logistics arrangements will be coordinated by ARC local offices and these include:
– Stationery and assessment materials including handouts preparation
– Meals and refreshments during the assessment teams’ training.
– Transportation of the consultant and team to and from their accommodations.
– Reasonable accommodation for the consultants.
– Cost of rental vehicles to the target villages
– Issues of any permits required for the team to carry out their duties within the country
Required Skills and Qualifications
– A relevant postgraduate degree in the fields of public health, nutrition, water engineering, disaster management, or other qualifications relevant to the work carried out by ARC
– 8 years of experience in evaluating grant-funded projects of a similar nature. Evidence of this will be through provision of references and or samples of similar past evaluation reports.
– Preferred: Experience in conflict settings / complex emergencies / humanitarian settings.
– Extensive experience in evaluation and management of primary health, nutrition, WASH, and shelter interventions in the context of emergency and development;
– Experience in using quantitative analysis such as Stata, EPI Info or SPSS;
– Proven experience in producing high quality evaluation reports, reviews and/or research reports
– Ability to communicate verbally and in writing in English including ability to explain concepts to non-technical audiences
– Availability and ability to provide consulting during the set period.
– Preferred: understanding of OFDA-USAID indicators, and policy and guidance for monitoring, evaluation, and reporting for emergency response
– Preferred: experience working in Sudan and managing teams remotely
– Proven ability to produce quality reports;
– Ability and willingness to travel to remote areas;
– Culturally sensitive
– Ability to work independently
– The consultant/s must adhere to appropriate research ethics and procedures during this evaluation.
The consultants will be supported by a team of ARC MEAL staff members who will support overall evaluation process. They will help to supervise data collection by enumerators to ensure quality, arrange community meetings, FGDs, KII, IDI with consultation and engagement of program teams and facilitate logistical arrangements.
How to Apply Applications should be submitted no later than December 15, 2018 at 4:00 PM. ARC will conduct interviews on an on-going basis. The selection committee will review all applications as they arrive. All applicants must meet the minimum requirements described above. Each application should include the following:
– An application letter addressing the selection criteria including how the candidate’s previous experience matches the consultancy objectives. The application letter should be no longer than two pages;
– A detail proposal detailing the assessment methodology (including the analytical framework and sampling methodology),
– Draft work plan clearly indicating the activity schedule;
– Financial proposal providing cost estimates and consultancy fees, enumerators payments, etc., to carry out this evaluation. Please include all costs including taxes as additional costs will not be considered. (All consultants’ internal transportation and accommodation costs including ARC staff costs will be catered for by ARC)
– Suitability statement including CVs of participating consultants with details of qualifications and experience;
– Contacts of three organizations that have recently contracted you to carry out a similar assignment.
Applications not including all of the above information will not be reviewed. Only short-listed candidates will be contacted. Please note proposed cost of the evaluation survey will also factor into final selection.
How to apply:
Follow this link to apply - https://app.jobvite.com/j?cj=onfN8fwh&s=ReliefWeb