Terms of Reference - (TOR) for engaging a Consultant to End line Monitoring and evaluation on ECW-FER Funded EIE response project in Benadir region and Baidoa district of Somalia

Terms of Reference - (TOR) for engaging a Consultant to End line Monitoring and evaluation on ECW-FER Funded EIE response project in Benadir region and Baidoa district of Somalia

CARE International Somalia

Terms of Reference - (TOR) for engaging a Consultant to End line Monitoring and ealuation on

ECW-FER Funded EIE response project in Benadir region and Baidoa district of Somalia Introduction and background:

CARE International works with the most vulnerable communities to address the underlying causes of poverty and to promote peace and development, by empowering women, enhancing access to resources and services, and improving governance. CARE actively works in emergency contexts providing a wide range of life-saving assistance in the thematic areas of Food security /Livelihoods (mainly Cash and Voucher Assistance), Nutrition, Health, Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH), Education in Emergency (EiE) and Protection.

CARE Somalia is currently leading an ECW-funded FER consortium implementing an Education in Emergency (EiE) project, jointly with Mercy Corps, Daryel Bulsho Guud (DBG), and GREDO in the Benadir region and Baidoa district of Somalia. The 14-month-long project started on the 1st of April 2023 and will end on the 30th of June 2024. The action seeks to improve education access for droughts and flood-affected children in the stated locations, aiming to improve enrollment for out-of-school children and to minimize dropout rates for crisis-affected children. The project aims to reach 43000 learners of which 60% are girls and 40% are boys. Of the targeted learners, 70% are Internally Displaced Population (IDP) children from households recently displaced by floods/droughts, while 30% are children from host community households equally affected by the crisis. The action covers various pathways to education access, such as formal learning centers that provide basic primary education for school-aged children and non-formal learning centers that provide Alternative Basic Education (ABE) and catch-up classes for over-age and adult learners. The project also supports pre-primary centers to provide quality early childhood development services in the targeted areas.

Purpose of the Terms of Reference (TOR):

With the project coming to an end in June 2024, CARE Somalia would like to engage an external consultant with the required technical skills and experience to conduct project end-line monitoring and evaluation assessment. The consultant is expected to assess the quality of the project implementation, its achievements, and impacts in line with the planned project outputs, outcomes and results. The end-line assessment is also meant to evaluate the project’s relevance, effectiveness, and efficiency. The assessment will complement other monitoring activities conducted by the consortium partners in the course of the project implementation, pinpointing the major gaps that have not been addressed by the project. More importantly, the evaluation should address:

•       To what extent was the project design and implementation aligned with the EIE response priorities of the EIE cluster, federal/state-level Ministries of Education (MoE), etc.?

•       To what extent did the project address identified needs and barriers, especially for marginalized girls and students living with disabilities?

•       To what extent did the project achieve its objectives? What approaches adopted by the project were the most effective in achieving the project’s objectives, especially in terms of its gender-responsive/transformative programming?

•       How effective was the project in terms of increasing participation and access to education for girls, marginalized groups, and students living with disabilities?

•       How well did the project adapt in the face of the unexpected/expected challenges?

•       How effective was the project in ensuring accountability, transparency, and local stakeholders’ ownership/participation?

•       What intended and unintended changes did project participants experience, as a result of the intervention?

•       What are lessons learned regarding what works/does not work?

•       Identify and document key case studies and human interest stories.

The consultant will be hired for 24 working days and the work will cover sampled locations across the project target areas. This will include 14 days of secondary and field data collection and 10 days of data analysis and report production. During the data collection, the consultant will engage a wide number of project stakeholders through focus group discussions (FGDs), key informant interviews (KIIs), observations, and other techniques to collate views and project data (both primary and secondary data) for report production.

The key stakeholders to engage will include:

a)  School-based stakeholders - teachers, head teachers, community education committees (CECs), child protection focal persons, learners -both girls and boys, parents, and IDPs/host community leaders.

b)  State and district-level MoE officials – this will include the MoE Director General (DG), school inspectors, regional education officers, district education officials, teacher training tutors

c)        Federal or national level education stakeholders – the federal government MoE DG and departmental directors in charge of teacher development, EiE, curriculum development, and EIE cluster coordinators.

The end-line monitoring and evaluation will cover all the project target regions and districts. The end-line findings will then be consolidated into an end-line evaluation report and submitted to CARE UK and CARE Somalia a week before the end of the contract period. The last day of the contract will be used to debrief the CARE UK and consortium members' focal persons for the project. The activities to be monitored and sampled project sites to visit will be jointly discussed and agreed upon by CARE UK, the project team, and the consultant at the beginning of the exercise

Scope of work:

The assignment will cover a sample of 30 learning centers (15 Benadir and 15 Baidoa ) targeted by the project and it will assess the work of all the four consortium members – CARE Somalia, Mercy Corps, DBG, and GREDO in their respective areas of work. The consultant will monitor and evaluate the progress and quality of the activities implemented by each of the partners, the achievements reached in line with the defined project targets, and the impact attained under the project objectives (indicated below) and provide a comprehensive quality report covering the key findings based on the below project outcome and outputs.

Outcome 1: Increased access, attendance and retention of education to out of school children or at children risk of dropping out of school in disaster affected areas of Somalia/Somaliland

Output

1.1 Increased access to safe learning spaces which provide a conducive learning environment. 1.2 Increased availability of gender responsive and accessible teaching and learning materials (TLM)

1.3 Increased enrolment in schools through community mobilization

1.4 Out of schoolgirls, boys and adolescents are reached by cash grants to schools.

1.5 Increased teacher availability and retention

1.6 Provision of safe, gender responsive and accessible WASH services, including MHM products

Outcome 2: Protected, quality learning is ensured for children affected by drought and displacement, including integrated education -child protection programming. Outputs.

2.1 School children living with disabilities benefit from inclusive education.

2.2 Teachers trained in inclusive, protective, and socio-emotional teaching and learning and psychosocial support.

2.3 Creation of conducive child friendly environments for crisis-affected children

2.4 Improved teacher capacity to use child-centered pedagogy.

2.5 Child Protection and GBV referral services are mapped out and awareness created on child protection pathways together with child protection cluster and GBV area of responsibility.

2.6 Community Education Committee members trained in school management, child protection and school safety.

2.7 Increased capacity of MOEs to undertake gender, disability and protection-focused quality assurance and monitoring activities in ECW supported schools.

Methodology:

The exercise will cover 24 days and will focus on tracking the quality and achievement of the implemented project activities, preparation, and submission of the evaluation report. The consultant is expected to conduct an in depth-analysis of project activities and implementation processes to bring out the project achievements, success stories, and critical lessons learned by

engaging thoroughly with the project staff, project target beneficiaries and stakeholders including the pupils (learners), teachers and CECs, MoE officials, parents, and local villages /IDP leaders to ensure quality data collection across wide groups for triangulation. The consultant will be expected to make site visits to observe the quality of the infrastructure constructed / rehabilitated by the project and also identify and document key case studies and success stories.

Duration of the Assignment:

The assignment is expected to take place from 26th May 2024 to 20th June 2024. The first draft report should be shared by 15th June 2024. The final report with necessary annexes should be submitted by 20th June 2024 and this will be accompanied by a PowerPoint briefing presented to the consortium partners on the same day.

Liaison and Communication:

The Consultant will work under the supervision and guidance’s of the EiE Consortium coordinator assisted by the project MEAL manager and project managers of each of the consortium partners (CARE Somalia, Mercy Corps, DBG and GREDO) responsible for their area of assignment. The consultant will also liaise with CARE UK/USA team which is lead agency for any technical issue where need be.

Deliverables:

The Consultant will be required to submit the following deliverables to the EIE consortium coordinator, MEAL manager, and CARE UK/USA focal person for the project:

•       Inception report, to be shared before the start of the fieldwork

•       A brief PowerPoint presentation highlighting findings from the monitoring exercise, to be presented to the consortium partners during a debriefing session.

•       All the tools / checklists used for the field data collection.

•       Anonymized interview transcripts and raw results of interviews

•       The final version of the monitoring /evaluation report (including the following annexes: inception report, PowerPoint presentation, data collection tools/checklists).

Responsibilities of CARE:

•       Provide consultancy fee for the task.

•       Provide transport during the engagement while undertaking field visit assessment.

•       Provide accommodation with meals at CARE guest houses during the engagement.

•       Identification of project sites to be visited and mobilization of key stakeholders.

Responsibilities of the Consultant:

•       Develop data collection tools and inception report

•       Engage with key staff/KII to generate adequate information relevant to the assignment.

•       Conduct field data collection, quality check, and analysis for generating the evaluation report

•       Provide recordings and anonymized interview transcripts to the CARE team

•       Make field visits to project sites to observe / assess project work.

•       Prepare quality and detailed end-line monitoring /evaluation report and share in time with the CARE team.

•       Prepare a PowerPoint presentation with preliminary findings

Qualifications for the Consultant:

•       Master’s degree in education and or relevant field related to social science research combined with a minimum of 5 years of work experiences experience in education programming in humanitarian/development settings.

•       Experience working in education programmes in Somalia and conducting similar assignments in the past.

•       Five years of experience in project design, implementation, monitoring, evaluation, and reporting.

•       Working experience in conflict and gender-sensitive programming.

•       Cultural sensitivity and adaptability to the context.

•       High degree of integrity and professional responsibility.

•       Flexibility, patience, and ability to work under pressure in challenging contextual circumstances and working with tight deadlines.

•       Ability to work independently and at times with little supervision.

•       Excellent communication skills (both written and oral English skills). Working knowledge of the Somali language is an added advantage.

•       Strong computer literacy.

•       Capacity and willingness to travel to/ in Somalia.

Interested applicants are encouraged to apply for this assignment by submitting the following.

A)     Technical proposal that includes but is not limited to;

•      Demonstrating a clear understanding of the objectives of the assignment.

•      Detailed methodology appreciative of the prevailing socio-political context in Somalia.

•      Detailed work-plan (program).

•      CV of the lead consultant undertaking the assignments

B)       Financial proposal:

•      Detailed budget of the professional fees quoted at per day’s rate

•      The budget should be inclusive of relevant taxes where applicable

The consultancy proposals shall be sent to the procurement department email; [email protected] subject line reading “Consultancy for Endline Monitoring /Evaluation of ECW-FER funded EIE Project in Benadir and Baidoa”.

The deadline for application submission is 20th May 2024 5:00pm.