Job Description

Posted on May 29, 2022

Terms of Reference
MID TERM EVALUATION OF THE BUILDING RESILIENT CLIMATE CHANGE COMMUNITIES IN RURAL ZAMBIA
1.    About Plan International
We strive to advance children’s rights and equality for girls all over the world. As an independent development and humanitarian organisation, we work alongside children, young people, our supporters and partners to tackle the root causes of the challenges facing girls and all vulnerable children. We support children’s rights from birth until they reach adulthood and enable children to prepare for and respond to crises and adversity. We drive changes in practice and policy at local, national and global levels using our reach, experience and knowledge. For over 80 years we have been building powerful partnerships for children, and we are active in over 75 countries.
2.    Project Background
The “Building Climate Resilient Communities in Rural Zambia” is a four-year project aimed at enhancing the capacity of young women and men to cope with and adapt to some of the climate hazards and effectively gain skills in sustainable utilization of natural resources and venture into natural resource-based enterprises to become economically empowered. This project is being implemented in the Chikonkomene ward of Chisamba in Central Province, Zambia.
The target groups are 3,665 young people aged 18-24, including 2,254 young women and 1,411 young men. This is based on the establishment or strengthening of 18 Green enterprises (with an average membership of 15 people per group and 18 Savings Groups with an average membership of 15 people per group. The young people involved in green enterprises from the 15 groups plus the individual beneficiaries are involved in five green enterprises which are; Poultry, Piggery, Fish farming, Gardening and bee-keeping. Among the 3,665 also are beneficiaries of training in climate smart agriculture as a way of adapting to the impacts of climate change, Gender champions of change and Community Livestock Volunteers. Furthermore, the project has taken other activities like regular sensitizations of communities through various activities on environment and natural resource awareness, training and establishment of tree nurseries and a gender transformative approach to ensure that gender and other inclusion factors are mainstreamed in all aspects of the project through community activities and engagement.
The following are the outcomes of the project:

Increased income for young women and men from diversified sources of livelihoods & enterprises for sustainable utilization of natural resources.
Improved soil fertility for increased agricultural production by young farmer
Afforested land and conserved forest areas
Improved women’s income, access and control over assets and resources, more decision making power and improved status in their families and community access.

3.    Purpose of the Mid-term Evaluation
The purpose of the mid-term evaluation is to provide programme staff and other key stakeholders with information on the progress that the project has made towards the achievement of the overall objective. The project has one Specific Objective and four outcomes and the extent to which the project targets/outputs had been achieved. It seeks to evaluate the impact of the project, enhance learning and show the level of accountability in the use of resources. The evaluation should provide information that is credible and useful, enabling the incorporation of lessons learned into the decision-making process of the Project.
The scope of the evaluation in assessing the progress of the project will focus on six key criteria. This will be to measure the efficiency, effectiveness, relevance, sustainability, childrens’ rights, gender and inclusion and impact of the project. These six criteria will be evaluated as follows:
a)         Effectiveness: Focus will be on whether there is indication of achievement of the objectives so far and the reasons behind the achievement (or not) of the projects objectives, and the possible results the intervention is leading to whether positive or negative.
b)         Sustainability: This will measure the probability of continued long-term benefits to the target populations after the project or programme has been completed. Focus should be on resource brought into the community and capacity of beneficiaries to continue running the enterprises even when the intervention has phased out.
c)         Relevance: This will assess whether the original project design targeted the right group of beneficiaries and if the root causes are being addressed correctly.
d)         Efficiency: This will focus on the use of financial sources to assess whether they are being used economically and efficiently, preferably include a cost-benefit ratio.
e)         Impact: will be assessed as critical aspect of project implementation. This will measure and address the change in the quality of life/environment. It will establish the causal attribution of the interventions to the positive or negative changes seen.
f)          Child rights, gender and inclusion: Assess whether the project applied gender and inclusion sensitive approaches, and whether this improved the rights of children, young people and gender equality.
3.1 Evaluation Questions
The following are the key questions that the mid-term evaluation report should answer based on the evaluation criteria.
1.         Is there any indication that the project outcomes are being achieved and can be attributed to the intervention?
2.         Are there signs that all the beneficiaries across the project will continue to reap benefits from the intervention even after the project closes?
3.         Is the project addressing the real problems faced by the beneficiaries of the project?
4.         Have the projects resources being used efficiently?
5.         What has been the projects contribution towards enhancing the capacity of communities to adapt and become resilient to the impacts of climate change?
6.         Has the project applied gender and inclusion approaches?
3.2 Child rights, gender and inclusion
Gender and inclusion is a cross cutting issue in all projects undertaken by plan international. Another area of interest is children’s rights as an organisation that is vested in young people and excluded girls.
It is imperative therefore that the evaluation comprehensively looks into what extent the project has employed gender transformative approaches to programming. All outcomes must be evaluated on this as well as each evaluation question must mainstream the children’s’ rights, gender and inclusion in answering the evaluation questions.
4.    Users of the Mid-term Evaluation
A wide audience of stakeholders will be interested in the evaluation report and use it for a number of things. These are internal and external stakeholders according to their different information needs. The internal team will include: project team, country management leadership, MERL teams, and AOGD technical networks. External to the organisation are stakeholders like the donor, communities we work with, Technical networks and the general public. These needs influence the scope of the evaluations inquiry and must be met. These information needs have been explicitly explained in the dissemination strategy. See Annex
5.    Methods for Data Collection and Analysis
The selection of methods will largely depend on the Evaluation Criteria and project indicators. The methodologies to be used for the evaluation will be participatory and interactive. Primary data and information will be obtained through research methods including interviews, Focused group discussions and surveys. Secondary data and information will be provided through literature review. Secondary data will be triangulated through discussions, surveys and interviews.
The evaluation will be designed in such a way that multiple stakeholders. Key Informants in the field who include among others, Village headmen, households, Focus Discussion Groups, Key Informants, District staff, National and International organizations etc.
6.    Sample
The sample selection will be drawn from Chikonkomene Ward and specifically eight communities which include; Kabanga, Chuunga, Chikonkomene, Lukoshi, Mufunda Lifwambula, Chamuka, Yuda, Yumba, Mpikwa and Suse. The evaluator must select the sample critically guided by the size of the communities and the scale of intervention in these communities.
Quota sampling Is suggested for surveys and purposive sampling for the key informant interviews and Focused Group Discussions. However, the evaluator may suggest other sampling methods deemed fit. Disaggregation of respondents recognized by Plan international are Sex and Age 18.
7.    Participant selection and recruitment
The main participants of the evaluation are the beneficiaries of the project themselves. However, the project team must also be included, other potential experts cooperating with the project team, e.g. public authorities, community leaders. The evaluator may add other stakeholders to participate that might be deemed fit to participate.
8.    Ethics and Child Protection
It is expected that high ethical standards will be followed in this evaluation as the organisation is well vested in protection of children and young people we work with.
With this regard, Plan International is committed to ensuring that the rights of those participating in data collection or analysis are respected and protected, in accordance with Ethical MERL Framework and our Global Policy on Safeguarding Children and Young People.
All applicants should include details in their proposal on how they will ensure ethics and child protection in the data collection process. Specifically, the consultant(s) shall explain how appropriate, safe, non-discriminatory participation of all stakeholders will be ensured and how special attention will be paid to the needs of children and other vulnerable groups. The consultant(s) shall also explain how confidentiality and anonymity of participants will be guaranteed.
9.    Key Deliverables
Deliverable
Format
Length
Due
Detail
Inception Report
narrative
4 pages
15-06-22
Draft Evaluation Report
narrative
45 pages
05-08-22
Final Evaluation Report (including Executive Summary)
narrative
80 pages
20-09-22
Final Data Collection Tools
tabular
2 pages max
15-07-22
Cleaned Data (including transcripts)
spreadsheets
10 sheets
01-08-22
Completed Consent Forms
Hard copies
100 forms
25-07-22
Other Communication Products for Dissemination
Narrative
TBA
20-09-22
10. Time frame
Activity
Time
Days of Work
Responsible
Individuals Involved
Tendering
30-05-22
10 days
Procurement and Logistics CO
Background Checks and Contracting;
Inception Call/ Inception Workshop
06-06-22
1 day
Procurement and Logistics
Submission of Inception Report
16-06-22
1 day
External consultant
Preparations for Data Collection
Develop tools
07-06-22
7 days
External consultant
Tool translation
–
–
–
Field piloting
13-06-22
2 days
External consultant
Tools finalisation
15-06-22
1 day
External consultant
Enumerator training
20-06-22
3 days
External consultant
Data Collection
27-06-22
3 weeks
External consultant
Data Cleaning
18-07-22
3 days
External consultant
Data Analysis
21-07-22
9 days
External consultant
Validation of findings with key stakeholders and respondents & feedback incorporation
05-07-22
1 day
External consultant
Submission of Draft
05-07-22
1 day
External consultant
Submission of Final Report
20-09-22
1 day
External consultant
Submission of Other Deliverables
See list of deliverables
See list of deliverables
External consultant
Management Response and Action Plan
21-09-22
5 days
MERL Manager
11. Budget
The consultant should submit the total budget in the proposal with detail breakdown that cover all related costs for midterm evaluation, including taxes, travel cost, per diems as well as translation costs. Fifty percent of the contract amount will be paid in advance after signing of the agreement, thirty percent amount will be paid after completion of field work and remaining twenty percent amount will be paid after submission of the final report.
Milestone
Detail
Amount to be Paid (%)
Expected Timeframe
Upon contract signature
50%
Upon completion of field work
30%
Upon submitting the final report
20%
12. Expected Qualifications
The consultant should have expertise in carrying out similar work before. The consultant should have good experience on participatory research methods and tools. S/he should have competency in managing and organizing and interpreting quantitative and qualitative data and information. The consultant(s) should have the following academic qualification and experiences:

Team leader should have minimum Master’s Degree in social sciences or any other developmental field with minimum 10 years experiences in undertaking similar type of studies/research/Evaluation.
Team members should have relevant experiences in their respective areas with 5 years experiences including field level data collection and qualitative research in similar type of studies
Consultant(s) should have comprehensive understanding of the tools development and draw the information from the baseline data and analytical report writing skills.
Ability to be mobile and available for the duration of the survey independently.

Good written and verbal communication skills.
Experience with mobile phone technology as well as using voice recorder.
Language capabilities: Good in English writing and relevant local language – Bemba, Nyanja and Lenje/Tong
Able to communicate effectively and work in the project areas for the duration of the data collection.

13. Applications
Interested applicants should provide a proposal covering the following aspects:

Detailed response to the TO
Proposed methodology
Ethics and child safeguarding approaches, including any identified risks and associated mitigation strategies
Proposed timeline
CVs
Example of previous work
Detailed budget, including daily fee rates, expenses, taxes etc.
Police Certificates of Good Conduct – especially where there is primary data collection.

Please send your applications to [email protected] or cc kennedy.maimisa[email protected] by 6th June, 2022 by 5:00pm local time.  Any bids received after this time and date will not be accepted.
Referencing “Evaluation for Building Climate Resilient Rural Communities in Zambia project” in the subject line and including support documents as outlined. All successful bidders will be will be communicated to within 7 days after final selection.

To apply for this job email your details to Planzamtenders@plan-international.org