Supporting Pastoral-Agro Pastoral & Urban Poor through Recovery initiatives (SPUR)

Description :

Organization: Adeso
Country: Somalia
Closing date: 01 Mar 2017

ORGANIZATIONAL BACKGROUND

Adeso, formerly known as Horn Relief, is an expanding and vibrant African-based international organization, working with communities to create environments in which Africans can thrive. We work to prevent and overcome situations that adversely affect community well-being by: reinvigorating the economy, developing skills for life and work, providing humanitarian aid, and influencing policy. Our belief that economic, social and environmental security is the bedrock of a healthy community drives the nature and intent of our programming. Adeso has been strengthening rural livelihood and delivering innovative humanitarian aid and development programs for the past 26 years. Currently, we have programs in Somalia, Kenya and South Sudan. Adeso is an exciting, dynamic organization experiencing managed rapid growth. It offers sound employment conditions with opportunities for personal growth and development.

POSITION SUMMARY

Adeso is seeking a competent consulting firm or qualified individuals with specialties in evaluating Agriculture & Food Security, Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (Wash) and review of disaster management component of the projects; to evaluate the impact of Adeso’s Supporting Pastoral-Agro Pastoral & Urban Poor through Recovery initiatives (SPUR) Project in Somalia/Somaliland. The consultancy is for a period of 30 days, beginning a few days after the application deadline of March 1, 2017 and will include desk review work, field data collection, data analysis, report writing and a presentation of the findings to the field team and Nairobi. Adeso encourages Consultancy firms or groups who can assign specific consultant specialized in WASH, Disaster reduction/ management and in Agriculture & food security.

PROJECT SUMMARY

SPUR is a 12 Month project funded by USAID-OFDA (April 2016 – March 2017). SPUR utilized a community-driven development approach to strengthen social, economic and respond to emergency and recovery projects in Mudug and Sanaag regions to provide support to vulnerable groups affected by emergency crisis. These interventions aim at improving livelihood of the project beneficiaries by protecting livelihood assets but also improve access to water and sanitation through rehabilitation of water facilities and improve the design to cater for sanitation and hygiene promotion component and to build resilience among most affected households. The project built on the gains realized in the SCORES II project, implemented by Adeso in 2015-2016, which provided humanitarian assistance as part of emergency response. It also adopted a multi sector strategy that links emergency interventions to recovery by strengthening recovery of livelihood and rehabilitation of communal water source assets in order to address emergency needs and develop opportunities for community asset building among most vulnerable households.

SPUR was designed to go beyond short-term crisis response and focus on enhancing household capacity to address recurrent problems such as food security and sanitation. The project included the following major components: provision of agricultural inputs, community based public health initiatives and the strengthening of early warning systems to include livelihood-saving early warning messages to communities through the Disaster Management Authority. These components complement each other and when combined, actively support households to maintain their livelihood strategies while addressing key WASH problems.

Currently Adeso is developing a strategy that is primarily hinged on a social safety nets approach. This strategy is geared towards building reliance not only at the household level but at the community level as well.

OBJECTIVES OF THE ASSIGNMENT

The purpose of this evaluation is to assess the progress made towards achievement of the overall and specific objectives of the project, its impacts on the lives of beneficiaries who have been directly involved in the project activities, including their families, communities and on the responses of policy makers at local and national levels after the end of the implementation period. The assessment will also help determine any impact the project has produced on the main target communities and project beneficiaries in terms of meeting their food security needs, improving access to clean water, increasing livelihood security and improving disaster preparedness. The evaluation will also gauge the level of community and other stakeholder participation and ownership of the implementation process including the identification of the intended and unintended outcomes, best practices and lessons learned as well as challenges arising from programme implementation. In addition, the evaluation will come up conclusions and recommendations on the way forward.

Specific Objectives

The evaluation will specifically assess the level of community, government and other stakeholder participation and ownership of the whole project process including the identification of the intended and unintended impacts, best practices and lessons learned as well as challenges arising from programme implementation. In addition, the evaluation will come up with conclusions and recommendations on the way forward for future programing.

More specific areas of focus for Adeso are as follows:

1. Appropriateness

· The evaluation must report back on the appropriateness of this particular intervention in meeting the objectives.

· Were the activities developed necessary and were they implemented appropriate to the context and culture?

· Was the choice of objective appropriate to the context?

· Appropriateness on the project design verses implementation.

2. Connectedness

· Does this fit within international priorities such as the Millennium Development Goals?

· Does the project fit within wider organization, government and other stakeholder’s programmes?

· Did the work of Adeso compliment the activities of other stakeholders, such as INGOs, NGOs and UN agencies?

· Assess the processes and systems used by Adeso to ensure the involvement of all the stakeholders, particularly women, youth and minorities in design, planning, implementation and monitoring stage;

3. Coherence

· Is the project coherent?

· Do the activities complement one another? Does a success in one activity increase the potential success of another activity?

· How well did Adeso link the activities on the ground?

4. Coverage

· Evaluate the coverage of the project.

· Is the coverage too small to have an impact or is it too large that the benefits are spread too thin to have an impact?

· How has the coverage affected other aspects of the project such as monitoring?

· Was the area the right area chosen for this sort of project?

5. Effectiveness

· How well did the project design meet the objectives and extent to which the objectives were achieved?

· How good was the targeting methodology in identifying the most vulnerable/ pastoralist dropouts’ households/ beneficiaries as well as the targeted areas?

· Was the number of beneficiaries reached by the various activities acceptable?

· Were the activities implemented well?

· Could there have been better ways of implementation that may have led to improved outcomes?

· To what extent did the external assumptions in the proposal hold true and how well were the mitigating measures put into use?

6. Efficiency

· Evaluate project activity management and implementation, and resource allocation and utilization (including human resources and financial management).

· Evaluate the involvement of stakeholders in the design of projects and identification of gender equalities and women’ empowerment support areas.

· How realistic is the potential sustainability of the infrastructures constructed and groups supported.

· Evaluate the gender balance in relation to beneficiary participation and benefits.

· Assessment of value of internal controls i.e. monitoring tools, information management, activity plan and implementation.

· Evaluate the efficiency of working with local stakeholders, including government bodies.

7. Outcomes and Impact signs

· Determine the outcomes of the project activities to alleviate vulnerability in the target population.

· Assessment of the outcomes of the project activities to increase number of empowered women representing their communities.

· Assess the impact signs of project activities on gender and other vulnerable groups and especially its impact in addressing the needs of women and children.

· Evaluate the impact signs on conflict mitigation as a result of the project design.

· Assess the potential sustainability of DRR interventions and potential for future impact.

· Highlight any unintended impacts of the project.

8. Sustainability

· Evaluate the design of the project in relation to sustainability and replicability.

· Evaluate whether the project activities implemented will live beyond the life of the project period and continue to contribute to improving the target regions.

9. Lessons Learnt

· Identify lessons learnt and give recommendations of general and specific nature which are useful to Adeso for the planning, preparation and implementation of integrated gender equalities and women’ empowerment programs/projects in future.

EVALUATION QUESTIONS

Overall the process must speak to the following broad evaluation questions:

· Have the right things been done? (Was the outcome and associated projects relevant, appropriate and strategic to national/local development goals and the Adeso mandate?);

· Have things been done right? (Were the actions to achieve the outputs and outcomes effective and efficient?);

· Are the results sustainable? (Will the outputs and outcome(s) lead to benefits beyond the life of the existing project(s)?);

· How might we do things better in the future? (Which findings may have relevance for future programming or for other similar initiatives elsewhere?).

DELIVERABLES

1. Initial work plan and proposal for study (including study methodology and process of data collection with clear timeline, budget), to be presented.
2. Final work plans and data collection tools for approval prior to fieldwork.
3. Interim evaluation report with preliminary analysis and observations, submitted for feedback and comments.
4. Presentation on the main findings of the draft evaluation report for final consensus building to the field team in Sanag and Programme development and quality team in Nairobi for comments;
5. Final Evaluation Report in English (3 hard copies and a soft copy on CD ROM).

SCOPE OF WORK

SPUR field final evaluation will be done through visits to project sites in Sanag and Mudug regions of Somalia/Somaliland. Indirect data collection will be done through extensive literature review, with interviewees from different livelihood groups who have been involved in the project. The following factors can be used to identify a cross-section of focus areas and interviewees:

· Coordination and implementation of the project in the project areas.

· Urban / rural

· Pastoralist / agro-pastoralist / riverine communities.

· Levels of displacement, access to land.

· Gender, age, clan, etc.

· Beneficiaries / non-beneficiary perspectives.

METHODOLOGY

The methodology will be further defined by the consultant (in the proposal) and revised at the outset of the consultancy. The elements in the methodology to include, direct and indirect data collection, analysis and cross referencing, formulating recommendations and lessons learnt. To the extent possible, field data should be collected using participatory appraisal techniques. District local authorities; such as elders, women CBOs, youth groups, minorities and other community members, In addition to government partners from the respective line Ministries should be included. It is envisaged that the methodology used during this final evaluation will include, but not be limited to, the following:

· Literature review of existing documents and review of context e.g. monitoring reports, existing data, previous projects etc.

· Interviews with government agencies and other stakeholders;

· Field visits in the implementation areas for sampling, data collection and observations;

· Conduct structured household interviews with sampled project stakeholders;

· Focus group discussions and interviews with field staff and with sample beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries;

· Reflection and feedback sessions with Adeso Nairobi, field staff and other key informants;

· Field observations for triangulation of information;

· Data analysis and validation of findings;

· Report writing and debriefing with project and HQ management teams.

· Review of monitoring and training reports and all other existing data.

WORKPLAN FOR THE EVALUATION

A work plan for this assignment should be developed in relation to the methodology suggested by the consultant, and the number of days set for this assignment. This will include a one day briefing on the findings to get input from project staff, as well as build consensus around the recommendations.

QUALIFICATION PROFILE

· Consultant firm with vast experience and qualifications on the fields of food security and livelihood, WASH, farming and entrepreneurship / business management

· At least eight years of hands on experience in conducting assessments, midterm reviews and evaluations in similar context

· Experience leading project evaluations/mid-term reviews is essential;

· Must have profound knowledge in economic analysis of development projects;

· Familiar with issues related to water source management (especially subsurface dams and hydro dynamic shallow wells) and agro pastoralist farming practices within Somali cultures;

· Familiar with environmental issues and semi-arid and arid lands;

· He/she must be experienced in developing and implementing gender sensitive evaluation methodologies in WASH, Agriculture and other food security frameworks;

· Experience in assessing community based DRR interventions and contingency planning;

· Ability to assess/review critically the project activities and results;

· Good knowledge and experience in survey design, implementation of surveys and statistical data analysis is required;

· Experience in the use of participatory appraisal techniques in data collection;

· Previous work experience in Somalia and knowledge of Somali culture is essential.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS:

All documentation related to the assignment shall remain the sole and exclusive property of Adeso.

CODE OF CONDUCT

All evaluators and evaluation processes must abide by Adeso’s HR Code of Conduct and Adeso’s Child Protection Policy.

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