Welthungerhilfe

Endline Evaluation Consultant

Consultancy, Research Jobs

Job Description

Welthungerhilfe is one of the largest German non-governmental organisations in development co- operation and emergency relief. Primarily in co-operation with local partner organisations, our task is to contribute to the improvement in nutritional and income base for the low-income populations in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Welthungerhilfe has been implementing projects in Zimbabwe since 1980. Sector focus is on Water Sanitation and Hygiene, Food and Nutrition Security, Livelihoods and when necessary, Emergency Response.

Welthungerhilfe is working on a project entitled “Development of Forecast-based Action mechanism” addressing drought induced food insecurity in Madagascar, Zimbabwe and Kenya”, briefly called Forecast-based Action (FbA) Project: The multi-country approach applied within the FbA Project by Welthungerhilfe (WHH), requires an operational structure within each project country to address the complexity and scope of in-country interventions (including networking, partnering, contracting, MEAL, etc.)To anchor the mind set for anticipatory humanitarian assistance, including Early Warning Early Action in-country, and build capacities on the job with national stakeholders, there is need for the FbA Country Teams to engage in learning, knowledge management, dissemination and advocacy activities: This is to support and contribute to the paradigm shift of the national humanitarian systems in Madagascar, Zimbabwe and Kenya towards early warning and early action.

Further, for the FbA Project to meet the institutional donor obligations towards the German Federal Foreign Office (GFFO), FbA Country Teams are established within each of the Welthungerhilfe country offices in Madagascar, Zimbabwe and Kenya: For a smooth implementation of the FbA country operations, it is essential to equip the FbA Country Teams with both, special FbA expertise but also with the necessary competencies and experiences regarding project, financial, and operational support from the Welthungerhilfe Country Offices. We are looking for a suitable candidate to fill the position below: If you are prepared to dedicate yourself to carrying out projects under sometimes difficult conditions, and you match the requirements set out below, we look forward to receiving your application:

Position summary:

Welthungerhilfe is seeking for an End Evaluation Consultant for the FbA project; Please kindly refer to the terms of reference for more information on this advert;

TERMS OF REFERENCE

End Evaluation of Forecast-based Humanitarian Action for Food Security in Zimbabwe (Multi-country Project implemented in Kenya, Madagascar and Zimbabwe)

1. INTRODUCTION AND CONTEXT

Country: Multi-Country Programme (Kenya, Madagascar and Zimbabwe)
Country for tendered evaluation: Zimbabwe
Project title: Development of Forecast-based Action mechanisms addressing drought induced food insecurity in Madagascar, Zimbabwe and Kenya
Project no.: ZWE 1141-20
Project holder: Zimbabwe Country Office
Project period: 01.03.2020 – 31.04.2023

Deutsche Welthungerhilfe e. V. is one of the largest non-governmental organisations in Germany operating in the humanitarian assistance and development fields. It was established in 1962, as the German section of the “Freedom from Hunger Campaign”, one of the world’s first initiatives aimed at the eradication of hunger. Welthungerhilfe’s work is still dedicated to the following vision: All people have a right to a self-determined life in dignity and justice, free from hunger and poverty.
By 2021, Welthungerhilfe and its partner organisations ran 539 international projects in 36 countries with an overall financing volume of EUR 246,1 million, comprised of private donations, public national and international funds.

At the beginning of 2020, Welthungerhilfe initiated its Forecast-based Action (FbA) Programme addressing drought-induced food insecurity in Madagascar, Kenya and Zimbabwe. The programme aims to develop a comprehensive Forecast-based Action mechanism supporting food security for drought events in Madagascar, Zimbabwe and Kenya open for collaboration with various other anticipative actors. The Early Action Protocols (EAP) developed in the project reduce the risks to the food security of vulnerable communities, prevent negative coping strategies and reduce loss and damages of drought affected households.

The programme built on previous lessons learned from the pilot project MDG 1087-17 and scheduled for longer lead-in time (especially in new countries of implementation: Kenya and Zimbabwe) to ensure proper introduction to concepts, capacity building and training, as well as the ‘buy-in’ of various stakeholders (national and local government, national and international NGOs, population and other stakeholders). The programme rolled out its EAP Custodianship Process and EAP Custodians developed their own protocols.

For the Zimbabwean context, following international and local NGOs were identified as EAP Custodians for each identified region: Welthungerhilfe (WHH) and TSURO Trust in Chimanimani, ACF and Nutrition Action Zimbabwe (NAZ) in Chivi district, and Trocaire and Caritas Bulawayo in Matobo district. While on the national government level, Department of Civil Protection, Meteorological Services Department, other NGOs and UN Agencies involved in FbA were involved as stakeholders, on the regional level, district Civil Protection Committees, drought relief committees, food and nutrition committees and traditional leaders were involved in all processes at all stages.

2. EVALUATION PURPOSE
This evaluation is conducted to facilitate learning for future FbA phases and/or other anticipatory action project development. The users of this evaluation are especially interested in best practices and shortcomings for future improvement. This evaluation is placed in the end of the programme to draw from learning made during the overall implementation of the FbA Programme after having implemented all five project steps (see graph on the right) with all needed stakeholders, to receive their input for further guidance in future similar projects and to guide design improvement and practical approaches/steps of the FbA mechanism and other anticipation initiatives.

3. SCOPE OF THE EVALUATION
This evaluation will be a final evaluation assessing all three country advances for cross-country learnings from all three project countries through a streamlined design of evaluation for parallel methodology outline and implementation. In each country of implementation, a national evaluator will conduct data collection, analysis and reporting using the methodology and tools provided by Welthungerhilfe and contextualized to each country.
The results of the evaluation should add on findings taken from Welthungerhilfe’s mid-term self-assessment on this project. While the mid-term self-assessment covered activity/output level achievements and a Programme Management Unit support function assessment, both focusing mainly on WHH internal procedures and perspective, especially on its functioning as a multi-country programme, the end evaluation will assess the outside perspective of the programme’s stakeholders in the countries, especially on the stakeholders’ understanding and buy-in and the programme’s relevance and the localization of the approach, especially in regards to participation, coordination, synergies/complementarity and sustainability, this includes the sustainability of the projects outcomes and the stakeholders’ plans for sustainability. A critical assessment and discussion of the project’s strengths, challenges and gaps should be done during KII and draw out recommendations.
The period of consideration includes the whole project implementation period across all five project phases.

As part of Welthungerhilfe’s AA/FbA implementation in Country regions, Chimanimani, Chivi and Matobo were identified as EAP regions for Zimbabwe and three respective EAP Custodians teams are WHH and TSURO Trust, ACF and NAZ, Trocaire and Caritas Bulawayo, respectively developed Early Action Protocols for these regions.
The consultant will need to visit these EAP regions for data collection through key informant interviews with Welthungerhilfe pre-defined main stakeholder representatives in case they cannot be performed online.

The evaluation is supposed to draw out specific best practices, lessons learned, key achievements towards outcome indicators and recommendations for future FbA/Anticipatory Action programming over the whole programme implementation period and for each project step.

4. USERS OF THE EVALUATION
Primary users: FbA Country Teams (+CO) and PMU
Secondary users: EAP Custodians, communities, (evaluate communication channels!), institutional stakeholders on international, national and regional level (government, UN, NGOs, Red Cross, donors, esp. GFFO as donor), other WHH Country Offices interested in FbA/Multi-country programmes, WHH multi-country programmes, WHH SEC/MEAL Unit.

Duties and Responsibilities

5. EVALUATION QUESTIONS
Buy-in and Relevance - Capacity Building and Actionability:
• To what extent and how does the project respond to the needs and priorities of the main stakeholders and the project participants?
• Is the FbA concept understood by main stakeholders?
• Do main stakeholders state a significant improvement in knowledge, skills and abilities to prepare and undertake Anticipatory Action (AA) measures?
• Do main stakeholders know their roles and responsibilities/Do communities know their rights?
• Is the approach and its guidance provided by Welthungerhilfe developed feasible and actionable?
• How was the acquired knowledge used by the main stakeholders, and accompanied/monitored by Welthungerhilfe? Do main stakeholders intend to use the gained knowledge, capacities and skills in future?

Localized/Contextualized Approach - Collaboration, Coordination & Synergies:
• To what extent were partners and project participants adequately engaged? Do they state sufficient involvement/participation/inclusion in the implementation of the project and with other initiatives during the five project steps?
• To what extent are all relevant stakeholders appropriately informed and updated on the activities / approach / strategy of the project during the five project phases?
• To what extent are (both formal and informal) local leaders and / or authorities consulted to ensure response strategies are in line with local / or national priorities during the five project phases?
• What are the factors of non-integration or non-engagement of a key actor in the mechanism and what approach and solutions should the project have taken?
• To what extent has the use of project resources been appropriate with regard to the achieved outputs / outcomes during the five project phases?
• To what extent the project builds local capacities and works towards improving the resilience of communities and people affected by crisis during the five project phases?
• Do the local, regional and national steering groups have sustainability plans and what are the main elements of the plans?
The questions will not strictly follow any evaluation criteria like the OECD/DAC criteria, but more the overall logic of evaluation focus on buy-in and relevance as well as the

localization/contextualization of the approach. Nevertheless, references to DAC criteria like Relevance, Effectiveness, Sustainability and Impact can be made.

6. EVALUATION DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY
A detailed design and methodology for the evaluation will be developed and provided by Welthungerhilfe as the process is planned to be a streamlined process conducted in parallel in all three countries of implementation. The evaluator will be introduced to the methodology and a common understanding will be ensured through the inception report produced by the national evaluator. The methodology proposed by Welthungerhilfe involves key informant interviews with individuals from the four main stakeholder groups (EAP Custodians, national government agencies, local government agencies and local traditional leadership - local meaning EAP region level).

Welthungerhilfe will provide the evaluator with contacts and contextualized questionnaires. Further, the evaluator will receive a detailed reporting template and summary table guiding a streamlined reporting process across all three countries of programme implementation. The overall goal is to enable good comparability and identification of joint or cross-country lessons learned, best practices and recommendations.

A final agreement on the evaluation design and methodology will be discussed on the basis of the submitted inception report.

The methods and data sources should be triangulated for enhancing the validity of evaluation findings. Existing data (e.g. baseline, mid-term self-evaluation, secondary data, data stemming from the project feedback and complaints mechanism) must be included, where appropriate, for the evaluation’s purpose and scope.

The consultant will collect data, analyze, interpret and produce a final project evaluation report. The evaluator will be free to adopt the use of any digital data gathering application best suited and compliant with WHH data protection guidelines. The consultant will ensure that the final evaluation report findings, lessons learnt and recommendations will be presented in a 2-staged process: first to WHH FbA team and secondly to stakeholders. This will be done in a participatory interactive manner where questions and answer sessions will be entertained for deeper understanding and ownership. Also the report will have to be validated in the country by relevant national steering groups; national technical working group as well as the Community of Practice group.

7. MANAGERIAL ARRANGEMENTS / ROLESAND RESPONSIBILITIES
The end evaluation of the FbA Porgramme is steered by the programme’s PMU (Programme Management Unit, especially PMU MEAL advisor based in Bonn, Germany) and implemented and managed by FbA Country Teams from the three participating Country Offices (especially Country Office MEAL focal points).
Evaluators will communicate with Country Office MEAL focal points who will supervise the process in coordination with partners and stakeholders. The consultant will be expected to work closely and interact with the project team and the relevant stakeholders.

For Zimbabwe the evaluator is expected to consult with the WHH FbA Evaluation advisory team made up of the Head of Project and Monitoring Advisor for any required field clearance, mobilization, information and logistical support. The list of contacts for KII and EAP custodians will be provided by the WHH FbA Evaluation advisory team. The advisory team will also be responsible for providing clearance for any payments due, based on contractual obligations and quality assurance approvals.

8. DELIVERABLES AND REPORTING DEADLINES

The following deliverables are expected to be produced by the evaluator(s):

 Inception report (4–6 pages for the main text without front page, table of contents, list (title) of persons and institutes to be interviewed and annexes).

The inception report should set out the planned design and methodology to meet the above- mentioned objectives and to answer the evaluation questions.

It should also reflect the limits of the suggested design and methodology and could explore the feasibility for answering the EQ and reflect on the ToR, describe the overall approach of the evaluation and how data will be collected by providing an evaluation matrix as well as a tentative evaluation schedule. Drafts of suggested data collection tools such as questionnaires and interview guidelines will be provided by Welthungerhilfe beforehand.

The inception report follows a standard outline which will be provided to the evaluator(s) after contracting and needs the approval of the contracting party.
Deadline: 10 days after contracting or after the briefing meeting

 Debriefing notes outlining the most important preliminary findings and recommendations (2–4 pages).

Deadline: Presented at the end of the field mission

 Evaluation report as draft and final (English, 25–35 pages main text, including the executive summary but excluding the front page, table of contents and annexes). The evaluation report has to contain an executive summary of a maximum 5 pages and the mandatory annexes. An outline for the evaluation report will be provided to the evaluator(s), as well as a template for a summary table enabling Welthungerhilfe to produce global synthesis report on all three country evaluations. The final report needs the approval of the contracting party. In case of dissent there should be documentation of the matter.
Deadline draft report: 24 February 2023.
Deadline final report: 10 March 2023.

 Draft management response; integration of the recommendations into Welthungerhilfe’s “management response” form, together with the final version of the evaluation report.
 Raw data used for analysis.
 If applicable, photos: The evaluator(s) should provide a digital file with up to three photos of the evaluation, including photos related to the evaluation process (e.g. KI interviews). The photos should be submitted in a JPEG or GIF format. The informed consent of the person presented is a prerequisite.
Deadline: 10 March 2023.

The consultants will ensure that all above mentioned outputs are delivered on time and with the required quality and completeness.

9. RESOURCES AND AVAILABLE DATA
The Forecast-based Action Country Team members in Zimbabwe as well as Programme Management Unit in Bonn, Germany will fully assist in gathering all the necessary information regarding the background information to prepare the evaluation and provide all necessary previously collected data, such as the Mid-Term Self-Assessment report.

10. TIME FRAME / SCHEDULE
The end evaluation will be carried out in the first quarter of 2023. The data collection is planned for January and February 2023, while the reporting will be done in March 2023. Overall,maximum number of working days should not exceed 15 days for the whole evaluation exercise.
The consultants are requested to immediately inform Welthungerhilfe if serious problems or delays are encountered/expected/anticipated. Any significant changes to the evaluation timetable must be approved by the contracting party.

11. CONFIDENTIALITY

All documents and data acquired from documents as well as during interviews and meetings are confidential and to be used solely for the purpose of the evaluation.

The deliverables as well as all material linked to the evaluation (produced by the evaluator(s) or the organisation itself) is confidential and remains at all times the property of the contracting party.

Qualifications and Experience

12. EXPERTISE OF THE EVALUATORS
The evaluator(s) are required to have:
• Proven expertise and experience with project evaluations for non- governmental organizations, preferably in DRR, Forecast-based Action and drought risk mitigation in affected regions.
• Demonstrated very good oral and written communication skills;
• Proven language skills: fluent in English and Shona/Ndebele;
• Understanding of national and regional stakeholder sphere (incl. DRR actors and meteorological offices);
• Experience with non-governmental organizations and project implementation;
• Expertise and knowledge in climate change, food and nutrition security, Natural Resource Management or Disaster Risk Reduction and anticipatory action;
• Academic qualification in Disaster Risk Reduction is an added advantage.

13. TECHNICAL AND FINANCIAL OFFER

Applicants have to provide:

 A technical and financial offer
• The technical part of the offer should include reference to the understanding and perceived feasibility of the ToR.
It should also include a brief feasibility assessment of the overall design and methodology of the evaluation provided in the TOR by Welthungerhilfe and a workplan/adaptations to the workplan at hand (maximum 4 pages).
• Methodology: Methods of data collection technique and data compilation, analyzing and interpreting (study design and sampling of KII will be provided by Welthungerhilfe).
• The financial part includes a proposed budget for the complete evaluation. It should state the fees per working day (plus the respective VAT, if applicable), the number of working days proposed and other costs details (e.g. transport, communication etc). Proof of professional registration and taxation is also required ( provide the evaluator(s) Tax Clearance Certificate). Costs for unforeseen expenses should not be included in the calculation.
 Experience of the company or individual consultant (including testimonials and a copy of a report of similar work done in the last five years).

 A capability statement: State the firm / organization or individual’s qualification and experience relevant to the assignment, curriculum vitae of key personnel, appropriate references and relevant testimonials Please state your availability for the assignment.
 Cover letter (maximum one page): A short letter addressing the evaluation.
 Physical input (e.g. computer, printer, fax, telephone and internet access) which would be used.
 Work schedule.

Other Information:

 All insurances are the responsibility of the evaluator(s)
 Soft copies of relevant documents will be provided by Welthungerhilfe
 Welthungerhilfe staff will facilitate community entry and contacts to KI interviewees
 Laptops need to be provided by the evaluator(s).

How to Apply

14. Application process

Interested candidates should email offers including both technical and financial proposal in a single document to recruitment.zimbabwe@welthungerhilfe.de by 25 November 2022.

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.