PEER Project Evaluation

TERMS OF REFERENCE

Project External Evaluation
'Post-Emergency and Early Recovery intervention to improve access to essentials services in the Gaza strip for most vulnerable individuals and families'

Handicap International

HI is an independent international solidarity organization which works in situations of poverty or exclusion, conflict and natural disasters. Working alongside people with disabilities and people in vulnerable situations, the association takes action and speaks out in order to meet their essential needs and improve their living conditions. Since its creation, Handicap International has set up development programs in over 60 countries and works in various emergency and post emergency contexts.

Handicap International Goals:
- To prevent impairment and disability linked to diseases, accidents and violence.
- To ensure that key services are available, adapted and accessible to persons with disabilities and vulnerable populations.
- To promote the social participation of persons with disabilities and vulnerable populations, and the fulfillment of their rights.
- In the time and space of conflicts and disasters, or in their immediate wake:
- To prevent and limit the consequences of crises and disasters on persons and communities.
- To help organize relief, provide adapted assistance and cover basic needs, with a special focus on vulnerable persons and those with injuries or disabilities.

Key axes of intervention in the Middle East:
The Middle East 2009-2014 strategic goal was to promote sustainable change for persons with disabilities while responding to humanitarian crises. In this respect, the MERP developed actions in 4 fields of intervention: access to social services, disability rights and multi-stakeholders policy making process, inclusive community development and humanitarian relief.
The strategy adopted for the period 2015-2019 continues promoting access to inclusive and adapted services for Persons with Disabilities & vulnerable groups along the continuum relief-recovery-development in close coordination with representatives of duty bearers, users and service providers. This new strategic period is intended to focus upon 3 fields of action, crises and emergencies, disability prevention and inclusion.


HI in Occupied Palestinian Territory:
HI in Middle East including OPT, is pursuing its 2015 2019 strategy aiming to promote access to inclusive and adapted services for PwDs and vulnerable groups, with a particular focus on youth and women, through a deep involvement of duty bearers, users and service providers representatives.
HI strategy lays on 3 main pillars: (1) promoting the inclusion of the most vulnerable, with a particular focus on PwDs, within the humanitarian response; (2) preventing impairment and disability by enhancing both the quality and the systemic management of existing services as well as by informing populations about ERW risks; and (3) promoting cohesion, resilience and participation of all through dialogue, empowerment, disability mainstreaming in service delivery and social change. The proposed project will contribute to the pursuit of the first and third pillars.

Main ongoing actions:

- Access to services: this project, funded by the EU and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Luxemburg, is articulated around different components (i.e. functional rehabilitation, referral networks, inclusive local development, and community-based rehabilitation teams capacity building) and aims to mobilize all community actors to promote access to services for PwDs within their communities. DPOs play an active role in this project as a key participant in locally based multi stakeholder working group.
- Post-emergency multi-disciplinary rehabilitation services to the most vulnerable women, men and children in Gaza funded by the Government of Canada (GAC, former DFATD). This project aims to increase access to post-emergency basic services and quality multidisciplinary functional, psychosocial and specialized services through home based intervention and adequate referrals for PwDs and people injured the last conflict. It also seeks to increase inclusion of PWDs in post-emergency and recovery programs.
- Education: this project is funded by the Global Affairs Canada (GaC) and the OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID), and includes activities such as training of teachers on disability, adapted teaching skills, support to special education and inclusion of children with disabilities in classes. This project through which HI has been particularly active in the education cluster.
- Post-emergency and early recovery: This project is funded by the French Development Agency (AFD). It includes rebuilding of rehabilitation services centres damaged or destroyed during the 2014 Gaza crisis, promotion of built environment accessibility among stakeholders involved into the Gaza reconstruction efforts, and a pilot intervention in economic inclusion for PWDs whom livelihood has been affected by the crisis.
- Risk Education: The project is funded by Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Luxemburg and aims to reduce the risks induced by wide explosive remnants of war (ERW) contamination in the Gaza Strip through the provision of risk education.



Context and Project Background

The last conflict in summer 2014 has compounded and exacerbated the pre-existing dire situation of Palestinians in Gaza. The bombardment and military ground operations have resulted in a very high civilian death toll , huge destruction and devastation of civilian buildings and infrastructures and large scale displacement, unprecedented in the Gaza Strip since at least the start of the Israeli occupation in 1967. Every man, woman and child in the Gaza Strip have been directly affected by the conflict. Explosive Remnants of War (ERW) and other explosive hazards are widely dispersed in civilian areas throughout the Gaza Strip, posing a permanent threat to the civilian population that may increase the number of casualties and PWDs in the near future if not dealt properly and urgently. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, this conflict brought about extensive disruption of the already over-stretched health system in Gaza, including damage to infrastructure, breakdown of services and interruption of health management and coordination structures. Furthermore, the crisis in Gaza has worsened an already extremely fragile environment in terms of livelihoods. Farmers, breeders, herders and fishers have been severely impacted partly as a consequence of the direct destruction of their land or productive assets, and partly due to their inability to tend to their land and livestock. According to OCHA, women, children, people living with disabilities and the elderly were the most hit by the crisis, which has even increased their vulnerability. According to a disability survey conducted by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics in 2012, it is estimated that 6.9 per cent of the population in Gaza (some 124,200) are persons with disabilities. This statistics was already considered as underestimated before the conflict (in particular due to the reluctance of the families to declare living with disability in a general climate of stigmatization). Into the current context, it is estimated that 10 percent of population injured during the recent hostilities may acquire a long term or permanent impairment, thus increasing by 1,000 the estimated number of persons with disabilities (30 per cent of whom are children).

To the above effect, HI developed a project to contribute to addressing part of the issues outlined above by providing post emergency and recovery support to address the growing gaps in PwDs and PwIs access to essential specialized and mainstream services due to the last crisis in Gaza Strip.

HI project beneficiaries organizations:

- Palestine Avenair Childhood Foundation / PACF: located in Gaza City, a non-profit registered organization works to provide specialized caring services to persons with cerebral Palsy.
- Society of Physically Handicapped People / SPHP: located in Rafah, non-profit registered and located in 2 governorates in Gaza Strip (Gaza City and Rafah). SPHP works to improve the daily life, health and education of children and persons with disabilities, through rehabilitation programs and medical services, advocacy, education activities.
- Baitona for Community Development / Baitona : located in North-Gaza Governorate, non-profit, established on May 2003. Baitona works to promote Women and Children and young people's , older and people with disabilities in Palestinian society through the provision of Training and rehabilitation, education, empowerment and participation in sustainable development opportunities
- National Society for Rehabilitation / NSR: located in Gaza city and has 3 branches, a non-profit registered organization works to provide community based rehabilitation programs targeting persons with disabilities at the local communities.


 Project Summary

Project: Post-emergency and early recovery intervention to improve access to essentials services in the Gaza strip for most vulnerable individuals and families.

Project Duration: 21 months from January 2015 September 2016
Project Funded by AFD
Ultimate Outcome: Provide post emergency and recovery support to address the growing gaps in PwDs and PwIs access to essential specialized and mainstream services due to the last crisis in Gaza Strip
Intermediate Outcome: In Gaza strip, PWDs and PWIs needs for quality services are addressed with increased involvement from local authorities, DPOs, national and international service providers, service users and their families

Immediate Outcomes and Outputs:
Immediate Outcome 1: 4 key disability services providers affected by the conflict working in 5 locations are in capacity to resume quality center-based services to PWDs and to PWIs and to sustain them overtime

Outputs:
Needs assessment available for 4 partners on 5 buildings
4 disability service providers receive equipment and/or benefit from minor damages rehabilitation and reconstruction work necessary to resume their services
1 OD plan available for the 4 partners and at least 50% of the measures included into OD plan implemented by the end of the project
Disability service providers benefiting from rehabilitation work and disability service provider benefiting from construction work recover the number of service users they had before the crisis respectively 6 months and 9 months after the project starts
80% of the users are satisfied with the quality of the services they receive

Immediate Outcome 2: Policy-makers, local authorities, service providers (I)NGOs and International organizations of Gaza Strip understand and promote the importance and benefit of accessible physical environment for equitable and sustainable access to services for people in disabling situation


Outputs:
Information material on accessible physical environment is available
50 stakeholders from the reconstruction sector have received information about accessible physical environment and the UNCRPD
At least 2 DPOs are trained to provide informed inputs on physical accessible environment and to participate in accessibility audit
At least 100 civil engineer/technicians working with national and international reconstruction service providers receive training on accessible physical environment
2 DPOs are able to promote physical accessible environment and provide technical support to actors involved in the reconstruction -sector to mainstream disability within infrastructure building and information
At least 10 main stakeholders have included accessible physical environment into their reconstruction initiatives

Immediate Outcome 3: Opportunities for PWDs access to livelihood in Gaza strip are assessed and members of at least 60 households living with disability can resume work


Outputs:

assessment report produced
Number of HH receiving support to resume work: at least 60 (360 persons as indirect beneficiaries) including 30 receiving grants and 30 getting access to employment
At least 70 % of benefiting households report an improvement in their socio and economic situation and ability to fulfill basic needs


DESCRIPTION OF THE REQUIRED SERVICE

Evaluation Purpose
The objective of the final evaluation is to assess the relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact, sustainability of the project and its services and to provide HI and partners with an independent comprehensive review of project performance, processes and results.
The evaluation will be used to ensure accountability towards donor and communities by reflecting the voices, opinions and experiences of the beneficiaries and stakeholders involved in this project.
Evaluation criteria and questions
Through the final project evaluation, HI would like to focus on the following areas:

Relevance:
- Did the project provide adequate support and response to the beneficiaries (individuals and organizations) needs?
- To what extent did the support to project beneficiaries offer an adequate response to their priorities at the time of the project design (post crisis)?
- Did the planned services realistically meet the priority needs of persons with disabilities in the post emergency phase?
- How useful are the outputs to the needs of the direct beneficiaries? Is there general acceptance of the outputs by these beneficiaries? Is there a significant gender differentiation in the usefulness of the outputs to direct beneficiaries?
- How far did the project realize its objective of supporting the transition from emergency to post-emergency / rehabilitation phase?

 Effectiveness
- Give a quantitative overview of the planned and achieved outputs, outcomes and their indicators
- How did the project outputs contribute to achieving the intermediate outcome and planned ultimate outcome of the project?
- What were the key management/operational/Implementation challenges met by HI during the project implementation? Were the mitigation measures or solutions put in place adapted and responsive? Were the planned monitoring system and operational procedures applied timely and regularly updated according to the needs? If not why?
- What are the main non-planned achievements within the project?
- What was HIs key contribution and added-value to the targeted rehabilitation services and the humanitarian actors in Gaza?
- Do you think we need to continue the same way to achieve the same result in the future? Why? Do the methods sufficiently accomplish the tasks? Do the tasks accomplish the goal?

 Efficiency
- How cost effective was the project in resources utilization?
- Describe management of budget overspending or under spending and impact on project objectives maximization.
- Assess day-to-day management of HI - Operational work planning and implementation (input delivery, activity management and delivery of outputs); respect for planning and deadlines.
- Assess the quality of relations/coordination/communication of HI with local authorities, rehabilitation services, institutions, beneficiaries, and other donors and stakeholders.
- How well has the project used its resources to produce target outputs? Were the planned resources adapted to the project needs?
- How adequate are the quantity and quality of project inputs relative to the target outputs?

 Sustainability
- Assess the ownership of project components by HI project beneficiaries?
- Assess the level of change in institutional knowledge and capacity through the project input and investments ( trainings, technical and managerial support),
- Have mechanisms been put in place to ensure the sustainability of project results? Are they adequate? Why?
- To which extent did users and rehabilitation services get involved in the action?

 Impact
- Assess Impact of the attainment of the project outcomes with regard to:
-- Capacity to resume quality center-based services to PWDs and to PWIs and to sustain them overtime and users satisfaction with the services
--Policy-makers, local authorities, service providers (I)NGOs and International organizations capacity to understand and promote the importance and benefit of accessible physical environment for equitable and sustainable access to services for people in disabling situation
-- Livelihood situation of PWDs (quality of life)
- Identify any unintended impact of the project on the target group and stakeholders How has the project contributed to the development of the capacity of the direct beneficiaries to carry out their tasks in an environment of change in terms of (a) individual learning, by gender, and (b) improving organizational structures and interrelationships?
- What is the likely impact of the project beyond the direct beneficiaries and its timeframe?
- Are there early indications of potential success?

 Scope of the evaluation and approach and methods, establishing the basic methodological requirements
HI values the contributions of the external evaluator towards proposing appropriate, innovative, and robust methods of evaluation. The evaluation methodology will be a criterion for evaluating candidatures.
Some basic methodological requirements, however, are:
- All evaluation tools should be accessible for the use of Persons with disabilities.
- The evaluation must be a participative and interactive process.
- The methodology should combine quantitative and qualitative data collection techniques and analysis.
- The proposed methodology should also describe how cross-cutting issues of gender will be addressed and incorporated throughout the various stages of the evaluation.
The evaluation should consist of 5 phases:
- Preparatory phase (briefing with stakeholders, document review, appreciation-review of the evaluation feasibility), sampling, preparation of data collection tools, logistic arrangements
- Product anion of inception report presenting the proposed methodology and tools developed for data collection and submit to HI for revision and validation.
- Field work - data collection
- Data analysis and presentation of preliminary findings (meeting with stakeholders to present analysis, conclusions and recommendation and debating)
- Report drafting phase and validation of the report.
The evaluation methodology proposed by the evaluators will be reviewed by HI after the closure of the selection process. The inception report and evaluation methodology must be approved prior to the commencement of any field work or any other substantive work.
HI will provide all the relevant project documents/reports, and make necessary appointments for meetings with partners, teams, beneficiaries and other respondents. The Evaluator will start with a meeting with HI project team.

 CONSULTANTS PROFILE
The consultant (an expert or a team of experts) should be a specialist in monitoring and evaluation with no prior involvement in the project, enjoying the following qualifications:
- Post graduate degree in social sciences, development, management or similar field; Additional educational background in the field of rehabilitation, disability, and/or livelihood is highly desired;
- At least 10 years of progressively responsible positions in planning and management of humanitarian and / or development programs;
- Demonstrated knowledge in evaluation methodologies and data collection techniques.
- Extensive proved experience in leading monitoring and evaluation of international donor funded project;
- Excellent facilitation and communication skills;
- Excellent analytical and report writing skills;
- Fluency in English (excellent level of written English) and Arabic.

 Deliverables
By end of the evaluation, the consultant should include the following in English and/or Arabic in word electronic format as the following:
- Inception report (English)
- Methodological framework for evaluation (English) including all tools produced (English and Arabic)
- Evaluation report (English) (Max. 35 pages plus annexes; font: Arial 11) that include the following main sections:
- Table of contents
- Abbreviations list
- Executive summary (that can be used as a stand-alone document)
- Brief on General context of the Palestinian context at the design and implementation phase
- Introduction that include the objectives of the evaluation, methodologies and techniques used and limitations of the evaluation, where relevant.
- Presentation of the evaluation analysis and findings, covering the five focus areas (Relevance; Effectiveness; Efficiency; Impact; and Sustainability) clearly showing response to the evaluation questions included in this TOR.
- Conclusions and recommendations with a clear relationship between them.
- Report annexes that include: The Terms of Reference of the evaluation; the techniques used for data collection; the program adhered to; the list of people met; list of document and bibliography and composition evaluation team.

SERVICE DURATION ,LOCATION AND AVAILABLE BUDGET
The consultant is expected to complete the evaluation process and submit the evaluation report during a three month duration starting from August 2016. A detailed action plan will be submitted by the selected consultant as part of the inception report. Final report should be validated no later than 15th October 2016
Location: Gaza Strip
Available budget: 20,000 ILS


Ethics and consent
It is essential that the process of data collection, as well as storage of data, is supported by careful ethical practice, including informed consent, anonymity and confidentiality, no-harm and protection of data and data storage. Informed consent needs to include awareness of the evaluation data collection process and that the evaluation report may be published and publicly disseminated. Extra precaution must be taken in involving project beneficiaries considering the sensitivity of the thematic issues tackled by this project. To protect the anonymity of communities, partners and stakeholders names or identifying features of evaluation participants (such as community position or role) will not be made public.

The evaluator should engage in respecting the following ethical principles:
- Child protection principles
- Integrity (respect of gender sensitivity issues, especially when performing interviews/focus groups, religion and beliefs)
- Anonymity and confidentiality
- Independence and objectivity
- Veracity of information
- Coordination spirit
- Intellectual property of information generated during and by the evaluation (including report and annexes) will be transferred to HI and donor.
- Quality of report and respect for timelines. Should the quality of the report be manifestly below the expected level, or in case of late in submission the report, HI reserves the right to terminate the contract.

11. Process of the selection of the evaluator or evaluation team and expectations for evaluation proposal
HI invites bids from individual consultants or firms. Tender should not be received later than 6th August 2016; and should include:
- Technical offer that include the basic methodology and evaluation plan, and timeframe;
Financial offer that covers all major anticipated costs (taxes, travel, accommodation, transportation, insurance, translation, communication, and advertisement fees on Jobs.ps.)
- A CV detailing relevant skills and experience of the consultant and her/his team members of no more than 3 pages, including contactable referees; and
- One sample of a relevant previous evaluation preferably for international donor funded project.
Offers should be sent by email or delivered by hand to:

 [email protected]

- Address:
 17th Square, Al Rasheed Street., Sea Road, Abu Sha'ban Building, 3rd Floor; Gaza City.

Kindly include the following title in the subject line PEER Project External Evaluation

Selected consultants might be invited for a complementary interview.

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