Evaluation:Consultant

Back ground:

War Child (WC) is an independent and impartial, international non-governmental organization investing in a peaceful future for children and young people affected by armed conflict. WC support children regardless of their religion, ethnicity, social background, or gender. Our work is based on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
WC believes that children and young people should play an active role in defining the future, not only for themselves but also for their communities. Children are creative and have the ability and skills to shape their lives and cope with adversity, even when they have experienced armed conflict.
Our current program works in partnerships with local organizations to safeguard children’s rights, focused primarily in the areas of protection, participation and advocacy. With funding from the EU (EIDHR/2012/296/378), WC in partnership with Sharek Youth Forum (Sharek) and Palestinian Center for Communication and Development Strategies (PCCDS) began implementing work starting 2012 aiming at ensuring that fundamental rights of vulnerable children in the occupied Palestinian territories are respected and enhanced in the framework of international Human Rights standards. The specific objective is to advance the rights of working children in marginalized areas of the West Bank through direct service provision, awareness raising, and a child-led advocacy campaign on child labour.

The action aims to ensure that working children in the West Bank, whose rights are currently violated due to their involvement in the labour sector, are able to (re)claim their rights by:
-Raising awareness on the long-term impact of working on children; and to build community based support and immediate prevention mechanisms;
-Empowering children and their families to identify alternatives to employment;
-Strengthening local government’s prevention and response programs; by providing them with the skills, tools and confidence to deal with working children and their families;
-Advocating for the effective implementation of international human rights standards relating to the protection of working children, including their return to school or to ensuring they remain in school, and the involvement of children in advocacy, to produce their own films and empowering them to be the agent of change.

The project targets the marginalized communities in selected areas of the West Bank including Hebron Governorate (Hebron Old City, Al Aroub and Al Fawwar Refugee Camps, and Yatta), the Qalqilya Governorate (Qalqilya) and the Tulkarem Governorate (Tulkarem, Nur Shams Refugee Camp, Tulkarem Refugee Camp). For this reason the WC signed an effective partnership with Sharek and the PCCDS.

Overall Objective of the project:
To ensure that fundamental rights of vulnerable children in the occupied Palestinian territories are respected and enhanced in the framework of international Human Rights standards.
The specific objective:
To advance the rights of working children in marginalized areas of the West Bank through direct service provision, awareness raising and a child-led advocacy campaign on child labour.
Expected results:
Result 1: A comprehensive understanding of the situation of working children in marginalized communities of Northern and Southern regions of the West Bank is gained by all relevant stakeholders.
Result 2: Increased awareness among 4,600 working children, their families and the wider communities on the risks connected to child labour.
Result 3: 4,600 working children and their families are provided with psychosocial support and case management when necessary.
Result 4: Through the use of media, with special emphasis on social media, relevant stakeholders, including government, civil society, national and international actors, are provided with relevant and reliable information, gain increased awareness on the situation of working children in marginalized communities in the West Bank, and engage in concrete action to address child labour.

Evaluation Objectives
The consultant shall verify, analyze and assess in detail the issues vis-à-vis the five evaluation criteria:
- Relevance: are we doing the right things? Did projects contribute to the overarching country strategy? Did country strategies contribute to the global strategy?
- Effectiveness: are we doing the right thing well?
- Efficiency: are we getting the most results for our input?
- Impact: what positive and negative change will happen on the long term?
- Sustainability: what will remain after we step out?
The consultant is required to use her/his professional judgment and experience to review all relevant factors and to bring these to the attention of WC, partners and EU. The consultant shall review what went well in networking, cooperation, communication and coordination with partner organizations and other stakeholders. What can be improved? What were the successes and pitfalls in the management of the evaluated strategies? And what’s the quality of the collected evidence and the analyses of the collected evidence.

The evaluation should aim at the following objectives:
-Make an overall independent assessment of the past performance of the project/ program, paying particularly attention to the impact of the project actions against its objectives; and assess how did the context influence the project strategy;
-Identify the extent to which the objectives of the project have been achieved as intended in particular the overall objective;
-Assess how well the various activities transformed the available resources into the intended results/ outputs, in terms of quantity, quality and timeliness in comparison with what was planned;
-Assess the extent of likeliness of the continuation of the positive outcomes of the project and the flow of benefits after external funding ends;
-Identify key lessons and to propose practical recommendations for follow-up actions.

The consultant shall present a sampling methodology of the project that ensures a good enough representation of the beneficiaries (especially children) in areas targeted by the project which were the following: 
1-Hebron Governorate: Hebron Old City, Al Aroub and Al Fawwar Refugee Camps, and Yatta.
2-Qalqilya Governorate: Qalqilya city
3-Tulkarem Governorate: Tulkarem city, Nur Shams Refugee Camp, Tulkarem Refugee Camp.

Methodology
WC values the contributions of the external evaluator towards proposing appropriate, innovative, child friendly (in terms that the children and beneficiaries should be involved from the planning stages of the evaluation; e.g formation of the evaluation questions, and the analysis of data) and robust qualitative and quantitative methods of evaluation. The evaluator will provide an evaluation methodology before undertaking the evaluation. The proposed methodology should also describe how cross-cutting issues will be considered throughout the evaluation. The evaluation methodology must be approved prior to the commencement of any field work or any other substantive work. WC approach the selection and development of such methods for external evaluation as a collaborative and interactive process. WC and its partners (Sharek and PCCDS) will provide all the relevant project documents/reports, office working space and make necessary appointments for meetings with beneficiaries. To the extent possible, this evaluation will be carried out in three phases in order to cover both, the breadth and depth of the experience:
-Desk Phase
-Field Phase, and
-Synthesis Phase

Management and steering of the Evaluation
The evaluation is managed by the consultant with the assistance of a reference group consisting of representatives from, Sharek, the PCCDS and WC under the coordination of Program Development Manager Iman Nijem, who oversees the evaluation on behalf of WC

The reference group member's main functions are to:
-Ensure that the evaluation team has access to and has consulted all relevant information sources and documents related to the project/program;
-Validate the Evaluation Questions including sampling data collection tools, evaluation questions..Etc;
-Discuss and comment on notes and reports delivered by the evaluation team. Comments by individual group members are compiled into a single document by the evaluation manager and subsequently transmitted to the evaluation team;
-Assist in feedback of the findings, conclusions, lessons and recommendations from the evaluation;
-Conduct a presentation and discussion of the preliminary results to both partners/ stakeholders involved in project implementation as well as informants/ beneficiaries. That would help the evaluator to collect relevant information for the final analysis/ report.
The evaluation approach / process
The evaluation approach should be developed and implemented as presented below.
Once the external evaluation team has been contractually engaged, the evaluation process will be carried out through three phases:  a Field Phase, a Desk Phase and a Synthesis Phase. Since the project implementation will finalized by the 18 of March2014, the evaluation should begin with the field phase in order to be able to reach the beneficiaries and collect information from the field.

--Field phase
The Field Phase should start upon signing the contract. The evaluation team should:
-Conduct several meetings and interviews with project management at WC, and its partners “Sharek and PCCDS” in order to reach adequate consultation and clear understanding of the project components, the beneficiaries..etc
-Submit its detailed work plan with an indicative list of persons to be interviewed, surveys to be undertaken, dates of visit, itinerary, and name of team members in charge. This plan has to be applied in a way that is flexible enough to accommodate for any last-minute difficulties in the field. If any significant deviation from the agreed work plan or schedule is perceived as creating a risk for the quality of the evaluation, these should be immediately discussed with the evaluation manager.
-Ensure adequate contact and consultation with, and involvement of, the different stakeholders; working closely with the relevant government authorities and agencies during the entire assignment. Use the most reliable and appropriate sources of information and harmonize data from different sources to allow ready interpretation.

Summarize its field works at the end of the field phase, discuss the reliability and coverage of data collection, and present its preliminary findings in a meeting with the project management, and the reference group.
-Desk Phase – Inception

In the inception stage of the Desk Phase, the relevant programming documents and material should be reviewed, as well as documents shaping the wider strategy/policy framework. The evaluation team will then analyze the logical framework [as set up at the beginning of the cycle] or [as reconstructed by the program Development manager retrospectively]. The relevant programming documents should also be reviewed, as well as documents shaping the wider strategy/policy framework. On the basis of the information collected the evaluation team should:
-Describe the development co-operation context.
-Comment on the issues / evaluation questions suggested or, when relevant, propose an alternative or complementary set of evaluation questions justifying their relevance. Develop the evaluation into sub-questions, identify provisional indicators and their verification means, and describe the analysis strategy.
-Propose the work plan for the finalization of the first phase.
-Confirm the final time schedule.

-Desk phase - Finalization
In the finalization stage of the Desk Phase, the evaluation team should carry out the following tasks:
-Review systematically the relevant available documents;
-Present an indicative methodology to the overall assessment of the project/program;
-Interview the Project’s management at WC, and its partners Sharek and PCCDS;
-Present each evaluation question stating the information already gathered and their limitations, provide a first partial answer to the question, identify the issues still to be covered and the assumptions still to be tested, and describe a full method to answer the questions;
-Identify and present the list of tools to be applied in the Field Phase;
-List all preparatory steps already taken for the Field Phase.
At the end of the desk phase a desk report shall be prepared.

-Synthesis phase

This phase is mainly devoted to the preparation of the draft final report. The consultant will make sure that:
-The assessments are objective and balanced, affirmations accurate and verifiable, and recommendations realistic;
-If the evaluation manager considers the draft report of sufficient quality, she will circulate it for comments to the reference group members, and convene a meeting in the presence of the evaluation team; 
On the basis of comments expressed by the reference group members, and collected by the evaluation manager, the evaluation team has to amend and revise the draft report. Comments requesting methodological quality improvements should be taken into account, except where there is a demonstrated impossibility, in which case full justification should be provided by the evaluation team. Comments on the substance of the report may be either accepted or rejected. In the latter instance, the evaluation team is to motivate and explain the reasons in writing.

Reporting Requirements
The reports must match quality standards. The text of the report should be illustrated, as appropriate, with maps, graphs and tables; a map of the project’s area(s) of intervention is required (to be attached as Annex).
The consultant will submit the following reports in English:
1-Desk report of maximum 12 pages to be produced after 3 weeks from the start of the consultant services. In the report the consultant shall describe the first finding of the study, the foreseen degree of difficulties in collecting data, other encountered and/or foreseen difficulties in addition to her/his program of work and staff mobilization.
2-Draft final report (maximum 50 pages) should be submitted to WC and its partners after 6 weeks from the start date of the consultancy, taking due account of comments received from the reference group members besides answering the evaluation questions, the draft final report should also synthesis all findings and conclusions into an overall assessment of the project/program. 
3-Conduct a meeting with the team management “WC and its partners Sharek and PCCDS” to present the first draft of the report and to check the factual basis of the evaluation, and to discuss the draft findings, conclusions and recommendations. 
4-Final report with the same specifications as mentioned under 2 above, incorporating any comments received from the concerned parties on the draft report, to be presented within 5 days of the receipt of these comments.

The Evaluation Team
The evaluation team will be composed of [number] experts with the following profiles and qualifications:

Qualifications:
-Affinity with the area of child rights and child protection;
-A solid and diversified experience in the specific field;
-An advanced university degree in social sciences, with specialized training in evaluation and project/program management;
-At least 3 years of experience in designing and managing program/project evaluations;
-Experience in the region  (years of experience may vary per expert irrespective of their position on the team);
-Full working knowledge of Arabic, and of English languages, and excellent report writing;
-Fully conversant with the principles and  working methods of project cycle management and EC aid delivery participatory, child friendly methods;
-Personal skills: good communication, analytical and drafting skills;
-Previous knowledge of the work of War Child will be an advantage.

Work plan and timetable
The consultant shall provide War Child with a detailed work plan, time table and a remuneration fee by 26/2/2014 to email address: [email protected]  Pls state ‘Evaluation’ in the subject line of the email.
After studying the offers, a contract will be prepared and signed with the consultant that includes, the methodology, the terms and financial arrangement, and will also include annexes of child safety, integrity policy and code of conduct as part of WC requirements.
The final report shall be received in two months from the date of signing the contract.


Financial arrangement
The consultant shall submit a detailed remuneration fee per day that includes all costs (travel, health insurance, printing, etc..) and the breakdown of the number of days . WC will pay the agreed upon fee in one installment upon the delivery of the final report approved from WC.

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