End of Project Evaluation: Beiersdorf COVID-19 Response Consultancy

TERMS OF REFERENCE

End of Project Evaluation

Title of the Project

Foster good health and economic resilience (in the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond)

Area of intervention

Afgoi and Mogadishu

Project number/Fund code

GLO3767/DE999

Length of Project (Months)

24 months

Start date of the Action

1st January 2021

End date of the Action

31st December 2022

1. Background

On 16th of March 2020, Somalia recorded its first case of corona virus and since then morbidity and mortality rates have been growing although it is assumed that the actual number of cases is substantially higher than the officially recorded figures. This situation has happened when Somalia is already grappling with cyclic climatic shocks, conflicts, natural disasters, poverty, insecurity, and locust infestation that continue to devastate most parts of the country. Currently, an estimated 7.8 million people (almost half the population) had been affected by the drought emergency, with over 1 million displaced from their homes in search of food, water, pasture and livelihoods since August 2022. More than 80 per cent of those displaced by the current drought are women and children. The consequences of the drought and other related drivers, such a s the ongoing conflict, the impact of the war in Ukraine on food prices, and the global economic downturn, have pushed millions of Somalis to emergency levels of food insecurity. The drivers of acute food insecurity in Somalia include the compounding effects of poor and erratic rainfall distribution, flooding, desert locust infestation, socioeconomic impacts of COVID-19, and conflict.

As of 18th November 2022, 27,254COVID-19 cases have been confirmed with about 1,361 deaths in Somalia, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). At the same time, nearly 5,938,186 people are fully vaccinated. Despite the economic impact of the pandemic in the past two years, the situation is significantly improving as most of the restrictions are lifted.

This is because of a significant decrease of active COVID-19 cases. Improved awareness among the population and vaccination advances are the two key factors believed to be responsible for the less severe pandemic situation.

CARE International is a 75-year-old global confederation working to fight poverty and social injustice in the world, with a specific focus on the empowerment of women and girls. We work side-by-side with communities to understand the root causes of poverty and find innovative, locally-led solutions. CARE seeks to demonstrate the results and methodologies used in our projects to ensure transparency and accountability and advance the quality of our work. CARE International implements various programs comprising food security and livelihoods, education, water and sanitation, governance and peace building and health across different regions in Somalia helping the most vulnerable households to cope with the different risks they face and achieve self-reliance. It has identified and selected two impact groups (Rural Women and Urban Youth) as its core programming focus/strategy and each program has a comprehensive Theory of Change spanning over 10-15 years of implementation period. In an effort to address the health and economic impact that COVID-19 placed on vulnerable Somali households and most notably women and children in IDP camps, rural and peri-urban areas in Benadir and Lower Shabelle, CARE received funds a multi-national company to implement a project entitled: ‘Foster good health and economic resilience (in the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond)’. The projects aimed to enhance the capacity of vulnerable women, youth, and service providers to cope with medium and long-term shadow effects of COVID-19 pandemic on economic, social and health wellbeing. As a member of the Somalia Resilience Program (SomReP) consortium, CARE has been implementing resilience building activities in Afgoi district and hence has built partnerships with communities and local authorities therefore will integrate this COVID-19 response in its already existing programing. The project had three main focus areas – a) awareness raising; b) health services and c) economic resilience. It partners with civil society organizations, government authorities and service providers to effectively contribute to the prevention of the spread of COVID-19 and mitigate its negative impact on the most vulnerable communities in Somalia.

The project’s specific objective, outcomes and outputs are:

Specific objective: Enhance the capacity of vulnerable women, youth, and service providers to cope with medium and long-term shadow effects of COVID-19 pandemic on economic, social and health wellbeing

Outcome 1: Increased safety, knowledge, skills and practices to prevent and respond to COVID-19 and related vulnerabilities

Output 1.1 Targeted communities have knowledge about prevention and spread of Covid-19 and related vulnerabilities

Output 1.2: Targeted communities are equipped with protection material against Covid-19

Outcome 2: Improved access to equitable and qualitative health services with a focus of vulnerable women and girls

Output 2.1: Frontline health workers and community volunteers trained and equipped for adequate COVID-19 response

Output 2.2: Health faciltities and treatment centers supported to provide and strenghen safe and quality services

Outcome 3: Increased economic resilience of vulnerable groups against the social and economic impacts of Covid-19

Output 3.1: VSLA groups supported or established and trained in targeted communities

Output 3.2: Support for business start-ups (grants, cash)

1. Profile of project target areas and beneficiaries

The project was implemented in Afgoye district and Mogadishu. Afgoye is thirty kilometres from the capital city of Mogadishu and is a very strategic town that joins many regions to the city. Its population depends on agriculture and livestock for their livelihood. The district hosts about 15,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) communities affected by the armed conflict that is currently affecting neighbouring locations around Afgoye region. The complexity of displacement and drought and its impact on IDPs and host communities in Afgoye has increased the vulnerability of these people leading to a humanitarian crisis. Mogadishu is the capital city of Somalia and is a home to about 2.5 million people with nearly 200,000 IDPs living in crowded settlements. The capital is devastated by conflict and limited health facilities and personnel to tackle with disease outbreaks, most notably COVID-19 at the present time. The beneficiaries of project activities were mainly travellers using Mogadishu airport and farmers and vulnerable IDP households in Afgoi district.

1. Purpose of the evaluation

To assess the impact of the project on the lives of project beneficiaries and the contribution of the project to the principle objective of the project, which is, to enhance the capacity of vulnerable women, youth, and service providers to cope with medium and long-term shadow effects of COVID-19 pandemic on economic, social and health wellbeing. In other words, this external end of project evaluation aims at assessing achievement of the stated objectives, outcomes and outputs (both intended and unintended), best practices and lessons learnt from the implementation process. It will also measure the level of community and other stakeholder participation and ownership of the implementation process. The evaluation exercise will come up with conclusions and recommendations for learning and future programing in COVID-19 response, supporting existing health services and systems and women’s economic empowerment in Somalia.

1. Objectives of the evaluation

To assess (i) the relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact and sustainability of the project towards meeting the specific objective and (ii) the contributions of the project to a) awareness and knowledge about prevention and spread of Covid-19 and related vulnerabilities, b) health facilities and treatment centres are able to provide safe and quality services, c) economic resilience and adaptive capacity of target communities that will enable them withstand the socio-economic impact of COVID-19 and related vulnerabilities.

The specific objectives of the evaluation are:

1. Assess whether this project, in design and implementation strategies, is consistent with the overall strategies and plans for containing and responding to COVID–19 at global and national levels
2. Examine to what extent the project interventions have effectively contributed to increased COVID-19 awareness, improved health services when facilities are overburdened and creation of stronger economic muscle of vulnerable women
3. Analyze and verify the achievement of intended outputs as described in the operational framework for each action i.e. logical framework
4. Analyze the efficiency of the operation: planning of activities, involvement of beneficiaries in the implementation, beneficiary targeting, and value for money, etc.
5. Assess the impact of the project on the prevention of the spread of COVID-19 and mitigations of its negative impacts on the most vulnerable households and draw out key lessons learnt and opportunities for future programing
6. Scope of work

In the course of this evaluation, the evaluators shall interact with a wide range of respondents or informants such as, beneficiaries who benefitted from the project such VSLA members and visitors of the target health facilities, health workers, MoH staff, local partners and Horn Population Research and Development (HPRD) which implemented awareness raising and capacity building activities. The evaluators will visit Mogadishu airport health section and Afgoye health facilities. They will speak with District MoH and South-West State MoH either physically or virtually as feasible.

1. Evaluation methodology

The consultant shall prepare comprehensive participatory methodology for undertaking this evaluation. The methodology must include among others, literature reviews; meeting and interviewing project staff, officials in relevant government authorities; visiting Afgoye and interviewing direct project beneficiaries and stakeholder consultations. The consultant is expected to develop and use data collection tools (questionnaires, key informant and semi-structured interview schedules, focus group discussion guides, observations, etc.) as appropriate to the sampling process employed. The survey will adopt a participatory approach, and use mixed methods i.e. quantitative and qualitative research methods to collect and analyze the data. The quantitative component will, for instance, measure awareness levels of COVID-19, and economic resilience of beneficiary households in relation to coping with the socio-economic impact of COVID-19.

1. Ethical considerations

The evaluation’s objectives will be clearly explained to all the respondents prior to gathering any form of information from them. Written consent of the respondents will be taken before collecting information where possible. The team will further be required to follow the CARE ‘Policy on Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse’ throughout the end-line evaluation exercise.

1. Indicative plan

Advertising the evaluation consultancy

17th November 2022

Assessment of applications and awarding of contract

27th November – 5th December 2022

Virtual call with Project Manager, M&E Coordinator and Senior Program Officer, review of project documents and development of data gathering tools

6th – 12th December 2022

Field work (data collection, interviews with stakeholders, etc.)

15th – 22nd December 2022

Report writing and submission of draft report

23rd December – 5th January 2023

1. Key tasks of the consultant
2. Collect relevant data / information on the project implementation, outputs and outcomes from relevant sources
3. Develop methodology and tools for the data collection and analysis process. The tools will be shared and approved by CARE before starting field work
4. Develop a practical work plan for the work
5. Recruitment of competent enumerators
6. Visit project sites and carry out data collection
7. Consult with relevant stakeholders for their views on the project
8. Debrief project team after completing the assignment and validate the findings prior to submitting the final report
9. Prepare and submit final evaluation report to CARE Somalia/Somaliland as per time frame set in the ToR.
10. Responsibilities of CARE
11. Provide relevant documents/resources (proposal, baseline survey report, progress reports etc.) for desk review
12. Officially introduce the consultants to relevant stakeholders
13. Review and approve the study instruments/tools
14. Support supervision of the consultant during the entire process of evaluation planning, field data collection and reporting
15. Provide input to the draft report and final report
16. Key deliverables
17. An inception report outlining the approach and methodology including the sampling approach of the end-line evaluation
18. A draft report that addresses the expectations stipulated in the objectives and key questions of the survey
19. A debriefing presentation for CARE Somalia, where the overview of the findings and the recommendations will be discussed
20. Final evidence based report as per objectives and evaluation questions stipulated in the ToR and following the reporting outline incorporating all feedback, suggestions and recommendations from CARE and other key stakeholders.
21. All datasets and tools are submitted with the baseline survey.
22. All necessary permissions, approvals, etc. required prior to data collection
23. Intended users

The evaluation report will be used by CARE for program development and strengthening accountability, local authorities in the project target areas including the health facilities for performance improvement and other government departments and NGOs implementing programs around COVID-19 prevention and response and economic resilience in South-West State of Somalia to improve targeting, program implementation and development.

1. Consultant’s profile

A consultant with strong knowledge and experience covering the key result areas of the project is recommended for this evaluation. The Consultant should at least have a degree in a health related field and experience in evaluation, sound knowledge of the Somalia context and demonstrated ability to manage the available time and resources and to work with tight deadlines. The Consultants should be independent from the parties involved.

The Consultant should also have demonstrated experience in evaluating humanitarian and development projects focusing on strengthening health systems, mass communication and economic resilience. The consultant should have good understanding of participatory methodologies. The consultant should be able to analyze and collect data using appropriate statistical packages if needed.

He/she should have:

1. Bachelor’s degree in public health, data management, monitoring & evaluation or relevant disciplines
2. 5 years of experience in similar evaluation/survey in context of or similar to Somalia
3. Knowledge and demonstrated experience of designing and leading multi-sectoral project evaluations
4. Strong knowledge of qualitative and quantitative research methods and sampling strategies
5. Fluency (verbal and written) in English and Somali is essential and presence of the key survey team in Somalia
6. The proposal may include a team instead of an individual. If a team is proposed, their roles should be clearly specified
7. Reporting

The evaluator will write and produce a precise final report (minimum 20 pages and maximum 30 pages) written in simple and understandable English. The draft report is to be shared with field teams and discussed with CARE Somalia. Comments and inputs from the CARE will be included in the final report.

The following report format to include:

1. Cover page: Title of the evaluation with the title of the project, names and logos of the donor and implementing partner, consultants’/firm’s name and address and dates of the evaluation)
2. Table of contents: Executive summary (a maximum of 3 pages), main report including the findings, conclusions, lessons and recommendations.
3. Annexes
   • Terms of Reference;
   • List of persons / organizations interviewed;
   • List of literature and documents consulted;
   • List of sites visited;
   • Examples of case studies
   • List of abbreviations
4. Submit 3 hard and 3 soft copies of the final report to CARE.
5. Expression of Interest

Applications should contain:

1. A brief cover letter (not exceeding one page), clearly indicating experience in the area of planning, designing and conducting the project evaluation and similar research activities
2. Up to date curriculum Vitae (CV) of the consultant/s that will be involved in the evaluation. A profile of the consulting firm
3. Specific roles and responsibilities of the team leader, supervisory chain and other core members of the evaluation team.
4. A technical proposal including:
5. Research methodology, study design, sampling technique, sample size, data collection instruments, data collection and analysis plan
6. Detailed work plan showing the different activities the project evaluation will comprise – training of enumerators, data collection, reporting, etc.
7. Financial proposal covering all costs – fees of the key team, transport costs, cost of enumerators, stationery, etc.

Submission Information

All qualified firms or individual consultant should send their applicants, The deadline for submission is 30th Nov 2022. The submission should be emailed to: som.consultant@care.org And questions about TOR should be emailed to abdirahim.gure@care.org

Proposals should include the following:

• Technical proposal –approach to the monitoring; workplan with milestones; how meet qualifications.
• Financial proposal
• CVs of all involved persons

Applications should be submitted to: som.consultant@care.org. no later than 30-nov-2022.

Tagged as: CARE, Somalia