Request for Consultants – Health, Hunger, Hardship, Her & MERL

May 22, 2019 | Project Concern International
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Background on PCI

Founded in 1961, PCI is an international non-profit organization dedicated to enhancing health, ending hunger, overcoming hardship, and advancing women and girls around the world. In 2018, PCI served nearly 10 million people through 50 projects in 15 countries across Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Through our current project portfolio, PCI facilitates transformative, community-driven solutions that build resilient, vibrant and healthy communities and neighborhoods by enhancing health, ending hunger, overcoming hardship and advancing women and girls (also known as Health, Hunger, Hardship and Her or the 4 Hs). PCI is known globally for mobilizing community participation in project design, implementation, and monitoring, and building the capacity of local organizations and governments to sustain long-term, measurable impact. Strategic statements by technical area are:

  • Enhance Health: Individuals, households, neighborhoods, and communities are healthy and thriving and achieve sustained physical, mental and social well-being.
  • End Hunger: Vulnerable households and their communities achieve improved food, nutrition, and livelihood security for sustained resilience.
  • Overcome Hardship: Communities respond effectively to crises, address the root causes of vulnerability, and lay the foundation for safe, healthy, resilient and thriving neighborhoods.
  • Advance Her: Women and girls control their futures, are valued as leaders, have access to resources to thrive and live in safe and resilient communities where their rights are fulfilled and protected.

Scope of Work

PCI is issuing this request for consultants (RFC) to identify individuals who have demonstrated technical expertise in our technical areas or in monitoring, evaluation, research and learning (MERL) to provide sector-specific technical assistance primarily in the field. Each technical area has a list of specific technical needs and all consultancies will be organized and managed in close partnership with the technical lead. General tasks that are envisioned include:

  • Review and/or design of survey and assessment tools and implementation of surveys/assessments
  • Program design including participation in/facilitation of design workshops, development of conceptual frameworks, theories of change, results frameworks
  • Report editing and writing
  • Project reviews and evaluations including the development of recommendations to improve project performance
  • Design of performance monitoring plans (PMPs) including indicator selection, designing M&E tools, collecting project data (as needed over life-of-project)
  • Local capacity strengthening including training

Health

  • Community health specialists with expertise in engaging and mobilizing community members, households, networks and organizations to improve the health and well-being of community members; with a focus on addressing health and nutrition needs in the first 1000 days of life, during adolescence, maternal, neonatal, child and adolescent health and through social behavior change in multifaceted projects.
  • Expertise in designing technical approaches and methodologies to achieve nutritional security in context of household and community resilience to shocks and stresses with a special focus on pregnant and lactating women and children under five.
  • Clinical health personnel (MD/RN or equivalent) with programming expertise to support prevention, care and treatment and laboratory needs across a range of populations and health conditions (maternal, neonatal, child and adolescent health and nutrition, HIV/AIDS, cervical cancer, epidemic diseases).
  • Public health specialists with expertise in health care programming that includes maternal, neonatal, child and adolescent health and nutrition, HIV/AIDS, cervical cancer, epidemic diseases, at community and facility, with special attention to community health systems, linkages from community to facility and facility to home.
  • Public health specialists with expertise in modifying gender and social norms at household, community and health facility levels.

Hunger

  • Nutrition sensitive agriculture expertise to provide technical design and implementation support in nutritionally-centered agriculture production approaches focused on meeting both micro and macro nutrient needs with a special focus on pregnant and lactating women and children under five.
  • Technical expertise in designing and calculating balanced rations for commodity transfers in development and disaster recovery programs.
  • Technical design and implementation support to enhance small farmer access and inclusion to improved market systems and strengthened linkages into value-chains.

Hardship

  • Humanitarian assistance practitioner, including with experience in humanitarian assessment and project design/new business in Africa, LAC and/or Asia, and with a preference for technical expertise in one or more of the following areas:
    • WASH
    • Protection programming, including for older people, people with disabilities, children and youth.
    • Shelter and settlements (including shelter assessments and transitional shelter construction/ owner driven repair programs).
    • Livelihoods and market systems
    • Emergency operations and safety/ security.
    • Humanitarian assistance expertise with displaced populations, including experience with non-USAID donors (i.e., BPRM, UNHCR, IOM)
    • Natural resource management/watershed rehabilitation
    • Housing finance and microfinance, with experience in LAC, Africa, and Asia
    • Urban planning and urban upgrading, preferably with experience in working in urban DRR and humanitarian assistance.

Her

  • Women’s economic empowerment, with a particular focus on income generation, livelihoods (esp. rural), and increasing women’s linkages to agriculture markets and value chains
  • Bilingual gender training and capacity development specialists and generalists with the ability to work fluently in one of the following languages: Spanish, Chichewa, Kiswahili
  • Gender-based violence prevention and response
  • Constructive male engagement
  • Gender-sensitive M&E, gender analysis

Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning (MERL)

  • Related to the four technical areas and with specific emphasis in basic and complex statistical analysis, database development, data collection/management, mobile technology, qualitative and quantitative methods; research design; sampling methods; survey development; qualitative data coding; learning agenda development; theory of change and log frame/logic model development.

Cross cutting areas

  • ICT/GIS specialist for the development of data collection, storage, and data utilization/ visualization systems for priority technical areas.
  • Social Behavior Change – as relevant across the four technical areas with specific technical support in designing and implementing effective and catalytic behavior change, including formative research (doer/non-doer or barrier analysis, qualitative methods, etc.) related to enhanced household and community resilience with focus on improved WASH, Mother & Child Nutrition, Gender Equity and Disaster Risk Reduction.
  • Adult education – curriculum design, materials development, assessment and evaluation, and data analysis.

Potential consultants will be vetted in a variety of ways (phone calls, meetings, reference checking and/or trial runs); “preferred consultants” will be identified and contacted as needs arise to see if there is interest, availability and a “fit” between the task at hand and the preferred consultant.

Deliverables

Each consultant agreement will be established in accordance with the needs of the position. Consultant agreements will have established timeframes, deliverables, methods of verification for deliverables and estimated level of effort (LOE).

Consultant Qualifications

Qualifications will vary based on the specific needs of each assignment. General qualifications, however, include:

  • Minimum of a Bachelor’s degree in global development, social sciences, international relations, or related field – Master’s degree in a PCI priority technical area or related field is preferred and may be required for some assignments;
  • Six to ten years of experience working in global development preferably with a non-governmental organization with relevant field experience;
  • Proven capacity as a quality consultant in the area of focus;
  • Comprehensive understanding of ongoing international development issues;
  • Development philosophy in keeping with PCI’s mission, vision, core values and approach to integrated, community-driven programming;
  • Experience working and networking with international donors, such as USAID, other bilateral development agencies, multi-lateral development banks, United Nations agencies, foundations, and corporate philanthropies;
  • Project design – pre-design (assessments, etc.), logical pathway thinking, and writing;
  • Other languages may be required, particularly Spanish fluency;
  • Exceptional communication and representational skills, including oral, written, and public speaking in English;
  • Sound time management skills and capacity to balance competing priorities;
  • Work well in a team environment and able to work independently;
  • Ability to work efficiently and effectively to deadlines; and
  • Strong computer skills including expertise in Word, Power Point, and other relevant computer packages and platforms. Job Location San Diego, California, United States Position Type Consulting