Gender for evaluation of Islamic Relief Afghanistan’s home based education for women project

Aug 19, 2019 | Islamic Relief
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Islamic Relief implements a wide range of education projects globally in humanitarian, conflict and development contexts. Examples of type of education related projects and interventions range from support to formal basic/primary education, early childhood education development, through to teachers training, improving school infrastructure including classrooms, water, hygiene and sanitation, support for children with special needs such as those with living with hearing and sight disabilities, provision of basic education to agro pastoral and pastoralist children who have no access to formal schools through a staggered curriculum transforming of the non-formal schools into formal schools where the government had allocated budgets to support to and for tertiary education and technical and vocational educational centres. The project under consideration here extends the portfolio to home-based adult learning.

The aim of this consultancy is to provide a detailed evaluation of Islamic Relief’s Homebased Education for Women project in Afghanistan against its stated objectives and specific criteria of holistic, integrated design and delivery.

The project is a long-term intervention which is reaching its conclusion at the end of the year. While the focus for the evaluation will necessarily be on the most recent two year segment of the initiative, it will be expected to investigate and analyse previous projects especially with a view to assessing longer term outcomes and impacts. The objectives for this consultancy will be mainly summative, capturing evidence of its impact on educational attainment and its effect on the women’s lives, and drawing out learning that can contribute to an understanding of the current status, approaches, gaps and potential opportunities in further developing IRW’s education programming globally both within development and emergency contexts.

Objectives

The aim of this consultancy is to provide a detailed evaluation of Islamic Relief’s Home based Education for Womenproject in Afghanistan against its stated objectives and specific criteria of holistic, integrated design and delivery.

The project is a long-term intervention which is reaching its conclusion at the end of the year. While the focus for the evaluation will necessarily be on the most recent two year segment of the initiative, it will be expected to investigate and analyse previous projects especially with a view to assessing longer term outcomes and impacts. The objectives for this consultancy will be mainly summative, capturing evidence of its impact on educational attainment and its effect on the women’s lives, and drawing out learning that can contribute to an understanding of the current status, approaches, gaps and potential opportunities in further developing IRW’s education programming globally both within development and emergency contexts

This consultancy will involve document reviews, emailing, field observations, face to face interviews, focus groups, virtual- and tele-meetings and other means of eliciting quantitative and qualitative data. The resulting reports will inform programme, policy and advocacy development, regional and country coordinators, programme managers and officers and the global education advisor on appointment to support situation analyses, funding, planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of education related work throughout the organisation.

Consultancy Goals

1. To provide primary evidence of outcomes and programme impact[1], potential and achieved, to support Islamic Relief to achieve better project outcomes and its strategic objectives in the education sector

2. Islamic Relief will be able to utilise this information to inform its programme, policy, advocacy and planning towards its contribution to SDG4 (and related goals) and support its funding positioning.

Implementation Framework

Consultants are invited to propose the specific methodology as part of this call. In general, it is envisaged this will involve document reviews, emailing, field observations, face to face interviews, focus groups, virtual- and tele-meetings, distributing and analysing the results surveys, and other means of eliciting data to achieve the goals above.

· Please refer to annex 1 for the specific scope of assignment highlighting key questions this evaluation seeks to answer and suggested final report outline.

· The consultant is expected to propose a suitably robust methodology through which areas highlighted in annex 1 can and will be most readily extracted, analysed, synthesised and reported back, within a 3 month consultancy time period, to provide a contribution to understanding of the current status, approaches, gaps and potential opportunities in further developing IRW’s education programming globally both within development and emergency contexts.

· The proposal should also take into account projects may lack evaluation reports and other baseline or end line data; and if ongoing may not have final reports. In such situation, the consultant should consider and propose suitable alternative methodology which can be used to determine project details and provide indicative, relevant and credible findings and recommendations.

Policy Framework

The consultant will be expected to work within and abide by Islamic Relief’s policy frameworks on communications, information management, human resources etc. and will be obliged to sign an agreement assuring the confidentiality of data and information utilised and collected in pursuance of the consultancy. The consultant will be sensitive and compliant to any requirements of GDPR.

The consultant will abide by and observe Islamic Relief’s Child Protection Policy and if appropriate provide evidence of criminal record check clearance or equivalent

The report will be produced for internal audience but may be edited and adapted for external publication by IRW for wider communication and learning purposes.

Reporting Framework and Schedule

Brief reports (written or oral) on progress against implementation plan weekly for the duration of the project.

Deliverables

Deliverables for this project would be;

1. Written implementation plan agreed with Programme Impact and Learning Manager within one week of commencement.

2. Workshops in both countries building capacity to conduct participatory evaluations

3. Narrative account, not exceeding 32 pages describing the projects and potential approaches, gaps and potential opportunities in further developing IRW’s education programming globally both within development and emergency contexts.

4. Executive summary incorporated in the above, not exceeding 3 pages

5. Soft copies of any substantial MS Excel or Word documents or other documents created to support mapping and analysis from which the findings in the main report have been extrapolated – including any tables, charts, graphs etc.

Accountability

The consultant will be responsible for conducting the activities and delivering the outputs set out in this terms of reference and will coordinate all activities with and through the Programme Impact & Learning Manager, regional desks and country offices. The Programme Impact & Learning Manager is responsible for facilitating access to all relevant and available documents (proposals, donor reports and evaluation reports) and wider staff necessary for the consultant to conduct these activities and deliver the outputs.

Required competences

Required Competencies of the consultant would be;

1. Have a broad understanding and experience of conducting participatory evaluations, outcome and impact assessments and reviews using a variety of methodologies and conducting desk reviews and studies.

2. Must have experience in accessing and managing diverse data, and extracting relevant information from them and drawing appropriate conclusions and recommendations

3. Must be able to converse with stakeholders from a variety of backgrounds in order to elicit specific information

4. Will have either significant technical and/or practical field-based or relevant academic experience of the Education Sector in the context of international development and emergencies and be able to us this knowledge to construct effective enquiries and order information received.

5. Will write informatively and succinctly in English

6. Respect the values of Islamic Relief

Project outputs

The consultant is expected to produce:

• A detailed work plan developed with and approved by IRW, setting out the detailed methodology and deliverables prior to commencing the desk review.

• A full report with the following sections:

a) Title of Report: Evaluation of Islamic Relief Afghanistan Home-based Education for Women project

b) Consultancy organisation and any partner names

c) Name of person who compiled the report including summary of role/contribution of others in the team

d) Period during which the review was undertaken

e) Acknowledgements

f) Abbreviations

g) Table of contents

h) Executive summary

i) Main report – max 32 pages (please see indicative layout in annex 1 below – consultant is invited to propose most suitable report structure layout)

j) Annexes

· Terms of reference for the review

· Profile of the review team members

· Review schedule

· Documents consulted during the desk review

· Persons participating in the review

· Field data used during the review

· Additional key overview tables, graphs or charts etc. created and used to support analysis inform findings

· Bibliography

k) The consultant will be required to visit IRW HQ and provide feedback on and answer questions about the findings from the desk review. This meeting can be attended remotely by the consultant via video conference where the consultant is outside the UK or based on request from the consultant.

Required inputs

The following are the key inputs:

a) Stakeholders to be involved include:

· IRW and IRW-field staff (in person and through remote communication by Skype / Zoom etc.)

· Primary stakeholders (learners and families)

· Communities, teachers, government officials

b) Relevant IRW proposals, narrative reports and evaluation reports/documentation

c) External secondary information and data as appropriate

d) IRW (2018) Desk review and mapping of IRW global education projects and intervention outcomes and impact