Invitation to Bid Final Evaluation Collaborative Cash Delivery Responding to Displacement Crises in Ethiopia Vacancy at Save The Children

1.  Background information

The Humanitarian Response Plan 2019 mentions around three million people were displaced in Ethiopia as of January 2019. The border area between Kamashi and Assosa Zones in Benishangul Gumuz (BG) region and the East/West Wollega zones of Oromia Region conflict represents one of the waves of violence and mass displacement. Following a September 2018 incident where BG state officials were ambushed and killed in Oromia, inter-communal violence erupted in Kamashi zone between the Gumuz community and the ethnic Oromo and Amhara population residing in the area. This resulted in displacement, deaths, injuries and damage of public infrastructure. As a result of this conflict 319.665 people have been affected out of which 273,338 people are displaced from both regions.

Another food insecurity crisis is expected to peak between June/October 2022, with more than half of the population in south eastern parts of Ethiopia (mostly Somali region) expected to a face crisis level of food insecurity. The imminent crisis calls for urgent action to mitigate the drought impact and the Somali region has prepared an Emergency Preparedness and Response Plan targeting 1,27 million people across its 11 zones, which seeks USD20,7 million.

To avert the crisis, the ECHO-CCD Project was proposed by consortium partners through ECHO fund source. The project proposes monthly unconditional, unrestricted cash transfers of 1.500 ETB per HH per transfer. Involved partners engaged in beneficiary targeting, selection and verification process in collaboration with woreda and Zonal level government structures. In Oromia, 3 cash transfer rounds to 10,000 crisis-affected HHs are underway in two zones: East (IRC:5000HHs) and West Wollega (AAH:5000HHs). In Somali region, 4 cash transfer rounds to 6,700 drought-affected HHs are underway in two zones: Liben (WV:3500 HHs) and Korahe (SCI:3200 HHs).

In general, IRC/ACF/WV/SC deliver cash transfers to beneficiaries for streamlined community interface, along with market monitoring, while WV manages data and digital data collection for all. WV supports government capacity building and coordination of cash interventions. SCI and IRC provide specialized services related to protection, monitoring, evaluation, and accountability. These services feed learning back to the Cash Collaboration Platform for adoption. CRS leads the CCD Collaboration Unit at national level, which support Consortium implementation and fill a gap in cash technical expertise in Ethiopia.

Cash transfers enabled beneficiaries to meet a wide range of fluctuating basic needs. Moreover, the project had protection mainstreaming activities to ensure equitable access to assistance and greater inclusiveness, and to better respond to the needs of the most vulnerable and marginalized HHs. Consortium partners leverage on their respective comparative advantages in operational capacity, geographical coverage and technical skills so each undertakes specialized roles in a collaborative, single response. The combination of specialized roles with shared technical resources and mutual support for and from the national CCD Ethiopia network is intended to create harmonized, optimized and modernized CTP in the intervention areas that is replicable and scalable in Ethiopia and globally. This new harmonized approach addresses identified barriers to efficient and effective CTP in Ethiopia through joining forces in good governance advocacy for targeting and community accountability and list verification; cash capacity strengthening for local government; a shared Collaboration Unit comprising of technical experts in cash operations, program quality, and data and technology that can be leveraged; support of joint assessments between CCD members and collaboration management services such as collective monitoring, feedback and complaint mechanisms, FSP engagement and data management. Gender and protection mainstreaming activities are included as part of cash transfer SOPs (Standard Operation Procedures) to ensure equitable access to and utilization of assistance.

In general, there are six categories of crisis-affected people in the target areas:

A. IDPs

1.IDPs who came from Benishangul Gumuz, lost houses and livelihoods 2.IDPs who came from the Oromia boarder, lost houses and livelihoods 3.Those who are not displaced but cannot access their farmland due to conflict 4.Host communities negatively impacted as the result of hosting IDPs ->Selection criteria for A: -HH having or caring for people with special needs (PWD, chronic illness, elderly, PLW) -IDPs who lost family members -HH with active/recent malnutrition cases -Child/elderly/single female headed HH -SAM and MAM cases (children under five)

B. Hosting communities

5. Drought affected HHs (in original residence); 6. Drought affected/climate IDPs ->Selection criteria for B: -SAM and MAM cases (children U5, PLW) -HH with active/recent malnutrition cases -Child/elderly/single female headed HHs -HH with high dependency ratios -Resource poor HH -HH without regular income , especially for Somali region the main selection criteria were Kebele with drought affected host communities, kebeles hosted IDPs, Kebeles located at far distance and have no humanitarian assistance history and kebeles know as high number of malnutrition prevalence.

As described above the project is being implemented in collaboration with the respective regional and zonal government sector offices and project-implementing partners. The project has a plan to do final evaluation to assess the change brought as a result of project intervention done on cash transfer, protection, risk minimization, institutional performance, previous and current status of beneficiaries, lesson learnt, identify good practice and challenges occurred during the implementation period and the final evaluation will set recommendations for future project planning. To do the final evaluation Save the Children and IRC would like to hire an external consultant firm with the consent of other consortium partners (WV, AAH and CRS) and the main expectation of the study is described as follows: –

2.  Objective of the evaluation

The overall purpose of the final evaluation is to evaluate the project implementation in terms of relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, impact, sustainability, coverage, coherence and coordination.

Specifically, the evaluation will address the following objectives:

1. To assess the project performance against each evaluation criteria:

a.     Adherence to Protection Principles :

Humanitarian actors involved in the project were they familiar with the Sphere Protection Principles. Were these principles integrated throughout the program cycle? Were protection risks and benefits considered in CBI. Did the project Identify, monitor, and mitigating protection risks and maximize protection benefits? Linkages with the Protection Cluster?

a.    Relevance: To what extent is, the intervention aligned with local needs and priorities, according to the beneficiaries? And according to members of the community? What could have been different in their opinion?

What is the reaction/acceptance of the government towards the CCD intervention? And their ways of working within the community? Relevance of the transfer modalities? Relevance of the intervention in terms of COVID 19 response?

b.    Economic and Efficiency: How economical resources/inputs (funds, expertise, time, etc.) are converted to results (value for money analysis), the cost-efficiency of the ECHO-CCD project? What inputs were employed to deliver the project?  What outputs were generated in the project (number of transfers, number of households, number of boys, girls, women and men)? What is the cost-to-transfer ratio? How does it compare to the cost-to-transfer ratio of different interventions, in the same geographic areas?

c.    Effectiveness: To what the extent were the interventions’ objectives achieved, or expected to be achieved, taking into account their relative importance?

Understand how was the effectiveness of the collaborative platform result has been (Result 2)?

Effectiveness in the timeliness of the activities of the action and their implications? Effectiveness in terms of COVID 19 protection response too?

Effectiveness of the processes put in place such as Targeting, Price market monitoring, PDM, CFM, registration process and the use of IT, data protection?

d.    Impact:   Impact of the project and mostly relaying on the objectives of the project result 1 and 2. What are the short impact of the project on the lives and livelihoods of displacement and drought crises affected population? What are the impact of the CCD approach to the wider cash community in Ethiopia in terms of accepting the approach, adopting the implementation approach, adopting the tools, and etc.? Were there unintended results during the intervention (Positive/Negative)? How were they managed?

e.    Sustainability: Are the benefits of the Action likely to continue after donor funding has been withdrawn and project activities officially cease?

2.    Coordination, Synergies, integration and complementarities with relevant national, regional zonal, programs and humanitarian response and other relevant Government and others (NGOs, etc.) projects/programs in the intervention areas

a.    What are the coordination effort taken place during the course of the project implementation? (woreda, project staff, kebele and etc.) (role and responsibilities of key actors)?  what kind of supports have you received from the different stakeholders? What worked well according to the other actors and according to the CCD members? What worked less well and why? What should be improved in a future similar project?

b.    How did the cash transfer  linked with other project-related activities? Other government, private or non-government initiative? What worked well according to the other actors and according to the CCD members? What worked less well and why? What should be improved in a future similar project?

c.    What specific coordination efforts or activities were carried out to achieve the linkages?

d.     Describe the coordination activities, who they were carried out by and with, with what purpose, when and how many times? (at consortium, woreda and kebele level coordination), any coordination challenges? If so, how were they overcome?

e.    How was the quality of the coordination within the CCD consortium? Problem solving and added values?

3.    Coverage: looks at which groups are included in or excluded from a project, and the differential impact on those included and excluded. (Who and how many people are we reached?) Where there groups of people that, although being in need, were systematically excluded because of the way the project was designed? Or because of the way the project was implemented?

4.       Draw lesson learning, good practices and develop recommendations from the project and CCD Network in Ethiopia as a whole.

3.  Scope of the Assignment

The assignment will cover the CCD project operation zones and woredas for primary and secondary data collections. The CCD project implemented in four zones (West and East wollega zone in Oromia Region, Liben and korahe zone in Somali Region).  Four representative woredas will be selected for the primary data collection using scientific sampling procedures. The assignment also expected to see the broader CCD network in Ethiopia through consultation of representative organizations, which can be a model for collaborative cash delivery programs.

4. Required Qualifications and Experiences

The consultant(s) who will be involved in the research should have a solid experience in social and applied research on strategic programs of wider operational coverage. The evaluation team members should also have a solid understanding of the study area context and national and regional strategies and policies on emergency food security support particularly understanding on cash transfer and protection modalities for emergency interventions.

Specifically, the evaluation team members should have at least an MSC level qualification in Rural development, Economics, Agriculture, Agricultural Economics, Nutrition and etc. The team members should also have a minimum of ten years relevant quantitative and qualitative research experience especially related with evaluation, program evaluations, program design in the emergency context area relevant research experiences preferably in the proposed project intervention areas.

The composition of the team should be balanced to enable complete coverage of the different aspects of project evaluation. The consulting firm should deploy multidisciplinary professionals composed of relevant background on Livelihood, Marketing, DRR, Health and Nutrition, Food dietary specialist and etc.

The evaluation team members should have a diverse group with preferable mix of understanding of the context and needs and challenges of various groups of IDPs, vulnerables and host communities (men, women, people with disability, etc.) A good knowledge of gender and child participation will be necessary while the team members should have a child protection and/or gender specialist experts in key tasks. A team coordinator should be assigned to coordinate the team and facilitate communications in each research location. Team member’s knowledge of the context and local language will be an asset.

5. Required Documents

Potential consultants are required to submit the following documents together with their technical and financial proposal.

• Covering letter which express consultant interest to carry out the work per TOR
• Updated CV of the evaluation team members
• Copies of similar or related previous works research team member have produced in undertaking relevant studies