Consultancy : RFP-004NGA22 – External Evaluation for Promoting Positive Peace – Building Resilience

Engaging conflict-affected communities and civil society in community safety and local peacebuilding in North-eastern Nigeria 2019 – 2021

TERMS OF REFERENCE External evaluation

“Promoting Positive Peace – Building Resilience”**

1. Context

The conflict in North-eastern Nigeria and the Lake Chad region has been ongoing since 2009, destabilizing Adamawa and Borno states, as well as bordering areas in neighboring countries, namely Cameroon, Chad, and Niger. Of the 4 million displaced people (source IOM dec 2021) in the Lake Chad region, approximately 75% reside among host communities, and 79% consist of women, boys, and girls. Over a third of all IDPs reside in areas that are inaccessible to humanitarian agencies, and given the fluid conflict dynamics, access to areas has been changing with time. Before the conflict, despite the absence of state presence and government services, the Lake Chad region was characterized by thriving cross-border trade; however, the conflict and its cross-border impacts have seriously affected economic activities and livelihoods resulting in further ethnic and social tensions in all four countries.

The conflict has brought enormous change and upheaval to the lives of many people in the Lake Chad region, and women and girls have been on the frontline in terms of marginalization, victimization, and violence. While addressing structural causes of inequality remain a challenge, the conflict has profoundly affected gender roles, particularly in areas directly affected by violence. In some cases, women make up most of the adult population as men and older boys fled insecure areas due to being deliberately targeted, killed, and forcibly recruited by armed groups. Given the absence of men, many women have engaged in new economic activities, including negative coping strategies, to survive. While Nigeria has developed a National Action Plan to implement the recommendations of the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security, the reality is that day to day life for many female IDPs and returnees remain precarious, and they continue to lack a voice and the opportunity to engage constructively on the peace and security issues that affect them and their families. State-level action plans on Resolution 1325 exist in some of the North-Eastern States (incl. Borno and Adamawa states), and civil society has been actively engaged in the process to establish the plans, however, authorities’ engagement, resourcing, and implementation of the plans are still lacking.

2. BAckground

Danish Refugee Council (DRC) has had an operational presence in Nigeria since 2015 and has experience working in 33 Local Government Areas (LGAs) across the Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe (BAY) states. DRC provides life-saving assistance and protection to vulnerable, conflict-affected populations including IDPs, returnees, and host communities in the sectors of armed violence reduction, livelihoods, nutrition, and food security, protection, shelter, and non-food items (NFI), and water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH). The operational context in northeastern Nigeria remains challenging, as the ongoing conflict impedes conflict-affected communities’ access to what limited basic services are available, as well as DRC and other humanitarians’ access to persons of concern.

To support the issue of building sustainable peace, DRC has been implementing a three-year project funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs (DMFA) since May 2019. The project ends in June 2022 and DRC is seeking to evaluate the overall impact and sustainability of the project’s activities.

DRC supported 28 conflict-affected communities in North-Eastern Nigeria (18 Adamawa State and 10 in Borno State). The overall goal of the intervention was to improve community safety and contribute to local peacebuilding through engaging conflict-affected communities, duty-bearers, and civil society in North-Eastern Nigeria. To reach it, the project focused on the following four objectives:

· Strengthen community safety and local peacebuilding capacities in the conflict-affected communities in Adamawa and Borno states.

· Provide tailored livelihoods opportunities and protection assistance to conflict-affected youth and women.

· Improve the capacity of civil society organizations to engage in state and community level actions on women, peace, and security.

· Ensure that communication and collaboration are improved between communities and policing service providers through facilitating regular meetings as well capacity building on accountable community engagement to security providers.

3. Scope and parameters

3.1 Purpose and objective:

The main purpose of the evaluation is to assess the overall impact of DRC’s peacebuilding, livelihoods and protection activities on the targeted communities while identifying and assessing lessons learned for each sector, the project, and DRC’s implementation in the targeted communities in general. DRC will also identify and evaluate best practices under this action. The selected consultancy is expected to work closely with the DRC teams in the country office and area offices to understand the project in brief, access project areas and beneficiaries for assessment purposes.

The specific objectives of the evaluation include:

• Evaluate the extent to which the project has met the desired impact on the targeted communities in Adamawa and Borno states.

· Evaluate the extent of the project’s effectiveness, relevance, efficiency, sustainability, of its activities, and potential for duplication/extension.

• evaluate the project’s relevancy, progress, and strategies about the respective project components (and linkages between these), namely:

• social cohesion and peacebuilding activities;

• peacebuilding and social cohesion;

• livelihoods and protection;

• capacity strengthening of local CSOs.

• assess the level of involvement and participation of community members and vulnerable groups including women and children

• produce an end-term report that will capture lessons learnt and room for improvement and best practices with potential for future implementation.

3.2 Key points to address:

Relevance

The extent to which the activities suited to the priorities and policies of the target group, recipient, and donor. Appropriateness of interventions must be assessed in line with the needs and rights of beneficiaries in terms of socio-cultural acceptance, religious barriers, age, or physiological conditions, etc. In evaluating the relevance of a programme or a project, it is useful to consider the following questions:

· Were the activities and outputs of the programme consistent with the overall goal and the attainment of its objectives?

· To what extent did the project meet the needs of the most marginalised groups?

· Were the activities and outputs of the programme consistent with the intended impact?

Efficiency

Refers to how economically projects resources and inputs were converted to results. Efficiency reviews whether the same results could have been achieved in a less expensive and better way. When evaluating the efficiency of a programme or a project, it is useful to consider the following questions:

· Were the objectives and activities sufficiently clearly defined? And were they relevant to the context and the project’s outcomes?

· Is there an internal monitoring system and SMART indicators in place to assess whether objectives were achieved?

· What were the major factors influencing the achievement or non-achievement of the objectives?

Effectiveness

Measures the extent to which the objectives were achieved. In evaluating the effectiveness of a programme or a project, it is useful to consider the following questions:

· To what extent were the objectives achieved?

· What were the major factors influencing the achievement or non-achievement of the objectives?

Impact

The totality of the effects of the intervention, positive and negative, intended, and unintended, short-term and long-term on individuals, households, communities, CSOs, policies, institutions, etc. When evaluating the impact of a programme or a project, it is useful to consider the following questions:

· Did the project produce any intended or unintended positive or negative impact on the beneficiaries?

Sustainability

Refers to the continuation or likelihood of maintained or exceeded benefits from the intervention after the donor funding has been withdrawn. When evaluating the sustainability of a programme or a project, it is useful to consider the following questions:

· How likely is it that the benefits of the project will continue after donor funding has ceased?

· What are the major factors that will influence the achievement or non-achievement of sustainability of the programme or project?

· To what extent is the project strengthening local communities and LGA capacities?

4. evaluation process

4.1 Methodology:

The selected consultant/firm will be responsible to develop the final methodology and a suggested timeframe to share with DRC management. During submission of the proposal, the consultant/firm will be expected to explain the possible steps for how they will carry out the work in the field. They will need to ensure a mixed-methods research approach in their assessment, to strengthen the validity of the research through the cross-verification of information. DRC will need to approve this methodology before any fieldwork can be undertaken.

The consultancy will also need to advise on their expectations of the DRC teams, for example, mobilizing targeted community members, providing primary and secondary data sources such as baseline studies, official handover documents, photographs, public records, enumerators, translators, etc. The timeframe and assistance required must be clearly communicated in advance.

Once the project is understood the consultant/firm is expected to submit a detailed methodology along with a work plan. Upon acceptance, an agreement will be formalized, and the consultancy can commence.

It is proposed that the external evaluator be contracted for between 30 to 35 working days.

4.2 Roles and Responsibilities:

The consultant is responsible for conducting the below activities to complete the evaluation successfully, these include:

· Designing how the work will be carried out, including field visits and consultation with beneficiaries and other stakeholders.

· Comprehensive desk review of relevant reports, baselines, end lines, donor reports, internal DRC reports and strategies and other relevant content and documents to be used as references.

· Conducting field visits and leading discussions with beneficiaries, community leaders, CSOs, local government officials and other stakeholders.

· Consulting with relevant staff (DRC, and partner CSOs) and stakeholders to understand key challenges and lessons learnt.

· Collecting pictures and footage as necessary to support evaluation findings (relevant consent and ethical research guidelines to be upheld).

· Prepare a report with recommendations and share with key project staff for review and feedback.

· Conduct a debriefing session with DRC Nigeria to present key findings of the evaluation in one of the planned Senior Management meetings.

· The consultant will closely work with DRC’s Quality Assurance and will report to the Programme Development and Quality Manager.

DRC will be responsible for identifying relevant information sources that exist and are available, such as monitoring systems and/or previous evaluations. The organization will assist in providing access to project areas and organizing meetings as possible.

4.4 Key deliverables:

· An Inception Report (maximum 5 pages): Based on the documentation review and report of the data analysis, the report will outline the evaluator’s understanding of the evaluation and expectations, along with a concrete action plan for undertaking the evaluation – including methodology and timelines for all deliverables. In addition, the consultant will submit the finalized assessment tools.

· A presentation of the major findings and recommendations of the evaluation to internal stakeholders (to occur immediately upon concluding the fieldwork and prior to departure from Nigeria).

· A Draft Report (maximum 20 pages with an Executive Summary of no more than 5 pages) clearly articulating key findings, conclusions, lessons learned, and recommendations for concrete actions to be taken in the implementation of DRC livelihood programming in NE Nigeria. The Evaluation Manager/Steering Committee will provide feedback and comment within 7 days of receiving the report.

· A Final Report that incorporates comments from the Evaluation Manager and Evaluation Steering Committee, alongside a response matrix detailing how each comment was handled in the revising of the draft report (delivered within 7 days working days of receiving Evaluation Steering Committee feedback on Draft Report).

5. application process

ü QUALIFICATIONS / SPECIALISED KNOWLEDGE

About you or your team

To be successful in this role we expect you to embody DRC’s core competencies: Communicating, Taking the lead, Collaborating, striving for excellence, and Demonstrating integrity.

Moreover, we also expect the following:

Required

• Previous experience in Conflict Analysis and Peacebuilding, Protection and Livelihoods in complex humanitarian crises (minimum five years of experience).
• Strong quantitative and qualitative research skills with strong experience in applying mixed research approaches.
• Experience of, and commitment to working through systems of community participation and accountability.
• Previous experience of working in monitoring and evaluation, research, consultancies, and managing project evaluations preferably in conflict-affected communities.
• Sound analytical skills to make observations, draw interpretations and identify lessons and recommendations.
• Strong writing ability, tailored for a non-technical audience
• Excellent command of written and spoken English.

*Desirable

• Knowledge of the current literature/practice on displacement-related emergency response.
• familiarity with DRC and/or Nigeria emergency response preferred.
• Experience conducting evaluations of peacebuilding and resilience projects preferred.

PROPOSAL SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS

All applicants must submit:

· Detail proposal about how you will undertake the assignment, detailing methodology, budget, work plan, and other processes (no longer than ten pages) in English.**

· The request for quotation filled in and signed**

· A profile of previous consultancies including CVs of the consultant/s

· Online Submission must be sent by email: [email protected]**

Closing date for applications: 12^th April 2022

If you have questions or are facing problems with the online application process, please contact [email protected]

For further information about the Danish Refugee Council, please consult our website DRC.ngo.