SYRIA – CONSULTANCY THIRD PARTY MONITORING (M/F)

Solidarités International

Expected starting date: 01/05/2022

Duration of mission: 30 days

Base/zone: Northwest Syria

ABOUT THE MISSION

SOLIDARITÉS INTERNATIONAL (SI) is a humanitarian NGO which is committed to meeting the vital needs of populations faced with a major crisis of human or natural origin and to strengthening their resilience, particularly regarding Water, Sanitation and Hygiene, and food security.

SI is an international non-profit, non-political and non-religious organization established in Afghanistan in 1980 and headquartered in Paris, France. SI is operational in 18 countries over the world, including in Syria.

After nearly ten years of conflict in Syria, the impact of present and past hostilities on civilians remains the principal driver of humanitarian needs. North East (NES) and North West Syria (NWS) contexts are both characterized by: (i) ongoing and protracted displacements with low return opportunities, into densely-populated areas where humanitarian assistance is overstretched, (ii) no availability of alternative durable solutions, such as eventual re-installation or re-integration within host community because of social and cultural related issues, as well as the will of authorities to protect local communities, (iii) the depletion of productive assets and savings, (iv) limited economic opportunities and (v) the widespread destruction and contamination of agriculture and water related infrastructure by explosive remnants as well as other infrastructures have had a profound impact on the population. Finally, the COVID-19 pandemic threatens to further exacerbate a fragile situation with a potentially disastrous impact on vulnerability levels of communities across the region.

ABOUT THE JOB

OBJECTIVE OF THE THIRD-PARTY MONITORING

To verify project outputs of the project in both partners’ areas of intervention and ensure that implementation on the ground corresponds to implementation plan, strategy and technical specifications outlined in the project proposal.

Specifically, the TPM will be responsible for:

  • Direct observation and verification of implementation and implementation process at site;
  • Monitoring and verification of SI and AFH activities in locations where SI and AFH have limited or no access;
  • Beneficiary verification and feedback mechanism for accountability to affected population;
  • Provide objective evidence of works in the field, according to SI and AFH response strategy and activities planning;
  • Situational analysis, identify implementation and monitoring related challenges and provide recommendations to improve quality.

The proposed TPM will focus at the end stage of the project and in anticipation of the continuation of the response through another grant. At present, the expected TPM services are not planned to be a continuous service spanning across a full project implementation period.

TPM design and methodology

The consultants or consulting firms interested to support SI and AFH on implementing Third Party Monitoring for the subject project are required to present a detailed TPM proposal including understanding of the TPM SoWs, proposed methodologies to respond to TPM objectives and a detailed plan for data collection plan in the field. The proposed methodologies may include but not limited to the following:

  • Literature Review of documents including project literature such survey reports, monitoring reports, FCRM summary findings, PDM- post distribution reports and other project reports and studies/surveys etc.
  • When feasible, households’ interviews and focus group discussion with men, women and where appropriate with children served directly or indirectly by the project
  • When feasible, Key informant interviews with stakeholder, project team and partners such as local councils
  • Field visit to ongoing implementation of activities (SI and AFH will provide list of all ongoing/completed activities and respective locations) This is expected to include distribution activities in shelter and Settlement and water trucking, SWM, dislodging in WASH.
  • Field observation during direct visit to the project locations and implementation sites.
  • Note: Use of cross cutting approaches such as gender, protection, child protection, environment and people with special need as and where applicable during the design including data collection teams, implementation including tools and techniques, analysis and reporting of the TPM.

Note: The list above is a proposed methodology. The consultants however are expected to choose from the list and/or proposed additional methods, in both cases, with strong justification and relevance to the TPM objectives.

Furthermore, considering that the areas covered by this project have complicated access and traveling requirement, it would be of greater interest to see the proposed methodologies from the interested evaluators for field work provided with aspects of remote management of TPM as well as remote data collection options and methods- as and where applicable.

Responsible Data management and compliance to SI’s data protection policy

The consultant is committed to have a responsible data management throughout all the data cycle and provide a data management plan that involves:

  • The purpose of the data
  • The methods used to collect the data
  • The collect of informed consent
  • The partners participating to the project and susceptible to access the data
  • The training of the team and relation with the community
  • The risks associated with the data
  • The sharing, storage and deleting strategy

Moreover, SI has a data protection policy that provides guidelines and concrete measures to ensure that personal data are processed in accordance with legal and ethical obligations to protect personal data. The consultant data management plan should be in line with this document. The TPM consultant may not have access to full data related to beneficiaries and associated data following data protection guidelines.

Data collection and analysis to be disaggregated by gender, household status, and location. Disaggregation can be included in the reporting products where applicable.

Expériences / Formation

In general, the TPM consultant/ consulting firm will combine the following criteria:

  • A solid and diversified experience in Third Party Monitoring of humanitarian assistance activities and information management and information systems
  • Experience in Monitoring of emergency-based WASH and Shelter and settlement related interventions (preferably in emergency context for reputed donor agencies and international organizations
  • Strong knowledge on data collection, analysis and protection
  • Experience on managing monitoring assignment in remote management settings
  • Full working knowledge of English and excellent report writing,
  • Full working knowledge of Arabic
  • A proven record of experience in conducting similar assignments, especially in NWS.
  • A proven record of capacities to access and conduct monitoring works in both targeted districts (Afrin and Azaz)

How to apply

Interest applicants are required to submit their proposal by sending an email to [email protected] with “2504BHA – TPM APPLICATION” referred in the subject of the email, using the following guidelines:

  • Cover letter – one-page maximum
  • Technical proposal – 4 pages including the following but not limited to
    • Relevant experience – Monitoring of emergency WASH and shelter related projects
    • Understanding of the assignment
    • Proposed methodology, sampling, tools and techniques
    • Propose clear timeline for TPM
    • Approach for data collection, cleaning, analysis, frequencies
    • Propose outline of the survey report
    • Composition of team, their resumes and assigned roles in the survey
  • Financial proposal. Includes breakdown of costs such as consultant fee, training, stationary, traveling and lodging etc.
  • Consultant/ consulting firm profile:
    • Training and qualifications
    • Professional experience (if relevant to consultancy, specific skills and/or specific context conditions)
    • Experience in TPM/evaluation/research
    • Experience in facilitating learning and participatory processes (in the case of a learning-oriented TPM/evaluation with co-construction of lessons learned and recommendations)
    • Knowledge of the country/area of intervention
    • Required qualities
    • Languages: English and Arabic
  • Sample copy of at least two similar assignments in past work.
  • Reference