Joint Programme on Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment, Nairobi

Grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, UN Women will work for the elimination of discrimination against women and girls; the empowerment of women; and the achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security. Placing women's rights at the centre of all its efforts, UN women will lead and coordinate United Nations System efforts to ensure that commitments on gender equality and gender mainstreaming translate into action throughout the world. It will provide strong and coherent leadership in support of Member States' priorities and efforts, building effective partnerships with civil society and other relevant actors.

Introduction and rational for mid-term evaluation:

The mid-term evaluation of the Joint Programme on Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment (JP GEWE) was planned in line with the programme's monitoring plan. The evaluation will be carried out in accordance with Joint Programme (JP) and United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) Evaluation Policy, which provides for a systematic evaluation of programmes in order to improve quality, accountability, transparency of the JP's work, strengthen the decision-making process and support Government of Kenya (GoK) in developing and enabling environment for gender mainstreaming.

Hence, the purpose of the mid-term evaluation is to look at the management and operations systems laid down by the programme, assess if the progress is on the right track, identify the challenges faced and make recommendations for the remaining implementation period. The expected outcomes of the mid-term evaluation are:

• Assess relevance of programme structures, systems and procedures.
• Assess possible progress made on the implementation towards achieving the Outcomes set out in the programme document.
• Identify lessons learnt and good practices of the programme implementation for sharing with UN Women widely.
• Recommend adjustments to the implementation plan in order to improve/speed up delivery.

The current mid-term evaluation will be conducted in October/November 2011 (4 weeks) by one international and one national evaluator.

of the Programme:

The GoK - UN Joint Programme on Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment (JP GEWE) is the product of a year-long intense consultation with national stakeholders, mapping and enhanced coordination of the UN systems support to national priorities in the area of gender equality and women's empowerment in Kenya. The Joint Programme's envisioned outputs, results and M&E mechanisms are fully aligned to the Government of Kenya - United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) 2009-2013.

The programme is guided by the principles of the UN reform process, 'Delivering as One' and as such brings together 14 of the 21 UN agencies resident in Kenya under one programmatic, budgetary and monitoring and evaluation framework, one UN coordinating agency and one leader. The accountability for the Joint Programme on Gender within the UN system in Kenya is vested with the Resident Coordinator as Chair of the UN Country Team (UNCT), while UN Women functions as the UN Kenya's coordinating agency with the mandate of coordinating the development and implementation of the GoK - UN Joint Programme on Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment both within the UN and with national counterparts.

While anchored in the UN Reform process of "Delivering as One", this Joint Programme is fully aligned to national priorities for the advancement of gender equality and women's empowerment in Kenya, the foundations of which are described in Kenya's development blueprint, Vision 2030 and its Medium Term Plan (2008 - 2012), the National Gender and Development Policy (2000) and its Action Plan (2008-2012), the Sessional paper no. 2 of May 2006 on Gender Equality and Development, the National Commission on Gender and development (NCGD) strategic plan (2008-2012), the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Development (MoGCSD) Strategic Plan (2008 - 2012), the NCGD strategic plan (2008-2012), the National Framework towards response and prevention of GBV (2009), Agenda item 4 of the National Accord and Reconciliation Agreement, and the Millennium Development Goals.

This UN joint programme aims to contribute to national objectives as described in the above documents within five inter-related strategic priority areas, namely:

• Gender Mainstreaming to strengthen the capacity of the national gender machinery for gender mainstreaming; build the capacity of relevant line ministries to meet their gender obligations under their performance contracts; strengthen the capacity of key institutions for gender responsive data collection, analysis and dissemination (including within national M&E systems) and support the development, review and/or enactment of relevant gender responsive laws, policies and protocols.
• Gender Based Violence to strengthen the capacity of key actors to respond to and prevent GBV; support the development, refinement and enactment of laws, policies, strategies and protocols relevant to the prevention and response to GBV; enhance awareness among citizens and support behavior change programmes related to GBV prevention and response mechanisms and human rights issues, particularly within marginalized communities; strengthen coordinated approach and network creation for the prevention and response to GBV, particularly at community level and amongst marginalized groups.
• Gender and Governance to support initiatives that ensure that reform processes as described in Agenda 4 are gender responsive and enhance women's participation in decision-making fora that affect their lives. The programme will also respond to specific gender related needs following the possible passing of a new constitutional dispensation.
• Economic Empowerment to support the operationalization and strengthening of business development services and vocational training for women and enhance women's access to financial services, productive and human capital development opportunities.
• UN Coordination and "Delivering as One" to ensure that the UN progressively "Delivers as One" in support of national priorities in the area of gender equality and women's empowerment and relevant areas of the Millennium Development Goals. It also aims to build the UN's internal capacity to mainstream gender throughout its operations and programmes in the country.

The UN's main national partner in the planning, implementation and M&E of the joint programme is the MoGCSD, in close collaboration with the Ministry of State for Planning National Development and Vision 2030. The UN also works with other relevant line ministries (these are the key line ministry each agency works with), CSO's and the private sector and relevant sub-national institutions throughout the implementation of the JP GEWE.

The GoK - UN Joint Programmes' strategic and programmatic direction is overseen and approved by a high-level joint UN-national partner's oversight body (steering committee). Programmatic direction and focus is guided by the work of 5 "Output Teams" aligned to the programmes priority areas mentioned above.

Within the UN, the JP GEWE is implemented and monitored through the UN Programme Working Group on Gender and the Core Management Team, which operate under the Resident Coordinators system and consist of technical staff from all participating UN agencies.

Following lessons learned from global UN Joint Programme initiatives, UN Women, as the UN's coordinating agency and chair of the UN Programme Working Group on Gender and the programmes Core Management Team, has established a Joint Programme Secretariat within its offices to:

• Facilitate the day-to-day operations of the Joint Programme.
• Ensure the continued functioning of the above management structure.
• Ensure programmatic alignment to national priorities and provide policy advice where required.
• Coordinate the development, operationalization and continued monitoring and coordination of the M&E of the programme, including timely reporting to the UNCT, donors and national counterparts.
• Coordinate a joint resource mobilization and fund raising effort in support of the JP GEWE.

Finally, this unit coordinates the development of a One UN Communication Strategy for gender equality and women's empowerment in Kenya and facilitates information management and dissemination.

Purpose, scope and clients of the evaluation:

Purpose:

The mid-term evaluation will review the programme design, implementation strategy and institutional arrangements and monitor the progress of the programme. The evaluation will thoroughly look at progress made under the five Outputs and evaluate to what extent the programme is targeting its overarching goal. The evaluation should also analyze implementation and adjustments made and the monitoring tools employed by the programme.

Consequently, the evaluation will have a formative / learning character through highlighting good practices and lessons learnt and making concrete recommendations on how to improve implementation over the next two years of the implementation period. Specifically, the evaluation should make recommendations on required improvements of programme focus and design. The evaluation should also assess how the programme activities feed into the UN Delivering as One initiative.

The outcome of the evaluation will be used for three purposes:

• Lessons learnt and good practices will be shared with UN partners, GoK stakeholders, relevant staff in participating UN-agencies, UN Women and other relevant stakeholders to be replicated in similar ongoing or future employment related programmes both in Kenya and globally.
• Address challenges faced in implementing the programme.
• Revise/improve the implementation arrangements of the ongoing programme to achieve the best results and improve delivery rate.

Scope:

This mid-term evaluation will analyse the process of development of the joint programme and look into the strength of its management coordination mechanisms from mid 2009 to date. It will also look at the relevance of its programmatic focus within Kenya and the UNDAF for Kenya and discuss its strengths and challenges. The mid-term evaluation will make recommendations for improvement on both operational as well as programmatic aspects of the programme.

The evaluation will specifically include:

• UN participating organizations.
• Main partners of UN participating organizations (GoK and CSO's).

Specific sites for the evaluation will be further worked out by the respective UN agencies during the actual planning of the evaluation process.

Clients:

The clients of the evaluation and main audience of the report are:

• Relevant staff in target ministries, local government and targeted governmental institutions, committees and commissions and participating CSOs.
• Relevant staff in participating UN-agencies in Kenya.
• UN Women - UN System Coordination Division.
• Technical units and head of Units in the participating UN-agencies.
• UN-agency Headquarters.
• Development partners.

Key Evaluation Questions / analytical Framework:

Final evaluation questions and relevant evaluation instruments will be determined during the inception stage.

Relevance and strategic fit:

• Has the programme addressed the relevant needs in the country? Have new, more relevant needs emerged that the programme should address?
• Have the stakeholders taken ownership of the programme concept?
• To what extent did the programme contribute to the national priorities stipulated in key documentation?

Validity of design:

• How the programme is aligned to the UNDAF and was a gender analysis conducted during the UNDAF or the development of the JP GEWE. If undertaken, did the gender analysis offer good quality information on underlying causes of inequality to inform the JP?
• What was the baseline of the programme for the five components at the beginning of the programme? How were they established?
• Are the planned programme outputs and results relevant and realistic for the situation on the ground? Do they need to be adapted to specific (local, sectoral etc.) needs or conditions?
• Is the intervention logic coherent and realistic, taking into account the phases of the programme from joint programming towards a joint programme? What needs to be adjusted? (refer to the programme Results Matrix)

- Do results causally link to the intended outputs (immediate outcomes) that link to broader impact (development goal)?

- What are the main strategic components of the programme? How do they contribute and logically link to the planned outcomes? How well do they link to each other?

- Who are the partners of the programme? How strategic are partners in terms of mandate, influence, capacities and commitment?

• How appropriate and useful are the indicators described in the programme document in assessing the programme's progress? Are the targeted indicator values realistic and can they be tracked? If necessary, how should they be modified to be more useful? Are the means of verification for the indicators appropriate?

Effectiveness:

• Is the programme making sufficient progress towards its planned outputs? Will the programme be likely to achieve its planned outputs upon completion?
• How have stakeholders been involved in programme implementation?
• Have the quantity and quality of the outputs produced so far been satisfactory? Do the benefits accrue equally to men and women?
• How has the JP enhanced ownership and contributed to the development of national capacity?
• Are UN agencies working together more effectively?

Efficiency:

• Have resources been used efficiently? Have activities supporting the strategy been cost-effective?
• Have programme funds and activities been delivered in a timely manner? If not, what were the bottlenecks encountered?
• Are there sufficient resources (financial, time, people) allocated to integrate human rights and gender equality in the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the JP?
• Were there any constraints (e.g. political, practical, and bureaucratic) to addressing human rights and gender equality efficiently during implementation? What level of effort was made to overcome these challenges?

Sustainability:

• Did the intervention design include an appropriate sustainability and exit strategy (including promoting national/local ownership, use of national capacity, etc.) to support positive changes in human rights and gender equality after the end of the intervention?
• To what extent were stakeholders involved in the preparation of the sustainability strategy?
• To what degree did partners change their policies or practices to improve human rights and gender equality fulfilment (e.g. new services, greater responsiveness, resource re-allocation, improved quality etc.)?

Coherence:

• To what degree are partners working towards the same results with a common understanding of the inter-relationship between interventions?
• To what extent are approaches such as attention to gender, human rights based approach to programming and results based management understood and pursued in a coherent fashion?

Management and Coordination:

• How well are responsibilities delineated and implemented in a complementary fashion?
• How well have the coordination functions been fulfilled?
• Were management and implementation capacities adequate?
• How effectively does the programme management monitor programme performance and results?

- Have appropriate means of verification for tracking progress, performance and achievement of indicator values been defined?

- Is relevant information and data systematically being collected and collated?

- Is information being regularly analysed to feed into management decisions?

• Has the programme made strategic use of coordination and collaboration with other Joint Programmes to increase its effectiveness and impact?

Accordingly, the following analytical framework is suggested for the final report:

1. Title page (1 page)

2. Table of Contents (1 page)

3. Executive Summary (2 pages)

4. Acronyms (1 page)

5. Background and Programme Description (1-2 pages)

6. Purpose of Evaluation (1 page)

7. Evaluation Methodology (1 page)

8. Findings, Analysis, Conclusions, and Recommendations (no more than 15 pages)

This section's content should be organized around the TOR questions, and include the findings, conclusions and recommendations for each of the subject areas to be evaluated

9. Lessons learned (1-2 pages)

10. Annexes: including the terms of reference, evaluation workplan and any other relevant documents.

Duties and Responsibilities

Main Outputs of the Evaluation:

The evaluators will be expected to deliver:

• Inception report that includes a detailed evaluation design and work plan before commencement of the actual evaluation.
• A draft report for the review by Participating UN Agencies and main partners.
• A mid-term evaluation report incorporating comments made on the draft report.
• The Lead evaluator is responsible to ensure a quality final report is delivered.

The evaluation will follow UN Evaluation Group (UNEG) Norms and Standards, UN Women Evaluation Policy as well as the Ethical Guidelines for evaluations in the UN system. In line with Norms and Standards a management response will be prepared for this evaluation as practical means to enhance the use of evaluation findings and follow-up to the evaluation recommendations. The management response will identify who is responsible, what are the action points and the deadlines.

To further promote learning and the exchange of experiences, a dissemination strategy will be developed for sharing lessons learnt and good practices from this evaluation with UN partners, GoK stakeholders, relevant staff in participating UN-agencies, UN Women and other relevant stakeholders.

Methodology:

The evaluators will collect secondary data from desk review and verify them with primary data from field visits, interviews and workshop. During the process of data gathering the evaluator will compare, validate and triangulate data of different sources (programme staff, programme implementing partners and beneficiaries) and different methodologies (desk review, site visits and interviews). All data collected should be sex-disaggregated and different needs of women and men should be considered. A mixed-methods approach will include qualitative and quantitative methods, and will seek to offer diverse perspectives to the evaluation and promote the inclusion of different groups of stakeholders. Stakeholder inclusion will help to address the issue of biases such as gender bias, distance bias (favoring the more accessible), class bias, power bias etc. it will also help to identify groups that may have been negatively affected by the programme.

Desk Review:

Before conducting field visits, the evaluator will review the programme document, quarterly progress reports, work plans and emergency work plans, mission and workshop reports, baseline surveys, monitoring data, country data and previous evaluation reports etc.

Individual interviews with staff and field interviews:

The evaluator will communicate with the coordinating staff (via e-mails and phone calls) and the field technical specialists and programme staffs that are involved in the management and implementation of the Joint Programme in Kenya.

Focus groups:

Focus groups will be organized according to topics, interests, or characteristics of groups of stakeholders to discuss specific issues or questions.

Field visits:

The discussions and interviews will be complemented with field visits to the actual sites of implementation. Discussion will be held with relevant governmental institutions and organisations involved and/or benefiting from the programme's interventions in those sites in accordance with the evaluator's requests and consistent with the terms of reference. The choice of sites to be visited should have an explicit rationale (differing conditions, random selection, etc.).

Debriefing:

The evaluator will present preliminary findings, conclusions and recommendation to representatives of stakeholders, GoK and UN-agencies in Kampala. The draft report will subsequently be shared for comments before finalization.

Management Arrangements, work plan and time frame:

The evaluation focal person for the Joint Programme on Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment is the Joint Programme Coordinator. The evaluators will thus be able to ask for any support and reports directly to the evaluation focal person of the programme.

The evaluation will be implemented by one international and one local evaluator.

The coordinating agency, UN Women in consultation with the Reference Group will provide the necessary guidance on the process and in reviewing the draft evaluation report.

A reference group will be established to ensure stakeholder engagement throughout the evaluation process. The evaluation reference group will help to:

• Provide a more balanced picture of views and perceptions regarding the progress of the JP.
• Make the evaluation more relevant through influencing not only the way the evaluation process is designed and implemented, but also the possible consequences and utilization of the evaluation.
• Prompt primary users of the evaluation and other stakeholders into action during and after the evaluation.

The evaluation will be done in 20 working days from November 1st, 2011. A detailed work plan specifying each partner's contribution to the evaluation process will be developed at the beginning of the evaluation.

Documents that will be shared with evaluators:

• Vision 2030 and its MTP.
• UNDAF.
• JP GEWE Prodoc.
• Programme work plans.
• Progress reports (and presentations on progress and achievements).
• Semi-annual reports.
• Publications and promotional materials.
• Reports on specific activities.

Evaluation Team:

The evaluation team will be composed of at least 2 consultants, 1 consultant MUST be an international expert and the other a national expert.

This advert is for INTERNATIONAL CONSULTANTS ONLY. The International consultant will be the teamleader.

Competencies

CORE VALUES / GUIDING PRINCIPLES:

• Integrity: Demonstrating consistency in upholding and promoting the values of UN Women in actions and decisions, in line with the UN Code of Conduct.
• Cultural Sensitivity/Valuing diversity: Demonstrating an appreciation of the multicultural nature of the organization and the diversity of its staff. Demonstrating an international outlook, appreciating differences in values and learning from cultural diversity.

Specific Competencies:

• Ability and experience in leading Evaluations.
• Knowledge of issues concerning governance, women's rights and gender equality.
• Specific knowledge in the area of democratic governance, economic empowerment, GBV and/or gender mainstreaming.
• Excellent facilitation and communication skills and the ability to conduct and document.
• Experience with focus group discussions and key informant interviews.
• Ability to deal with multi-stakeholder groups.
• Ability to write focused evaluation reports.
• Wide experience in quantitative and qualitative data collection methods.
• Willingness and ability to travel to the different project's sites in the country.
• Ability to work in a team.
• Ability to manage and supervise the evaluation team and ensure timely submission of quality evaluation reports within deadline.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

• Degree in Social Sciences, Development Studies or other relevant field and with formal research skills.

Experience:

• At least 7 years of advanced experience in conducting evaluations, with post graduate

Languages:

• High proficiency in English is required.
• Knowledge of local language is essential.

Applications should include:

• Cover letter stating why you want to do this work, your capacity and experience that lead you to be able to fulfil the capacities required in the above, available start date.
• Detailed CV (UN Women P11).
• A paper outlining expected approach to the consultancy and teamwork with International Lead Consultant.
• Indication of expected daily consultancy fees.

Consultants will be given workspace within UN Women and will be expected to work on their own laptops.

Note:

In July 2010, the United Nations General Assembly created UN Women, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. The creation of UN Women came about as part of the UN reform agenda, bringing together resources and mandates for greater impact. It merges and builds on the important work of four previously distinct parts of the UN system (DAW, OSAGI, INSTRAW and UNIFEM), which focused exclusively on gender equality and women's empowerment.

All applications must include (as an attachment) the completed UN Women Personal History form (P-11) which can be downloaded from

http://www.unwomen.org/about-us/employment

UNDP is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality and culture. Individuals from minority groups, indigenous groups and persons with disabilities are equally encouraged to apply. All applications will be treated with the strictest confidence.