Final Evaluation: “Supporting the Implementation of the Maputo Protocol in Angola, the DRC and Tanzania

Context

About Search for Common Ground

Search for Common Ground’s (SFCG) mission is to transform the way individuals, organizations, and governments deal with conflict, away from adversarial approaches and towards collaborative solutions. Headquartered in Washington DC, USA, and Brussels, Belgium with field offices in 35 countries, we design and implement multifaceted programs that aim to transform conflict. We seek to help conflicting parties understand their differences and act on their commonalities. SFCG has been working in Angola since 1996, in the DRC since 2001, and in Tanzania since 2010, working with a wide array of tools to support positive social change in the region.

About the project

Angola, DRC, and Tanzania have committed to respect international regulations on the promotion of women’s rights. Yet practices that reinforce gender norms based on women’s inferiority are still widespread in all three countries. The project “Supporting the implementation of the Maputo Protocol in Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Tanzania” is implemented by Search for Common Ground (SFCG) with the overall goal to support the implementation of the Maputo Protocol in Angola, DRC and Tanzania.

With particular attention to the provisions of the Protocol on women’s access to justice and equality before the law, the project has two specific objectives:

To enhance the capacity of women’s rights institutions to address gaps in the implementation of the Maputo Protocol;
To transform attitudes in target communities to support gender equality and women’s rights, as enshrined in the Maputo Protocol

Working with an array of male and female stakeholders, the project has four expected results:

(R 1.1)Partner organizations strengthen their capacities in key self-identified areas;
(R 1.2)Partners are able to work effectively in target communities to support women’s rights;
(R 2.1)Partners and target community groups can work together on advocacy strategies to promote women’s rights;
(R 2.2)The broader population has greater awareness of the value of supporting women’s rights and the tools available;

Activities adopt an inclusive, bottom-up and top-down approach, recognizing the need for both women and men, and State and non-State actors, to be involved for long-term change. One set of activities focuses on enhancing the understanding by key stakeholders (our national partners, community women’s groups and civil society organizations, law practitioners, security agents, community and religious leaders) of key principles in women’s equality, particularly with respect to justice. These activities involve targeted capacity-building, as well as dialogue forums between stakeholders and innovation grants for advocacy work on concrete access to justice and equality changes. Another set of activities focuses on transforming mass attitudes towards gender, in favor of more egalitarian views, through sensitization activity grants and our diverse range of media tools, including radio, television and comic books. A regional conference will also serve as a platform for experience-sharing and strategic analysis on ways forward.

Rather than pre-defining capacity needs, the project adopts an innovative participatory approach that puts national partners and stakeholders at the front and center of decisions about priority action. The partners are actively engaged in defining the support that the project can provide to strengthen their capacity to act in the field of women’s rights and to extend this support down to actors in the target communities. Since gender equality is as much about cultural attitudes as it is about institutions, it is important that contextually appropriate strategies are adopted. Whereas attempts to promote gender equality are often perceived as being forced on societies against their will, this project instead gives voice to national and local stakeholders, to encourage greater ownership among both men and women of the fight for social justice.

2. Objectives of the evaluation

Objectives of the evaluation

The Maputo Protocol project ends on August 31st, 2015. SFCG would like to conduct the project’s final evaluation during the month of August, with the aim to measure the change brought about by the project among its target groups and beneficiaries. This final evaluation will be led by an external consultant (individual or team), to allow a comparative analysis of results achieved in all three countries targeted by the project. The external consultant will benefit from SFCG teams and partners’ support in the three countries. SFCG reserves the right to approve the final methodology before data collection begins.

The global objective of this final evaluation is to capture the change brought about by the project with regard to civil society and government support to the implementation of the Maputo Protocol, comparing with the baseline studies conducted in each of the three countries. More specifically, the final evaluation has three specific objectives:

Measure the state of the project’s indicators after implementation of the activities;
Analyze the following evaluation criteria: effectiveness, relevance and sustainability;
Extract lessons learned and recommendations from this experience to inform future programming for supporting women’s rights and gender equality in Africa.

The results of this final evaluation are deemed to inform all actors working in the area of women’s rights and gender equality in the three implementation countries, and in other African countries that have ratified the Maputo Protocol. This includes: key project partners, women’s rights organizations, government representatives in charge of gender issues at the national level, as well as international donors including the US Department of State, which funds this project and its final evaluation. The findings of this final evaluation will be shared with the US Department of State and will be published on SFCG’s website to allow a larger dissemination and utilization.

Evaluation questions

The evaluation questions will be developed by the external consultant on the basis of questions designed at the baseline stage of the project, and will specifically seek to identify what approaches/activities have brought good results, and what has been less efficient, relevant or sustainable – comparing experiences in the three implementation countries.

General evaluation questions could seek to measure if:

Effectiveness:

How did the project strengthen main civil society partners’ organizational structures and visibility, and/or enabled them to innovate in their activities to support the implementation of the Maputo Protocol and related national laws?
How did the project create effective and sustainable networking opportunities for civil society organizations promoting women’s rights in each country?
How did the project reach its expected results in each of the three targeted countries?

Relevance:

How did the project enable CSOs in each country to identify gaps in the implementation of the Maputo Protocol and related national laws, and to conduct relevant activities to fill-in those gaps?
Do participants believe that the knowledge and networking opportunities gained through participation in the program strengthen the work they do outside of the implementation of Maputo Protocol itself? If so, how? If not, why not?

Sustainability:

How did the project allow for greater collaboration and the creation of synergies between different CSOs and other actors active in promoting respect for women’s rights and the implementation of the Maputo Protocol within each country?
The project enabled transforming target beneficiaries’ attitudes towards an increased support of women’s rights.

Methodology

The evaluation methodology, covering all three implementation countries, will be proposed by the external consultant, and finalized with the SFCG’s support. We are open to different evaluation approaches and research methodologies (such as outcome harvesting).

On the basis of the methodology and tools developed for the project’s baseline study, and with SFCG support, the external consultant will be responsible to develop the methodology and tools for the final evaluation, specifying:

The approach, including: 1) qualitative methods used across all three countries, and 2) small-scale quantitative methods targeting beneficiaries only;
The data collection tools, including: an interview guide, a focus group discussion guide, and a questionnaire for small-scale surveys;
The data collection sites, including: at least 2 sites per country (one urban, one rural);
The type and number of targeted participants, taking into consideration that: 1) at least 25 CSOs have been engaged in the project, and 2) at least 1500 beneficiaries have been engaged through the multi-media activities of the project;
The methodology to select participants, including for key informant interviews.

Deliverables

SFCG expects the following deliverables from the external consultant:

An evaluation plan detailing a proposed methodology, calendar and written evaluation tools for a final evaluation in three countries;
Training of enumerators in each country;
Supervision and active participation of the consultant in data collection in the three countries;
Oversight of the data coding process;
Analysis of the data collected in five countries and production of a draft evaluation report in English, for review by SFCG staff and other stakeholders;
A Final Report in English (30 pages max in length, excluding appendices) that consists of :
Executive summary of key findings and recommendations (in English and French)
Table of contents
Objectives, methodology and limitations of the study
Research findings, analysis, and conclusions with associated data presented (should be structured around the main objectives/evaluation criteria)
Conclusions and recommendations for future action
Appendices, which include detailed research instruments, list of interviewees, terms of references and evaluator(s) brief biography
Submission of the data bases to SFCG

Logistical Support

SFCG will provide logistical support for the data collection (vehicles, fuel, and drivers) on the data collection sites identified in the three implementation countries.

In addition, SFCG will share the following elements with the external consultant:

Background materials including the project proposal and logframe, the M&E plan, quarterly reports, and other materials as requested by the external consultant;
The methodology, tools and report of the baseline study conducted in the five implementation countries;
Other quantitative and qualitative data collected by SFCG’s staff in the five implementation countries during the project.

Timeframe

The evaluation should be conducted in July and August 2015. For more detail about the calendar expectations, please see below:

Signature of contract with the consultant: 15 July 2015
Development of the methodology and tools by the consultant: 31 July 2015
Training of enumerators and data collection in three countries: 1-15 August 2015
Data entry: 15-18 August 2015
First draft of the evaluation report submitted by the consultant to SFCG: 25 August 2015
SFCG shares its comments on the first draft with the consultant: 27 August 2015
Final evaluation report submitted by the consultant to SFCG: 31 August 2015

Requirements of consultant

The following skills and experience are expected by SFCG for our evaluator for this project:

Proficiency in English and French (written and spoken), working knowledge of Swahili and/or Portuguese is highly desirable;
More than 5 years of experience in project evaluation or the equivalent in DM&E expertise, including collecting data in interviews, surveys and focus groups;
Experience working with international organizations;
Experience conducting quantitative surveys and analysis;
Understanding of and experience working on women’s rights’ related topics;
Evaluation methods and data collection skills;
Ability to be flexible with time and work schedule for travel across the three implementation countries in August 2015.

In addition, the consultant is required to respect the following Ethical Principles[1]:

Comprehensive and systematic inquiry: Consultant should make the most of the existing information and full range of stakeholders available at the time of the review. Consultant should conduct systematic, data-based inquiries. He or she should communicate his or her methods and approaches accurately and in sufficient detail to allow others to understand, interpret and critique his or her work. He or she should make clear the limitations of the review and its results.
Competence: Consultant should possess the abilities and skills and experience appropriate to undertake the tasks proposed and should practice within the limits of his or her professional training and competence.
Honesty and integrity: Consultant should be transparent with the contractor/constituent about: any conflict of interest, any change made in the negotiated project plan and the reasons why those changes were made, any risk that certain procedures or activities produce misleading review information.
Respect for people: Consultant respect the security, dignity and self-worth of respondents, program participants. Consultant has the responsibility to be sensitive to and respect differences amongst participants in culture, religion, gender, disability, age and ethnicity.

In addition, the consultant will respect SFCG’s evaluations standards, to be found in SFCG’s evaluation guidelines:http://www.sfcg.org/programmes/ilt/dme_guidelines.html

[1] Adapted from the American Evaluation Association Guiding Principles for Evaluators, July 2004

HOW TO APPLY:

To apply, interested candidates (individuals or teams) are requested to submit the following documents:

Curriculum vitae;
Short biography/ies of the candidate(s);
A technical proposal proposing a methodology for the evaluation;
A financial proposal for the completion of the aforementioned deliverables;
A copy of one evaluation conducted by the candidate(s) in English.

Applications must be submitted by email before 25 June 2015 to gsolanet@sfcg.org, withalemon@sfcg.org in copy, indicating the following email subject title “Consultancy Final Evaluation Maputo Protocol”.

Candidates will be evaluated by SFCG based on the following selection criteria:

Technical proposal;
Financial proposal;
Experience and expertise of the consultant in DME and the project’s thematic; Fluency in English and French (and other preferred languages).

Kazibongo