Background

In order to meet immediate food security needs of drought affected households in Awdal, Bari, Nugaal and Hiiraan regions, to prevent further loss of productive assets and to mitigate the need for households (HHs) to engage in negative coping strategies, SC will support 13,465HHs, reaching approximately 80,790 unique beneficiaries with unconditional cash and cash-for-work/cash-for-trainings. All the targeted populations fall within the IPC 3 or 4 phases. In this cost modification, SC will reach an additional 18,638 HHs, reaching approximately 111,828 unique beneficiaries. All of these beneficiaries will fall within IPC 2 and worse phases. In the second re-targeting phase (elaborated under the selection and targeting section), if the situation gets worse, SC will then prioritize IPC 3 and worse populations.

The project objective is to improve HH food security through increased access to food, ultimately increasing HH dietary diversity as well as reduce the use of negative coping strategies. Timeliness is an important factor, given the immediacy of the need, and the mobile money cash transfer modality allows for assistance to be provided quickly and efficiently. This project also aligns with SC’s broader drought response strategy for food security to ensure that children and their families have access to food in sufficient quality and quantity to meet daily basic needs. SC will ensure a gender sensitive approach so that both men and women have access to humanitarian aid and that socio-cultural barriers limiting access to services are considered. An open door policy, accountability mechanism and gender-balanced field teams will ensure easy access by both genders. The complementary activities aim to support households to improve food security and livelihood opportunities for increased resilience.

2. Purpose

The purpose of the final evaluation are to measure the extent to which the program improved key food security indicators, to identify and document Save the Children Somalia’s successes and lessons learned, and to develop recommendations for similar programs in the future. The findings are intended to be used by Save the Children Somalia, other Save the Children country offices, and donors to improve planning, designing, and implementation of food security programming.

2a. Specific Objectives

The evaluation objectives included the following;

ü Evaluate to what extent the response has fulfilled its objectives and the technical strength of the program.

ü Evaluate the accountability of the response to the affected population.

ü Asses Relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, sustainability and impact criteria will be used; and also the, and protection of the intervention

ü To document lessons learnt for future programming and impact/case studies

ü Recommend improvements for the continuation of the response or recovery.

3. Evaluation criteria

Following evaluation questions should be at least included in the evaluation criteria. This evaluation criteria is based on OECD DAC.

a) Relevance

1. To what extent are the objectives of the FFP programme are valid for country programme and target community?
2. Are the activities and outputs of the programme consistent with the overall goal and the attainment of its objectives?
3. Are the activities and outputs of the programme consistent with the intended impacts and effects of its Strategy?
4. Was the design of the project is most appropriate and relevant to promote the its strategy;

b) Effectiveness

1. To what extent were the project objectives demonstrate progress on Core FFP indicators?
2. To what extent project achieved planned objectives and results?
3. What were the major underlying factors (internal and external) influencing the achievement or non-achievement of the results within the one years of project implementation?
4. To what extent technical input provided to the project team in leading the implementation of plans and proposed activities of the FFP Programme? **

c) Efficiency

1. Assess the activities are cost-efficient within the programmes supported by project?
2. Does the Project offered better value for money within the rural and urban context in terms of its impact?
3. Identify the cost factors spent to deliver FFP interventions in the urban and rural community and identify the reasons behind budget underspent

d) Impact

1. What are the key short term and long term changes produced by project, positive or negative and what are the key factors behind these changes?
2. What real difference has the FFP project activities made for the direct, and indirect stakeholders of promoting food security situation?

e) Sustainability

1. To what extent did the benefits of the projects continue after the fund support is ceased?
2. What were the major factors which influenced the achievement or non-achievement of sustainability of the project?

g) Coordination

1. How have the FFP project activities been coordinated within different stakeholders to achieve overall objective?

h) Scalability/Replicability

1. Is there any likely ability of the project or its components to be scaled or replicated in other programme areas?
2. Who are the main actors in the scale-up/replication of the approach in other urban and rural locations and how has the project engaged with them to date?

4.1 Methodology

The methodology for the study should include quantitative and qualitative methods.

The quantitative component must align with the methodology used for the final evaluation study. The final evaluation study will be conducted using a two-stage design with systematic selection of participants, and the final sample size was 749 households. These are the same households interviewed for the baseline assessment; Save the Children will provide the consultant with the list of households and their location, and baseline report and other relevant documents. The data collection tool from the baseline study must be used. The consultant must conduct a test of difference for all key indicators (i.e. FCS, HHS, rCSI, GAM, etc.) to detect change(s). The full indicator list is included as Annex 3.

Indicators to be evaluated during end line.

1. The analysis should address percentage changes for the following indicators between baseline and end line

§ Prevalence of households with moderate or severe Household Hunger Scale (HHS) score

§ Percentage of households with acceptable Food Consumption Score (FCS)Percentage of households with borderline Food Consumption Score (FCS)Percentage of households with poor Food Consumption Score (FCS)

§ Prevalence of global acute malnutrition (GAM) in beneficiary households

§ Percentage of households that can identify at least three promoted IYCF behaviours

§ Average Reduced Coping Strategies Index (rCSI) Score*

1. Cross sectional analysis for the beneficiaries at the end line for the following indicators

§ Percentage of households that report the cash transfer allows them to meet their basic food needs.

§ Number of months of household were food self-sufficiency as a result of improved agricultural production programming

1. Project effect on children nutritional outcomes

§ Effect of cash programming on the nutritional status of children:

· What are the effect of the cash transfers both Unconditional and conditional cash and on child nutrition.

ü To what extend the cash transfer both Unconditional cash and conditional cash have underlying determinants on child nutrition?

· The cash transfer and child nutrition outcomes

ü How CTs increase resources for food, health and care and how cash transfer programming have an impact on children’s dietary intake and health status?

· Heterogeneity of impact of cash transfer programing on child nutrition

ü What are the factors that may explain some of the heterogeneous impact of CT programmes on child nutrition?

The report should include tables with the following information for each indicator:

Indicator

Baseline value

End line value

test-statistics for difference

P-Value

FCS

rCSI

HHS

GAM

Etc.

The qualitative component should include focus group discussion and key informant interviews with beneficiaries and Save the Children Somalia staff. The consultant should ensure the qualitative sampling approach includes men and women of all ages. The consultant will be expected to propose a detailed methodology as part of the application.

4.2. REFERENCE MATERIAL

• FFP Baseline Report 2020
• FFP Technical Proposal 2019/2020
• Monitoring and Evaluation Plan for year 2020
• Quarter reports 2019/2020
• FSNAU Somalia 2020 update

· Intellectual Property

Save the Children will retain the rights, title, and interest to all data collected and reports produced through this research. Any work product resulting from this research must credit Save the Children, any other participating partners, and USAID.

· Ethical Guidelines

Every member of the research team must adhere to Save the Children’s ethical guidelines and child safeguarding policy. The research protocol, data collection tools, and informed consent language must be submitted to Save the Children’s Ethics Review Committee (ERC) for approval before data collection begins. Approval by the ERC can take up to 7 working days, so the contractor should build this into their timeline.