Terms of Reference

Third Party Monitoring Services for CARE Somalia’s Girls’ Education Challenge (GEC): ADOLESCENT GIRLS’ EDUCATION IN SOMALIA (AGES) PROJECT

SUMMARY
CARE Somalia is seeking to procure the services of a consultant or team of consultants to manage third party monitoring of Adolescent Girls’ Education in Somalia (AGES) funded by United Kingdom’s (UK) Department for International Development (DFID) through its Girls’ Education Challenge (GEC) initiative.

GEC is a global initiative focusing on ensuring expansion of education opportunities for marginalised girls at primary and secondary level, using rigorous monitoring and evaluation practices. AGES has high demands in terms of the quantity and quality of data to be collected, in order to generate robust evidence to be used by multiple stakeholders.

The consultant/s will be contracted to be responsible for the design and execution of quarterly monitoring including the preparation and refinement of tools as required and manage data collection.

2. BACKGROUND TO THE GEC PROGRAMME AND THE PROJECT

A. GEC Programme Background:

DFID leads the UK’s work to end extreme poverty. DFID is tackling the global challenges of our time including poverty and disease, mass migration, insecurity and conflict. DFID’s work is building a safer, healthier, more prosperous world for people in developing countries and in the UK too.

DFID is working to reach the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. Progress on girls’ education is critical to the achievement of these targets. SDGs 4 and 5 specifically relate to education and achieving gender parity. SDG 4 specifically notes ‘inclusive and quality education for all and promote lifelong learning’.

Globally 31 million primary age girls have never been to school[1]. And the majority of these girls come from the poorest and most marginalized communities in the most disadvantaged locations, ethnic groups etc[2]. Over the last 20 years primary enrollments for girls have improved along with boys but completion rates are equally low for both sexes. At the secondary level the differences between boys’ and girls’ participation rates really start to show. In the specific case of Somalia, such disparities are already observed at primary entry level. Significant disparities exist within countries, with the poorest girls from rural areas most severely subject to educational disadvantage – even at the primary level[3].

The Girls’ Education Challenge (GEC) is helping the world’s poorest girls improve their lives through education and supporting better ways of getting girls in school and ensuring they receive a quality of education to transform their future.

Price waterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) and alliance partners have been contracted as the dedicated Fund Manager (FM) and is responsible for the day-to-day operation of the GEC. This includes establishing the recipient tendering process, supporting bidders, sifting and scoring proposals, monitoring Value for Money (VfM) and making project funding recommendations for DFID approval. The FM also manages the relationships with the selected projects and oversees their Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning operations.

Through the GEC, DFID provided £355m between 2012 and 2017 to the FM to disburse to 37 individual projects across 18 countries across sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia to help girl’s education. In 2016 the GEC Transition window has been set up with additional DFID funding to support the original GEC beneficiaries continue their journey through stages of education and further transit to upper grades and improve their learning[4].

CARE Somalia is implementing AGES, one of the GEC-funded projects. AGES’ intervention focuses on providing tailored, sustainable solutions to develop literacy, numeracy and key life skills (financial literacy and knowledge of menstrual health management) for 42,000 of the most marginalized girls in South Somalia, including girls with disabilities.

B. Project Background

Operating in Somalia since 1981, CARE currently works through three main programs: the first, CARE’s rural vulnerable women’s program supports poor rural women and girls in addressing long term underlying causes of poverty and vulnerability, addressing social, economical, cultural and political obstacles to positive change. We help women and girls improve their economic status, access education and support them to play a greater role in local leadership and conflict resolution. Our second program area, the youth program, focuses on job creation and livelihood opportunities for poor youth through e.g. secondary education, vocational training, small business development, and microfinance. Thirdly, our emergency program provides direct humanitarian relief to victims of drought and conflict in Puntland, Mogadishu, and Lower Juba. CARE has its main offices in Hargeisa, Garowe, Mogadishu and Erigavo, and satellite offices in Burao, El Afweyn, Kismayo and Bossaso, with 137 staff. We work with a large number of local partners and maintain excellent relations with local governments.

Led by CARE in partnership with ADRA and 3 local NGOs, AGES will work with schools, communities, individual students, religious leaders and Ministries of Education (MoEs) in Banadir, South-West and Jubaland Administrations to:

Strengthened economic situation of communities

Village Savings and Loans (VSL) for parents and Adolescent girls

Increase availability of flexible, quality learning opportunities tailored to the needs of ultra-marginalised out of school girls:

Accelerated basic education (ABE) including compressed primary content, financial literacy and business management;

Increased access to quality formal education through agreements with education providers and teacher training (reading, numeracy, child protection and gender-equitable practices);

Life skills course for older girls (age 16+), teaching literacy, numeracy, financial literacy, savings and basic business planning;

Access to a mobile learning platform to practice literacy and numeracy skills.

Social norm change movement towards broader life opportunities for adolescent girls and boys:

Religious leaders trained on Islamic principles to support gender equity and education for girls;

Community leaders and Community Education Committees (CECs) sensitized and mobilized to work with parents to identify and support extremely marginalized girls to enroll in learning opportunities and attend classes regularly;

Mothers and mothers-in-law mobilized through village savings and loans associations (VSLAs) and enrollment drives;

Girls trained on leadership skills and menstrual hygiene management, and forming peer support networks at Girls’ Empowerment Forums (GEFs);

Boys mentored through Boys’ Empowerment Fora (BEFs);

Messages reinforced via radio and social media.

Build institutional capacity: Support to strengthen monitoring of education services and to the review of the policy framework for ABE.

Enhanced access to education for girls with disabilities

Increase community awareness of types and severity of disability

Enhance teacher knowledge of disability identification and support

Address financial barriers for girls with disabilities to attend school

3. THIRD PARTY MONITORING PURPOSE AND DESIGN

Monitoring Objective

Assess to what extent the project is being implemented as designed/ intended and identify potential gaps in activity implementation. Monitoring findings will be used to verify program implementation and quality in hard to reach project locations.

Data Collection Domains

There will be two primary data collection methods focused on the hard to reach project locations:

Telephone calls. Designed to reach about 10% of facilitators (n=a total of 8) and 5% of learners (n=a total of 165) on a quarterly basis (during a total of four quarters), from facilities not included in the in-person site visits, assessing:
· Implementation of activities (is the activity being implemented? What methodologies are being used during implementation?);

· Alignment with safeguarding and child protection practices;

· Verify facilitator and student attendance

School spot checks. In about 40% of the hard to reach facilities (n=8) per quarter.
· Conduct spot-checks to identify attendance on day of visit;

· Review records vis a vis attendance to confirm learners enrollment;

· Survey a sample of learners at each location to assess practices;

· Facilitator observations – observe classroom lessons for facilitator behavior and adherence to the curriculum.

Specific data to be collected includes:

a) With Learners:

· Enrollment data vs presence in class (e.g. potential for presence of non-registered learners; number of dropouts)

· Attendance data (spot-checks)

· Experience / observation of any form of verbal and physical abuse

· Teachers’ regular attendance

b) With Head Teachers or CEC Member(s):

Interview with school head teachers to confirm things like rehabilitation, desk distribution, TLM and teacher attendance

c) With teachers:

· Curriculum coverage what do they teach,

· how many days a week do they teach

· Records of formative assessment

· Attendance register/tracking

Data Collection Locations

Data collection will take place in project locations that are inaccessible to project and partner staff due to security policy. The locations where monitoring will be undertaken include:

· South West Zone:

o Walanwayn District with 3 learning facilities, 19 facilitators and 834 learners

o Diinsor District with 2 learning facilities, 18 facilitators and 839 learners

· Jubaland

o Baardheere District with 2 learning facilities, 8 facilitators and 446 learners

· Banaadir

o Danyile District with 2 learning facilities, 5 facilitators and 268 learners

o Kaxda District with 8 learning facilities, 25 facilitators and 919 learners

Sampling

Sampling is expected to be done in two different ways; for facilities to be physically visited and for facilities where data will be collected through phone calls with leaners and facilitators. For the facilities to be physically visited, the expectation is about 8 facilities (40% of the hard to reach facilities) to be sampled while for the phone calls, the expectation is 5% and 10% of the leaners and facilitators respectively from the remaining 13 facilities that have not been sampled for physical visits.

The consultant/s will be responsible for finalizing the design and managing the sampling of the learning facilities, facilitators, and learners for telephone and in-person monitoring. It is expected that there will be four quarterly monitoring exercises, beginning in April 2020.

Ethical protocols

The monitoring must consider the safety of participants and especially children at all stages of the data collection. The selected consultant/s will need to demonstrate how they have considered the protection of children through the different data collection stages, including recruitment and training of enumerators, data collection and data entry/storage.

The selected consultant/s is required to set out their approach to ensuring complete compliance with international good practice with regards to research ethics and protocols particularly with regards to safeguarding children, vulnerable groups (including people with disabilities) and those in fragile and conflict affected states. Consideration should be given to:

· administrative, technical and physical safeguards to protect the confidentiality of those participating;

· physical safeguards for those conducting research;

· data protection and secure maintenance procedures for personal information;

· parental consent concerning data collection from children or collation of data about children;

· age- and ability-appropriate assent processes based on reasonable assumptions about comprehension for the ages of children and the disabilities they intend to involve in the research; and

· age-appropriate participation of children, including in the development of data collection tools.

Risk and risk management

Risk management plan: It is important that the successful bidder has taken all reasonable measures to mitigate any potential risk to the delivery of the required outputs for this monitoring. Therefore, the selected company / consultant once contracted will be required to submit a risk management plan covering:

· the assumptions underpinning the successful completion of the proposals submitted and the anticipated challenges that might be faced;

· estimates of the level of risk for each risk identified;

· proposed contingency plans that the bidder will put in place to mitigate against any occurrence of each of the identified risk;

· specific child protection risks and mitigating strategies, including reference to the child protection policy and procedures that will be in place; and

· health and safety issues that may require significant duty of care precautions.

Professional Skills and Qualifications

Qualifications: the selected consultant/s is required to clearly identify and provide CVs for all those proposed in the team, clearly stating their roles and responsibilities for this monitoring.

The proposed person or team should include the technical expertise and practical experience required to deliver the scope of work and outputs, in particular, with regards to:

· Design: the team should include skills and expertise required to design, plan and conduct electronic data collection in fragile contexts;

· Experience with the implementation of large-scale phone surveys in Somalia;

· Relevant subject matter knowledge and experience: knowledge and experience required on conducting research with children and adolescents, the education sector, disability and gender to ensure that the design and methods are as relevant and meaningful as possible given the aims and objectives of the project and the context in which it is being delivered;

· Data collection management: manage a data collection process from end-to-end;

· Country experience: it is particularly important that the team has the appropriate country knowledge /experience and ability to interpret findings from a contextual perspective, as required to conduct the research;

· Data management and data cleaning. Ability to supervise the collection, entry (if required), cleaning and management of large data sets.

· Safety and ethical considerations: Ensuring the whole process adhere to best practice for research with children including the implementation of child protection policy and procedures to ensure safety of participants.

Day–to–day project management of the monitoring will be the responsibility of Paul Odhiambo, M&E and Knowledge Manager, AGES project/ CARE Somalia.

Expected duration of the assignment

The expected period duration of the assignment is one month during April 2020

Deliverables and Schedule

Expected Tasks

Review the project’s MEL framework and monitoring reports;

Submit an inception report (draft and final), that outlines the monitoring methodology, including data collection tools and detailed work plan outlining all tasks to be completed by each of the members of the team;

Finalization of tools, including back-translation where required;

Enumerator training on data collection tools and their application;

Collect data according to workplan

Validate all datasets and collate data as necessary for analysis;

Deliverables

In reference to the scope of work above, the consultant team led by a quantitative research expert is expected to accomplish and submit the following:

1) An inception report including:

· Monitoring methodology including the sampling methodology

· Draft data collection tools,

· Detailed work plan outlining all tasks to be completed by each of the members of the consultant team for the duration of the baseline.

2) Data collection protocols;

3) Enumerators training plans;

4) Complete clean datasets in Excel

The consultant/s will be expected to identify a Project Director for communication and reporting purposes. At the Inception meeting the Evaluation Team Project Manager will be expected to submit a full contact list of all those involved in the data collection.

Budget

The budget prepared by the consultant/s should cover all the activities outlined above, including design, data collection, cleaning, analysis and reporting. This budget is inclusive of all costs covering team member costs, travel, research costs and any other costs associated with the completion of the work including where required costs for reasonable adjustment. The selected consultant is required to organise and fund their own duty of care arrangements as required.

The consultant/s is required to provide a fully costed proposal in the form of a price schedule that as a minimum should include:

· Sub-total of fees for the delivery of any task or deliverable;

· Sub-total for number of days per partner organisation (as applicable);

· Expenses and overheads broken down by the project cost categories;

· Reasonable adjustment costs; and

· Total costs before and after any taxes that are applicable.

The selected consultant/s are required to provide a payment schedule on the basis of milestone payments for the successful delivery of each deliverable.

Proposals should include the following:

· Technical proposal –approach to the monitoring; work plan with milestones; how meet qualifications.

· Financial proposal

· CVs of all involved persons

Submission Information

· The deadline for submission is 15/03/2020.

· The submission should be emailed to: somconsultant@care.org

· And questions about TOR should be emailed to Paul.Odhiambo@care.org.

[1] United Nations, 2015. The World’s Women 2015: Trends and Statistics. New York: United Nations,

Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Statistics Division. Sales No. E.15.XVII.8.

[2] Idem

[3] Idem

[4] https://www.gov.uk/international-development-funding/girls-education-cha…

How to apply
How to apply

Interested candidates should send in a detailed Technical and Financial Proposal marking the subject line

Third Party Monitoring Services for CARE Somalia’s Girls’ Education Challenge (GEC): ADOLESCENT GIRLS’ EDUCATION IN SOMALIA (AGES) PROJECT“ to the email address somconsultant@care.org on or before 15th March, 2020 16:0 late applicants will not be conside

Country
Somalia
City
Mogadishu
Organization
CARE
Type
Consultancy
Career Category
Information Management
Years of experience
3-4 years
Theme
Education
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