Request For Consultancy Services For The Final Evaluation Of The EU Food Security Grant For Warrap State, Gogrial East County South Sudan

Request For Consultancy Services For The Final Evaluation Of The EU Food Security Grant For Warrap State, Gogrial East County South Sudan

ABOUT US
The organisation is an International NGO supporting humanitarian and development interventions in the region mainly in Sudan, Southern Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Somalia. Its main activities focus on improving vulnerable target community’s food security through animal health, crop production, and cash based interventions, initiating peace and conflict resolution approaches amongst conflict communities and supporting the resettlement of IDPs as well as capacity building.

Purpose of Consultancy
The purpose of this consultancy services is to undertake final project evaluation as required by the grant agreement and within the organisation’s internal project management strategies

Scope of Work is to provide a framework for planning and conducting the Final Evaluation for the organisation’s Gogrial East Food Security Program, funded by the European Union.

The Final Evaluation will use both quantitative and qualitative methods to ascertain progress made, factors which limited achievements of targets as well as recommendations for possible future same interventions. This planned final evaluation will be instrumental in assessing issues such as operational issues like project management, sustainability, institutional strengthening, training, environmental management and effectiveness of the monitoring & evaluation system.

Key stakeholders, including local government authorities, state government line ministries and departments, partners’ organizations and associates as well as implementing partners (Council of Traditional Leaders Authorities of Warrap, River Jur Cooperative society, will have a highly participatory role in planning and implementation of the evaluation as well as input into the final evaluation report. While the final evaluation will focus on the examination of specific evaluation criteria, it will also act as a means to promote and maximize organizational learning from the past one (RRP09) and the near fours of PARIS project implementation.

Introduction and background (PARIS)
The organisation has been implementing the EU food security grant in Gogrial East County of Warrap State under the name Productive Asset Recovery and Institutional project (PARIS since March 27th 2010.

The project is being implemented in a consortium model the organisation being lead agency while world Concern International Development Organization (WC) is the partner. National Associated are Indigenous Forest Resources Awareness and Improvement of Diet (INFRAID) and Sudan Education Agency for Development (SEDA).

Prior to this food security grant, the organisation as lead agency had just finished implementing a four year food security and basic services grant from EU through UNDP in same county. The new grant was designed to built on the outputs and results of the former grant

Brief Description of the program
PARIS is a forty three month (43) EU funded food security grant running from March 27th 2010 to October 2013. The project is being implemented in Gogrial East County of Warrap State of South Sudan

Gogrial East is one of the six counties of Warrap State inhabited by Dinka Rek largely Agro Pastoralist. The county experiences a dry period from October to June while the rest is a wet season

OVERALL PROJECT OBJECTIVE:

To contribute to improving food security in favour of the poorest and the most vulnerable in Gogrial through a set of actions which ensure coherence, complementarities and continuity of community interventions in particular aiming at Millennium Development Goal No.1

Specific Objectives
To protect, maintain and recover productive and social assets vital for food security, to allow economic reintegration and longer term rehabilitation and in particular to strengthen local institutions and authorities

RESULT 1: Improved Opportunities for Market Oriented food Production
Below are key activities associated with this result 1.

• Support improved farming through better tillage and pest control in 3 Payams of Torch North, Pathuon West and Nyang targeting 400 vulnerable farming households
• Promote increased cultivation of pulse crop and tuber production (cowpeas, cassava) targeting 2,000 HHs and progressive farming HHs
• Promotion of quality seed production and preservation at household level (including staple food production) targeting 3,000 HH
• Establish and promote fruit tree nurseries and fruit tree planting at Household level and Schools and public institutions targeting 520 HH and 9 primary schools and 3 major market centres and LGA HQ office
• Promote vegetable gardening at household and school level targeting 300 HH and 9 primary schools
• Support private service delivery in animal health: private village pharmacies and AHAs, CHAWs and infectious disease control and vaccination campaign targeting 10,000 livestock HH in the six Payams of the county (6 private Agro-vet shops, 1 in each of the 6 Payams)
• Support establishment of hygienic animal slaughtering systems. (Target: 8 - slaughter slaps; 1 market office administration office rehabilitated; 1 slaughter house rehabilitated)
• Alternatives in animal production promoted and improved targeting 240 women headed/returnees HH; 90 progressive farmer HH
• Improving fishing techniques improving fish preservation (refrigeration, drying and salting) targeting 360 HH and 60 youths along the River Jur including its marketing
• Use of animals diversified - Animal traction promoted targeting 300 HH through distribution of 300 ox ploughs and training, including 36 donkey carts' use

RESULT 2: Increased opportunities for self employment and income generating activities for marginalized groups
Below are key activities

• Strengthening of Leitnhom Community Bank targeting 800 people
• Formation of Accumulated Savings and Credit Associations (ASCAs) in 6 Payams (Target: 30 groups of 20 members each (600 HH)
• Promote value Addition of crop and animal products and marketing of the same targeting 900 farmers
• Business Development Services (target: 120 Business people including one black smith association)

RESULT 3: Community’s capacities to initiate and participate in development strengthened
Following are key activities to this result area

• Construction and equipping of Payam headquarter in 6 Payams
• Support to basic running of LGA offices support to LGA office running targeting 1 V Sat system at the LGA headquarter, and 1 other at the Luonyaker Sub County office, and also contribute to the running of generators in headquarter and Luonyaker offices
• Support to County Planning Unit in developing county plans and budget, monitoring and reporting processes in re adjusting the county development strategic plan to cover 2012 to 2014 with 3 annual plans
• Organizational Capacity training and development of 2 local NGOS and 4 CBOs and formation of NGO/CBO county umbrella body
• Support CoTAL in peace activities within and in the two counties of East and West targeting 50 women and 50 youth, 30 traditional chiefs, 2 commissioners and 20 county council representatives 3 Community meetings/consultation per year

DESCRIPTION OF KEY PARTNERS:
The Gogrial East Productive Asset Recovery and Institutional Strengthening project takes consortium model with following arrangements the organisation as lead agency responsible for Agriculture, Livestock and LGA support, while World Concern as the international partner responsible for Microfinance sector. The local associates, INFRAID and SEDA share agricultural and livestock activities with close supervision by the organisation. SEDA also supports LGA activities especially peace building.

The following are other key implementing collaborators

• State Ministry of Animal Resources and Fisheries
• State Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry
• Local governance Authorities of Gogrial East.
• Jur River Cooperative
• Gogrial East Youth Association
• Warrap State Council of Traditional Authority Leaders (CoTAL)
• The state government of Warrap state has seconded full time staff to the project in Agriculture 2 extension officers, livestock 1 vet while the local government has seconded two administration officers full time with the project.

Implementation History
The PARIS project was approved in March 27th 2010 and has been operation since then without any interruption except the political happenings affecting whole of south Sudan such as referendum and national elections including the independence. All key project staff are (were) on board

OBJECTIVES OF THE FINAL EVALUATION
The Final Evaluation will address four broad and inter-related objectives:

• Establish progress made in achieving project objectives to gauge the effectiveness of the project.
• Establish the extent to which relevant project activities were being carried out appropriately.
• Establish the appropriateness and relevance of project interventions.
• Determine the extent to which the project is in compliance with requirements agreed with the donor.

These objectives above will be addressed under three specific areas namely:

• Program design, Program implementation, and Quality, outcome and sustainability of specific interventions.
• Partner NGOs the organisation and World Concern field and national office-based staff the organisation project and Technical staff
• Local leadership Council of Traditional Authority Leaders (Warrap).

Evaluation Team Composition and Qualifications
Proposed Evaluation Team Composition

• Composition of the Evaluation Team should mirror the diverse project areas of PARIS.
• The evaluation team should consist of some of the following experiences: - agronomy, livestock production, veterinary work, rural finance as well as local goverance
• It is expected that skills represented by the different roles of the Evaluation Team will be provided through a mixture of local and expatriate personnel.

TEAM MEMBER QUALIFICATIONS

• The Evaluation Team will be led by an external consultant who will report to the PARIS Project Manager and the organisation Program Manager.
• The Evaluation Team Leader will be responsible for planning and organizing the evaluation and should have excellent skills in these areas. Additionally, the team leader should have excellent writing and interpersonal communication skills, as s/he will be responsible for preparing the final evaluation report as well as supervising interaction with personnel, counterparts and community members throughout the review.
• The lead consultant should have at least 10 years of rural development/food security experience as well as at least 5 years evaluation experience with food security programs in Africa preferably in South Sudan.
• Team member(s) should have at least 7 years agricultural development/food security experience.

CRITERIA FOR CONSULTANT SELECTION
Selection of the Team Leader will be based on the following criteria:
Description

• Work experience in developing countries, preferably Africa (at least 10 years)
• Strong evaluation experience with food security programs (at least 7 years)
• Proposed work plan
• Communication/interpersonal skills
• Total proposed consultancy cost

Selection of Evaluation Team members is based on the following criteria:
Description

• Work experience in developing countries, preferably Africa (at least 7 years)
• Work experience with food security programs, preferably in South Sudan

Technical qualifications

• Communication/interpersonal skills

BELOW IS A TENTATIVE TIMELINE FOR COMPLETION OF THE ASSIGNMENT:
Proposed time frame – October 1st to October 30th 2013

Task	Duration	Responsibility
·         Review and study of relevant documentation on project	2 Days	Team Leader
Review of survey instrument Finalize questionnaire, test, and train field workers	4 Days	Team Leader
Field data collection by enumerators	6 Days	Team Leader/the organization/WC
Data input into appropriate database or statistical software	3 Days	Team Leader
Data analysis and write-up of survey report	5 Days	Team Leader
Fieldwork for team of evaluators for qualitative survey	3 days	Team Leader and team of evaluators
Draft evaluation report	2 days	Team Leader
Workshop presentation on evaluation findings evaluators/the organization/WC	2 Days	Team Leader

 

EXPECTED OUTPUTS

• Terms of reference/evaluation methodology to guide the evaluation process
• Draft evaluation report
• An electronic copy of hard data collected with instructions on codes used for data input
• Five copies final evaluation report

HOW TO APPLY:
Interested and qualified candidates should submit Technical and Financial proposals clearly stating their per day rates, Firm & Consultants’ profiles together with all the related standard application documents to: The Head, Human Resource
Please indicate the title of the consultancy on the Subject if sending via email.
Given the urgency of this consultancy, applicants will be assessed on a continuous basis and may be recruited on short notice.