NATIONAL CONSULTANT: MID-TERM EVALUATION OF UN WOMEN STRATEGIC NOTE AND ANNUAL WORK PLAN 2013/2014

Location :	Juba, SOUTH SUDAN
Application Deadline :	17-Sep-13
Additional Category	Democratic Governance
Type of Contract :	Individual Contract
Post Level :	National Consultant
Languages Required :	English
Starting Date : (date when the selected candidate is expected to start)	27-Sep-2013
Duration of Initial Contract :	31 working days
Expected Duration of Assignment :	31 working days
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Background
Organizational Context Grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the UN, UN Women works 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 center of all its efforts, UN women lead and coordinate United Nations System efforts to ensure that commitments on gender equality and gender mainstreaming translate into action throughout the world.  It  provides  strong  and  coherent  leadership  in  support  of  Member  States'  priorities  and  efforts,  building effective partnerships with civil society and other relevant actors. UN Women has established a Programme for 2013/2014 in South Sudan that targets three (3) key results areas: (1); Improved protection and security for women and girls; (2) enhanced women leadership and participation in gender responsive governance; (3) increased access to women’s economic empowerment. Increased women’s access to literacy opportunities is cross cutting and supports all 3 result areas. The programme is aligned to the UN Women Global Strategy, 2012;  the United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF), 2012-2013 which as well is aligned to the South Sudan Development Plan (SSDP), 2011-2013. Pillar 1. Peace and security: This pillar aims at improving protection and security for women and girls through peace building and conflict resolution and gender responsiveness of security sector processes.  The strategy is to enhance the capacity of gender advocates to influence peace recovery, peace building, peace planning and transitional justice processes; to ensure that community women effectively influence peace building processes at the community level. It provides economic support to women involved in Peace Building at the Community Level such as the Village Savings and Loans Associations and the construction of women empowerment centers. Its projects are in four geographical locations namely, Warrap, Western Equatoria, Eastern Equatoria and Lakes; with planned expansion to Jongolei and Western Bahr el Ghazal States. UN Women through this pillar trains security sector personnel on Violence against Women, SGBV, peace building processes and engage women and girls, men and boys in peace building and security and justice sector reform processes. The main partners are the South Sudan National Police, customary court officials, Local authorities and women’s led organizations  Pillar 2. Economic Empowerment:  This Pillar seeks to increase women’s economic assets and productivity through capacity strengthening of key government ministries to develop gender responsive policies, strategies and services that will enhance women's economic and sustainable livelihoods; increased access to functional literacy and numeracy for rural women; increased capacity of women entrepreneurs to access diverse sources of income. Specifically, UN Women has estimated to increase the productivity and incomes of 30,000 women over a period of three years. A project has been initiated with the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry Cooperatives and Rural Development (MoAFCRD) that aims at increasing rural women farmers’ access to services and opportunities that will facilitate their engagement in agribusiness. This project targets 600 farmers in six states, namely Eastern Equatoria, Western Equatoria, Western Bahr el Ghazal, Lakes and Warrap. UN Women has constructed two multi-purpose centers for the empowerment of women and there is an ongoing quick impact functional literacy and numeracy skills for rural women in 5 Payams in 4 states that is reaching out to over 1000 women.  UN Women with support from EMPRETEC Ghana Foundation and in partnership with the South Sudan Women Entrepreneurs Association has provided entrepreneurship training and business development services for 40 women in business or those who aspire to start a business. The methodology includes the provision of training, quarterly business development services that last up to one year and links to financial services. UN Women in collaboration with the Ministry of Gender, Child and Social Welfare (MGC &SW) has initiated an intervention aimed at increasing women’s participation in the governance and reaping benefits from Extractive Industry. The main partners are Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Forestry, Cooperatives and Rural Development, UNESCO, UNICEF and the Ministry of Gender. Pillar 3. Governance and Leadership: This Pillar is promoting gender responsiveness in government policies and institutions; gender budgeting and gender mainstreaming; increasing women’s participation and leadership in governance.  It reinforces the leadership skills and capacities of women legislators, women led groups, CSOs, female lawyers, women in the media and gender equality advocates to influence government to adopt gender responsive planning and budgeting.  Through the governance and leadership pillar, UN Women supports the Ministry of Gender by positioning Gender Advisors within the Ministry are focal point for gender equality promotion. The pillar trains gender advocates to engage in advocacy for gender responsive governance including the Constitutional Review process and the ratification of CEDAW. UN Women also leads, coordinates and promotes accountability for the implementation of gender commitments across the UN system. The scope of coverage is within Juba, the political capital that lodges national government ministries. UN Women is interested in conducting a mid-term evaluation of its programme in South Sudan as outlined in its 2013/2014 Strategic Note and Annual Work Plan.  The purpose of the evaluation is to determine the overall effectiveness, efficiency, impact, continued relevance and sustainability of UN Women programmes in South Sudan. The evaluation findings will be used as basis for changes in Programme design and implementation strategies, up-scaling or replicating of interventions. The evaluation is also expected to generate lessons learned about effeciency and the effectiveness of UN Women support, processes and management. The evaluation will provide forward looking recommendations for effective planning, management, monitoring and evaluation of the country office strategies, support and activities. The lessons identified will also feed into the UN Women future planning in South Sudan and the global strategy for women’s empowerment and gender equality promotion in countries of transition.
Duties and Responsibilities
Under the overall supervision of UN WOMEN Country Representative and in close supervision from the Deputy Country Representative and the UN Women M & E Adviser, and working in close collaboration with the International Evaluation Consultant; the National Consultant will assess the design of the 2013/2014 Strategic Note and the Annual Work Plan including the corresponding Development Results Framework, Management Results Framework and Performance Measurement Framework. The evaluation will analyze the coherence of processes and strategies in place and provide early indications of achievements at the output levels of results. The Evaluators (one International and one National) will be responsible for developing the evaluation methodology and work plan in close consultation with the Evaluation Reference Group (see below) and the Regional Evaluation Team. The questions below outline some indicative key information needs identified during the formulation of this Terms of Reference. The questions will be further refined based on input from the Evaluation Reference Group and the Evaluators during the inception phase of this evaluation. Key questions to be addressed include: Design of the 2013/2014 Strategic Note and Annual Work Plan: Does the UN Women programme have a clear theory of change/logic model? Overall, is the results framework SMART, clear and logical? Are the formulated outputs and outcomes clear and realistic? Are they measurable and do they respond to the needs identified? Do all results have sufficient, clearly defined and measureable indicators? Does baseline information exist, or what are the provisions to generate baseline information? Does the programme have a complete Monitoring, Evaluation and Research (MER) Plan to gather and systematize the information with defined responsibilities, sources and periodicity? Relevance: To what extent the programme results are consistent with beneficiary requirements that is, empowering women and promoting gender equality; how is UN Women positioning it’s within national needs (SSDP) and UNDAF priorities? 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? Efficiency: Have resources been used efficiently? Have the programme activities 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 programme design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation? Effectiveness: Is the programme making sufficient progress towards its planned outputs and outcomes spelled out in the AWP? 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? If not, what were the bottlenecks encountered? Do the benefits accrue equally to men and women? How has the programme enhanced ownership and contributed to the development of national capacity? Sustainability: Does the programme 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 programme? To what extent were stakeholders involved in the preparation of the sustainability strategy? How do stakeholders show ownership of the programmes? To what degree did partners change their policies or practices to improve human rights and gender equality fulfillment (e.g. new services, greater responsiveness, resource re-allocation, improved quality etc.) If not, why not and what are the major obstacles? The Evaluation Team is composed of 2 Consultants, 1 International Expert who will serve as Evaluation Team Leader and 1 National Expert. The Consultants will be engaged under the Special Service Agreement (SSA), for a total number of 36 Consultancy days for the International Consultant and 31 Consultancy days for the National Consultant in the period 1st October until December 9th 2013.  The consultants will work in close consultation with the Evaluation Reference Group which will help to identify the key stakeholders to be interviewed. Stakeholders will include representatives from Government Ministries, implementing partners, donors, community based organizations so that their engagement and involvement in the evaluation process can be arranged in a timely manner. The participation of stakeholders will enhance the credibility and ultimately ownership of the evaluation findings Evaluation Reference Group To ensure coordination and coherent management, an Evaluation Reference Group has been created whose roles and responsibilities are to establish a system to involve the key stakeholders in the evaluation process; serve as consultation body, facilitate feedback and make decisions on the evaluation processes. This reference group will ensure that the evaluation process and outputs are of the required quality, that the principles of participation and consultation, transparency and accountability are upheld at the maximum. The M & E Adviser and the Deputy Country Representative are coordinating these roles and will throughout the process closely liaise with the UN Women Regional Evaluation Specialist based in Nairobi. Key Tasks Desk Review Before conducting field visits, the evaluators will review all relevant documentation, quarterly progress reports, work plans, mission and workshop reports, baseline surveys, monitoring data, country data and previous evaluation reports etc. Individual Interviews and Focus groups Individual interviews and Focus groups will be organized according to themes, topics or characteristics of groups of stakeholders to discuss specific evaluation issues or questions. 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 organizations involved and/or benefiting from the programmes 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 evaluators will present preliminary findings, conclusions and recommendation to the Evaluation Reference Group in order to discuss and validate them. The draft report will subsequently be shared for further comments before finalization. Key Deliverables This evaluation is expected to produce: Credible, impartial and reliable data that will help improve decision making and management; Early indications that planned outputs are contributing to desired results; Improved strategic planning and management, monitoring and evaluation processes; Increased accountability and transparency in promoting gender equality and the empowerment of women through stakeholder participation; Lessons learnt for future planning in the global strategy for women empowerment and gender equality; Accordingly, the following analytical framework is suggested for the final evaluation report; Title page (1 page); Table of Contents (1 page); Acronyms (1 page); Executive Summary (~2 pages); Background and Programme Description (~2-3 pages); Purpose of Evaluation (1 page); Evaluation Objectives and Scope; Evaluation Methodology (1 page); Findings, Analysis, Conclusions, and Recommendations (no more than 20 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; Lessons learned (1-2 pages); Annexes: including the terms of reference, evaluation work-plan and any other relevant documents.
Competencies
Ability to manage and supervise evaluation teams and ensure timely submission of quality evaluation reports; Good knowledge and understanding of the UN system, familiarity with UN Women mandate an asset; Knowledge of issues concerning governance, women's rights and gender equality; Specific knowledge in the subject area [e.g. democratic governance, economic empowerment, GBV and/or gender mainstreaming]; Thorough knowledge of results-based management and strategic planning processes; Excellent facilitation and communication skills; Ability to deal with multi-stakeholder groups; Ability to write focused evaluation reports; Willingness and ability to travel to the different project's sites in the country; High sense of relational skills, including cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability, with a demonstrated ability to work in a multidisciplinary team.
Required Skills and Experience
Education:  Advanced Degree in Social Sciences, Development Studies or other relevant field and with formal research skills. Experience:  At least 5 years’ experience in conducting evaluations; Knowledge of South Sudan is a requirement; Wide experience in quantitative and qualitative data collection methods and –analysis including surveys, focus group discussions, key informant interviews etc. Language Requirements:  Fluency in English, knowledge of Arabic or another South Sudanese local language is a requirement.
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.