National Consultant to Conduct End Program Evaluation: Promoting the Leadership, Empowerment, Access, and Protection (LEAP) of Women and Girls affected by conflict, severe drought, and forced displacement in Uganda.

Background

I.UN Women Organizational Context

The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women), grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, 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. UN Women provides support to Member States’ efforts and priorities in meeting their gender equality goals and for building effective partnerships with civil society and other relevant actors.

In February 2023, UN Women received funding from the Government of Japan to implement a one-year Leadership Empowerment Access and Protection (LEAP) project that aimed at Strengthening emergency protection, leadership, access to services and empowerment for 6,300 (5,300 women, girls and 1,000 men, and boys) including persons with disabilities) affected by interconnected crisis related to drought and displacement in Uganda.

The project targeted 3250 (2,750 women, girls, youth, and 500 men and boys including) and 100 key actors such as the district Local Government officials, local women organizations, para social workers, para legal, police and members of the judiciary. These were among the most marginalized groups, affected by interconnected crises related to drought and displacement including asylum seekers in Kisoro transit center, new arrivals in Nakivale Settlement in Isingiro district, as well as drought affected women, girls, and youth in Moroto and Kaabong Districts. The project also targeted to support two women centers with ICT equipment to enable access to services for 500 women and girls; while 500 women and youth were to benefit from vocational skills Climate Smart Agriculture and skills in agroforestry; and 750 women and girls were to be provided legal aid and psychosocial support services.  A total of 2 local women’s organisations were to be supported to reach out to 800 women and girls; 100 women and youth provided with literacy, numeracy skills and solar lanterns; and 500 men and boys engaged with training and mentorship in positive masculinities to promote gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls. Additionally, 200 women and girls were to access cash through participation in the cash for work opportunities to enable women access basic needs such as food. The project will also establish and support 30 VSLA groups for women involved in agricultural and nonagricultural livelihoods to enable them access savings and credit to boost their business ventures.

II. Program Overview / Results

The program aimed at achieving the following:

Programme Goal: To Strengthen emergency protection, leadership, access to services and empowerment for 3250: 2750 Women and girls and 500 men and boys including persons with disabilities affected by interconnected crisis related to drought and displacement in Uganda.  

OUTCOME 1: Improved positive coping mechanisms for 1,750 vulnerable refugees, host communities and drought affected’ women and girls and 200 men and boys in Uganda.

Output 1.1: Increased access to integrated skills, services, and infrastructure including ICT services for 500 refugee and drought affected women and women in host communities in Uganda.

Output 1.2: Increased capacity and access to emergency social protection and climate friendly livelihood opportunities for 500 women and 200 men including youth and GBV survivors to mitigate the impacts of drought and displacement.

Output 1.3: Enhanced access to emergency protection services including legal aid and psychosocial support for 750 refugee women and girls, within the Women Empowerment Centers in Uganda.

OUTCOME 2: Strengthen gender-responsive emergency drought and displacement prevention, response, and recovery interventions through the involvement of women leaders and key actors targeting 1,000 women and 300 men.

Output 2.1: Skills to participate and lead in drought and displacement response enhanced for 1,000 refugees and host community members in Uganda.

Output 2.2: 300 men and boys and 100 key actors benefit from initiatives promoting positive gender norms in support of women’s leadership and protection from SGBV.

Duties and Responsibilities

III.Purpose of the Evaluation

The is the main guiding document that sets forth the principles and organizational framework for evaluation planning, conduct and follow-up in UN Women. These principles are aligned with the . The key principles for gender-responsive evaluation at UN Women are: 1) National ownership and leadership; 2) UN system coordination and coherence with regard to gender equality and the empowerment of women; 3) Innovation; 4) Fair power relations and empowerment; 5) Participation and inclusion; 6) Independence and impartiality; 7) Transparency; 8) Quality and credibility; 9) Intentionality and use of evaluation; and 10) Ethics.

The one-year project funded by the Government of Japan whose implementation commenced in March 2023 will come to an end in February 2024. In line with the program requirements and the UN Women evaluation policy, an end of Programme evaluation is to be conducted to assess the performance of the Programme, provide accountability and enhance learning. The purpose of this independent end term evaluation is to assess the project’s achievements against the set objectives, identify and document lessons learnt (including design issues, lessons and best practices that can be up-scaled or replicated), and assess how the program contributed to gender equality and economic empowerment for vulnerable refugees, host communities and drought affected’ women and girls living in Isingiro (Nakivale), Kisoro (Nyakabande TC), Moroto and Kaabong Districts in Uganda.

It is a priority for UN Women that this end line program evaluation will be gender-responsive and will actively support the achievement of gender equality and women’s empowerment, with emphasis on UN Women key areas central to supporting women and girls’ empowerment in humanitarian action: Leadership and participation, Protection and safety, and Economic well-being.

The primary intended users of this evaluation are:

• Relevant staff in target ministries, local government and targeted government institutions, and participating CSOs
• Target beneficiary communities/groups
• Members of community leadership structures
• Relevant staff in participating UN-agencies.
• Staff of implementing partners
• Sector leads in the participating UN-agencies and refugee response coordination.

UN Agencies technical working groups

UNACs

• Development partners

 Primary intended uses of this evaluation are:

1. Information on the program’s effectiveness will be used to inform decision making for the scale up of LEAP;
2. Feedback, participation and accountability to affected communities;
3. Accountability for the development effectiveness of the LEAP program to the donors and other stakeholders;
4. Capacity development and mobilization of national stakeholders to advance gender equality and the empowerment of women. Evaluation will provide evidence on areas that need strengthening in the advancement of GEWE.

II.evaluation criteria and key questions

The objectives of the evaluation are to:

1. Assess the relevance of LEAP III Japan Supplementary Budget (LEAP III JSB) intervention in addressing the needs of refugee and drought affected women and how gender equality principles were integrated in the program.
2. Assess the effectiveness and efficiency of UN Women’s approach for achievement of results, as defined in the logical framework.
3. Identify lessons learned and provide actionable recommendations with respect to the strategy, and overall approach to UN Women’s programming in humanitarian settings.

The evaluation will apply four UN Evaluation Group (UNEG) evaluation criteria (relevance, effectiveness, efficiency and coherence), as well as standards based on Human Rights and Gender Equality.  

The evaluation will seek to answer the following key evaluation questions and sub-questions:

Criterion	Questions
Relevance	Was the Programme design appropriate to address the identified needs of beneficiaries?
	Was the choice of partners most relevant to the situation of refugee women and marginalized groups in the program operational areas?
	Were the choice of interventions most relevant to the situation in the target thematic areas?
	How well did the Programme design take into account learning from previous evaluations / reviews of LEAP?
Effectiveness & Efficiency	To what extent has UN Women achieved planned outputs and contributed to expected outcomes? Were the planned outputs achieved on time and on budget?
	To what extent did the UN Women management structure support efficiency for implementation and delivery of required results (including Risk and Financial Management)?
	What were the main program enabling and hindering factors to achieving planned outcomes and what actions need to be taken to overcome any barriers that limit required progress?
	Did the IPs have access to the necessary skills, knowledge and capacities needed to deliver the program?
Coherence	What is UN Women’s comparative advantage in implementing this type of project compared with other UN entities?
Human Rights and Gender Equality	Has the project been implemented according to human rights and development effectiveness principles: Participation/empowerment; Inclusion/non-discrimination; National accountability / transparency/ gender equality
	How did the project integrate gender equality principles in its design and implementation?

 

Scope of the evaluation

Whereas this project was implemented in both Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, this end-of-project evaluation will cover only project activities implemented in Uganda from March 2023 – February 2024. The evaluation will cover project beneficiaries in Isingiro (Nakivale), Kisoro (Nyakabande TC), Moroto, and Kaabong Districts in Uganda.

The evaluation team is expected to undertake a rapid evaluability assessment in the Inception. This should include the following:

1. An assessment of the relevance, appropriateness and coherence of the implicit or explicit theory of change, strengthening or reconstructing it where necessary through a stakeholder workshop;
2. An assessment of the quality of performance indicators in the program, and the accessibility and adequacy of relevant documents and secondary data;
3. A review of the conduciveness of the context for the evaluation;
4. Ensuring familiarity with accountability and management structures for the evaluation.

 IV.  Evaluation Approach and methodology

The evaluation will be an external, independent and participatory exercise, which should be completed within a timeframe of 30 days spread over a period of 3 months beginning on 1st March 2024.  The final evaluation report will document and analyze the distinct achievements of each programmatic pillar, while also assessing the ways in which efforts contributed to national implementation and program-level work influenced country advocacy and policy.

The evaluation shall provide evidence-based information that is credible, reliable and useful and will be based on gender and human rights principles, as defined in the UN Women Evaluation Policy and adhere to the United Nations norms and standards for evaluation.

The evaluation methodology will employ mixed methods and an innovative approach for capturing results, while ensuring that the views of the most excluded groups of women are represented in the evaluation.  An initial desk review and brief discussions with key stakeholders will support the refinement and finalization of the methodology and analytical framework.  An important component of this evaluation will be the assessment of performance against the results framework to assess whether the program remained on track to achieve expected outcomes.

The evaluation is expected to follow a collaborative and participatory approach ensuring close engagement with Programme beneficiaries, implementing partners, district local government leadership, Humanitarian actors, Office of the Prime minister and other key stakeholders as informed by the stakeholder mapping process.  The analysis of the application of human rights and gender equality principles in LEAP interventions will be an integral part of the evaluation. Integration of human rights and gender equality issues into the evaluation requires adherence to three main principles – inclusion, participation, and fair power relations.

The main recommended phases of the evaluation methodology are:

1. Inception Phase:

• Conduct a rapid evaluability assessment.
• Conduct an initial desk review of available documents, gather and analyse programme data, conceptualize the evaluation approach and develop an evaluation matrix, consult internally on the approach, develop data collection tools, stakeholder mapping, sampling strategy, engage reference group.
• Conduct inception interviews with key stakeholders to refine the evaluation scope and methodology.
• Draft an Inception Report that will be reviewed by the Evaluation Reference Group.
• Refine the evaluation methodology/question matrix based on Evaluation Reference Group’s feedback and integrate proposed changes (as appropriate) into the final evaluation report.

 Data collection Phase

• Collect survey data from beneficiaries and key stakeholders as informed by the stakeholder analysis.

Conduct in-depth interviews with national UN Women staff, partner organizations, donor representatives, and others as necessary.

• Deliver PowerPoint presentation of preliminary field key findings.

 Analysis and Report Writing Phase:

• Review and analyse all available data including staff, partner and stakeholder survey(s) and interpret findings.
• Prepare first draft of the evaluation report and submit to Evaluation Reference Group for comments and possible endorsement.
• Revise report based on the feedback from Evaluation Management Group and debriefing session (as appropriate).
• Compile final report. The report should not be longer than 40 pages in the following format: 

• Title and opening pages
• Executive summary
• Background and purpose of the evaluation
• Programme/object of evaluation description and context
• Evaluation objectives and scope
• Evaluation methodology and limitations
• Findings
• Conclusions
• Recommendations
• Lessons learned
• Annexes (Terms of reference, documents reviewed, list of interviews conducted)

V.MANAGEMENT OF THE EVALUATION

The evaluation and quality assurance will be managed by UN Women Uganda Country Office. The Consultant will be accountable to UN Women on behalf of the team and report to the Uganda CO Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist. The evaluation will be conducted in accordance with UN Women evaluation guidelines and UNEG norms and standards. Upon completion of the evaluation, UN Women has the responsibility to prepare a management response that addresses the findings and recommendations to ensure future learning and inform implementation of their relevant programmes, especially the Women Economic Empowerment and Women’s Leadership programmes.  For quality assurance, the evaluation report will be rated against the

The evaluation management structure will comprise of one coordinating entity and two consultative bodies: The Evaluation Management Group and the Evaluation Reference Group. The Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist will manage the day-to-day aspects of the evaluation. This evaluation will be a participatory process and the evaluation manager (Planning Monitoring & Evaluation – PMER Specialist) will ensure consultations with all the key stakeholders as required.

The Evaluation Management Group will be responsible for management of the evaluation. It will coordinate the selection and recruitment of the evaluation team, manage contractual agreements, budget and personnel involved in the evaluation, support the reference groups, provide all necessary data to the evaluation team, facilitate communication between the evaluation team and the reference group. The Management Group will include UN Women (Programme Specialists, M&E/Communications Officer; Operations Manager, Program Analyst; PMER Specialist; and Regional Evaluation Specialist).

The Evaluation Reference Group will provide direct oversight, safeguard independence, and give technical input over the course of the evaluation. It will provide guidance on evaluation team selection and key deliverables (Inception Report and Evaluation Report) submitted by the evaluation team. It will also support dissemination of the findings and recommendations. The Evaluation Reference Group will include: Deputy Country Representatives, Representatives from IPs, Embassy of Japan & Regional Evaluation Specialist

VI.Time frame and Deliverables

The primary evaluation deliverables are:

Deliverable	Required Timeframe	Payment %
Inception Report: this report will include a detailed evaluation methodology, revised evaluation matrix, proposed data collection tools and analysis approach, and final evaluation work plan (with corresponding timeline).	3 weeks after signing of the contract	10%
Preliminary findings presentation and validation workshop with stakeholders.	8 weeks after signing of the contract	40%
First draft of the Evaluation Report.	12 weeks after signing of the contract
PowerPoint Presentation to Core Reference Group & Broad Reference Group on main Findings/ Recommendations.	14 weeks after signing of the contract	50%
Final Evaluation Report.	16 weeks after signing of the contract

Competencies

VII Competencies

Core Competencies:

• Awareness and Sensitivity Regarding Gender Issues
• Accountability
• Creative Problem Solving
• Effective Communication
• Inclusive Collaboration
• Stakeholder Engagement
• Leading by Example

Functional Competencies

• Ability to create, edit, and present information in clear and appealing formats.
• Ability to manage data, documents, correspondences, and reports.
• Strong interpersonal skills and the ability to communicate and work well with diverse and multicultural supervisors and staff members.
• Demonstrated ability to meet deadlines and work under pressure.
• Consistently approaches work with energy and a positive, constructive attitude.
• Focuses on impact and results for partners and responds positively to feedback.

Required Skills and Experience

VIII.QUALIFICATION AND EXPERIENCE

The selected consultant should fulfill the following requirements:

Education

• A Master’s degree related to any of the social sciences, political science, international relations, economics, gender studies and evaluation.
• Work Experience
• A minimum of 10 years of working experience with proven practical professional experience in designing and conducting major evaluations within humanitarian settings.

• Extensive knowledge and experience in the application of quantitative and qualitative evaluation methods with a strong gender focus. 
• High-level data analysis skills in both quantitative and qualitative data. 
• In-country or regional experience in programming in refugee setting.
• Flexibility and Ability to work with teams in multicultural settings.
• Demonstrable ability to work under pressure to meet challenging deadlines.

IX. Language Requirements

• Fluency in written and spoken English is essential.
• Working knowledge of another official UN language is an asset.

X.Application Procedure

Interested qualified candidates must apply online by latest by 31st January 2024. Candidates should submit one PDF File attachment containing the following:

1. Signed Curriculum vitae with contact details of 03 clients for whom you have rendered preferably similar services.
2. The application package will include; a summary of candidates’ experience against each of the work experience requirements, a technical proposal detailing a clear methodology and work plan, and a financial proposal. The financial proposal must cover all anticipated activities including travel to the field for data collection.
3. UN Women P11 dully filled form with at least three (3) professional references (UN Women Personal History Form (P11), can be downloaded at: ;

Kindly note that the system will only allow one PDF attachment.  Applications without the completed UN Women P-11 form will be treated as incomplete and will not be considered for further assessment.

NB: All raw data files, consent forms and relevant documentation must be returned to UN Women Uganda before release of final payment.

At UN Women, we are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment of mutual respect. UN Women recruits, employs, trains, compensates, and promotes regardless of race, religion, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, ability, national origin, or any other basis covered by appropriate law. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, competence, integrity and organizational need.  

If you need any reasonable accommodation to support your participation in the recruitment and selection process, please include this information in your application.  

UN Women has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UN Women, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority, and discrimination.  All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to UN Women’s policies and procedures and the standards of conduct expected of UN Women personnel and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. (Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.)  

CONFIDENTIALITY AND PROPRIETARY INTERESTS

The Consultant shall not either during the term or after termination of the assignment, disclose any proprietary or confidential information related to the consultancy service without prior written consent. Proprietary interests on all materials and documents prepared by the consultants under the assignment shall become and remain properties of UN Women.