An opening position for consultant

December 6, 2017 Regional and International

We are searching a consultant for the Baseline Assessments of the Regional Project: “Men and Boys as Partners in Promoting Gender Equality and the Prevention of Youth Extremism and Violence in the Balkans”.

  • Terms of Reference for the Baseline Assessments of the Regional Project:
    Men and Boys as Partners in Promoting Gender Equality and the Prevention of Youth Extremism and Violence in the Balkans”
  • ADC Grant Number:
    8305-00/2017
  • Project Duration:
    01stof October 2017 -30th of September 2020
  • Deadline for application:
    December 15th, 2017, 4 pm, local time

About CARE in the Balkans

CARE’s mission in the region is to contribute to post-war recovery and the socio-economic development of Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, Kosovo and Montenegro. CARE in the Balkans consists of Offices in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), in Belgrade, Serbia and Pristina, Kosovo.

CARE’s work in the Balkans started in 1992, when it provided humanitarian support to people affected by war. In the late 90-ties CARE shifted its focus in the region from humanitarian post-war assistance and rehabilitation to socio-economic development engaging in interventions directed at conflict prevention and peace-building, sustainable livelihoods, gender equality and the prevention of gender-based violence.
CARE in the Balkans places the quality of its program at the center of its business and its mission and has developed encompasses two main program directions: Gender Equality and Social and Economic Inclusion. The goal of the Social and Economic Inclusion Program is to strengthen capacities and create opportunities for marginalized, socially excluded and poor to integrate into society and access rights. CARE’s Gender Equality Program aims to empower women and girls vulnerable to violence, discrimination and poverty, to reach better life opportunities and social justice. CARE’s engagement and contribution lies in strengthening sustainability of key regional, national and/ or local civil society organizations and networks promoting gender equality and diversity, in the context of social inclusion and non-violence.

Background

The Men and Boys as Partners in Promoting Gender Equality and prevention of Youth Extremism and Violence in the strong>or Young Men Initiative II (YMI II) project builds upon CARE´s comprehensive and programmatic effort to fight interpersonal and gender-based violence (GBV) as well as to improve gender equality in the region and address preventative issues related to youth extremism and violence.
The project objective is to enable positive and peaceful societies for young people in Serbia, Kosovo, Herzegovina, that support gender equality and decrease interpersonal violence and its extremism.
The project’s specific objective is to improve Youth NGOs and government capacities to integrate Program Educational Curriculum in the current educational and youth policy strategies and strengthen governmental and civil society efforts related to the inclusion of youth vulnerable to extremism.
This project aims at scaling up and mainstreaming earlier achievements related to the implementation of the program, or short Program Y, via targeted advocacy and a close cooperation with relevant stakeholder through the support of movement / coalition building through the development of new alliances that engage parents and citizens in supporting gender equality focused life skills education program. One of the main results of the project is to develop educational tools for scaling up such activities as online education and working with universities in the training of new educators. To enhance this process, CARE will scale up the Program Y in selected secondary vocational schools whereby the schools take the lead in the implementation with the support from CARE’s local partners and will identify allies among teachers, who will act as trainers of trainers (ToT) and youth engaged as peer educators. In addition, a new comprehensive model, Program Y plus will be piloted working with a more select group of youth vulnerable to violence and extremism. This model seeks to increase community connections and address the multiple layers of exclusion often leading to extremism. CARE´s local partner organizations are increasingly recognized as key players by the public stakeholders in the field of men engagement, youth work and gender equality. Supported by the project, the partners will launch campaigns targeting youth and selected communities, around hate speech and promoting the positive role of all community members in addressing extremism and violence. The project will mainly build on the use of social media, but also involve popular media and the arts to further messaging and reaching vulnerable groups. The project will continue to support the efforts of CARE´s partners to become national resource centers in regards to gender equality, youth work and violence prevention.
The main expected outputs are the following:

Output 1: Life Skills program (Program Y) scaled up in accredited countries with the Ministries of Education and supported in its promotion and capacity building for use in secondary schools.

Output 2: In selected communities, a Program Youth “Plus model” is developed, piloted and tested to address issues of vulnerability to violence and extremism amongst selected youth.

Output 3: In targeted countries, social movements activated and/or supported to engage/encourage citizens; including parents, youth and a diverse civil society, with the focus on encouraging governments to actively promote/address gender equality, life skills and health education in schools.

Output 4: Social norms campaign developed for targeted audience promoting peaceful masculinities, gender equality and addressing hate speech and intolerance.

Output 5 (OAK): Technical assistance, training and the promotion of tools and best practice related to work with youth, especially young men on gender equality, interpersonal violence and positive youth development developed and disseminated in the Balkans, Eastern Europe and globally. 

The YMI II project will be implemented in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Serbia and will target youth, especially young men vulnerable to violence and anti-social behaviors and strengthen key skills, knowledge, attitudes that support improved behaviors around gender-equitable norms and non-violence. In total 56.800 people will be directly reached through the project: 150 teachers, 5000 students, 150 university students, 50.200 youth, 1100 parents/citizens, 100 community members and 100 movement leaders.  (Indirectly more than 68.000 people).

Purpose of the Baseline Assessment

The Baseline Assessment will be done complementary to the projects contributing to the same objective, namely for the Young Men Initiative II, both finance by ADC and OAK.  The Baseline Assessment will be carried out to contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the overall project progress as well as the change in knowledge, attitudes and behavior related to gender based violence, gender equity, healthy life styles and youth extremism amongst young men and young women, teachers, parents, pedagogy students from Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania and Kosovo participating in the program. CARE intends to assess the knowledge level, attitudes, and behaviors of the above mentioned target groups by conducting self-administered surveys prior to the interventions, so that a comparison and assessment of the project purpose can be made in the endline assessment which will be part of the Final Project Evaluation. The assessment contributes thus to the accountability towards our main stakeholders (beneficiaries, donor, wider public) as well as to learning that shall inform future programming.

In addition, a segment within the baseline will be focusing explicitly on the relevant indicators set for this project; baseline and endline data (of YMI I) and analysis will be used to measure the project results, objective(s) and impacts.

Objectives of the Baseline Assessment

The overall objective of the Baseline Assessment is to describe the situation at the project start in order to be able for monitoring project progress along the way as well as determine the level of successful implementation during the Project Final Evaluation results.
The specific objectives are twofold – project management and research related:

  1. Conducting the situation analysis and project baseline assessment per each result and indicator of the project Logframe following the OECD/DAC requirements. These data will be used for the development of baseline indicators and monitoring tools.
  1. Conducting a Baseline Assessment in order to measure the change in attitudes, knowledge and behavior of main beneficiaries group young men and young women but also teachers, parents and Pedagogy students from Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania and Kosovo related to gender-based violence, gender equality, healthy lifestyles, and youth extremism.

Subject and focus (scope)

The Baseline Assessment will be conducted by CARE’S Regional Gender Equality Program Advisor and an external of tasks and responsibilities:

The CARE Regional Gender Equality Program Advisors Responsibilities:

The CARE Regional Gender Equality Program Advisor will conduct the Project Baseline, implementing a situation analysis countries related to the Project Impact and Project Goal indicators. She will develop the desktop study including:

  1. Baseline data collection related to the baseline indicators development per the project Logframe and development of relevant monitoring tools
  2. Reviewing national data and related documents (including relevant strategies and action plans), statistic reports, OECD Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI) for each of the targeted countries

She will also support the partner organizations in the development and conducting of a research study related to setting the criteria for the selection of the communities and target groups where the Program Y Plus will be piloted.

The Consultant’s Responsibilities:

The Consultant (or a team of an evaluator and a researcher) will be responsible for the following aspects while span>

  1. Development of Guidelines for baseline assessment implementation and Action plan for the process of Baseline Assessment;
  2. Developing tools of quantitative and qualitative survey for secondary school students, teachers, parents, students of pedagogical faculties, and for youth at risk (out of school youth);
  3. Supervising Baseline Assessment process in all four countries (Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Albania);
  4. Testing the tools in the field and modifying them if necessary;
  5. Coding questionnaires and data entering in SPSS or other relevant statistical programs, data mining and analyzing;
  6. Developing the Baseline Assessment report in English.

Baseline Assessment approach and methods

The first phase would be conducting the desktop research of the situation analysis in all 4 countries related to the Goal indicators. The desktop study should include:

  1. Review of the Project logical framework and development of the baseline indicators as well as a monitoring system development
  2. Reviewing national data and related documents (including relevant strategies and action plans), statistic reports, OECD Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI) for each of the targeted countries

The second phase is developing qualitative and quantitative survey tools for the following target groups:

  1. High school students – 1,000 – 1,500 young men and young women 15- 17 years old. Most schools draw their students from the surrounding community, which is largely homogenous in terms of the ethnic or religious identity. However, across the four countries and within some locations, CARE does expect that there will be a variety of ethnic and religious backgrounds represented.

A method for research with high school students: – In order to obtain a detailed input from the target group representatives, a self-administered questionnaire will be used for the baseline and endline research, in all intervention sites. The questionnaire was developed already in earlier phases of the YMI project; it will be reviewed now and updated accordingly. The survey will include sections on background characteristics (e.g. age, ethnicity, parents’ education levels, etc.), and attitudes and behaviors related to gender norms (e.g., household roles), sexual behaviors (e.g., decision-making on contraceptive use or timing of sexual activity), health seeking behaviors (e.g., seeking treatment of STIs) and interpersonal and group violence (peer / bullying, gender based and homophobic violence).

  1. Youth at risk – 200 young people from the selected areas who will be directly involved in testing and piloting the workshops and campaign activities envisaged within Program Y Plus through both qualitative and quantitative tools.
  1. High school teachers – The teachers are directly involved in the project which works in high schools in the target countries and they will participate at the Training for Teachers.

Method for research:

  1. pre and posttests (self-administrative questionnaires) that would be used prior and after the Training for Teachers.
  2. M&E tool for teachers who will implement the workshops independently with technical support of the partner organizations in scaling up the process. This tool has to be short and simple, developed in a user-friendly way so that teachers across the region are able to use it and record the most relevant quantitative and qualitative data. The tool will be part of the Program Y educational toolkit.
  1. Pedagogy university students – The Pedagogy students will be involved in the workshops, through simple pre and posttests (self-administrative questionnaire).
  1. Parents – The parents of youth at risk will be assessed through qualitative tool

The Consultant shall determine the sample size of the other target groups subject to the (high school teachers, pedagogy students, youth at risk, parents) in agreement with CARE.
The third phase would be conducting a field research – baseline assessment in cooperation with the local partner collectors.
After this phase, the CARE Regional Gender Equality Program Advisor and the Consultant will produce a high-quality with paying careful attention to the OECD-DAC Evaluation Criteria and providing presentation of the results by using ethnicity/sex-disaggregated data.

Indicative workload

Description of the activities Number of Days Responsible person
Desktop Study for Project Baseline 10 Days CARE Regional Gender Equality Program Advisor
Developing Guidelines for Baseline assessment implementation and Action Plan 2 Days Consultant
Developing tools for quantitative and qualitative research 3 Days Consultant
Action Planning (skype call meeting with partner organization) 1 Day Consultant
Field Research – Baseline Assessment 4 Days Consultant
Coding questionnaires and data entering 3 Days Consultant
Baseline Assessment Report 7 Days Consultant
Project Baseline Assessment Report 4 Days CARE Regional Gender Equality Program Advisor
TOTAL 34 Days

Timetable

Timetable Output Comments Responsible person
December 11 – 23 2017 (10 days) Desktop Study for Project Baseline Review of Project logical framework and set indicators;
Reviewing national data and related documents (including relevant strategies and action plans), statistic reports, OECD Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI) for each of the targeted countries
CARE Regional Gender Equality Program Advisor
January 11 – 12 2018 (2 days) Developing Guidelines and Action Plan for Baseline assessment The Consultant will develop Guidelines and an Action plan for the Baseline Assessment that will be shared with CARE and the partner organizations Consultant
January 14 – 15 2018 (2 days) Developing tools for qualitative and quantitative research The existing questionnaire used in the previous CARE researches will be reviewed by the Consultant and CARE staff and adapted based on the specific project goals and intended outcomes. The new tools regarding youth at risk and parents will be developed. Consultant
January 17, 2018
(1 day)

Action Plan for Baseline assessment implementation

The Consultant will present the process of the baseline assessment and provide inputs and recommendations on the methodology as well as the developed research tools for the partner organizations and deliver the baseline plan to CARE by January 15, 2018. Consultant
January23 – 26 2018 (4 days) Field Research The Consultant will organize a quantitative research in the field with the support of the partner organizations. Consultant
February 1 – 3 2018 (3 days) Coding questionnaires and data entering The consultant will do questionnaires coding, data entering and data mining. Consultant
February 5 – 10 2018 (6 days) + 1 day for finalization of the report after CARE comments Reporting process The consultant will submit to CARE a draft Baseline report by February 11 ,2018. After CARE’s & ADA’s inputs/comments, the Consultant will submit the final baseline assessment report with the results from the baseline survey by February 15,2018. Consultant
February 12-15 2018 (4) Finalization of the Baseline Report CARE’s Regional Gender Equality Program Advisor will compile the Baseline assessment Report done by the Researcher with the Project Baseline and finalize it together with the Project Manager. CARE Regional Gender Equality Program Advisor and Project Manager
The Consultant will be engaged in the period January 11, 2018 – February 15, 2018, for a maximum up to 20 working days.

Evaluation team
The Evaluation team will consist of CARE’S Regional Gender Equality Program Advisor, an External Consultant and the Project Manager.
The CARE Regional Gender Equality Program Advisor will conduct the Project Baseline, implementing the situation analysis countries related to the Project Impact and Project Goal indicators. She will develop the desktop study including:

  1. Review of Project logical framework and development of the baseline indicators and a monitoring system
  2. Reviewing national data and related documents (including relevant strategies and action plans), statistic reports, OECD Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI) for each of the targeted countries

She will also support the partner organizations in the development and conducting of a research study related to setting the criteria for the selection of the communities and the target groups where Program Y Plus will be piloted.
The Consultant is a critical partner in the implementation of the YMI II Baseline Assessment. The Consultant will assessment content (study design, sampling approach, indicators, etc.), implementation plan, questionnaire and the pre and posttest development.  The Consultant will be involved in analyzing and interpreting the findings, data entering and producing the the baseline assessment report. He/she will work in close cooperation with CARE and CARE’s local partner organization and their data collectors.
CARE invites individual experts, teams of experts, NGOs and agencies for the Balkans region, familiar with the context project in question, to respond to this call and present in details their expertise, experience, division of work and responsibility levels/responsible person (in case of teams or agencies).
Required qualifications

    • Comprehensive experience with conducting evaluations and similar researches (The applicant is requested to send several samples of prior evaluation reports written by him/herself).
    • Excellent oral and writing skills in English.
    • Academic background from social sciences field with minimum of a Master’s degree  and five years of working experience in academic or research institution.
    • Prior experience of working in the Balkans region.
    • Prior experience with projects targeting young men and women beneficiaries.
    • Prior experience with projects targeting gender mainstreaming.
    • Preferably prior experience with projects targeting educational policy.
    • Knowledge of the national/regional and EU public policies targeting prevention of gender based violence and promote gender equity.

Application process
If an individual is applying it is necessary to enclose CV with printed hard copies (or e-documents in PDF format on CD) that indicates experience described in above eligibility section and daily fee/rate per day in Euro and the number of days predicted for the work. The Consultant should make a breakdown of costs in the budget part of the proposal, including different activities and types of costs (travel related costs should be included into the budget, if any).  If a company is applying, beside above listed requests, it must enclose proof of tax paid.
Offers should be submitted by December 15, 2017 at 4 p.m. to the following address:
Procurement Team, CARE International Balkans, Hasana Kaimije 11, 71 000 Sarajevo or to the e-mail address [email protected] and [email protected]
The offer that is chosen by CARE International Balkans will be notified in writing by December 25th</span class=”s1″> 2017.

Reports

Following documents have to be submitted in hardcopy format and online:
Baseline Assessment Report:

  • Should be no longer than 20 pages (Arial or Times New Roman, font 11)
  • Should present disaggregated data based on sex and if feasible ethnicity.
  • The report fulfills the requirements listed in the Terms of Reference.

Report should be written in English (text must be edited free from spelling mistakes and span>

Coordination/Responsibility
The coordination between Consultant, CARE Regional Gender Equality Program Advisor, partner organization collectors and CARE staff (CARE Balkans and CARE Austria) will be done by CARE Project Manager.
CARE commits itself to:

  • Prepare and agree on a work-plan with the Consultant(s)
  • Provide support with implementing the data collection.
  • Coordinate with the Consultant(s)
  • Provide requested documentation to Consultant(s)
  • Provide logistical support to the Consultant(s)

Consultant commits him/herself to:

  • Realize all the activities listed in TOR in highly professional manner
  • Respectful collaboration with partner organizations and CARE staff in the field

Annex 1 – Format for Baseline Report

Baseline Report should include the following chapters:

  • Introduction
  • List of Acronyms
  • Executive Summary
  • Situation analysis (project baseline)
  • Methodology applied
  • Findings
  • Conclusions
  • Recommendations
  • Annexes: Qualitative and Quantitative tools

       All data should be disaggregated data based on sex and if feasible ethnicity.

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