CTG overview:
- CTG stands for Committed To Good. With an ethical approach at the heart of all that we do, it is a description that makes us proud. Respect for the fundamental human rights of our staff, and those our staff encounter, is a cornerstone of our values. We strive for gender equality, inclusion and diversity, providing fair and equal opportunities for all. We take a zero tolerance approach to corruption and stay true to local labour laws and all local statutory requirements. In operation since 2006, today we are honoured to serve clients in 15 fragile and conflict-affected states assisting with disaster relief, peace building, humanitarian aid and development programmes through our specialised recruitment, HR management and operational services.
Overview of position:
- Yemen is the world´s worst humanitarian crisis. The 2021 humanitarian response plan indicates that the country is on the brink of the worst famine the world has seen in decades. The violent conflict, now in its 6th year, has crippled Yemen’s economy & created an unprecedented humanitarian crisis. Oil exports, the main source of govt. revenue & foreign exchange, came to a virtual halt in 2015 due to repeated sabotage of vital infrastructure & increased insecurity. The resulting wide scale suspension of basic public services & civil service salary payments, rapid depreciation of the currency & shortages of imported goods weakened the non hydrocarbon sector & left many Yemenis without a regular income. A liquidity crisis hit the country in mid to late 2018 with the local currency depreciating significantly & food prices becoming virtually unaffordable to many households. External assistance, which financed imports of food & other necessities & helped stabilize the economy in 2019, was largely depleted by early 2020 as foreign reserves were not replenished.
- With currently over 24 million people (or 83% of the total estimated population) food insecure, including a staggering 16.2 million people in IPC phase 4 & requiring urgent emergency assistance, food insecurity in Yemen is driven by constrained food production, food supply & distribution as well as households’ diminishing purchasing power. An estimated 4.3 million people have fled their homes since the start of the conflict, of which 3.3 million remain internally displaced. Hunger, food insecurity & malnutrition are among the most pressing & overwhelming challenges faced by the country at present, at a scale that is not being fully met by national authorities & the international development & humanitarian communities. An estimated 7.4 million people require services to treat or prevent malnutrition, including 4.4 million who are in acute need. This includes 3.2 million people who require treatment for acute malnutrition, 2 million children under 5 & 1.14 million pregnant or lactating women. Acute malnutrition among pregnant or lactating women is also expected to increase slightly, from 1.12 million women to 1.14 million. The high dependence on food imports, for most households combined with high food prices & significantly reduced income earning has resulted in low food access. It is estimated that Yemen imported 8% less wheat per month between January & May 2020 due to limited funds, therefore not importing sufficient amounts of wheat to meet the 2020 consumption requirement. Women headed households are more at risk of food insecurity due to their limited work opportunities & reduced access to productive resources, services & rural institutions. Moreover, women are generally excluded from economic transactions in the local markets. When food is scarce, women are the first family members to eat less as a coping mechanism, even though they continue to do hard labour (e.g. working in the fields). Agricultural extension & other services are not provided or limited for rural women & related staff .
- To respond to the conflict, our client developed the Yemen Resilience Program (YRP) framework with the aim to build resilience from the bottom up using local systems, capacities & institutions to progressively restore livelihoods, basic services, contribute to peacebuilding. Therefore, an Emergency Crisis Response Project (ECRP) was initiated with the support of World Bank (WB) which is being implemented by our client through 2 national Responsible Parties (RPs), namely Social Fund for Development (SFD) & Public Work Projects (PWP).
- The initial project agreement of USD 50 million was approved by WB in July 2016 for the Yemen Emergency Crisis Response Project – YECRP (as parent fund), with implementation starting in September 2016. The support was scaled up to USD 300 million in early 2017 with an Additional Financing (AF) of USD 250 million. In May 2019, WB board approved an additional funding (AF4) of USD 100 million for the YECRP. The duration of the implementation of the Parent Fund (PF) project was set during the period from September 2016 to August 2018 & during the implementation period of the (PF) project, an AF was approved by WB to increase the scale & scope of the activities & target areas. With the AF, the original project duration of the ECRP parent project (August 2018) was extended by 10 months until June 2019 & as for the implementation period of the (AF4) project, it was during the period from July 2019 to September 2021 which to be ended on March 31, 2022 with 6 month no cost extension. The project is being implemented in 317 districts (out of 333) under all 22 governorates of Yemen.
- The main objective of the project is to provide short term employment & access to select basic services to the most vulnerable & preserve the implementation capacity of 2 service delivery programs SFD & PWP – who are project national Responsible Parties (RPs). It aims to mitigate the adverse impact of the current crisis on the Yemeni people by supporting their recovery efforts through a bottom up approach using local systems & boosting the capacities of institutions to progressively resume & scale up service delivery. The project contributes towards our clients country program outcome 2 “Yemenis improve their livelihoods & access inclusive productive services” & seeks to achieve 3 key results: (i) Increasing short term employment & livelihoods opportunities. (ii) Reviving the local private sector & (iii) Restoring key service delivery through small scale infrastructure. To realize these results, the project works through 4 interr elated outputs: (1) Communities benefit from short term income generation & youth have enhanced skills & employment opportunities. (2) Communities benefit from restored socio economic community assets. (3) Nutrition support services to the malnourished family (women & children). (3) Financial service providers & Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) are able to sustain & scale up their business operations.
- The project is implementing small, fast disbursing interventions that serve as a rapid response, providing households & communities affected by the conflict with income support (as wages) to purchase basic necessities. These short term interventions are also delivering benefits to the wider community by creating community assets, small infrastructure & improved access to basic service delivery, as well as restoring livelihoods. The project adopts a community based approach, which brings communities together around common humanitarian & development initiatives & hence promotes social cohesion & the protection of human capital. The project gives special attention to youth & women & as an important peace dividend, provides them with income & participation opportunities & includes design features that ensure women’s access to project opportunities. Targets for engagement of youth, women & displaced are 35%, 30% & 15% respectively. Finally, the project finances the operating cost of the SFD & PWP to ensure continuation of their core staff & operational capacity.
- Since project inception in September 2016 to August 2021, a total of 2,528 sub projects worth approximately US$ 292.6 million had been identified, which represents around 99% of the total subprojects’ allocation. The completed (2,412) subprojects created 443,008 wage employment opportunities for the targeted vulnerable community beneficiaries, of which 29.68% women, 19.73% IDPs / returnees, 60.74% youth & 5% persons with disability beneficiary, with over 11.73 million workdays generated, in which more than 5.41 million people provided with access to key services. Moreover, approximately 678,723 women & children benefitted from the project’s nutrition services interventions. The project also constructed 1,102,388 cubic meters of water reservoirs, rehabilitated 23,601 hectares of agricultural lands, repaired 513.3 kims of roads & rehabilitated 2,552 classrooms. Furthermore, the project supported 17,329 businesses, among them 20% are female, including Small & Micro Enterprises (SMEs), farmers, fisheries & livestock breeders, creating 63,332 additional jobs for their respective communities.
Purpose:
- With an anticipated YECRP end date of 31 March 2022, this evaluation is being conducted to assess the project’s contribution towards strengthening the resilience capacity of poor & vulnerable communities & households to effectively cope with the impact of the crisis, mitigating the impact of the current crisis on local households, communities & assisting their recovery from the bottom up using local systems, capacities & institutions to progressively resume & scale up service delivery.
- Our client commissions a final project evaluation serves as an important learning & accountability tool, providing the WB, our client, national stakeholders & partners with an impartial assessment of the results achieved by the project. The evaluation also assesses the internal & external factors affecting the project’s outcomes. The evaluation will assess the project’s relevance, effectiveness, efficiency & sustainability, identify & document lessons learned & provide recommendations to inform key stakeholders, relevant national institutions / partners, donors, our client, UN agencies, CSO’s on any adjustment / redirection that may be necessary for future social safety net support in emergency contexts.
Evaluation objectives:
The principal objectives of the evaluation are to ascertain the relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, sustainability, human rights & gender equality & women’s empowerment of ECRP support interventions on well being of most vulnerable households & communities in Yemen & provide actionable recommendations on the WB, our client and their partners’ implementation strategies, polices, approaches & activities on ECRP interventions. The specific objectives of the evaluation are:
- To assess the relevance & strategic positioning of the project in strengthening the resilience capacity of poor, vulnerable communities & households, mitigating the impact of the current crisis on local households, communities & assisting institutions to progressively resume & scale up service delivery.
- To assess the progress made towards project results & whether there were any unintended results including unintended outcomes & whether they could have been avoided or were they due to factors beyond the project’s control.
- To assess whether the project management arrangements, approaches & strategies were well conceived & efficient in delivering the project. It will also assess whether there were other approaches that could have achieved the same objectives in a more coste ffective way.
- To analyses the extent to which the project enhanced the application of a rights based approaches, gender equality, women’s empowerment, social, environmental standards & participation of other socially vulnerable groups such as children & the disabled.
Evaluation scope:
- The evaluation will focus on the (PF, AF & AF4) ECRP interventions implemented by our client & their national RPs in targeted governorates of Yemen from the project’s inception in September 2016 to March 2022.The evaluation will cover the ECRP conceptualization, design, implementation, monitoring, reporting, evaluation of results & will engage all project stakeholders. The evaluation will assess the relevance, effectiveness, efficiency & sustainability of the project, explore the key factors that have contributed to the achievement or non achievement of planned results including the impact of COVID-19 pandemic & determine the extent to which the project contributed to improving the resilience of vulnerable Yemenis & responded to COVID-19 to the targeted beneficiaries & communities, addressing key challenges & gaps, crosscutting issues of gender equality & women’s empowerment & human rights that may have affected / limited the attainment of the project development objective & recommend actionable intervention & forging partnership at different levels, including with donors (specifically for the WB), UN agencies, national partners & communities.
Evaluation criteria & key questions:
The evaluation will answer the following questions structured around the Organisation for Economic Cooperation & Development (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC) criteria of relevance, efficiency, effectiveness & sustainability. Furthermore, the evaluation will also answer specific questions related to human rights, gender equality & impact of COVID-19 & limitations to cover evaluation questions:
Relevance:
- To what extent was the project in line with the UN humanitarian response plan for Yemen & our client developed Yemen Resilience Program (YRP) framework, the country program’s outputs & outcomes & our clients strategic plan?
- To what extent does the project contribute to the theory of change for the relevant country program outcome?
- To what extent were lessons learned from other relevant projects considered in the project’s design of (AF & AF4) grants?
- To what extent were perspectives of those who could affect the outcomes & those who could contribute information or other resources to the attainment of stated results, taken into account during the project design & extension processes?
- To what extent has the project been appropriately responsive to political, legal, economic, institutional, etc., changes in the country?
- To what extent has the project objectives are adjusted to attend to the different problems & needs of women & men, IDPs, other vulnerable & whether the methodology adopted by the intervention helps women, IDPs & the most vulnerable to perceive the limitations imposed on them & to overcome them?
Effectiveness:
- To what extent did the project contribute to the country program outcomes & outputs, the SDGs, our clients strategic plan & national development priorities?
- To what extent were the project outputs achieved? What were the achievements in terms of improving the livelihood of targeted most vulnerable beneficiary & community, both intended & unplanned?
- What factors have contributed to achieving or not achieving project intended outputs & outcomes as well as country program outputs & outcomes?
- To what extent has our clients partnership strategy been appropriate, effective & what factors contributed to effectiveness or ineffectiveness?
- To what extent has the project been appropriately responsive to the needs of the national constituents & changing partner priorities?
- What are the project’s greatest achievements & impacts why & what have been the supporting factors? How can the project build on or expand these achievements?
- In which areas does the project have the fewest achievements? What have been the constraining factors & why? How can or could they be overcome?
- What, if any, alternative strategies would have been more effective in achieving the project’s objectives?
- Are the projects objectives & outputs clear, practical & feasible within its frame?
Efficiency:
- To what extent was the project management structure as outlined in the project document efficient in generating the expected results?
- To what extent have our client & its RPs (SFD & PWP) project implementation strategy & execution been efficient & cost-effective?
- To what extent has there been an economical use of financial & HR? Have resources (funds, HR, time, expertise, etc.) been allocated strategically to achieve outcomes?
- To what extent have resources been used efficiently? Have activities supporting the strategy been cost-effective?
- To what extent have project funds & activities been delivered in a timely manner?
- To what extent do the M&E systems utilized by our client ensure effective & efficient project management?
- To what extent are our clients resources (financial, time, male / female staff, technical & gender expertise) adequate to address gender inequalities & root causes?
Sustainability:
- Are there any financial risks that may jeopardize the sustainability of project results?
- To what extent will targeted beneficiaries & communities (men, women & vulnerable people) benefit from the project interventions in the long term?
- To what extent do mechanisms & procedures exist to allow primary beneficiaries / communities / stakeholders to carry forward the results attained during the project lifetime?
- Are there any social or political risks that may jeopardize sustainability of project results & the project’s contributions to country program & WB outputs & outcomes?
- To what extent are lessons learned being documented by the project team on a continual basis & shared with appropriate parties who could learn from the project?
- To what extent does our clients interventions have well designed & well planned exit strategies?
Human rights:
- To what extent have poor, IDPs & vulnerable, indigenous, physically challenged, other disadvantaged & marginalized groups benefited from the interventions of ECRP in Yemen?
Gender equality:
- To what extent have gender equality & the empowerment of women been addressed in the design, implementation & monitoring of the project?
- Is the gender marker data assigned to this project representative of reality?
- To what extent has the project promoted positive changes in gender equality & the empowerment of women? Were there any unintended effects?
- How the project has contributed to the empowerment of women & reduced gender inequalities (keep women in poverty, accelerate transformations for sustainable development, reduce structural vulnerabilities to shocks & crisis)?
Other groups: Disability / IDPs:
- Were persons with disabilities / IDPs engaged in project planning & implementation?
- What proportion of the beneficiaries of the project were persons with disabilities / IDPs?
- What barriers did persons with disabilities / IDPs face? How it was overcome?
- What is the impact of the project on the lives of people with disability & IDPs. Have any positive changes have been added?
Methodology:
- The evaluation will be carried out in accordance with our clients evaluation guidelines & policies, nnited nations group evaluation norms & ethical standards, OECD / DAC evaluation principles, guidelines & DAC evaluation quality standards. The evaluation will employ a combination of both qualitative & quantitative evaluation methods instruments: The evaluator is expected to follow a participatory & consultative approach that ensures close engagement with the evaluation managers, implementing partners, project direct & indirect beneficiaries & communities with gender balanced. However, final decisions about the specific design & methods for the evaluation emerge from consultations with our cleints Management Support Unit (MSU), the evaluators & key stakeholders about what is appropriate & feasible to meet the evaluation purpose, objectives & answer the evaluation questions, given all limitations including time, security situation, accessibility, budget & data. Suggested methodological tools & approaches include:
- Desk Review: Document review of all relevant documentation. This includes a review of inter alia, description of action, theory of change & results framework, contribution agreement, letter of agreement with national RPs & proposal, project quality assurance reports, annual workplans; annual reports, ECRP results oriented monitoring report, highlights of project board meetings / donor’s aide memoire & technical / financial monitoring reports.
- Interviews & meetings with key stakeholders (men & women) such as key national counterparts, donor community members, representatives of key CSO’s, United Nations Country Team (UNCT) members & implementing partners:
- Semi structured interviews, based on questions designed for different stakeholders & also evaluation questions around relevance, coherence, effectiveness, efficiency & sustainability, human rights & gender equality & women’s empowerment.
- Key informant & focus group discussions with beneficiaries, communities & stakeholders with gender balanced.
- All interviews with men & women should be undertaken in full confidence & anonymity. The final evaluation report should not assign specific comments to individuals.
- Surveys & questionnaires including direct & indirect beneficiaries, respective communities with gender balanced (at least 30% female to be engaged during the evaluation survey), UNCT members & / or surveys & questionnaires to other stakeholders at strategic & programmatic levels (if necessary).
- Field visits & onsite validation of key outputs & interventions. The evaluation team is expected to follow a participatory & consultative approach that ensures close engagement with the Evaluation Manager, project team, implementing partners & direct beneficiaries.
- Other methods such as outcome mapping, cash study approach, stakeholder analysis / consultations, observational visits, group discussions, etc.
- Data review & analysis of monitoring, other data sources & methods.
Quantitative impact including cost benefit analysis:
Quantitative evaluation:
- Building on project M&E data of production volumes & income levels of beneficiaries of agricultural, livestock rearing & fishing activities over a period of around 2 years, the evaluation will collect up to date data on productivity & income gains for a purposive sample of earlier beneficiaries, for an assessment of the sustainability of project benefits beyond project support. Current productivity & income for a control group engaged in the same activities as the beneficiary sample will be assessed. The size of the control group will be equal to the beneficiary sample. Productivity & income data for both the treated group & the nontreated control group will be collected through household / beneficiary interviews using structured questionnaires. A discount rate of 10% annually will be used for estimation of net present value of presumed future income increases. Data (from both treatment & control groups) will be collected from households in the sample governorates. Project impact will be assessed against both the control group counterfactual & baseline data for project beneficiaries insofar as such data is available through the ECRP M&E system. As no baseline exists for a nontreated control group, difference in difference methods cannot be applied. Cost information will be collected from M&E records of grants & other support given to the respective beneficiary farmers, livestock producers & fishermen, from cost information in ECRP progress reports & if required, from itemized accounts of our client, SFD & PWP.
- Benefits of cash for work, cash for social services & restoration / reconstruction of community infrastructure interventions need to be assessed not only from the volume of temporary employment generated, but with a focus on the benefits reaped by local communities from improved infrastructure & basic services. Completed sub projects representing all the various types of infrastructure created will be sampled from the ECRP governorates. Ascertaining project attribution by means of a control group counterfactual is problematic in case of community infrastructure since random assignment for all factors except the treatment assignment cannot be ensured in case of communities that are too heterogenous to allow such comparison. Instead, quantified project impact will be compared with the situation in each respective community before & for parameters as related to, implementation of the sub project. In the absence of ECRP collected baseline data or other available historical records, the pre project status will be construed through recall interviews with key informants.
- To enable cost benefit analysis, it will be important to quantify & as far as possible monetize, the benefits. Quantified benefit measures can be generated from surveys of farmers’ improved crop yield as a result of improved irrigation facilities, number of people benefitting from investments in improved drinking water, number of students (gender disaggregated) in restored schools, traffic counts on improved roads (both pedestrian & vehicular, by type of vehicle) & so forth. M&E records will be used to source as much information as possible, missing data will be collected through simple surveys (such as traffic counts & interviews with farmers) & key informant interviews. Cost information will be collected from ECRP progress reports, SFD & PWP sub project accounts as primary data sources.
Qualitative evaluation:
- Qualitative evaluation will unpack mechanisms through which impacts occurs, identify barriers faced & explore how these can be mitigated. It will also be used to document & compare subjective experiences of beneficiaries & non beneficiaries (control group). Qualitative data collection will include semi structured Focus Group Discussions (FGD) & in depth interviews with intervention participants & non-participants. The qualitative sample will include FGDs with reasonable respondents in 1 control & 2 treatment districts. FGDs will consist of participants from beneficiary & non beneficiary households, in separate FGDs for women & men. Based on the FGDs a small sample of respondents may be selected for in depth case studies indicative of heterogeneity of experiences of beneficiaries & non beneficiaries. In each community, community leaders will be interviewed as key informants to understand the role of community level factors in project performance. Social return on investment methods & principles of stakeholder participation will be applied in case studies of community benefits generated from improved infrastructure. In case of cash for work & cash for social services, former participants will to the extent possible be traced for a sample survey of their current livelihood status & a probe into how the episode of temporary ECRP employment has in retrospect mitigated their distress.
Benchmarking Value for Money (VfM) analysis:
- Assessing the efficiency of the implementation process of the ECRP needs to include an appraisal of the cost of the interventions as compared to the cost being incurred by other similar interventions in Yemen as part of a benchmarking VfM. ECRP cost information will be taken from ECRP progress reports and accounts of SFD & PWP. An important element in project implementation is the administrative cost of implementing the project. Understanding administrative costs is important for assessing efficiency. The obvious desire is to minimize administrative costs. At the same time, delivering project inputs is like any production process, to reach the intended beneficiaries with the desired services, projects have to finance a set of critical functions, such as receiving & processing applications, dealing with appeals, processing payments, distributing in kind inputs, undertaking Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) & exercising oversight over how project resources are used. Projects that allocate insufficient resources to perform these functions tend to perform poorly. The administrative cost of ECRP will be analysed in view of its efficiency to perform critical functions, benchmarked against desirable administrative rates for the various types of interventions that constitute ECRP. ECRP administrative cost specification will be derived from the accounts of our client, SFD & PWP.
- The final methodological approach including interview schedule, field visits & data to be used in the evaluation will be clearly outlined in the inception report & be fully discussed & agreed between our client, stakeholders & the evaluators.
Evaluation products:
The evaluation will be expected to deliver the following:
- Evaluation inception report (maximum 15 pages except annexes). The inception report should be carried out following & based on preliminary discussions with our client after the desk review & should be produced before the evaluation starts (before any formal evaluation interviews, survey distribution or field visits) & prior to the country visit / project site visits in the case of international evaluator / national evaluators respectively. The evaluation inception report should highlight how the evaluation is planning to integrate major gender aspects during data collection & reporting.
- Evaluation debriefings. Immediately following an evaluation, the evaluation team will conduct a preliminary debriefing of findings & key critical observations including gender issues.
- Draft evaluation report (maximum 60 pages including 4 – 5 pages executive summary). Our client & stakeholders will review the draft evaluation report & provide an amalgamated set of comments to the evaluation team within 10 days, addressing the content required (as agreed in the inception report) & quality criteria as outlined in our clients evaluation guidelines.
- Evaluation report audit trail. Comments & changes by the evaluation team in response to the draft report should be retained by the evaluators to show how they have addressed comments.
- Final evaluation report.
- Presentations to stakeholders & the Evaluation Reference Group (ERG).
- Evaluation brief & other knowledge products / impact case studies (potentially, focusing on project components / sub components / intervention sectors (cash for work, cash for social services, nutrition intervention, community assets, or livelihood impact of beneficiaries & communities, sustainability of rehabilitated assets & benefits, gender / women empowerment) agreed in the inception report.
Implementation arrangements:
- Our clients Yemen country office will select the consultants through a competitive process in line with their rules & regulations. They will be responsible for the management of the evaluation team & will in this regard designate an Evaluation Manager & a focal point. Project Manager will assist in facilitating the whole evaluation process, providing relevant documentation, constituting the ERG, support to conduct selected project site visits / interviews with key informants, reviewing evaluation products stated above etc.
- The Evaluation Manager will convene an evaluation reference group comprising of technical experts from partners & our client with gender balanced to enhance the quality of the evaluation. The ERG will review the inception & the draft evaluation reports, providing detailed comments related to the quality of methodology, evidence collected, analysis & reporting. The ERG will also advise on the conformity of the evaluation process to our client & UNEG standards.
- Evaluation team composition & required competencies:
- The evaluation team will consist of experienced multi disciplinary team of consultants (1 international lead consultant & 3 national consultants, Employment & Livelihood Specialist, Community & Social Services Specialist & Enterprise Development Specialist) with experience in designing & conducting evaluation for social safety net project / program & humanitarian responses / actions in emergency contexts.
- The international consultant will be the Team Leader (TL) & take a lead role during all phases of the evaluation & coordinate the work of all the 3 national consultants. S / He will ensure the quality of the evaluation process, outputs, methodology & timely delivery of all products. The TL, in close collaboration with the other evaluation team members, leads the conceptualization, design the evaluation & plays a lead role in shaping the findings, conclusions & recommendations of the report.
- A pool of national consultant will be comprised of 3 multidisciplinary experts in accordance with the nature & structure of the project interventions & will be recruited to work under the leadership of the TL, be responsible for the overall assistance to the TL to implement the evaluation inception guideline including application of all agreed evaluation methodologies to collect, analysis & draft report (plus drafting case studies / knowledge products) in line with field findings covering all agreed approaches such as consultations & meetings with selected different stakeholders, FGDs, etc. The national consultants will contribute substantively to the work of the TL, providing substantive inputs & context in the drafting & finalizing the inception & final evaluation reports. Both the international &d national consultants should have M&E technical knowledge & experience in key critical cross cutting areas such as gender equality, empowerment, disability issues, rights based approach &d capacity development.
Evaluation ethics:
- This evaluation will be conducted in accordance with the principles outlined in the UNEG (UN Ethical Guidelines for Evaluation). The consultant must safeguard the rights & confidentiality of information providers, interviewees & stakeholders through measures to ensure compliance with legal & other relevant codes governing collection of data & reporting on data. The consultant must also ensure security of collected information before, after the evaluation & protocols to ensure anonymity & confidentiality of sources of information where that is expected. The information knowledge & data gathered in the evaluation process must also be solely used for the evaluation & not for other uses with the express authorization of our client & partners.
Project reporting:
- The consultants will take responsibility, with assistance from the PM, for setting up meetings & conducting the evaluation, subject to advance approval of the methodology submitted in the inception report. The consultants will report directly to the designated Evaluation Manager (TL, MSU), focal point & work closely with the PM & project M&E team. PM / staff & project RP’s staff will not participate in the meetings between evaluation team / evaluators & project beneficiaries / stakeholders. The evaluation team / evaluators will work full time & will be required to travel to the project sites as part of the evaluation (unless the situation dictates otherwise). The international consultant / evaluator (TL) will work remotely due to access difficulties in Yemen from outside & the national consultants will work with their own logistical support in Yemen along with capacity to access to the project sites. The consultant / evaluation team / evaluators will use their own laptops & cell phone. Our client will develop a management response to the evaluation within 2 weeks of report finalization.
Key competencies:
- The candidate should have at least a Master’s Degree in Business Development, Business Administration, Financial Management, Economics, or other related field especially advanced academic Certificate / Diploma courses on Development & Operations of MFIs & SMEs especially in the context of financial, political crisis situation & will be added value.
- At least 5 years’ experience working on the MFIs / SMEs ecosystem in Yemen, preferably in evaluating business plans & developing performance improvement plans.
- Proven expertise in partnerships with lead financial firms, business associations, investment funds, partnerships with technical assistance providers, as well as working with SMEs on performance improvement.
- Experience with understanding of the shortcomings & opportunities within the operating & business environment of the entrepreneurship ecosystem in Yemen in assignments undertaken in the last 5 years.
- Expertise in gathering strategic business data & undertaking business analysis for organizational development including strategic business analysis frameworks and elaboration of strategic performance plans in previous assignments.
- Experience in working with diagnostic tools to administer the diagnostic exercise & evaluate performance plan proposals in at least 2 similar projects in the last five years.
- Provision of sample work is required.
- Teamwork skills & experience of working as a member of evaluation team to be considered as one of key technical competencies for the national consultant.
Team management:
- This role has no team management responsibility.
Further information:
- Payment is contingent on approval by the TL of MSU & ECRP Project Manager upon satisfactory dispensing of the milestones & it will be paid in the instalments as stated in the deliverable table above.
- Qualified female candidates are encouraged to apply for this role.
https://reliefweb.int/job/3802850/enterprise-development-specialist