UN WOMEN Jobs - 70898- Project Evaluation Consultant (Engaging Women in P

Project Evaluation Consultant (Engaging Women in Preventing and Countering Extremist Violence in Kenya)

Advertised on behalf of

UN WOMEN

Location :

Nairobi, KENYA

Type of Contract :

Individual Contract

Starting Date :

Application Deadline :

08-Mar-17 (Midnight New York, USA)

Post Level :

National Consultant

Duration of Initial Contract :

Languages Required :

English

Expected Duration of Assignment :

15 working days

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. UNDP does not tolerate sexual exploitation and abuse, any kind of harassment, including sexual harassment, and discrimination. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks.

Background

UN Women is implementing a project “Engaging Women in Preventing and Countering Extremist Violence in Kenya” from April 1st 2016 to March 31st 2017 in 5 counties that are particularly vulnerable to radicalization, recruitment and attacks including; 3 coastal counties (Mombasa, Kwale and Kilifi) and 2 counties in northern Kenya (Wajir and Mandera).

The overall goal of the project is to promote and advance women’s active participation in efforts to prevent and respond to extremist violence in Kenya, while ensuring their human rights are protected and promoted.

The theory of change of the project assumes that if the evidence on the drivers of extremist violence in Kenya is generated and made available to stakeholders for policy action, and if women are facilitated and given access and resources to participate effectively in the prevention, conflict management and recovery efforts of preventing and countering violent extremism and if are women are provided with safe spaces to share and exchange critical information, then vulnerable communities would be more resilient to risks of conflict, thus leading to improved cohesion amongst communities.

The project has the following outcomes and outputs:

Outcome 1: Evidence base is strengthened on understanding the drivers of extremist violence in Kenya.

Output 1.1: Gender sensitive research and sex-disaggregated data on the drivers of extremist violence in Kenya is available.

Outcome 2: Women and women’s groups are actively involved in efforts to prevent and counter extremist violence in Kenya.

Output 2.1: Strengthened capacity of women’s civil society groups to advance the rights of women and girls in efforts to counter extremist violence.

This project, with a total budget of USD 750,000 for 1 year was implemented directly by UN Women and in partnership with government, civil society and UN partners to implement this project. This includes leveraging partnerships with the National Cohesion and Integration Commission, National Counter Terrorism Centre, the Office of the President which is responsible for implementing the national counter-terrorism strategy and County Peace Secretariats. UN Women will work closely with the Ministry of Public Service, Youth and Gender Affairs, and the Ministry of Interior and Coordination of National Government (MoICNG) to foster strategic engagement with the National Steering Committee on Implementation of UNSCR 1325 and support mainstreaming preventing and countering violent extremism policy and programming in their interventions.

Purpose and Use of the Evaluation:

The purpose of the evaluation is to determine the extent to which the “Engaging Women in Preventing and Countering Extremist Violence in Kenya” project achieved its stated outcomes, document lessons learned and best practices with the view to scaling up activities. The overall goal of the project is to promote and advance women’s active participation in efforts to prevent and respond to extremist violence in Kenya, while ensuring their human rights are protected and promoted. The evaluation is a mandatory evaluation requested by the donor and included in the project design.

The findings of the evaluation will be used inform project learning and decision-making on future engagements in the field of Countering Extremist Violence in Kenya.

In line with UN Women Evaluation Policy, the final evaluation report together with the UN Women management response will be disclosed publicly on the UNW ‘Global Accountability and Tracking of Evaluation Use (GATE) System’ at http://gate.unwomen.org/.

Duties and Responsibilities

With this background and context in mind, the Project Evaluation has the following objectives:

Assess the relevance of UN Women contribution to engaging women in preventing and countering violent extremist in Kenya;
Assess effectiveness and organizational efficiency in progressing towards the achievement of women’s participation in preventing and countering violent extremist in Kenya;
Assess the sustainability of the intervention in achieving sustained engagement of women in preventing and countering violent extremist in Kenya;
Analyze how human rights approach and gender equality principles are integrated in the implementation of the project;
Identify and validate lessons learned, good practices and examples and innovations of efforts that support women’s participation in preventing and countering violent extremist in Kenya;
Provide actionable recommendations with respect to the UN Women intervention.

The key evaluation questions are:

Relevance:

To what extent is the intervention relevant to the needs and priorities as defined by beneficiaries;
How relevant and appropriate is the Theory of Change underlying the project to achieving the objectives;
To what extent is the UN Women’s strengthening rights-holders’ participation and duty-bearer’s accountability; ensuring that the most vulnerable populations know, demand and enjoy their human rights and reinforcing capacities of duty bearers to respect, protect and guarantee these rights.

Effectiveness:

To what extent were the expected outcomes achieved and how did UN Women contribute towards these;
To what extent have effective partnerships and strategic alliances been promoted.

Efficiency:

Have adequate financial resources been allocated into the realization of the project results;
Are the implementation mechanisms effective in managing the Programme;
How efficiently resources/inputs (funds, expertise, time, etc.) have been converted to strategic results.

Sustainability:

To what extent was capacity developed in order to ensure sustainability of efforts and benefits;
How will the benefits of the intervention be secured for rights holders (i.e. what accountability and oversights systems were established).

Gender Equality and Human Rights:

To what extent has gender and human rights considerations been integrated into the project design and implementation;
How has attention to integration of gender equality and human rights concerns advanced the women’s participation in preventing and countering violent extremist in Kenya.

Evaluation Design (Methods and process):

The evaluation will be an external, participatory, and iterative learning exercise, which should be completed within a timeframe of 15 working days. The Evaluation will be conducted under the guidance of the UN Women Kenya Deputy Country Director.

Internal arrangements - The Senior Management Team will constitute the Reference Committee for the Evaluation, signing off and providing direction at key milestones. The role of Senior Management will also include final approval authority on evaluation deliverables, and the Evaluation Reference Group (ERG).

The role of the ERG is to serve as consultative body and sounding board for the evaluation, allow stakeholders to express their information needs and enhance learning and ownership of evaluation findings. The ERG provides feedback on specific evaluation questions, on evaluation inception and draft report and helps with providing background information to the evaluation team as relevant. The ERG includes both UN Women staff and partners.

Methods to assess the project outcomes and impact will include open and semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders, a comprehensive review of documents, a synthesis and analysis of data from regular programme monitoring as well as field visits. Interviews with beneficiaries and local partners using participatory review and evaluation methodologies will be strongly encouraged.

The evaluation will be carried following UN Evaluation Group (UNEG) Norms and Standards (http://www.unwomen.org/about-us/accountability/evaluation/ ), UN Women Evaluation Policy as well as the Ethical Guidelines for evaluations in the UN system, see Annex to this TOR. Once finalized the evaluation report will be quality-assessed based on the UN Women Global Evaluation Reports Assessment and Analysis System (GERAAS). GERAAS standards and GERAAS rating matrix are available at http://www.unwomen.org/en/about-us/evaluation/decentralized-evaluations.

Deliverables:

The findings and recommendations of the evaluation will be thoroughly discussed with the UN Women and Partners.

The key deliverables of the evaluation are:

Inception report outlining the design- criteria, scope, methodology, data collection method and tools and time frame including a Draft Report Template: Submission of a draft report format containing Table of Contents for the final report for approval by UN Women;
The Draft and Final Reports: The report should address the contents specified in section IV and use a format that will be provided during inception phase. It should be logically structured, contain evidence-based findings, conclusions, lessons and recommendations, and should be free of information that is not relevant to the overall analysis. The report should respond in detail to the key focus areas described above. It should include a set of specific recommendations formulated for the project, and identify the necessary actions required to be undertaken, who should undertake those and possible time-lines (if any). Stakeholders will provide comments on the Draft Report, and the consultants will finalize the report in view of these comments;
Presentation: For presenting and discussing the draft final report interactively, the consultants will facilitate a one-day concluding workshop for the project stakeholders.

The Inception report should include an evaluation matrix with evaluation questions and -criteria, indicators, data sources and methods of data collection.

The Draft/ Final report should follow the following structure:

Title page, Table of Contents and Acronyms;
Executive Summary;
Background and purpose of the evaluation;
Programme description and context;
Evaluation methodology and limitations;
Findings;
Analysis and Conclusions;
Recommendations;
Lessons learned (if applicable);
Annexes: Terms of Reference, List of documents reviewed, list of agencies and partners interviewed (without direct reference to individuals), evaluation matrix and data collection instruments, any other relevant documents.

Competencies

Core Values/Guiding Principles:

Integrity:

Demonstrate consistency in upholding and promoting the values of UN Women in actions and decisions, in line with the UN Code of Conduct.

Professionalism:

Demonstrate professional competence and expert knowledge of the pertinent substantive areas of work.

Cultural sensitivity and valuing diversity:

Demonstrate an appreciation of the multicultural nature of the organization and the diversity of its staff;
Demonstrate an international outlook, appreciating difference in values and learning from cultural diversity.

Core Competencies:

Ethics and Values:

Demonstrate and safeguard ethics and integrity.

Organizational Awareness:

Demonstrate corporate knowledge and sound judgment.

Development and Innovation:

Take charge of self-development and take initiative.

Work in teams:

Demonstrate ability to work in a multicultural, multi ethnic environment and to maintain effective working relations with people of different national and cultural backgrounds.

Communicating and Information Sharing:

Facilitate and encourage open communication and strive for effective communication.

Self-management and Emotional Intelligence:

Stay composed and positive even in difficult moments, handle tense situations with diplomacy and tact, and have a consistent behavior towards others.

Conflict Management:

Surface conflicts and address them proactively acknowledging different feelings and views and directing energy towards a mutually acceptable solution.

Continuous Learning and Knowledge Sharing:

Encourage learning and sharing of knowledge.

Appropriate and Transparent Decision Making:

Demonstrate informed and transparent decision making.

Functional Competencies:

Excellent analytical and communication skills;
Demonstrated ability to produce high quality evaluation reports, including recommendations for future work of the funding organization/ a donor;
Understanding of the Kenyan context with specific regards to the gender priorities and role of UN Women;
Knowledge of issues concerning women’s human rights and gender equality including specifically in the area of gender based violence, ii) familiarity with the relevant context in Kenya will be an added advantage.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

At least a master’s degree in development studies, economics, political science, public policy /and or relevant field of social sciences.

Experience:

At least seven years of planning, reviews and/or evaluation experience, five years of which in planning/reviews in development programs related to human rights, gender and results-based evaluations;
Knowledge and experience with the national development frameworks, especially National Development Goals (MDGs), PRSP, SWAP, key legislation, etc.;
Extensive experience with UN programming, especially the UNDAF and delivering as one.

Language:

Fluent in English;
Knowledge of local language an asset.

Ethical code of conduct:

UNEG Ethical Guidelines for Evaluation in the UN System- The evaluation of the project is to be carried out according to the following ethical principles and standards established by the United Nations Evaluation Group (UNEG), available at http://www.unevaluation.org/document/detail/102.

The consultant will sign the UN Women Evaluation Consultants Agreement Form available at https://unw-gate.azurewebsites.net/resources/docs/SiteDocuments/UNWomen%20-%20CodeofConductforEvaluationForm-Consultants.pdf.

Please follow the links below for further details to the UN Women Evaluation Consultants Agreement Form, UNEG Ethical Guidelines and Code of Conduct for Evaluation in the UN system.