UN WOMEN Jobs - 73895- UN Women: Consultant to Conduct a Meta-Analysis of

UN Women: Consultant to Conduct a Meta-Analysis of Selected Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Projects of UN Women Nepal’s Strategic Note for the Period 2014 - 2017

Advertised on behalf of

UN WOMEN

Location :

Kathmandu, NEPAL

Type of Contract :

Individual Contract

Starting Date :

01-Sep-2017

Application Deadline :

17-Aug-17 (Midnight New York, USA)

Post Level :

International Consultant

Duration of Initial Contract :

9 weeks

Languages Required :

English

Expected Duration of Assignment :

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

Grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, UN Women works for the elimination of discrimination against women and girls; the empowerment of women; and the achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security. Placing women’s rights at the center of all its efforts, UN Women leads and coordinates United Nations System efforts to ensure that commitments on gender equality and gender mainstreaming translate into action throughout the world. It also provides strong and coherent leadership in support of national priorities and efforts, building effective partnerships with government, civil society and other relevant actors.

In Nepal, UN Women focuses on strengthening women’s voice, agency and leadership across sectors to advance women’s rights, provide space for women’s meaningful participation and to demonstrate tangible differences in their lives. The agency’s programme adopts a holistic and integrated approach across UN Women’s five thematic priorities. It is guided by Nepal’s stated priorities (including those from the Three-Year Plan 2016-2019) and its commitments to relevant normative frameworks, the country’s United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) 2013-2017, the CEDAW Concluding Observations (2011) and UN Women’s Corporate Strategic Plan 2014-2017. The programme promotes national ownership, capacity development and institutionalization, inclusiveness, coordination and partnerships, and knowledge generation and management, and seeks to prioritize engagement with and support to key duty bearers who are responsible for advancing women’s human rights and with rights holders so they can exercise voice and agency. UN Women is in process of developing UN Women’s Corporate Strategic Plan 2018-2021.

UN Women is dedicated to the achievement of gender equality and the empowerment of women. The mandate and functions of UN Women call for the promotion of organizational and UN system accountability on gender equality through evaluation, strengthening evaluation capacities and learning from evaluation, and developing systems to measure the results and impact of UN Women with its enhanced role at the country, regional and global levels.

The purpose and role of evaluation in UN Women is to contribute to learning on best ways to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment, enhance UN Women’s accountability, and inform decision-making. By providing evidence-based information, evaluation contributes to UN Women’s role to generate knowledge on what works to advance gender equality and women’s empowerment.

To address the organizational demands for enduring good quality and credible evaluations particularly at decentralized level, the UN Women’s Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) has designed a Global Evaluation Oversight System (GEOS) and a Global Evaluation Reports Assessment and Analysis System (GERAAS) driven by similar good practices enforced by other UN entities and consistent with the UNEG Norms and Standards. The system is serving as a key instrument to increase the application of sound approaches and methods to continuously improve the quality and credibility of evaluation methods and reports within UN Women. As part of this process, the IEO assesses the quality of the oversight system on a quarterly basis and corporate and decentralized evaluations on a yearly basis and made available assessment findings to senior managers, programme units and the UN Women Executive Board.

In addition to the quality assessment of individual reports, the GERAAS system requires a meta-analysis of evaluations to capture the key insights from evaluation reports – rated satisfactory or above according to UN Women standards. This is required to develop constructive lessons for future system strengthening of programming, organizational effectiveness and the evaluation function. Whereas the meta-evaluation provides a rating of the quality of evaluation reports according to UN Women standards, meta-analysis synthesizes the key findings conclusions and recommendations for the body of evaluation reports that meet UN Women quality requirements.

UN Women Nepal (NCO) is seeking a consultant to conduct a meta-analysis of the evaluation reports produced by the NCO for Women Peace and Security (WPS) projects from the period 2014-2017. The selected consultant will review the evaluation reports produced by the NCO for WPS projects, as well as analyze trends, results, contributions, strengths and weaknesses across the NCO. It should also synthesize the recurrent findings, recommendations, conclusions and, and lessons learnt for all evaluation reports completed in the given years.

The findings of meta-analysis of the evaluation reports will contribute to the development of the NCO’s Strategic Plan 2018 – 2022.

Duties and Responsibilities

Since 2012, UN Women Nepal Office has commissioned six evaluations of its projects/programmes covering mainly WPS projects from 2014 to 2016.

The meta-analysis will be conducted by an external consultant from 1 September 2017 to 16 November 2017. The consultant will work under the overall supervision of the Unit Manager of the PSH Unit and in close coordination with the M&E officer and other programme units.

METHODOLOGY:

This meta-analysis will be carried out solely based on desk review of six programme evaluation reports completed between 2014-2016. By aggregating the recurrent findings, conclusions, lessons learned, good practices and recommendations, the synthesise will provide a better understanding and insight of NCO’s WPS programme interventions and operational effectiveness of NCO interventions as it transitions into a new Strategic Note cycle (2018 - 2022).

The synthesis of this information will also support the use of evaluation findings by the NCO and its key stakeholders for its Strategic Planning process. It will also inform donors and other development partners about the effectiveness of the interventions supported by the NCO’s intervention on WPS projects in the last four years.

Usability will be ensured through different strategies, including tailoring of the deliverables to ensure that the results of the MA are captured in a way that stimulates sharing and understanding of knowledge.

META-ANALYSIS QUESTIONS:

The meta-analysis should be guided but not limited to the guiding questions illustrated below. The consultant is encouraged to be innovative in the analysis and presentation of the insights to address any other relevant issues that may emerge during the analysis.

The analysis is guided by the following core questions:

What are the strengths that emerge from the evaluations of the NCO’s WPS projects?
Which types of efforts/strategies being implemented have shown high degrees of relevance, effectiveness, sustainability, efficiency and impact?
Are there any patterns and lessons to be learnt regarding results produced by the NCO’s WPS projects in general?
Are there findings and conclusions that point in the same direction?
What strengths and challenges do the evaluations expose?
What are the lessons learnt?

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:

To examine the quality of the past evaluation reports of the NCO’s WPS projects by providing a summary of reports to the Senior Managers and staff in the NCO;
To analyze the impacts of the NCO’s projects on WPS;
To provide better understandings and insights into the NCO’s performance;
To capture experiences and lessons learnt from the evaluations to enhance organizational learning and knowledge management.

KEY DELIVERABLES:

The three main deliverables of the consultancy will be the following:

Deliverable 1: Aide Memoire

The aide memoire will be completed after an initial desk review of the completed evaluations of the six WPS projects. It will be 2-3 pages’ maximum in length and will include:

Introduction
Background to the meta-analysis: objectives and overall approach of both phases of this exercise.
Description of meta-analysis methodology/methodological approach.
Work Plan with dates and deliverables (Annex).

Expected Duration: 2 weeks

Management Notes:

This report will be used as an initial point of agreement and understanding between the consultant and the Evaluation Manager (Unit Manager, Peace and Security and Humanitarian Action Programme) & Reference Group.

Payment schedule: 40% of total on approval of deliverable.

Deliverable 2: First and Second Draft Meta-Analysis Report with Report Validation Workshop

The first draft report will analyze and synthesize the findings, conclusions, recommendations and lessons learned and good practices from the six WPS evaluations conducted. It will be a maximum of 25-page report that will help to paint a perspective of the achievement of the NCO’s WPS projects vis-à-vis its organizational goals. The Meta-analysis is poised to provide a basis to better understand the NCO’s WPS interventions and achievement of its goal and outcomes. The content of the report will be discussed with the consultant in detail prior to the meta-analysis phase. The consultant should cover all the required sections and contents in the first draft and share it to the management group and reference group for their inputs.

The second draft report will be presented in the validation workshop organized by the consultant in close consultation with management team of the NCO after incorporating the inputs received from relevant experts/stakeholders. It will be a 25-page report that will help to paint a perspective of the achievement of NCO’s WPS programmes and projects vis-à-vis its organizational goals. The NCO will provide support to the consultant to make sure wide ranging stakeholders, including partners and beneficiaries attend the meeting. The consultant will submit several key products namely;

One validation workshop;
Power point presentation of the meta-analysis;
A ten-page summary report (e-copy and 100 copies printed) in Nepali and English language.

Expected Duration: 2 weeks (First draft)

Expected Duration: 1 week (Second draft)

Expected Duration: 2 weeks (Validation Workshop)

Management Notes:

The first draft report will be reviewed and commented on by the management team.
Once the inputs from management group are incorporated in the first draft, the agency will share the second draft to the reference group.
The second draft will be shared with the reference group and presented in the validation workshop after the review and comments from the management team of the NCO and the Reference Group.

Payment schedule: 30% of total on approval of deliverable.

Deliverable 3: Final Meta-Analysis Report and Dissemination of Report

The consultant will finalize and submit the meta-analysis report by incorporating the comments from the NCO and the relevant stakeholders. The final meta-analysis report shall include the following chapters:

Executive Summary
Background and context of the analysis
Purpose
Approach and methodology
Findings – from the desk review of the six evaluations
Conclusions and lessons learnt
Recommendations
Annexes (relevant documents)

The consultant will in close coordination with the NCO prepare a dissemination strategy and disseminate the report among the project partners and stakeholders at national level by sharing the published report. The consultant will organize a national level workshop for the dissemination of this report and present on the findings and recommendations.

Expected Duration: 2 weeks

Management Notes:

The final Meta-Analysis report will go through a process of review and approval. Final approval of findings will be done by the Representative, UN Women Nepal.

Payment schedule: 30% of total on approval of deliverable.

SUGGESTED WORKPLAN:

Aide Memoire: Weeks 1 and 2
First and second draft meta-analysis Report with Report Validation Workshop: Weeks 3 to 7
Final Meta-Analysis Report and Dissemination of Report: Weeks 8 and 9

EVALUATION MANAGEMENT:

The Meta-Analysis Management Group will comprise of the NCO Representative, Deputy Representative, Unit Manager - Peace and Security and Humanitarian Action Programme, M&E Officer and Women, Peace and Security Consultant and will be in charge of the direct management of the meta- analysis. At the technical level, this group will provide technical feedback and support essential decision making during the whole evaluation process.

The Reference Group will comprise of members of the Ministry of Peace and Reconstruction, National Planning Commission, 1325 Action group, Conflict Victims Common Platform, Development Partners, UN Agencies, representatives from the relevant department of Kathmandu University and UN Women.

Who: Actors and Accountability

Reference Group