Public Tender nb.83505691 - Impact Monitoring for CSOs - ACE Project 21.1823.0-001.00

Context

Lebanon is facing severe challenges such as an economic crisis, increasing poverty causing worsening food security, a financial crisis due to the constant depreciation of the Lebanese lira and all this exacerbated by the explosion in the Beirut port and the resurgence of conflicts with its neighbouring countries. In addition to its economic and political woes, Lebanon has been grappling with ongoing shelling in south Lebanon since October 7th, further destabilizing the region and heightening tensions. This latest escalation adds to the already dire situation facing the country, exacerbating the challenges of an economic crisis, increasing poverty, worsening food security, and a financial meltdown.

The project ACE “Strengthening the resilience of smallholder farms, micro and small enterprises, and local communities” aims to strengthen economic stabilization and improve social stability through targeted measures to promote cooperation and exchange in three areas of action (agriculture, support of small and medium enterprises and local communities). The project implements in municipalities, located in West Bekaa, Upper Shouf, South Baalbek, and Hasbaya.

In addition to the project components for strengthening the agricultural sector & support for private sector, the project also has a component dedicated to social stability and local communities, which is about joint planning & implementation of low-threshold community initiatives both within civil society and together with local governments to increase confidence in local capacity to act through positive intergroup experiences. The social stability component has its own project objective indicator, which requires that community members' confidence in local capacity to act is measured and monitored continuously throughout the project.  Part of the effort to contribute to this result, Civil Society Organization Partners have been reinforced and accompanied in the design and implementation of so-called intergroup initiatives.

The project wants to leverage this requirement to monitor developments or changes in beliefs, attitudes, behaviours, and norms of the actors involved, that are necessary to strengthen social stability and community engagement.

In that sense, this assignment has two main objectives:

• The first objective is to evaluate the impact of accompanying civil society organizations to reinforce social stability as well as local community engagement.
• The second objective is to represent the results, and the success achieved.

Tasks to be performed by the Contractor

The contractor is responsible for providing the following services, under two main work packages:

I - Focus Group Discussion & Evaluation​​​​​​

The contractor is responsible for organizing up to 20 focus groups discussions with relevant actors and collecting data to be evaluated. This data will produce further tangible information on the status and development of social stability within the communities where the intergroup initiatives were organized by the civil society organization Partner, considering possible prejudices, stereotypes, or reservations concerning community members of various backgrounds and informing the conflict-sensitive monitoring system of the project.

The focus group discussion guidelines have been developed by the project and will be shared and discussed with the contractor in the preparation meetings. Adjustments to these guidelines are possible but require close discussion with the project Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) team.

The monitoring and evaluation system of the project foresees that among all the intergroup initiatives, including relief related ones, 20 (around 50%) will have to be considered in the four project regions: West Bekka, Hasbaya, Upper Shouf and Southern Baalbek. The final choice of the initiatives to be considered will be made with the GIZ Team during the first week and the preparatory meetings.

Depending on the size of the initiatives to be selected, between 15 to 30 participants will have to attend the focus group discussions and represent all relevant local stakeholders involved or not in the initiatives.

To carry out the impact evaluation, the contractor is responsible for providing the following

• Identify relevant actors to be consulted, organize and coordinate the implementation of the focus group discussion
• Facilitate the focus group discussions
• Prepare and clean data according to the needs of GIZ Team
• Discuss the findings with GIZ team and jointly reflect on what the results mean for implementation and monitoring, as well as a critical review of the existing assumptions of the theory of change of all three areas of action
• Hand in the collected data (excel sheet) as well as an evaluation report based on the project monitoring and evaluation system

II - Representing Results and success achieved

Besides data collection and evaluation, directly in the areas where the intergroup initiatives have been organized, the contractor is responsible for providing the following:

• Mapping and documenting the key achievements of ACE project support to CSO Partners
• Mapping and documenting at least four success stories.
• The contractor is responsible for delivering the key achievements and success stories in the same evaluation report mentioned above, which will be used as row data by the project for further communication and reporting.

Specifications of Inputs:

1. Team Leader - Up to 26 Working days

2. Data Management Expert - Up to 20 Working days

3. Workshop - Up to 20

4. Other Cost ( Printing)