Call for Expression of Interest for National Enumerator for Final Independent Project Evaluation for “Improved Business Development Support Services and Entrepreneurship Education Targeting MSMEs and Youth for the Creation of Decent Work Opportunities in

1. Background

Protracted violence and the conflict with Daesh have also spawned a large population of internally displaced persons (IDPs), adding to earlier waves of internal displacement resulting from conflicts of the past decades. In 2021, around 1.2 million Iraqis are IDP (UN OCHA, 2022), Iraq also hosts a refugee population of some 250,000 Syrian refugees (UNHCR, 2022). Conflict and displacement have acutely increased the vulnerability of women and put them at higher risk of violence, including sexual exploitation.

Even before the 2014 crisis, ILO survey data found most Micro-, Small, and Medium-Sized Enterprises (MSMEs) were operating informally, where workers are at heightened risk of exploitation. This is particularly true among displaced populations, who were forced to find employment in new communities. Evidence suggests that time spent outside of the formal labour market creates additional barriers to access employment as skills go unused and qualifications become outdated. The war exacerbated institutional weaknesses and structural issues such as education and training systems that fail to deliver and certify demand driven skills.

Women’s participation in the labour force is very low. According to ILO estimates, only 11% of women participated in the labour force in 2020, compared to approximately 72% of men. Women tend to be more affected by informality than men are. Informally employed women are often found in agriculture as unpaid family labour.

Iraq hosts one of the youngest populations in the region but struggles to provide employment opportunities for them. ILO modelled estimates put male youth (15-24) unemployment at 23.6% and female youth unemployment at 64.6% in 2020. Challenges include a lack of work opportunities, skills mismatches, a strong preference for public sector employment among more educated youth, as well as a lack of effective and accessible career and job information systems. Altogether, these factors contribute to the fact that almost half of unemployed youth in Iraq have been looking for a job for more than one year.

Some of the major impediments to rapid growth and improvement of micro and small enterprises in Iraq include the lack of positive attitudes and initiatives geared towards entrepreneurship, the lack of required basic business start-up and management skills, absence of financial literacy, difficult access to start-up capital and finance and the absence of an effective service infrastructure for start-ups. It is particularly important that business skills training providers ensure small enterprises receive the training which could enhance their sustainability, expand their business, and achieve economies of scale in a business environment context often characterized by little physical support infrastructure and limited access to financial services and markets.

Formal financial inclusion in Iraq is low. The population displays a preference for cash, due in part of a general distrust in the banking sector after decades of financial sector instability, when private deposits were lost and not compensated. While electronic payments have increased since 2014, salary payments (for both civil servants and private sector employees) are often made in cash, rather than through commercial banks. A significant demand for both credit and savings services is thus needed in Iraq and remains unmet by the formal financial sector. Potential financial services’ customers are in need of financial literacy support and providers, which are mainly state-owned banks and a number of commercial ones, offer over-collaterized loans (typically 140% collateral is required).

The private sector in Iraq is underdeveloped due to the economy’s heavy reliance on oil exports (99% of all exports), an abundance of cheap imports, and competition from state-owned enterprises. Private sector development is a central government priority, but a lack of productive investment in the formal private sector has resulted in inadequate creation of decent jobs for Iraq’s growing labour force. The need to promote entrepreneurship among Iraqis, including women and youth, and build the national capacity for the provision of non-financial business development services (BDS) and financial literacy were depicted as priority areas of intervention in the transition to sustainable employment. In facts, during the last few years and within the framework of the transition from the humanitarian response to a more development-oriented phase; a number of projects funded by foreign governments and international agencies, targeting livelihoods and MSME development, have already been providing BDS. These services however were not needs based and remained mostly generic in nature without being provided in a common and standardized manner.

2. Project Background

It is against this backdrop that this project has been developed with focus on strengthening the provision of needs-based standardized business support services and financial literacy. The initial objective of the project is to introduce and institutionalize the ILO Start and Improve Your Business (SIYB) programme and its financial literacy/inclusion package in selected local and national partners who in turn provided these quality support services to existing and potential Iraqi/Kurdish entrepreneurs. Another objective has been added later to introduce the ILO Know About Business (KAB) programme in response to the requests received by GIZ and the ILO from the Ministry of Labour in Erbil in 2019-2020 to continue the provision of the required support for the promotion of an entrepreneurship culture among youth in the Kurdistan region.

Objective 1: Iraqi/Kurdish nationals have access to decent job opportunities in micro, small and medium enterprises in KR-I

The ILO SIYB training programme, management training programme, is used, targeting existing and potential owners and managers of small businesses to develop and strengthen their basic management skills. The programme is made of a comprehensive set of training materials for various target groups in the small business sector and was introduced in over 100 countries worldwide. The existing ILO SIYB training package in its latest Arabic and international versions has been adapted to suit the Iraqi and Kurdish cultural, social and economic environment together with the Financial Education Material. It has been also translated to Sorani and Badini.

A Training of Trainers’ (ToT) methodology is applied to achieve the programmes’ sustainability through ensuring an available and capable network of Iraqi trainers, beyond the project duration, who are able to deliver the SIYB and financial literacy programmes to potential and existing entrepreneurs in a cost-effective manner. The added advantage of this approach is that it creates a multiplier effect for skills transfer and ensures the development of local training capacities in the field of basic business management and financial literacy. Consequently, the project has aimed to build the capacity of 50 Iraqi trainers on SIYB and 25 trainers on financial literacy who in turn deliver these programmes to potential and existing Iraqi entrepreneurs under ILO monitoring as part of their certification requirements. The Training of Entrepreneurs (ToEs) are organised and financially covered INGOs, NGOs, Cash Consortium for Iraq (CCI) and national selected institutions as part of the delivery of their own donor-funded programmes. ToEs are also conducted by private sector BDS providers as a part of their services provided to support MSMEs.

Objective 2: Entrepreneurship education introduced in vocational and technical education targeting youth in KR-I

Under this objective, the project assists Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs (MoLSA) in the Kurdistan region to implement the ILO KAB programme in a selected number of governmental Vocational Training Centers and schools. Despite the fact that the KAB programme has already been rolled out nationally under earlier ILO projects, this project aims to build on lessons learned and focus on increasing the number of trainers to reach out to a bigger number of students in vocational and technical schools while at the same time introducing the new version of the programme in Kurdish.

Approximately 30 KAB facilitators who had been previously trained/certified and still operational in the Kurdistan region are targeted in the refresher workshop. Furthermore, additional trainings of facilitators are conducted, targeting 50 new vocational training teachers/instructors. In order to ensure quality and standards, training workshops targeting 20 vocational centre/school supervisors are also delivered.

A process of Training of Facilitators' (TOF) and certification is used to achieve the programme's

sustainability by ensuring a capable network of teachers, are able to deliver the KAB programme to students in a cost-effective manner beyond the life of a given project. The added advantage of this approach is that it creates a multiplier effect for skills transfer and ensures the development of local teaching capacities in the field of entrepreneurship education. Additionally, it requires the involvement of national coordinators and supervisors, who also play a key role in embedding the KAB programme in the country's institutional memory.

3. Evaluation Purpose and objectives

This final evaluation will examine the relevance, coherence, effectiveness, efficiency, sustainability, and potential impact of the project. It will provide recommendations for future similar projects. This evaluation will also identify strengths and weaknesses in the project design, strategy, and implementation as well as lessons learned and good practices.

Specifically, the evaluation will examine the following aspects: 

• Changes in context and review of assumptions (relevance):  Is the project’s design adequate to address the problems at hand? Were the project objective and design relevant given the political, economic, and financial context?
• Results in terms of outcomes and outputs achieved (effectiveness): How has the project contributed towards project’s goals? To what extent did it contribute to the ILO’s Programme & Budget, Country Programme Outcomes, and more largely SDGs?
• Use of resources in achievement of projected performance (efficiency): How have the resources been used to fulfil the project performance in an efficient manner with respect to cost, time and management staff?
• Assessment of impact (impact): To what extent has the project contributed long-term intended impact? 
• Sustainability: Will the project’s effects remain over time? 

4. Scope of Evaluation

The evaluation will review the project outcomes and outputs to date. The geographical coverage is the Kurdistan Region, aligned with the scope of the project. The evaluation should cover the period of November 2019 – March 2022, while the project ends in May 2022. As cross-cutting themes, the evaluation will also take specific note of integration of gender mainstreaming, disability inclusion, International Labour Standard, social dialogue, and environmental sustainability as well as contribution to SDGs and COVID-19 response.

5. Work Assignments

The national enumerator will provide support to the evaluator in data collection: Arabic key information interviews and focus group discussions.

1. Data Collection Preparation

The evaluator will discuss specificities of required support, such as background, timeline, and modality, with the national consultant. The evaluator will provide documents for the national enumerator to review to be familiarized with the subject project and context. The evaluator will explain the level of detail of the report to be submitted by the national enumerator. The national consultant will schedule key informant interviews and focus group discussions in coordination with ILO project officers.

2. Key Informant Interviews

The national consultant will interpret dialogue during key information interviews with stakeholders where interpretation is required.

3. Focus Group Discussions

The national consultant will conduct on-site focus group discussions, using pre-agreed focus group discussion guide with a set of questions.

4. Report on Focus Group Discussions

The national consultant will develop a report which describes the detail of focus group discussions, particularly detailed opinions expressed by the discussion participants, in English. The report will be submitted to the evaluator and the ILO evaluation manager for their approval.

6. Timeframe

The evaluation is to commence in April and complete in August 2022.  Please find in the attached Call for Expression of Interest a table that describe the tentative timeline.

Total estimated payable working days of consultant: 7 Days

7. Deliverable

The deliverable for this consultancy is the focus group discussion report.

8. Payment Term

100 per cent of the total fee against the deliverable above approved by the evaluation manager. Travel costs will be reimbursed against invoices.

9. Management Arrangement

The national enumerator will report to the evaluator and the ILO’s evaluation manager. The ILO project office in Iraq will provide administrative and logistical support during the data collection.

National enumerator will be responsible to,

• Provide interpretation support for key informant interviews when necessary
• Conduct focus group discussions as per inception report
• Develop a report detailing the focus group discussions and submit it to the lead evaluator and evaluation manager

10. Legal and Ethical Matters

• The consultant shall not have any links to project management or any other conflict of interest that would interfere with the independence of the evaluation.

11. Qualification

The national consultants are expected to have following qualifications,

• At least three years of professional experience in qualitative data collection and reporting
• Relevant translation experience between Arabic and English
• Excellent command of Arabic and English.
• Demonstrated experience in qualitative research is an advantage
• Previous experience with the UN agencies is an advantage
• Extensive knowledge of Iraq context
• Excellent drafting skills
• Ability to work on own initiative as well as a member of a team and ability
• Professional facilitation skills preferred
• Understanding of project evaluation and MSME development is an advantage