End Of Project Evaluation - Protecting The Most Vulnerable Children And Their Families In Northern Lebanon

Protecting the Most Vulnerable Children and their Families in Northern Lebanon  Role: End of Project Evaluation of the Radio Aid Project Funded by: Radio Aid - Sweden Supervisor/s: MEAL Director Time Frame of Assignment: 16 February – 20 March 2017 (33 Working Days) Location: North Lebanon Project Background Save the Children aimed to address child protection violations through Case Management interventions to address the needs of the most vulnerable Syrian girls and boys as well as their host communities in northern Lebanon. At the same time we meant to build the capacity of national actors as a step to ensure long-term sustainability. Furthermore, this was coupled with support to the most vulnerable families with livelihood or cash interventions to ensure children’s protection. The need to protect children continues to be high, especially as the refugees’ and host population’s socio-economic vulnerability increases due to protracted displacement and competition for low wage jobs/daily labor. This has resulted in increased psychosocial distress, further breakdown of protective community mechanisms as well as increased negative coping mechanisms among families. The children need to be protected from all kinds of child labor, exploitation, and forced early marriages. This is particularly necessary at a time when the most vulnerable children and their families are leaving for Europe. Save the Children undertook capacity building of national staff and partners. This focused on the project management and working in partnership, and supported organizational development and succession planning as well as assisted individuals to strengthen their own personal development. The programme tackled the following overall objective: “Vulnerable girls and boys are protected from violence, exploitation, abuse and neglect through equitable access to quality Child Protection services”. The project implementation started on 15 November 2015 and will end on the 31st of March 2017 and was implemented in the North. 350 children in need of case management and specialized services were identified based on a risk and vulnerability assessment equally inclusive of children with disabilities, minority groups and other excluded children such as children with chronic diseases. Identification of cases was done through referrals from psychological support activities, community based mechanisms, registration actors, Social Development Centers, other sector teams and other organizations. Of these 350 it was estimated that approximately 120 children and their families will also benefit from specific livelihoods/cash support interventions to address negative coping mechanisms. All nationalities were included.   Objectives of the Evaluation This End of project Evaluation aims at evaluating the project outcomes, objectives and impact, with a focus on understanding the outcome for children in particular from the Cash interventions in Child Protection approach. The Evaluator will be answering the following main question: “Did SCIL integrated Cash and CP approach increase the protection of children and parents who were receiving support in the North?” The objective of this final project evaluation is to assess the relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact, and sustainability of the “Protecting the Most Vulnerable Children and their Families in Northern Lebanon” project. The project final evaluation will focus on all the activities carried out during the lifetime of the project. Hence, the evaluation will address the following:   Identification of key project’s challenges, risks and opportunities as well as the strengths and weaknesses. Recommendations on how to improve the design and/or operational processes of the project to result in more impact and increase implementation efficiency and effectiveness, and to attain project’s sustainability.     Deliverables The evaluation team will submit three reports and three presentations to the SCIL Steering Committee:   Assignment timeline: The assignment timeline should include clear dates and deadlines of deliverables beginning by the submission date of the inception report. Inception report: Following the desk review and prior to beginning of the field work, an inception report will be produced subject to approval by SCIL. This report will detail a draft work plan with a summary of the primary information needs, the methodology to be used, and a work plan/schedule for the field visits and major deadlines. With respect to methodology, the inception report will include a description of how data will be collected and a sampling framework, data sources, and drafts of suggested data collection tools such as questionnaires and interview guides. It should also include the draft of the final report outline (i.e. Table of Content).  Once the report is finalized and accepted, the evaluation team must submit a request for any change in strategy, methodology or approach to the SCIL MEAL Director. Draft report: A draft evaluation report will be submitted to SCIL MEAL Director who will lead the revision process with the reference group and provide feedback within two weeks of receipt of the draft report. Quantitative and qualitative data collected and analysis developed should be annexed to the draft report. Final report: The Final Evaluation Report should include a two page executive summary that summarizes the key lessons learned, conclusions and recommendations. It should also include best practices case studies that can be shared with SCIL technical and management staff. Quantitative and qualitative data collected and analysis developed should be annexed to the draft report. All material collected in the undertaking of the evaluation process should be lodged with the SCIL Person to be referenced by the MEAL Director prior to the termination of the contract. Presentation of findings:  At the end of the field work and after submission of the draft report, the evaluation team will present preliminary findings to validate and prioritize learning at the SCIL Lebanon level After submission of the Final Evaluation Report, the evaluation team will provide a final presentation for relevant stakeholders One Skype call for the SCIL headquarters and other interested SCIL staff who may benefit from the learning with the lead Evaluator.                                                                              Essential Competencies Required SCIL seeks expressions of interest from people with the following skills/qualifications and expertise:  Expertise in Social and Child Protection approaches  Expertise in Child Protection and Cash programming evaluations  Sound and proved experience in conducting evaluations, particularly utilization and learning focused evaluations.  Expertise in qualitative data collection techniques  Expertise in participative evaluations with focus on child participation and designing evaluation tools   Application Process  Interested consultants or consultancy firms are required to send an expression of interest email to the email address below using the following subject line “EXPRESSION OF INTEREST - End of project Evaluation”. Upon expressing interest, the interested consultant or consultancy firm will receive the detailed TOR based on which they would submit their proposal. The proposal should include the methodology, the CV(s) of the consultant(s), and their respective rates per day. The deadline for submitting proposals is: 10 February 2017  Submit completed proposals to lebanonhrb@savethechildren.org