Terms of Reference (ToR)

Terms of Reference (ToR)

Consultancy for External Evaluation

of Survivor and Community-Led Crisis Response (sclr) project and approach implemented by Association Najdeh in three Palestinian Refugee Camps in Lebanon.

1. Background Context:

Association Najdeh is a secular feminist organization founded in 1976. It works mainly with Palestinian refugee women and girls and through them with the whole Palestinian refugee community, and vulnerable groups of other nationalities living in camps and gatherings. Najdeh strives to combat the negative impact of a patriarchal social system, considering that civil activism is essential to social justice, gender equity, and democracy. Najdeh advocates for gender equality that entails equal rights, including in terms of distribution of and access to resources, visibility, empowerment, responsibility and participation in all spheres of public and private life. While Najdeh adopts several approached to realize its objectives, it also advocates for localization of development and humanitarian policies and interventions. All to facilitate a strategic shift of power, decision-making, and resources from international organizations to local actors and communities. In parallel, Najdeh has been experimenting the community-led, GBV-survivor-led, and survivor and community led approached since 2021 in different camps and with different targeted segments of the community.

In 2024, and with the participation of staff, volunteers, beneficiaries, partners, activists, and key members and representatives of key entities in the refugee camps, Najdeh developed its new strategic plan (2024-2028). This new strategy focuses on shifting the relation between Najdeh and the communities it serves from a donor-beneficiary relation to a partnership relation aiming at shifting the power, resources, and decision-making from the organization to the community. Najdeh’s 5 programs where reshaped into three programs, one of them is the Individual and Community Development Program where all efforts aiming at the realization of this objective is implemented within it mainly community-led interventions.

Since these approaches are open-source, and subject to upgrading or modification, Najdeh is seeking to evaluate the impact of the sclr approach used in one of the implemented projects, Project: Crisis-affected Communities in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon are Supported to Work Together to Improve their Lives (2023-2025). This project is supported and funded by Church of Sweden and Christian Aid. This three-year project aims at empowering crisis-affected community members to meet their immediate basic needs while ensuring their dignity through the provision of community microgrants using the Survivor and Community-Led Response (sclr) approach. A total of 100 community cash grants is to reach highly vulnerable individuals. Group Cash Transfers and Survivor and Community Led Response are considered the most effective ways to transfer power to communities in times of crisis, and these are adopted as part of this response. Applications from the community were received and processed, and small grants dispersed to the community groups to implement their initiatives.

2. Sclr Method: 

The SCLR approach (https://www.local2global.info/sclr/) aspires to bring together the cash, localization, nexus and participation agendas of the Grand Bargain. This approach helps crisis-affected communities lead and manage responses to emergencies in ways that improve their immediate well-being, strengthen longer-term resilience and accelerate social change. This approach focuses on the natural resilience and abilities of affected communities which aims to: 

• Enhance immediate survival by increasing the responsiveness, speed and outreach of the overall combined response. 

• Strengthen the sense of dignity, self-worth, connectedness, social cohesion and broader well-being of survivors. 

• Initiate longer-term, people-led processes aimed at tackling the root causes of vulnerability to a given crisis.  

3. Sclr Evaluation Scope and Objective: 

This evaluation will focus on three Palestinian refugee communities in Lebanon, which are the project sites for the ongoing Act CoS and CA three-year sclr project  

The purpose of this learning review is to assess the impact of the use of sclr approach in three refugee camps in Lebanon. It will create evidence needed to advocate to national and international actors to build on and work with initiatives that are community-led in both design and delivery. Additionally, it will inform the wider sector on the implementation of the Grand Bargain commitments on localization, participation, cash programming and nexus in a practical way. 

Specifically, it aims to: 

• Review the effectiveness of the sclr approach and overall intervention with focus on how the project has contributed to shift the power, resources, and decision-making to the communities including community mobilisers

• Generate recommendations to a) enhance Najdeh’s efforts (theoretical and practical) to shift the power, resources, and decision-making from the organization to the communities and b) empower the community mobilizers to lead this process through the SCLR method. 

• Document at least two best community practices (two case studies) in implementing the sclr approach 

4. Audience for this evaluation 

The learning from the SCLR Learning Review report will be shared with humanitarian actors to improve humanitarian responses in Lebanon and beyond. The learning and research papers will be used as a tool to cultivate program innovation and give a strong platform for advocacy among wider stakeholders including both practitioners and academia. It will also be used with the following: 

• Engagement and promote recommendations in UN cluster, technical working groups, NGO platforms and local government in Lebanon to provide evidence of the effectiveness of SCLR. 

• Engage various donors and actors in localisation learning spaces to promote recommendations. 

• Engage in Grand Bargain Workstreams: Localisation, Participatory Revolution, Cash, C4C, Academia, and CHS as an example to meet the commitments made by signatories and as best practice. 

5. Methodology

The consultancy will focus on the use of outcome harvesting by focusing on what has changed as a result of the utilisation of sclr approach. The consultant will adapt a methodology appropriate to the context and scope of study and will be responsible for developing their own plan and tools to be approved by Najdeh and Partners to collect and analyse data. It is expected that the methodology used will utilize qualitative data methods. This will include but not limited to partner sessions through KII and desk reviews, community groups’ sessions through FGDs, sample micro-projects for experiential learning. This will be characterized by data collection where the consultant will put it in a learning report.   

The draft developed methodology is also expected to focus on:

• Community Mobilizers: their role, related capacities and commitment to the sclr and other bottom-up concepts, challenges and elements of success.

• Is Najdeh facilitating community empowerment as stated in its new strategic plan? - towards a more participatory and transparent dynamics with the community, increasing their control over resources, and decision-making, what was successful and what is missing.

• Is this process building individual agency and collective capacity to address local priorities, leading to outcomes such as increased participation, power shifts, and the ability to influence services and policies.

6. Timeline of consultancy:

The sclr learning review will be conducted between September and October 2025. 

Start of consultancy: on the date when contract signed. 

7. Outputs of the consultancy: 

• Output 01.

Inception report: A 04-page document with detailed research methodology. 

• Output 02.

Preliminary workshop of evaluation findings. 

• Output 03.

Evaluation Report, it is expected that the consultant will produce a report of max 20 pages excluding annexes, covering the findings, lessons learnt and quotes by participants from the process. We also expect two case studies / best practices to be highlighted as part of the annexes in the report. 

8. Consultant qualifications:

• Core competencies for the project’ evaluation and the utilization of outcome harvesting approach  (design, conduct and management of evaluation processes, survey design and implementation, research, project management and monitoring).

• Strong skills and experience in the use of research participatory methods and in community facilitation.

• Knowledge of feminism and feminist approaches, power dynamics, and power shifting approaches.

• Knowledge of transformation and empowering approaches emphasizing increased individual and group agency, confidence, and capacity to act.

• Knowledge of the Palestinian Refugee Camps context and refugees generally in Lebanon as well as situation of Lebanese vulnerable communities.

• Advanced university degree in relevant field  .

• Readiness to carry the evaluation and interviews in the three camps of Nahr el Bared (Akkar), Dbayeh and Shatila camps (Beirut).

9. Deadline and Application Guidelines: 

How to apply, please send: 

• A cover letter that explains how the consultant meets the technical specifications of this call and how the objective will be achieved.  

• Consultant CV, mainly providing detailed presentation on the consultant experience in carrying out a similar work during the past 05 years, including name of institutions, type of evaluation / consultancies and references. 

• Provide an example of an evaluation report that you have produced in the past 

• Two-page document summarizing research methods and budget  (of 5000 USD)

Application Deadline: 22 September 2025.

Submit applications to: fatima.sh@association-najdeh.org