Post Appeal review for DEC’s Turkey-Syria Earthquake Appeal: Call for Expression of Interest At Disasters Emergency Committee

The DEC is calling for Expression of Interest to undertake a post-appeal review for the DEC response in Türkiye and Syria as described in the Terms of Reference (TOR), below.

Terms of Reference

Background – About the DEC

The Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) is a unique and dynamic membership organisation, which comprises 15 of the UK’s leading humanitarian charities: Action Against Hunger UK, ActionAid UK, Age International, British Red Cross, CAFOD, CARE International UK, Christian Aid, Concern Worldwide UK, International Rescue Committee, Islamic Relief Worldwide, Oxfam GB, Plan UK, Save the Children UK, Tearfund, and World Vision UK. Since its founding in 1963, the DEC has run over 77 fundraising appeals and raised more than 2 billion to help save lives and protect livelihoods in disaster-affected communities around the world.

About the DEC Turkey-Syria Earthquake Appeal

On 6 February 2023, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck south-eastern Türkiye, followed a few hours later by another 7.6 magnitude earthquake. Across Türkiye and Syria, nearly 18 million people were directly affected with over 56,000 people losing their lives. The earthquakes led to mass displacement as millions of people left their homes as around 300,000 buildings were destroyed or badly damaged across the two countries. In response to this, the DEC Turkey-Syria Earthquake Appeal was launched on 9th February 2023. In total, the appeal has raised £159.4 million.

So far this has enabled DEC members to reach more than 4.6 million[1] people who have been affected by the earthquakes with vital assistance.

As the DEC appeal nears to a close on 31 January 2025, the humanitarian needs of those affected still remain high. Across both countries, member charities are now focussing their work on rebuilding people’s livelihoods, improving access to safe drinking water and providing mental health and psychosocial support in response to the devastating earthquakes.

Purpose

The purpose of this consultancy, a post-appeal review of DEC members’ and others’ work, is to learn lessons from the DEC Turkey-Syria Earthquake Appeal (February 2023 – January 2025). This study is not an evaluation of members’ activities; rather, it seeks to look at the overall work of DEC members within the larger humanitarian context, and from that, aims to identify lessons that can help improve future humanitarian action and establish what contribution members’ work made / what changes it contributed to in the wider response.

The post-appeal review consists in two major components:

• A meta-analysis providing an accessible narrative synthesis of the main findings highlighted in DEC members’ MEAL-related reports[2] as well as external literature with particular emphasis on areas of convergent findings and indicative learning points. The study should provide lessons for the DEC Secretariat, DEC members, and the humanitarian sector more widely.
• A review of appeal outcomes to understand what changes the appeal and members’ programmes contributed to and how, by reviewing the role of DEC members in the wider response to the humanitarian crisis. We hope that this will ground in an approach referred to as outcome harvesting, which seeks to be open-minded about the diverse range of outcomes that are produced by the overall response, and which explores the role of the DEC as a contributor within a multi-actor, evolving context.

Scope

The scope of the post appeal review will cover members’ DEC funded activities across Syria and Türkiye.

Guiding questions

DEC wishes to maintain flexibility for the post-appeal review process to be iterative.

Key themes of concerns to the DEC in this response are:

• The role played by partnerships, and the quality and equity of those partnerships
• The ability of communities to provide feedback, complaint and shape the aid they receive
• The sustainability of changes, reinforced by responsible exit and/or transition strategies

Initial guiding questions are:

• What are the key recurrent themes arising from the desk review?
• For each of these themes:
  • What are the main findings and learning points?
  • Is there any significant divergence in the findings, and if so, what factors might affect or explain this?
  • Where common or consistent findings do occur, what indicative conclusions do these suggest?
• How have the findings from the DEC Response Review, Affected Population Perceptions Survey, and other key learning milestones been taken onboard throughout phase two?
  • What factors facilitated adoption of learning and what were the barriers?
• What changes did DEC members’ work contribute to for earthquake affected communities? Were these changes intended or unintended?
• What role was played by DEC members’ partners in Türkiye and Syria?
  • To what extent did those partnerships contribute towards a shift in knowledge, resources, and decision-making power?
  • To what extent did those partnerships contribute to better, more sustainable humanitarian outcomes for communities impacted by the earthquake?
• What role was played by affected communities in the design and adaptation of DEC-member programming?
  • To what extent did information received through complaint and feedback mechanism contribute to programmatic changes and adaptions?
• How sustainable are the changes that DEC-members work contributed to?
  • To what extent are programmatic outcomes underpinned by responsible exit or transition (out of DEC funding) strategies?

Approach

The consultants are invited to outline an appropriate approach for the assignment in a short conceptual framework; however, the following points should be taken into consideration:

• a desk-based review of members’ reports and additional relevant materials is essential
• an outcome analysis to identify changes and effects brought by the appeal, and the factors that enabled or hindered them
• explicit reference to the Core Humanitarian Standard (as the DEC’s quality and accountability standard) is expected throughout the report
• remote interviews with key informants (from DEC members and other relevant organisations, such as local partners) typically form a key part of post-appeal reviews

The consultants

It is expected that the bulk of the work will be carried out by a team of consultants.

The consultants will provide the following:

1. extensive experience in conducting learning focussed studies/reviews/ evaluations of humanitarian programmes
2. proven ability to coordinate a multi-stakeholder review
3. sound understanding of the methodological considerations
4. demonstrable analytical, communication and report-writing skills
5. sound understanding of the context in Türkiye and Syria, and the dynamics of the humanitarian response
6. strong facilitation skills and experience in designing participatory workshops
7. demonstrable commitment to learning and improvement in humanitarian action
8. experience with DEC or a DEC member agency is a plus but not essential

If some or all the consultant team are based in Türkiye and/or Syria this will be seen as a strong advantage.

Deliverables and schedule

It is expected that the bulk of the work will take place across December 2024 – March 2025.

The outputs of this assignment will be:

• A draft report to be submitted in March 2025.
  • including actionable recommendations for programming
  • max 30 pages, plus appendices
• A one or two-page summary of findings that can be translated into Turkish and Arabic.
• A dissemination event for member agencies, following finalisation of the report.
• An audio/visual output for dissemination to aid workers (a possible additional output)

Budget

The maximum overall budget for this work is £35,000.

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[1] While efforts have been made to avoid counting people twice, some people may have been helped more than once by different member charities.

[2] This includes joint exercises led by the DEC Secretariat such as the Real-Time Response Review and Affected Community Perception Survey as well as reviews and evaluations conducted by members.