Consultancy for Community and School Disaster Readiness Assessment (CSDRA) for the CRIB Project

The ‘Community Readiness in Bicol’ project seeks to address the level of community readiness systems, response management capacity, and coordination network in the event of natural disasters at a barangay (village) level. The longstanding partnership between the PRC and AmCross has produced opportunities to develop a comprehensive community readiness curriculum. CRIB is an effort to tailor this suit of DRR resources to reinforce community readiness in Catanduanes, and Bicol as a whole, in the hopes of enabling barangays to mitigate risks and recover faster and stronger in the aftermath of these inevitable disasters.

The purpose of the assessments is to enable identification and understanding of the level of preparedness of communities (including schools) to natural hazards, specifically in terms of their self-organization, ability to take action, knowledge and awareness, and connectivity.

• The community disaster readiness assessment will aim to measure and compare (at the community level) progress made in each community on four determinants that include self-organization, ability to take action, knowledge and awareness, and connectivity.
• The school disaster readiness assessment will aim to measure and compare (at the school level) progress made in each school on four determinants that include self-organization, ability to take action, knowledge and awareness, and connectivity.

Overall, the process will enable assessing the capacity of vulnerable communities in relation to responding to disasters more effectively and reducing risks while also recognizing community-level strengths and weaknesses. The result of the assessments will be used to adjust project strategies and intervention (where necessary and applicable) to ensure that project activities address gaps identified from the assessments. Furthermore, results will be compared with prior and future assessments and will also enable learning and sharing of community practices on using innovative tools and resources to help increase their safety and resilience.

Scope of Work of the Consultant

The consultant will be responsible to ensure the assessments utilizes methodologies that meet qualitative research standards of the scientific community. The scope of work must include the following:

1. Review of secondary sources of information (
   • Collect and review relevant data, reports and publications, both project-related and disaster risk reduction program component- related, as part of the overall analysis and reporting
2. Assessment Tool Adaptation
   • Provide technical support in adapting the assessment tools (if applicable)
   • Translate data assessment tool into local language(s) (where relevant).
3. Conduct Community (and school) disaster readiness assessments)
   • Recruit and train data collectors/facilitators
   • Provide necessary guidance to data collectors/facilitators
   • Establish mechanisms to ensure data quality
   • Lead and coordinate data collection
4. Data management, analysis, and reporting
   • Perform data cleaning and consolidate findings from the community and school assessments
   • Perform data analysis
   • Prepare the assessment report
   • Present the results to the project team and other stakeholders as relevant

Summary of Methodology

The assessments will utilize qualitative approaches, adapted to the local context.

Sampling Parameters

Geographic Scope, Target Population, Sampling Unit, Sampling Method, Sample Size Parameters

Work Plan (Indicative)

The study period will be for a maximum of 40 working days. The consultant will be required to provide and confirm a detailed work plan during the inception p

Expected Deliverables

1. Inception Report
2. Finalize Assessment Tools
3. Training Manual for Field Staff
4. All data files in Excel
5. Report with preliminary results
6. Draft Reports
7. Final Reports

7.1 Qualification of Consultant

The required qualifications and experience are as follows:

· Five to seven years’ experience conducting and leading survey research and assessments, both quantitative and qualitative, 4 of which should be with international organizations (NGOs, UN, and other humanitarian agencies)

· Post graduate degree, from a recognized institution, in social research particularly qualitative studies, or monitoring & evaluation

· Demonstrated experience in training and managing data collectors/facilitators of the qualitative study

· Experience with work in DRR or related sectors

· Experience in Monitoring and Evaluation (preferably in DRR or related sectors)

· Excellent knowledge and skills in qualitative research methodology including data analysis techniques with Excel or other software such as NVivo; Atlas Ti

· Excellent communication skills for training and facilitation, and leadership to manage and coordinate a team of data collectors/facilitators (working knowledge of local dialects is an added advantage)

· Excellent report writing skill in English and Tagalog language skills is highly desirable

· Ability to work independently, ability to juggle and coordinate various tasks simultaneously, ability to prioritize tasks, well organized, reliable and trustworthy