External Final Evaluation of EU-funded Dynamo Project At Groupe Energies Renouvelables, Environnement et Solidarités

Call for applications to conduct external final evaluation of “DYNAMO – Dynamise – Organize! Rejuvenate climate awareness and climate sensitive construction sector in Tajikistan”.

The EU funded Dynamo project objective is to contribute to developing a formal space for rural youth to voice out climate actions and get involved in sustainable segment of the job market, in climate compatible jobs. The Action is implemented in close collaboration with two local CSOs in 4 rural districts of Tajikistan and in Dushanbe. Each implementing partner brings in its unique expertise and skills to the project. As a consortium lead Geres is responsible for overall project management, M&E systems, data collection, partnerships management and reporting duties to donors and line national agencies. While Geres takes a leading role and supports partners in their activities, all 3 organizations are actively involved in project implementation. The Action use Little Earth expertise in bringing confidence and mobilizing youth for climate & Umedbakhsh know-how in developing, institutionalizing, and supporting specific TVET curriculum. Geres provides further backstopping and engineer level technical assistance.

To achieve the overall goal, the Action is designed around 3 complementary results:

Under the Result 1, the consortium led by Little Earth & Geres produced a contextualised body of knowledge (Eco-actions toolkit) and a practical methodology together with training materials to adequately engage with youths at school level and establish/animate the Eco-clubs in targeted schools. Within the framework of the clubs, eco-action projects have been prepared by the youth and supported with subgrants. To further strengthen youth participation and leadership skills, exposure visits have been organized amongst peers to showcase successes & opportunities. With the fertile soil prepared by Eco-clubs in schools and the incentives provided under the subgrant for youth, it is expected that youth mobilisation, creativity and capacity will be increased, hence achieving the Early Outcome 1 that is Youth groups are empowered in voicing out climate concerns & supporting sustainable energy production & consumption patterns amongst their communities.

Under the Result 2, the consortium led by Umedbakhsh & Geres prepared a new curriculum on energy-efficient (EE) construction that was introduced into vocational technical education in Tajikistan. TVET teachers were trained and both theoretical & practical courses on energy efficiency were conducted for TVET students. The graduates receive diplomas confirming their skills and potentially facilitating their job search. As a result, 4 TVETs, participating in the current project, provided short-term EE courses as part of their educational offer. Besides formal TVET education, in order to raise awareness and spread widely the EE construction techniques, additional trainings were held for the unemployed youth, who received certificates issued by SRICA (Scientific Research Institute for Construction and Architecture), potentially facilitating their job search. The trainings were combined with paid internships in the form of retrofitting of the houses of vulnerable people, targeted by another Geres project. Grounding youth engagement & climate action into real professional life, it is expected that capacity building, skills development, and access to sustainable jobs for youth will be enhanced, hence achieving Early Outcome 2 that is Youth have access to green construction jobs in Tajikistan thanks to conducive TVET courses, training for jobless & linkages to market/demand.

Building on those first Early Outcomes (youth group empowerment, quality climate compatible education and streamlining of job opportunities) and extending the circle of engagement, the partners, under Result 3, focused on building the case for a more supportive & responsive environment from the overall public and Tajik authorities. The consortium created and mentored a network of young leaders raising their voices, concerns and interests at district and national levels. To materialise their engagement and tentatively influence their policy makers, leaders were invited to perform a set of advocacy activities to promote their commitment and best practices. Those include study tours for local/national authorities, the organisation of a large national event of climate, energy efficiency and green jobs & the development and restitution of a set of related recommendations to national authorities. Anchored on R1 and R2 outputs, it is foreseen that the awareness and influence of key youth leaders’ networks will increase and eventually start to reflect on policy shapers, hence achieving the Outcome 3 that is Youth groups & CSOs have mainstreamed climate solidarity & sustainable economic development practices towards policy makers & overall public.

Evaluation objectives

The general objectives of the Final Evaluation are to measure Relevance, Coherence, Effectiveness, Efficiency, Impact and Sustainability of the intervention following OECD’s DAC Development Evaluation criteria and guidelines.

The Evaluator(s) will:

• Assess the relevance of the project objectives and results in relation with priorities and needs of policy objectives, plans of national and local governments, the donor agency and the needs of target groups and beneficiaries (ownership, alignment);
• Assess the effectiveness of the projects in terms of results and progress;
• Assess the efficiency of implementation (results achieved per inputs and budgets);
• Assess the feasibility in terms of design, scope, implementation, management and steering, and develop final conclusions, recommendations and way forward;
• Assess the sustainability of the project results beyond the end of the project together with potential for uptake and/or replication;

Additionally, Geres expects a specific focus on a qualitative evaluation of the impact of the intervention, looking at the long-term prospects in terms of empowerment of young people, wider social benefits and income generation potential for trained craftsmen while proposing recommendations for further improvements, uptake and/or replication.

To this end, the Evaluator will also provide recommendations based on factual, critical and solid analysis in order to further strengthen the outputs/outcomes post-project. The evaluation will propose a disaggregated analysis of the results, effects and impacts (distinction between gender – male/female). Amongst other suggestions that may be proposed by the evaluator, the impact of the project on the future job opportunities for the youth should be specifically looked at.

Methodology

After a thorough desk review (project documents, activity reports, studies, etc.) and discussions with Geres team to get sufficient understanding of the project, the Evaluator is expected to focus on direct interviews/discussions with key local actors directly or indirectly involved in the project.

It is expected that the Evaluator meets with 4 key categories of actors i.e.:

• Representatives from key Tajik institutions (Ministry of Education, Ministry of Labour, SRICA, Committee for Environmental Protection)
• Local authorities in target areas (at both Hukumat, Jamoat level)
• The project partners, Little Earth and Umedbakhsh
• Direct and indirect beneficiaries – A representative sample of school pupils engaged in eco-clubs and TVET students as well as their families, teachers/school principals from targeted schools involved in the action, trained young craftsmen, households benefitting from retrofits, community leaders (head of neighbourhoods and local representatives of city/district authorities). Those interviews can be supported by a control group.

Timeline

The Evaluator is expected to perform the tasks starting in January 2023 latest

The workload would be split as follows:

Scoping note on methodology 9 January 2023

Framing meeting with Geres team 16 January 2023

Mission, surveys, interviews and debrief meeting January/February 2023

Provisional and final report Deadline 25 February 2023

ToR for the consultancy can be downloaded here