TERMS OF REFERENCE FOR CONTRACT TO CONDUCT BASELINE SURVEY At CARE

Background

CARE is a non-governmental organization (NGO) which has since 1968 been working to enhance social justice and alleviate poverty in Kenya. In Kenya, CARE targets approximately 2 million people per year, focusing on empowering women and girls to be self-reliant, have a sustainable, high quality of life and their rights are fully realized, while engaging institutions for enabling policy and accountability and with communities for transformational practices that enhance women and girls’ access to and control over productive assets and benefits – as well as engaging men and boys. It does this by collaborating with national and county governments, communities, and development partners to implement programs that highly impact women and girls while targeting relevant stakeholders. The programs align with National and County level priorities focusing on Humanitarian action – specifically Refugee assistance, disaster risk reduction, and emergency response; Gender Equality; Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights; Food and Nutrition, including Agricultural value chains; Water sanitation and hygiene (WASH); Women Economic Empowerment; and Climate Change.

The Elimu ya Vijana Tuendeleze project in Kenya is a two (2) and a half-year Start Small Foundation-funded project running from January 2021 through June 2023. This project aims to ensuring adolescents in Nairobi’s informal settlements and Kajiado Central sub-County reach their full potential by limiting the number of adolescents, particularly girls, at risk of dropping out of school, and supporting those who are out-of-school to re-enroll. The project will increase access to education and improve acceptance of parents and community members on adolescent education, with a target of 31,000 adolescents in Nairobi’s informal settlements and Kajiado County (peri-urban and rural areas). The Elimu ya Vijana Tuendeleze project is implemented by HOPE worldwide Kenya (HWWK) and led by CARE Kenya, which plays an overall leadership role and implements field activities.

Scope of the project**

The purpose of Elimu ya Vijana Tuendeleze project is to ensure Adolescent girls and boys reach their full potential in Kajiado and Nairobi Counties by 2023.

The project has one (1) objective and two (2) expected outcomes outlined below:

Objective:

Limit the number of adolescents, particularly girls, at risk of dropping out of school.

Desired Project Outcomes:

1. Increased access to education for adolescent girls and boys.
2. Improved acceptance of parents and community members on adolescents’ education.

To achieve the goal, the Elimu ya Vijana Tuendeleze project implements the activities as per the MEAL framework (annexed), aligned with the Project outcomes.**

Table 1. Geographic Area and Population Coverage

Location

Gender

Girls

Boys

TOTAL

Kajiado

7700

6300

14000

Mukuru

9350

7650

17000

TOTAL

17050

13950

31000

Table 2. Key Participants, Target, and Impact Groups

Key Participants

Impact or Target Group

No. Direct Participants

No. Indirect Participants

Adolescents **

10-19 years

31000

TBD

Parents

Guardians/ parents of project adolescents

1000

TBD

Teachers

Project trained teachers on PSS

130

TBD

Community Based Trainers

VSLA trained facilitators

20

TBD

Purpose, Objectives, and Rationale

The baseline survey will be conducted to establish the status of quantitative and qualitative data values for the project indicators and help determine target values for key indicators in Elimu ya Vijana Tuendeleze project. This is important because they will help formulate target values and best monitoring methods during implementation. The baseline evaluation is planned to take place in the informal settlements of Mukuru in Nairobi Makadara and Embakasi sub-Counties in Nairobi County and peri-urban and rural areas of Kajiado Central sub-County in Kajiado County in December 2021.

The consultant(s) will be responsible for setting up procedures and guidelines to:

· Conduct the baseline survey data collection in Mukuru informal settlement and Kajiado Central sub-County. It will target 510 (255 girls and 255 boys, disaggregated by location) who are confirmed as participating in the Guidance and Counseling programs at the target schools.

· Train enumerators for the data collection exercise.

· Ensure that datasets are clean, complete and consistent.

· Analyse data and write the baseline report.

The objectives of the baseline evaluation are as follows:

1. Assess perceptions, attitudes and practices among individual adolescents regarding GBV, ASRH, and COVID.
2. Provide analysis on levels of anxiety and depression of adolescents in the study, and if other indicators or demographics influence these levels.
3. Track the savings rates amongst adolescents in the target population.
4. Understand the level of engagement target adolescents have in decision making, as well as the ways in which they demonstrate leadership competencies.

Intended Users and Use

The baseline survey findings and processes will be used and shared by relevant stakeholders, including CARE International in Kenya, HOPE worldwide Kenya (HWWK), Ministry of Health (MOH) and Ministry of Education (MOE) at National and County/sub-County levels, Nairobi County School Health Unit, and target participants to help in formulation of strategies and plans for adolescents to remain in school and transit to the next level of learning.

Evaluation Criteria and Questions

1) What is the current school enrolment and extent to which different school and community related barriers hinder adolescents from accessing and completing education during the Covid 19 pandemic?

2) To what extent does anxiety and depression during the Covid 19 pandemic hinder adolescents from accessing and completing education?

3) What is the level of knowledge on ASRH and GBV by adolescents?

4) To what extent is gender-based violence (GBV) and school related GBV (SRGBV) socially accepted and reported, and how does this affect rates of GBV reporting?

5) To what extent do adolescents use their money on education related expenses?

CARE’s MEL principles and standards

The TOR should also be aligned with CARE’s evaluation principles, standards, and include at least one of CARE’s global indicators. The evaluation should always respect the security and dignity of the stakeholders with whom CARE works, incorporating gender and power elements (see CARE’s gender analysis framework) during the evaluation. Evidence should be disaggregated by sex, age and other relevant diversities in line with the project’s Theory of Change. Lastly, the evaluation should be made accessible on CARE’s Electronic Evaluation Library and Projects/Programs Impact and Reach Information Reporting System (PIIRS), per the reporting requirements documented here.

Approach and Methodology

The baseline survey will take a participatory approach. The consultant will be responsible for defining and carrying out the overall baseline evaluation approach, with guidance from the CARE team on required metrics based on the TOC/log-frame, as well as the baseline methodology if applicable. This will include specification of the techniques for data collection and analysis, structured field visits and interactions with beneficiaries and the evaluation team. Evaluation tools will be provided by CARE. It is expected that the chosen consultant(s) will utilize safe, child-friendly, and participatory methods to collect data using the qualitative and quantitative tools provided by CARE.

It is paramount that the evaluation provides quantitative as well as qualitative data, triangulated, and well-analysed, and results interpreted before formulating (a) findings, (b) conclusions, and (c) programmatic recommendations, each of which should show how they relate to each other. Data analysis must go beyond simple demographics and cross-tabs, and instead look at the statistical relationships between variables.

The consultant(s) is expected to share an objective data analysis plan, taking into account data quality, coding and analysis procedures (both qualitative and quantitative).

Primary Data

The collection of primary data will involve both quantitative and qualitative methods, especially interviews (face to face, unless prohibited by government COVID regulations).

Some of the key stakeholders that must be targeted through the primary data collection include:

· Adolescent girls and boys from mapped schools in Kajiado and Mukuru.

· Relevant government agencies – MOH, MOE, Nairobi County School health unit, Local government and leaders.

The data collection process will include: documentary review of the school enrolment reports and data. Data collection to be done using mobile data collection kit (KOBO), key informant interviews (KIIs) and Focused group discussions (FGDs). The tools will be piloted to determine the responsiveness and flow of the set questions.

Expectations

The consultant (s) is expected to provide the following:

1. Inception report outlining the baseline evaluation approach and methodology, a realistic timeline, and analysis method.
2. Upload data collection tools Kobo collect and share with CARE for approval before commencement of actual fieldwork.
3. Train local enumerators on the data collection tool and lead data collection activities while ensuring COVID-19 safety precautions are in-place, as well as data-quality monitoring assessments.
4. The development of clear protocols for data quality control and data management during mixed methods data collection, entry and cleaning processes. Data collection tools will be developed by CARE prior to the engagement of the consulting team
5. Draft the baseline evaluation report with preliminary findings, likely recommendations and conclusions which will be presented to program team for comments.
6. A complete set of raw and cleaned data, including complete codebooks for quantitative files generated and analysed for the report. For the qualitative data, this includes the audio recording files, original transcripts, and translated transcripts of the full verbatim. Note that summary transcriptions or translations will not be acceptable.
7. PowerPoint presentation of evaluation findings and key recommendations.
8. Final baseline evaluation. The consultants will submit a complete final report in English after incorporating comments and feedback. The report will be in Hard copy and Soft copy.

COVID-19 adaptations:

The field work must follow the stipulated Ministry of Health (MoH) measures to prevent spread and contraction of COVID 19. This entails wearing of face masks, meeting in small groups in open air settings, and ensuring social distancing is always maintained.

The selected consultant is expected to outline how COVID-19 safety measures, including the response measures, will be implemented during the task. These measures will need to complement each other with CARE COVID-19 safety guidelines.

Final Report Requirements

The external evaluator is accountable to maintain the requirements for the content, format, or length of the final report, overall quality, and approved timelines. They will produce a comprehensive report that assesses the current Covid 19 school and adolescent context and needs, relevance, coherence, coverage, effectiveness, efficiency, outputs and early outcomes of Start Small project so far and provide prioritized recommendations to maximize results. To simplify this process, CARE has developed an evaluation report template that can be modified to meet the needs of all project, programs, and initiatives.

The contract will be a deliverables-based contract, and final payment will be contingent on receiving the agreed deliverables in their final versions at acceptable quality standards.

The report must include:

· A Title: A title that conveys the name of the project, location, implementation period, as well as the main impact or key finding of the report.

· An executive summary that focuses both on process as well as impact (except for baseline evaluations where we would not expect to see impact data) that is no more than 2 pages in length and is formatted so that it can be printed as a stand-alone 2-pager about the project.

· A display of impact early in the report, including 3-5 key impacts/findings: What changed because of the program? What happened in the world, and why did it matter? This are the most significant accomplishments, supported by solid evidence. Each impact should be written as one or two sentences. Talk about impact early on the report so that the audience does not have to read the entire report before seeing evidence of change.

· A clear methodology section: the methodology should explain the evaluation questions, and how the methodology chose appropriately answers those questions. It should also contain key ethical considerations and a description of how the evaluators protected participants and personally identifiable information.

· 3-5 key lessons learned: These should be short, actionable, and the most important aspects of what the program/analysis found. They need to be relevant and new for people outside of the direct program. They should also include highlights of what to improve in the future

· 3-5 bullets describing how the project got to impact/3-5 recommendations: It is important to have non-jargon descriptions of what a project did to get to impact. These are highlights of the most effective, relevant, and scalable approaches and tools. If this is an analysis and not an evaluation, then this section should be 3-5 key recommendations for what the project/program/initiative should do based on your findings.

· Shareable Evidence: Evidence collected by the external evaluation from the conclusions and recommendations must be submitted along with the final report. All datasets, qualitative interviews, and underlying data are owned by CARE and are included in final deliverables. Sources of all evidence must be identified, and conclusions must be based only on evidence presented in the report, and recommendations must directly correspond to the conclusions.

Data Disclosure

The external evaluator should deliver, at minimum, all files including quantitative data sets (raw and refined products), transcripts of qualitative data and others in an easy-to-read format and maintain naming conventions and labelling for the use of the project/program/initiative and key stakeholders.

All documents should be compliant with the following conditions:

o Data collected during the end line evaluation belongs to CARE and shall not be replicated, published, or used in public domain without the necessary consultation and eventual approval from CARE in Kenya

o CARE requires that the datasets that are compiled or used in the process of external evaluation are submitted to CARE when the evaluation is completed.

o Data must be disaggregated by gender, age, and other relevant diversity, in line with the project’s Theory of Change.

o In the case of textual variables, textual datasets or transcripts please ensure that the data is suitable for dissemination with no de-anonymizing information UNLESS these are case studies designed for external communication and suitable permission has been granted from the person who provided the data. In these circumstances, please submit, with the case study, a record of the permission granted, for example a release form[1].

o Where there are multiple datasets (for example both tabular and textual datasets) identifiers must be consistent to ensure that cases can be traced across data lines and forms.

o CARE must be provided with a final template of any surveys, interview guides, or other materials used during data collection. Questions within surveys should be assigned numbers and these should be consistent with variable labelling within final datasets.

o Formats for transcripts (for example: summary; notes and quotes; or full transcript) should be defined in collaboration between CARE and the external evaluator at the evaluation inception

o In the case of tabular datasets variable names and variable labels should be clear and indicative of the data that sits under them. Additionally, the labelling convention must be internally consistent, and a full codebook/data dictionary must be provided.

o All temporary or dummy variables created for the purposes of analysis must be removed from the dataset before submission. All output files including calculations, and formulae used in analysis will be provided along with any Syntax developed for the purposes of cleaning.

o We require that datasets are submitted in one of our acceptable format types: SPSS and Excel.

o CARE must be informed of and approve the intended format to be delivered at evaluation inception phase. Should this need to be altered during the project CARE will be notified and approval will be needed for the new format.

o The external evaluator will be responsible for obtaining all necessary permissions, approvals, insurance, and other required permits needed for data collection. These include required permits related to data collection from human subjects, including necessary ethical review board approvals (ERB) and health and accident insurance for evaluation team members.

Roles, Responsibilities, and the Evaluation Timeline

During data collection and analysis, the primary roles of CARE program staff and HOPE worldwide Kenya with direct stake in the project, are as informants and reviewers. They may review and provide comments on data collection tools, instruments, and all other deliverables before they are finalized. They must not collect primary data, or participate in translation, analysis, or interpretation of the data.

The following tables delineates the evaluation timelines and milestones during the evaluation process.

Table 3. Evaluation timeline and milestones.

Evaluation Activities

*Timeline: December 2021

Inception meeting with selected consultant(s).

Meeting to ground break the exercise and set timelines and expectations.

Inception report from Consultant

Inception report demonstrating understanding of the TOR and the proposed methodology

Piloting of data collection tools.**

Test the practicability and usage of the tools and methodology of data collection in context

Updating the data collection tools.

Review and update the tools with input from the pilot.

Data collection.

Carry out the actual data collection exercise including quantitative surveys, KIIs, FGDs in Mukuru and Kajiado.

First debrief meeting. Another debrief meeting shall be called if necessary.

Hold debrief meeting to discuss reflections of the data collection process and key highlights (may be more than one meeting)

Data cleaning, triangulation, analysis & interpretation.

Consultant to conduct data analysis after collection and present preliminary findings of the analysis.

Development of 1^st draft report.

The consultant(s) to develop the first draft of the end-line report and share with CARE team.

Review of 1^st draft of report.

CARE team to review the draft report and share feedback with the consultant.

2^nd draft with comments (however necessary).

The consultant(s) to incorporate comments and feedback from CARE team and produce a revised copy of the report for CARE team to review.

Final soft copy report and hard copies in prescribed format.

The consultant(s) to produce the final copy of end-line report, incorporating any final feedback from CARE, and share with the team. Hard copy reports shall be produced as required.

Submission of final payment request

Budget

The consultant(s) should provide a detailed budget on what resources can be dedicated to the baseline study that includes the costs of personnel, baseline study permit, travel and accommodation logistics (where applicable), supplies, time, translation, etc.

Required External Response to Terms of Reference

A technical and cost proposal based on this Terms of Reference (ToR) is requested from the consultant or consulting firm. The proposal should contain: **

1. Detailed plan of action for field work indicating staff-days required.
2. Specific roles and responsibilities of the team leader, supervisory chain and other core members of the evaluation team.
3. Schedule of key activities preferably in a format such as a Gantt chart.
4. Detailed budget with justification. The external evaluation proposal should include a reasonable detailed budget to cover all costs associated with the evaluation. This should be submitted by major activities and line items for CARE’s review and decision. This includes a break-down of the cost to contract external evaluation team members, local travel, and in-country lodging and per diem. Other related costs that might be in the budget include expenditures for hiring local personnel (drivers, translators, enumerators, and other local technical experts), translating reports, etc.
5. Updated CV of Team Leader and other core members of the Evaluation Team
6. A profile of the consulting firm (including a sample report)
7. At least two testimonials of previous works from references.

Annex

Acceptable formats for data

Review the data formats below and select the data types and acceptable formats.

Type of data

Acceptable formats

Tabular data with extensive metadata

• proprietary formats of statistical packages: SPSS (.sav), Stata (.dta), MS Access (.mdb/.accdb)
• SPSS portable format (.por)

Tabular data with minimal metadata

column headings, variable names

• tab-delimited file (.tab)
• delimited text with SQL data definition statements
• comma-separated values (.csv)
• delimited text (.txt) with characters not present in data used as delimiters
• widely-used formats: MS Excel (.xls/.xlsx), MS Access (.mdb/.accdb), dBase (.dbf), OpenDocument Spreadsheet (.ods)

Geospatial data

vector and raster data

• ESRI Shapefile (.shp, .shx, .dbf, .prj, .sbx, .sbn optional)
• geo-referenced TIFF (.tif, .tfw)
• CAD data (.dwg)
• Geography Markup Language (.gml)
• ESRI Geodatabase format (.mdb)
• MapInfo Interchange Format (.mif) for vector data
• binary formats of GIS and CAD packages

Textual data

• Hypertext Mark-up Language (.html)
• widely used formats: MS Word (.doc/.docx)
• Rich Text Format (.rtf)
• plain text, ASCII (.txt)
• eXtensible Mark-up Language (.xml) text according to an appropriate Document Type Definition (DTD) or schema

Image data

• JPEG (.jpeg, .jpg, .jp2) if original created in this format
• GIF (.gif)
• TIFF other versions (.tif, .tiff)
• RAW image format (.raw)
• Photoshop files (.psd)
• BMP (.bmp)
• PNG (.png)
• Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF/A, PDF) (.pdf)
• TIFF 6.0 uncompressed (.tif)

Audio data

• Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC) (.flac)
• MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 (.mp3) if original created in this format
• Audio Interchange File Format (.aif)
• Waveform Audio Format (.wav)

Video data

• MPEG-4 (.mp4)
• OGG video (.ogv, .ogg)
• motion JPEG 2000 (.mj2)
• AVCHD video (.avchd)

Application Procedure

Applicants should submit a soft copy of Expression of Interest by 30^th November 2021 at 5:00pm to Abraham Serem at KEN.proc@care.or.ke

The subject line should read “BASELINE EVALUATION – ELIMU YA VIJANA TUENDELEZE PROJECT”.

Please note that emails and attachments should not exceed the 10mbs in one mail. If above 10mbs please send different emails and name them accordingly.

Please note that applications that are incomplete and/or received past the deadline will not be considered. Only shortlisted, qualified candidates will be contacted.

[1] All release forms should be agreed in advance with CARE.