Third Party Evaluation of 5 Projects funded by JPF in Afghanistan at Japan Platform

The Japan Platform (hereinafter referred to as “JPF”) is an international emergency humanitarian aid organization which offers the most effective and prompt emergency aid in response to global developments, focusing on issues of refugees and natural disasters. JPF conducts such aid through a tripartite cooperation system where NGOs, business communities, and the government of Japan work in close cooperation, based on equal partnership, and making the most of the respective sectors’ characteristics and resources.

JPF serves as an intermediary support organization providing various types of assistance to member NGOs in Japan to deliver quick and comprehensive aid on their own. JPF has supported aid activities of 44member NGOs, each with its own set of diverse strengths. It has delivered humanitarian assistance to 47 nations and regions about 1,200 project, with a total financial contribution of 40 billion yen. JPF has built a strong reputation based on trust by promoting cooperation among private sectors and NGOs and by accurately reporting all of its activities. Please find attached JPF Information Leaflet as Annex 1. More information on JPF can be found at http://www.japanplatform.org/E/.

The purpose of this request for proposals (RFP) is to solicit competitive offers for the provision of Third-party project final evaluation services for five JPF projects that are funded by JPF and implemented by member NGOs in Afghanistan.

JPF seeks to contract a TPM entity to accurately capture information and analyse data on these project outcomes. Neither JPF nor member NGOs have access to the project sites in Afghanistan due to restrictions associated with the Japanese government funding. Therefore, the projects subjected to this Third-party evaluation are implemented by local implementing partners/local offices and remotely managed by the members NGOs. In particular, this Third-party project evaluation will be an essential accountability and quality assurance activity in Afghanistan where JPF and the member NGOs have no access to. The evaluation reports will be made available to the public as part of JPF’s activity to ensure accountability to donors and the general public.

The main objectives of final evaluation are:

• To verify and measure outcomes of the projects;
• To understand the beneficiary’s satisfaction;
• To document above achievements and challenges;
• Within the scope of the above evaluation, to provide any possible indicatives for improving the projects for both JPF and member NGOs.

This RFP encompasses the Third-party project evaluation on ongoing five projects as part of JPF accountability and learning initiatives for quality improvement. Brief summary of each project presented in Annex 2. Expected work performed by the selected contractor is outcome evaluation at the time of project completion. Unit of analysis is per project. The criteria of value used for this evaluation is CHS and therefore it is essential that the selected contractor possesses a good understanding of this standard and past experience in conducting monitoring and evaluating using CHS.

Given drastic situational changes in Afghanistan, JPF with consultation with the member NGOs, decided to avoid exhausting limited staff and financial capacity by conducting summative and/or programme evaluation; instead, this evaluation will focus on assessing and documenting outcomes (immediate impact) of these five projects. The selected contractor will be required to carefully review the outcomes pre-set by the project respectively and prepare evaluation questions. Where possible and with full agreement of the member NGOs, non-intervention group will be examined and subjected for data collection. Moreover, a few question will be introduced to assess status and challenges of localisation felt by local stakeholders/implementers to underpin the programme specific discussion on the theme.

In evaluating the projects, the selected contractor is expected to have the capacity of undertaking evaluation activities specified below;

• Beneficiary surveys to measure project outcomes through tools such as Post Distribution Satisfaction, Coping Strategy Index, Food Consumption Score and household visits
• Statistical analyses with use of stratification, radam/matching selection of beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries and application such as STATA
• Project Site visits and verification of project activities
• Individual Observations of the surveyor
• Key Informant Interview
• Focus Group Discussions

Given the outbreak of COVID-19 worldwide which Afghanistan is no exception from, the successful contractor is expected to undertake above evaluation activities with only essential moves in conformity of do-no-harm principal and must adapt alternative means of factual identification such as telephone interviews and use of local agents. In order to assess the competency and consideration of the individuals and institutions submitting proposals with this regards, explicit explanations on organization policy toward preventive measure toward COVID-19 and how to utilise the alternative means to collect information in the proposal is the strong assert considered for selection process. The plan should inform the approach to the data collection and any other information deemed necessary to demonstrate the ability to conduct data collection with much consideration on COVID-19 outbreak in general.