Oxfam is a global movement of people who are fighting inequality to end poverty and injustice. Across regions, from the local to the global, we work with people to address inequalities, tackle the root causes of poverty, and bring transformative changes as well as lifesaving support during moments of crisis.
The foundation of our work is solely based on our commitment to the universality of human rights. Driven by diversity and basing our asks in evidence and experience, we take a global stand against poverty and injustices. Feminist approaches strongly guide our analysis, actions, and interactions. To learn more about Oxfam, please click here.
Project Background
The Women’s Economic Empowerment and Care (WE-Care) program has been operational since 2013. WE-Care is an Oxfam flagship programme that seeks to address unpaid care and domestic work (UCDW) gender gap (women and girls do around 2/3 of all the UCDW around the world) as a key factor in achieving gender equality and economic development. WE-Care works by tackling heavy and unequal UCDW to create lasting change for women and girls. This is subsequently aimed at creating a just and inclusive society by recognizing, reducing, and redistributing UCDW, and by increasing the representation of collectives and organizations being oppressed by the disproportionate burden of UCDW. Through research, organizational support, capacity building, political advocacy and public influencing, WE-Care aims to shift the unpaid care narrative from being a woman’s issue to being a development, economic, and gender equality issue.
Phase IV of the program (2020-2023) spans four countries in East and Southern Africa, namely Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, and Zimbabwe, and two additional components: a PanAfrican and Global one. Phase IV of the project seeks to address three key areas of change:
- Deepening partnerships with CSOs, WROs and youth groups, and supporting their networking and participation in key decision-making spaces
- Building an enabling environment for policy change
- Shifting public narratives and discourse on care work
To learn more about WE-Care, please click here.
Purpose
This Terms of Reference serves as a guideline to interested consultant(s) for undertaking the evaluation of the Women’s Economic Empowerment and Care (WE-Care) program, implemented by Oxfam and partners in Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, and Zimbabwe and its global and PanAfrican components.
- Specific objective and objectives of the evaluation
Evaluation objective: The main objective of this evaluation is to ascertain the anticipated results, relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, coherence, impact and sustainability, best practices, and lessons learnt of the project. A key component of this evaluation will be to document lessons learnt and best practices from phase IV of the project to build up on the design of phase V of WE-Care. For this, we will require a first report with recommendations after the team has completed their literature review.
The objective of the evaluation also includes to measure the indicators included in the MEL plan of the project as well as to compare with the baseline indicators set as it must provide evidence of progress (if any) based on these indicators, and on the 4 baselines carried out by independent consultants in each of the 4 countries where the project was implemented.
As a reference, the desired results for the project are as follows:
Goal: WE-Care’s goal is to reignite progress on gender equality by addressing the largest, least-recognized factor preventing women to reach their full potential – unpaid care work. By recognizing, reducing, and redistributing UCDW, WE-Care promotes a just society where women and girls have more choices across all stages of their lives, in economic, social, and political activities, and where carers’ voices are heard in decision-making about policies and budgets at all levels.
Project outcomes:
Outcome 1: Public and private sector institutions increase commitment & investment on UCDW through policy, practice, and budget reforms.
Outcome 2: Public opinions and narratives shift to acknowledge UCDW as an economic, development and gender equality issue.
Outcome 3: WROs, youth groups, carers and citizens have more individual and collective power to influence decision-making processes around UCDW.
- Key questions of the evaluation
The final evaluation will seek to answer the following evaluation questions:
- Effectiveness – To what extent did the project achieve its objectives based on the indicators of progress?
- Relevance – How appropriate was the project design in meeting the needs of the participant partner organizations?
- Efficiency – What cost-effective strategies can be attributed to the influencing work of the partner organizations on advocating for a higher recognition, reduction, redistribution, and representation of care givers in key decision-making spaces?
- Equity (gender equity) – To what extent have the systemic barriers preventing women form reaching their full potential perpetrated by unjust and patriarchal systems been addressed by the project? Especially the participation of women and girls in decision-making spaces inside and outside their organizations.
- Sustainability – To what extent were the actions of the project implemented with the vision of making sustainable the wins of the project in terms of political and public influencing and of partner organizations increasing their ownership of UCDW and their participation in decision making spaces? What other strategies were implemented to increase the level of sustainability of the actions of the project?
- Impact – What impact did the project have across the three outcomes of the project?
- Coherence- To what extent and how well does the intervention fit.
The evaluation will therefore provide a well-founded, comprehensive, and concretely argued document that gives a clear statement on the quality of the project and its implementation.
- Scope of the evaluation and approach and methods, establishing the basic methodological requirements (if applicable)
A final evaluation of the program’s relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact, and sustainability will be carried out by an external evaluator using both quantitative and qualitative techniques, as described below. Given the tight timeline for designing the new proposal, we will require a first set of recommendations, from the consultants, after finishing their literature review.
This will include evaluating the project design, implementation, management, and progress towards achievement of goals and outcomes. Additionally, the evaluation will highlight the best practices and lessons learned that can be built on or carried forward to the next phase of the project. To address issues of quality, validity, utility and shared ownership of the findings, the consultant will be required to use a feminist approach guided by inclusivity and participation of all relevant stakeholders.
The final evaluation will be carried out in all the WE-Care countries, namely, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, and Zimbabwe and will also include assessments of the global and PanAfrican components. (A different approach will be used for the evaluation of the global and PanAfrican components).
- Evaluation team: qualifications and skills needed, (plan for organizing the evaluation team)
- Academic qualifications – A master’s degree or higher in Gender and Development, Monitoring and Evaluation, Development Studies, or another related field.
- An evaluation specialist with a minimum of seven years’ experience in gender and development and women/ youth project evaluations in an international development context.
- Experience in results-based M&E
- Ability to design, plan and implement the evaluative approaches and research methodologies.
- Relevant subject matter knowledge and experience in UCDW, gender, youth programming and women’s economic empowerment to ensure coherence and relevance in evaluation designs and research methods.
- Ability to manage a complex evaluation and research process, including interpreting baseline data and conducting a final evaluation
- Must have the necessary country knowledge/ experience including but not limited to understanding the context and prevailing conditions of the project areas.
- Schedule, budget, logistics and deliverables. Include outline of the evaluation report (see below)
The final evaluation should include the following:
- An inception report highlighting the methodology and workplan
- Desk review of all relevant project documentation and other materials (such as the project implementation plan (PIP), monitoring, and evaluation framework, project reports, baselines studies, annual work plans, any commissioned research findings, policy documents etc.)
- Other data collection methods to be proposed by the consultant to answer sufficiently the evaluation questions
- Presentation and discussion of findings, key lessons learned, and recommendations for action
- Submission of the final evaluation report, reflecting comments and feedback received from selected staff from relevant stakeholders with data collection tools, raw data files and a data quality report as annexes
The evaluation must be carried out adhering to Oxfam’s responsible program data policy (https://oxfam.box.com/s/85d6cdaaxq505zgnsvtsfe0z3cj1n9zt).
An outline of the evaluation report is provided at the end of this ToR.
- Evaluation responsibilities and management arrangements
Oxfam will:
- Provide all documentation required for initial review by the consultant(s), this includes but is not limited to reports, baseline report, workplans, policy reports etc.
- Supervise the evaluation process. Specifically, the consultant will report to the evaluation manager and We-Care Program Manager.
- The evaluation manager will review the evaluation report and assess its quality based on Oxfam’s standards.
- The evaluation manager will ensure the development of a management response outlining the findings and recommendations from the report.
The consultant will:
- Develop an inception report outlining their understanding of the assignment, methodologies, and sampling techniques to be used in the evaluation.
- Sharing preliminary recommendations after completing the literature review.
- Work closely with partner representatives, OXFAM MEAL teams at country level, program coordinators, and the gender focal persons at country level. Carry out the evaluation responsibilities within the stipulated period agreed upon by Oxfam.
- Organize for a validation meeting (with the assistance of Oxfam’s evaluation manager) to assess the findings and key learnings of the evaluation.
- Develop and share an evaluation report.
- Develop a presentation highlighting the key findings of the final evaluation.
- Dissemination strategy, plan, and responsibilities for sharing and using the findings.
Oxfam’s evaluation manager will:
- Develop an approach to disseminating the findings of the final evaluation to the partners, Oxfam country staff and other stakeholders.
- Liaise with the consultant(s) to organize a validation meeting to be held with all relevant stakeholders to assess the findings and key learnings of the evaluation. Disseminate the report and avail it on Oxfam’s website.
How to apply
Applicants meeting the requirements in Section 5: Evaluation Team, should submit an Expression of Interest to ssc.consultancy@oxfam.org latest by 20th February 2023 with the following:
- Brief CV with a succinct rationale of how the team meets the requirements provided above (maximum 2 pages)
- Technical proposal of how the work will be undertaken including the methodology and proposed timelines (maximum 6 pages)
- A financial proposal in USD/ Euros showing the budgeted cost of work and indicative daily rates for each team members including government tax for either local or international consultants
- Contact details for two referees who can ascertain similar work done
Confirmation of availability to undertake the assignment, including field visits to the target locations in the partner countries
Recommended outline of an evaluation report
- cover pageclearly identifying the report as an evaluation and stating:
- evaluation title
- Program/project title /affiliate identification code
- Geographical coverage: global; region; country (ies)
- date that the evaluation report was finalized
- evaluator(s) name(s) and logo (if available)
- Oxfam logo (unless not appropriate)
- appropriate recognition of institutional donor support.
- Clear statement in case this report can NOT be used externally
- Table of contents
- Glossary
- List of abbreviations.
- Executive summary that can be used as a stand-alone document
- Introduction, stating objectives of the evaluation and evaluation questions
- The intervention and context
- Methodology, including an indication of any perceived limitations of the evaluation
- Presentation of the findings and their analysis
- Conclusions
- Learning and Recommendations
- Appendices:
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Terms of reference
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Evaluation program (main features of data and activities carried out).
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A list of interviewees (name, function and working environment) and places visited.
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List of documents and bibliography used.
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Details on composition of evaluation team (names, nationality, expertise, working environment).
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Link to Methodological appendices:
- The evaluation proposal
- Evaluation instruments such as questionnaires and interview guides
- Data collected
