Consultancy service of the Project’s Final Evaluation Gender Responsive School and Community Safety Initiatives (GRSCSI) Project

1. Introduction

Plan International is an independent development and humanitarian organization that advances children’s rights and equality for girls. In the Asia-Pacific region, Plan International works together with children, young people, supporters and partners in 15 countries to strive for a just world, where we are all equal. It is committed to making a lasting impact on the lives of the most vulnerable and excluded children while creating greater equality for girls. The ambition of Plan International till 2027 is to see All Girls Standing Strong Creating Global Change. It is working with focus on girls’ rights, especially for adolescent girls and young women, so they can learn, lead, decide and thrive. Exception of humanitarian scale up and addressing climate crisis, Plan International has four priority areas of work, which are: 1. Learn: Inclusive Quality Education and Skills and Decent Work, 2. Lead: Young people driving change, 3. Decide: Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, and 4. Thrive: Early Childhood Development and Protection from Violence. Currently, Plan International is adopting gender transformative approach in its planning and implementing programs. This approach goes to explicitly tackle the root causes of gender inequality, particularly unequal gender power relations, discriminatory social norms and systems, structures, policies and practices. Hence, it improves the daily condition of girls while advancing their position and value in society.

Background of the Project

Plan International Asia Pacific Regional Office (Plan International APAC) with funding support from Plan International Japan, in collaboration with Plan International Nepal, Plan International Bangladesh and their local partners, has been implemented the Gender Responsive School and Community Safety Initiatives (GRSCSI) project in 12 schools and its surrounding communities, funded by Plan International Japan from July 1st, 2021 to June 30th, 2024. During the 3 (three) years of implementation, the project aims to achieve a gender transformative, safer education and learning environment both at school and community levels that responds to and prepare for multi-hazards risks by three outcomes;

Outcome 1: Strengthened safer and gender responsive school environment aligning with Comprehensive School Safety framework

Outcome 2: Enhanced community DRM capacities that are gender responsive, inclusive and integrated with school preparedness initiatives

Outcome 3: Gender-responsive safe school initiatives promoted by government t and CSO partners at local, provincial, national, and regional levels.

In Bangladesh, the project is aimed to reach 13,302 people including 3,362 girls and 4,986 boys in 4 schools and 2,012 women and 2,942 men in 4 communities from targeted schools. While in Nepal, the project is planned to reach 6,980 people including 1,171 girls, 1,125 boys, 2,389 females and 2,395 males from 8 schools and 24 communities of these school’s catchment areas. In Bangladesh, the project is being implemented in three unions of Kurigram sub-district, which is managed by local partner Eco- Social Development Organization (ESDO). Similarly, it is implemented in two local governments of Sindhuli district in Nepal, which is being managed by Human and National Development Society (HANDS Nepal).

For the regional activities, Plan APAC is responsible for ensuring a timely and quality implementation and effective coordinating with Bangladesh and Nepal Country Offices. Plan APAC also focuses on supporting the knowledge management of the project including the facilitation of smooth learning exchanges among the project team members. In addition, Plan APAC is expected to support strengthening the resource capacity of school safety programming in Asia Pacific through reactivation of the APAC Safe School Task Force (SSTF). The scope of this SSTF is to provide technical support and services (I.e. training facilitation, technical reviews, resource person, etc.) with regards to school safety topics to country offices in Asia Pacific region.

1. Purpose of Evaluation

The overall aim of the evaluation is to comprehensively assess the project achievement in the last three years of implementation. The evaluation should also look out strength, shortfalls of the project cycle management, constraints and challenges, lessons learnt and good practices through at least 3 evidence-based case stories from each country i.e. Bangladesh and Nepal.

The final evaluation will be carried out by following the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC) Criteria. Besides, the evaluation should also assess the challenges, learning points and key success with generation of solid evidence. Therefore, this ToR is prepared for the consultancy service of final evaluation of this project and as reference to seeking for the external consultant team to support conduct the evaluation

1. Objectives of Evaluation

The objectives of the final evaluation are:

• To assess GRSCSI Project with referring OECD DAC’s evaluation criteria of the project i.e. Relevancy, Coherence, Effectiveness, Efficiency, Impact, Sustainability and also Gender and Inclusion aspects.
• To evaluate strength, shortfalls, constraints, challenges, lessons learning and good practices throughout the GRSCSI’s project cycle management focusing planning and implementation of the project.
• To generate success and key achievement of the project through developing of at least 3 evidence-based case stories from each country i.e. Bangladesh and Nepal.
• To generate concrete conclusions and propose practical recommendations that can be used to strengthen gender transformative comprehensive school safety and DRR interventions at school and community resilience.

1. Evaluation Criteria

Consultant should carry out project evaluation by using six evaluation criteria that was defined by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC), and gender and inclusive criteria.

Relevance: Evaluation of extent of the project’sinterventions and results that are relevant to the needs of target people and communities focusing comprehensive school safety and gender transformative interventions of DRR/CCA in schools. Similarly, relevance should analyze the extension of addressing needs and priorities of global, country, and local level’s policies and plans for comprehensive safe schools and education.

Coherence: Assessment of compatibility of the interventions with other interventions and results along with result framework with anticipatory risk, its management and assumptions.

Effectiveness: Assessment of achievement of intervention achieved against its objectives and its expected results along with unintended result in society due to project interventions.

Efficiency: Evaluation of intervention’s cost effectiveness, timely delivery, flexibility and adaptability of the project. It should also assess project structure, partnership management and efficiency of decision-making process.

Impact: Assess the project’s significant positive or negative impacts, which might be intended or unintended and should be higher-level effects rather than outcome of the project.

Sustainability: Assess the project long run changes to society. It should be assessed in term of change in attitude/behavior, social, financial, physical and environmental aspect.

Gender and inclusion: the extent to which the project or programme applied gender and inclusion sensitive approaches and explicitly aimed for results that improve the rights of children and young people and gender equality.

1. Scope of Evaluation

Plan International is looking for a consultant to conduct the final project evaluation of GRSCSI project with following scope:

• Consultant should carry out required literature review for the evaluation of the project including project documents, relevant global to local level policies/strategies of DRR/CCA and comprehensive school safety, relevant reports and tools and standards for project evaluation and so on.
• Prepare or development tools and checklist for the project final evaluation.
• Conduct field study of Bangladesh and Nepal’s project sites and gather information as required. For APAC level’s stakeholder and informant; consultant/consulting firm may do virtual meetings regarding to evaluation of the project.
• Based on evidence and assessment, the strength of the organization and its partner, project team should be evaluated. Similarly, shortfalls of the project especially gender transformative DRR/CCA and comprehensive safe schools shall be assessed.
• The consulting firm or consultants should assess constraints and challenges, which should be evaluated with assumption and risk of the project. Beside these, their coping strategies should be assessed. Key lessons of the project should be documented, which will guide for future project design and planning and implementation especially in the similar field and context.
• Good practices of the project with solid evidence of success, achievement or failure cases should be documented. In this regard, consulting firm/ consultant/s should discuss with both countries office and partners to identify and to develop at least 3 evidence-based case stories from each country i.e. Bangladesh and Nepal i.e. total 6 stories.
• Based on information and evidence, consultant should provide concrete conclusions and suggest practical recommendations for end to end project cycle management process (from project ideation to closure), programme quality, project approaches such as gender transformative and influencing, and practical working methods for project cycle management.
• Expected output of the consultancy work is to develop a maximum 50 pages of final evaluation reports that will clearly illustrate project evaluation at APAC and country wise.

Plan International Nepal and Bangladesh will conduct survey for end-line results of the project, which will provide comparative data of result frame for baseline and end line. The endline survey results from Nepal and Bangladesh will be shared with the selected consultant team to be used in the analysis process of the overall final evaluation report.

1. Methodology

The consulting firm or consultants is/are required to present qualitative approach that they will undertake for the evaluation and elaborate on the evaluation process, tools, data analysis and presentation methods. Also present the sampling approach considering the scope of project. Relevant methodology suggestions to be developed by the consultant that will ensure to this evaluation’s objectives and scope of work. The consultants are expected to design participatory methodology and tools for collecting both qualitative information. The brief of tools shall be written in express of interest of this services, which should be elaborated in inception report, if consulting firm or consultant/s will be selected for the task. The methods and tools will be finalized in consultation with Plan International APAC, Bangladesh and Nepal offices.

6.1 Desk Review: Review of the project documents including country strategies, project implementation guidelines, project result frame-work and baseline reports, etc.

6.2 Field Methods

6.2.1 Observations: Consultant should visit to all 12 project schools for the observation and field verification i.e. 4 schools from Sindhuli district from Nepal and 2 schools from Kachakata, Kedar and Bolloverkhash unions of Nageswari sub-district (Upzilla) from Kurigram district Bangladesh.

6.2.2 Key Informant Interview (KII): Government officials from district/ subdistrict/ union or local government, head teachers, elected representatives and community leaders might be key informant for this evaluation. Similar, KII should also be carried out with project lead, technical advisor such as technical advisor of DRR/CCA, GEDSI, MERL from APAC, BGD CO and NPL CO. Consultant should maintain gender balance for KII. Number of KII should be fairly equal to both COs.

6.2.3 In depth Interview (IDI): In depth interview shall be carried out with by maintaining gender balance among student task force (STF) or school Disaster Management Committee member or school safety champion (SSC) or girl DRR champions (GDRRC). Similarly, DRR focal and GEDSI focal teacher of target schools, and Community Disaster Management Committee’s executive members should be considered. Besides these, IDI will also conduct to children with disability or intersex, to whom project has worked closely with, if any. Virtual interviews with representatives (5-6 members) of safe school task force (SSTF) of APAC as there are 18 SSTF members of Plan International APAC now.

6.2.4 Focus Group Discussion (FGD): FGDs are recommended to conduct with girls and boys group of basic level and secondary level separately. Similarly, FGD will be carried out to STF, SSC and GDRRC and teacher group. Representatives of Basic or secondary or madarsha school should be considered. At community level, FGD should be carried out for women group, men group and youth group separately. A virtual FGD to Plan International APAC/SSFT should also be carried out for regional level intervention assessment.

6.2.5 Schedule/questionnaire survey: No schedule survey to girls, boys, care takers, teachers is required. For result frame, respective country office (BGD CO and NPL CO) will carry out survey separately and will provide end-line result of each result’s indicator along with comparison with baseline and target value to the consultant. However, the consultant should analyze further for this final evaluation especially for effectiveness and efficiently.

6.3 Analysis: Data analysis should be carried out logically and statistically valid proceed and procedure. In this regards, qualitative and quantitative means of data analysis will be performed. For 6 evaluation criteria of OECD/DAC, normative research design shall be adopted.

6.3.1 Normative Research Design: Consultant can suggest the norms and standards of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC)’s criteria. With reference to 6 criteria of evaluation, consultant should develop indicator and standards of progress, which should be agreed before evaluation.

6.3.2 Qualitative methods: Consultant should analyze information, which will be collected through literature reviews on reports/ publications/ frameworks at international, national and local levels related to the topics and project documents. Similarly, KII, IDI and FGD should be analyzed with qualitative methods.

6.3.3 Quantitative methods: BGD and NPL COs will provide data of baseline, endline and target. Consultant will perform standard and appropriate test statistics beyond measurement of central tendency and standard deviation such as parametric test (Eg. study t-test) or non parametric test (Eg. Mann-Whitney U test) on results of final against baseline and target value. Hence, the result of the final evaluation will be statistically valid and complete.

6.4 Quality Assurance, Risk Mitigation and other considerations: It is expected that the evaluation team will use gender friendly and inclusive participatory approaches to seek views of participants as far as appropriate. Inclusive techniques will be expected from the consultant, to seek active participation in the evaluation of program participants and different stakeholders at different levels. Upon signing of the contract, the consultant and Plan International APAC will have an inception meeting to ensure that both have the same understanding of the evaluation objectives, expected result, methodology and action plan.

Consultant must also explicitly provide details on data quality assurance at the field and assurance of the quality of final report in the proposal. Also, potential risks and limitations of the evaluation and consultants’ plan to mitigate them should also be specified in the proposal. Further, the consultant should mention data analysis, data management and data security in their proposal.

1. Expected deliverables

At the end of the consultancy service, the following outputs are expected to be achieved:

• A written inception report in English with maximum 20-25 pages describing an evaluation plan (timeline and evaluation matrix), evaluation methods (type, justification, number disaggregation, field data collection tools and technique including sampling methods and size) and data analysis methods and procedures including appropriate test statistics. The report should have a participatory, gender responsive and child-friendly evaluation procedures throughout the process. It should be built ethical considerations and consent forms for primary data collection in the inception report. Plan International APAC will provide reporting template of inception report after accomplishment of selection.
• A well-written and concise evaluation report of GRSCSI project in English with maximum 50 pages excluding annexes should be submitted. The report should have distinctive analysis of both countries (Bangladesh and Nepal) and APAC. It shall address the specific aims of the evaluation mentioned above and include key findings and recommendations for each country, APAC and donor, lessons learned and good practices with 6 case stories of success or failure, to be submitted in provided template. Consultant should submit Draft Evaluation Report first before April 25, 2024 and Final Evaluation Report including Executive Summary before May 15, 2024.
• Final evaluation report should have detail of methodology of data collection and analysis including final data collection tools and cleaned data such as raw data files in MS Excel or file of SPSS and transcripts of qualitative data syntax/ code books etc. Raw data of every KII, IDI, FGD and observation should be annexed in the report
• Presentation of final evaluation in MS power point. In this regard, Plan International will organize a half day seminar consisting project team of Plan International APAC, Bangladesh and Nepal along with partners’ representatives. Consultant will be invited for presentation in person meeting for final review and reflection in last week of April, 2024

1. Timeline

The assignment is estimated to be undertaken within 40 working days beginning from March 5, 2024 and to be completed by May, 25, 2024

SN / Description / Tentative Date /Estimated Working Day

1 / Publication of notice for consultancy service / 24 January, 2024

2 / Last Date of submission of EoI /February 23, 2024

3 / Review EOIs and interview of the consultant and final decision of the selected consultant agency /

Feb 23–3O, 2024

4 / Contract Award and Signing /March 1- 5, 2024

5 /Orientation to consultant /March 6 –7 , 2024 / 1 Day

6 / Desk review and inception review along with field work schedule / March 7-13, 2024 /5 days

7 /Presentation of methodology with project team including tools and work plan / March 13-18, 2024 /1 Days

8 / Safeguarding assessment based on proposed methodology by Plan / March 18-20, 2024

9 / Review of Inception report, input on methods and finalization of methods /March 19-22, 2024 /2 Days

10 / Ethics review and approval /March 29 2024

11 / Field Work for data collection / April 1-13, 2024 /10 Days

12 /Data Analysis and Reviewing of draft report of endline survey from Bangladesh and Nepal /April 1-20, 2024 / 8 Days

13 / Draft report of evaluation including integrate data of COs from end-line survey /April 20-25-, 2024 /

5 Days

14 /Presentation of final evaluation initial finding in regional review and reflection workshop at Bangkok by physical presence / April 29-May 1, 2024 /2 days including travel

15 /Seminar of Final Evaluation (Virtual) with Management of both CO, JNO and APAC / May 6-10, 2024 /

1 Day

16 / Review of Report and Incorporate feedback / May 10-15 20 /2 Days

17 / Submission of Reports / May 15-20, 2024 /2 Days

1. Expertise and experience of consulting team

A consulting firm or a consultant team should form diverse group of experts to performance this task with gender-balanced team. Plan International APAC will contract with a single consulting firm or consultant. It is suggested that consulting firm/ consultant team firm having at least following team members:

SN / Role / No. of People / Expertise and experience

1 /Team Leader /1 /

• Qualification: Master’s degree, PhD preferred, in disaster management, statistics, anthropology/ sociology, international development, education, environmental studies, or other relevant social science.
• Experience: At least 10 years of proven experience in conducting more than 10 final evaluation of development project especially for INGO and bi/multilateral organization. S/he must be worked more than 3 years in either Bangladesh or Nepal. Consultant from either Nepal or Bangladesh is highly preferred. S/he should have gender-sensitive qualitative and quantitative evaluations related to DRR, Education and/or school safety.
• Have strong understanding and proven experience of practices of OCED/DAC criteria in project evaluation
• Strong writing skills including international journals and news paper column
• Excellent writing skills in English.
• Ability to work with clients remotely and in different time zones; comfortable working in a self-directed manner and communicating proactively

2 / Country Lead /2 (1 for Nepal and 1 for Bangladesh)

• Qualification: Master’s degree in disaster management, statistics, anthropology/ sociology, international development, education, environmental studies, or other relevant social science.
• Experience: At least 7 years of proven experience in conducting more than 10 final evaluation of development project especially for INGO and bi/multilateral organization. S/he must have more than 5 years working experience in respective country i.e. Bangladesh or Nepal. S/he should have gender-sensitive qualitative and quantitative evaluations related to DRR, Education and/or school safety.
• S/he shall be citizen of respective country.
• Excellent writing skills in English and local languages of respective country i.e. Bangli for Bangladesh and Nepali for Nepal.
• Ability and willingness to visit remote and rural area i.e. target area

3 / Data Analyst /1

• Qualification: Master’s degree in statistics, anthropology/sociology, environmental studies, or other relevant social science.
• Experience: At least 5 years of proven experience in data analysis. S/he should have gender-sensitive qualitative and quantitative data analysis. Strong analytic quality of test statistics for parametric and no parametric test.
• Sound experience with data analysis software such as SPSS or R and data collection software (online and offline).
• Familiar social economic context of either Nepal or Bangladesh
• Excellent writing skills in English.

4 / GEDSI Expert /1

• Qualification: Master’s degree in anthropology/sociology, gender studies, or other relevant social science.
• Experience: At least 7 years of proven experience in field of GEDSI especially development sector.
• S/he should have strong analytic quality for gender transformative approach and inclusive development programming.
• Familiar gender issues and social economic context of either Nepal or Bangladesh
• Excellent writing skills in English.

1. Selection Criteria

A two-stage procedure is utilized for selection of consulting firm or consultant team. Technical assessment will be followed by financial analysis.

11.1 Technical Assessment: The technical proposal is evaluated on the basis of its responsiveness to the Term of Reference (ToR). From Expression of Interest (EoI), the technical assessment of the firm or the team will be evaluated. Basically, the technical assessment will be carried out on the basic of technical aspect of proposal from EoI i.e. understanding ToR, methodology for data collection, data analysis and data security along with research ethics. Similarly, work plan of evaluation will also be reviewed. Except these, expertise and team composition of consultants will be considered for technical assessment based on proposed team with CVs.

11. 2 Financial proposal: Financial offer will be opened to those consulting firm or consultant team having 60% or above score in technical assessment. The financial proposal of all Offerors will be evaluated with total score of 30%. The points for the financial proposal will be allocated as per the following formula:

* “Lowest Bid Offered” refers to the lowest price offered by a proposer scoring at least 60% points in technical evaluation.

9.3 Final Evaluation: Final score of each firm will be calculated by taking 70% weightage from technical assessment and 30% weightage from financial proposal.

1. Term and Condition

• Technical and financial proposal should be submitted in separate .pdf file with proper password protection. Plan International APAC may accept or reject of proposal, if there will not be protected. And it is considered as confidential or seal, though it will not be protected.
• Password will be requested to bidder by Plan International APAC’s staff after ending of deadline of submission.
• Each page of technical proposal should be signed by team leader, whereas CV of respective team member’s should have signature in last page.
• Except a cover letter, no alternation of technical proposal and financial proposal can be altered by offer. Technical proposal template (MS Word file) is in Annex 1 and financial proposal template (MS Excel File) is in Annex 2.
• Plan International APAC can request for price negotiation, if required. Price negotiation will be done with bidder, which will score 60% or more score in technical proposal.
• The agreed costs will be paid in two installments i.e. 30% of the consultancy fee after signing of contract and remaining 70% will be paid as final payment after the satisfactory delivery of work upon receipt of letter-headed invoice in accordance with Plan International’s payment policies;
• Selection process and awarding of contract will be done immediately after the closing date;
• All consultants/companies will be checked for anti-terrorism before awarding of the contract.

How to apply

To apply, applications should email to [email protected] and [email protected] before- February 23, 2024 at 17:00 PM BKK time (+6 hr with GMT).

Consultant or consulting firm should submit following documents;

• Technical proposal as prescribed template in annex including CVs of consultants
• Sample of past evaluation- one past evaluation work by team leader and country lead (total three past sample evaluation work)
• Financial proposal as prescribed template
• Scanned copy of Firm registration if consulting firm along with applicable renewable
• Scanned copy of PAN of consulting firm or consultants (all consultants, if team of consultants applying)
• Tax clear certificate consulting firm or consultants (all consultants, if team of consultants applying)