Interpeace
Reporting to: Programme Manager, Interpeace Guinea-Bissau
Location: Guinea Bissau (Bissau, with a planned mission in the regions)
Application closing: 20 June 2022
1- Introduction
Interpeace programme in Guinea-Bissau, seeks a consultant to conduct a final evaluation for its project “No Ianda Djuntu- Drawing the pathway together: new leadership for meaningful participation, peace and stability in Guinea Bissau”. The project has been implemented by Interpeace with its local partners, Voz di Paz, and funded by the United Nations Secretary-General’s Peacebuilding Fund to strengthen the role and leadership of youth to enhance their inclusion in and influence on democratic development and peacebuilding processes in Guinea-Bissau.
2- Context
Interpeace
Interpeace is an international organisation for peacebuilding that strengthens the ability of societies to manage conflict themselves in sustainable and non-violent ways. Interpeace designs and delivers its work tailored to each situation in partnership with local partners and communities, based on extensive consultation and research. Interpeace was originally established by the United Nations and remains its strategic partner. Beyond field-based peacebuilding, Interpeace also assists the international community – particularly the UN – to be more effective in supporting peacebuilding efforts worldwide. This includes contributing innovative thought leadership on peacebuilding policies and practices. Interpeace is headquartered in Geneva and has offices around the world.
For more information about Interpeace, please visit www.interpeace.org
Voz di Paz
Voz di Paz, Peacebuilding Initiative, is a Bissau-Guinean NGO active since 2007 in Guinea Bissau. Its objective is to stimulate citizen engagement to consolidate peace contributing to good governance, with a specific focus on the most vulnerable groups (women and young people). Voz di Paz has its headquarters in Bissau and has established a unique peace architecture across the country – a network of 10 Regional Spaces for Dialogue that can be called upon to prevent and resolve local conflicts fostering dialogue.
For more information on Voz di Paz, please visit www.vozdipaz.org
Guinea Bissau Programme
In 2007, Interpeace set up a peacebuilding programme in Guinea-Bissau in collaboration with its local partner organization Voz di Paz, with the long term goal to address obstacles to peace in Guinea‐Bissau by fostering a culture of dialogue and engaging all sectors and levels of society in the peacebuilding process. Interpeace and Voz di Paz’s methodology is rooted in Participatory Action Research and has as a principle the inclusion of all actors in the peace-building process, according to international practices approved. Interpeace and Voz di Paz work aims to lead processes of conflict management and change that are integrated at all levels of society including local communities, civil society, government, and the international community (we call it a ‘Track 6’ approach).
United Nations Peacebuilding Fund
The UN Secretary-General’s Peacebuilding Fund (PBF) is the organization’s financial instrument of first resort to sustain peace in countries or situations at risk or affected by violent conflict. PBF funding covers different, mutually reinforcing sectors: dialogue and national reconciliation, strengthening of the formal and informal justice sectors, women and youth empowerment, as well as strengthening professional and conflict-sensitive media as a cross-cutting issue. The Multi-partner Trust Fund calculates that 57.5 million have been allocated to Guinea-Bissau since 2008.
Every year, the PBF launches the Gender and Youth Promotion Initiative (GYPI), an expression of the Fund’s commitment to inclusive peacebuilding which aims to support the empowerment of women and the advancement of gender equality and to recognize the important and positive role young people play in peacebuilding. The project “No Ianda Djuntu- Drawing the pathway together: new leadership for meaningful participation, peace and stability in Guinea Bissau“ has been funded through the GYPI in 2020.
3- Description of the project
In January/February 2021 Interpeace and Voz di Paz launched the 18-month project “No Ianda Djuntu- Drawing the pathway together: new leadership for meaningful participation, peace and stability in Guinea Bissau”, funded by the UN Peacebuilding Fund (PBF). The project, which end is foreseen at the beginning of August 2022, has been implemented in all the regions of the country with the objective of strengthening the role and leadership of youth to enhance their inclusion in and influence on democratic development and peacebuilding processes in Guinea-Bissau.
Generating a reflection on youth role in decision-making processes, reinforcing their responsibility and capacity to jointly act and influence upon public decision-making bodies and boosting their self-confidence in promoting new leadership models were key entry points of the project which aimed to catalyze a tangible and long-lasting institutional change for an effective inclusion of young men and women in political, civic and economic life.
Project Theory of Change and Outcomes
The theory of change that underpins the project intervention strategy lays its foundations on the assumptions that to strengthen the role and leadership of youth, and to enhance their meaningful participation and inclusion in decision making processes, young men and young women have to play a pivotal role in defining new pathways and models for leadership and participation together with the older generation. By creating the space and opportunities for an intergenerational dialogue, the project will contribute to building trust and the relationship between young people and older generations, bridging the existing intergenerational gap. By strengthening and boosting young people self-confidence to meaningfully take part to decision making and peace processes, and accompanying and structuring youth initiatives, the project will address some of the causes of youth exclusion such as the lack of self-confidence and social recognition, and the lack of effective inclusion in participatory democracy mechanisms at the local level. By bringing together older generations, the political leaders and young people, the project will seek to address some of the institutional barriers as well as the lack of incentives to make youth participation a priority.
By giving youth the opportunity to set their own agenda, to lead actions that specifically target key institutions to take forward the recommendations coming from the dialogue and to reach out to a wider audience with new positive leadership models, it will create the momentum for long lasting change in Guinea-Bissau economic, political and civic life
Outcome 1
Relationships between youth leaders and key government institutions/authorities at the national and local levels are improved
Outcome 2
Capacities and self-confidence of young men and women to influence public decision-making at the local, regional and national level are strengthened
Outcome 3
Increase the public awareness of the importance of women leadership in peacebuilding and of the good practices in the mitigation of division risks, and the public knowledge of the previously shared success stories of men and women.
The project scope, budget, implementation timeframe, as well as further specific details are available at: https://mptf.undp.org/factsheet/project/00125914
4- Objectives and Contents
The main objective of the final evaluation is to assess the achievements of the project; to build evidence of peacebuilding results and to highlight the strategies that have contributed to, or hindered, their achievement; to design lessons learned from the project and to provide recommendations for future programming in the sector of youth participation in Guinea-Bissau.
Within the broader and country specific context, the evaluation will be guided by the 6 OECD DAC criteria[1] as further detailed below, and is expected to:
- Assess effectiveness and a potential measurable impact of the intervention on the target group
- Identify and document lessons learned, best practices, success stories and document and analyse challenges and possible weaknesses to inform future work of the Peacebuilding Fund in the area of youth participation and inclusion in decision-making in Guinea Bissau
- Analyse the relevance of the Project objectives, strategy and approach at the local and national levels
- Assess organizational efficiency and coordination mechanisms in progressing towards the achievement of the project, including the achievement of gender equality and women’s empowerment results as defined in the intervention
- Analyse and assess the strategies in place and contribute to identify additional strategies for replication and up-scaling of the project’s best practices
- Asses the measures taken by the project (and identify new measures) to ensure national ownership of the project
The evaluation will be of interest to Interpeace, Voz di Paz, the Peacebuilding Support Office of the United Nations (PBSO), the United Nations Secretary-General’s Peacebuilding Fund (PBF), the UN Resident Coordinator’s Office, and the Guinea Bissau Government, notably the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport and the National Youth Institute as well as to international donors and policy makers engaged in Guinea-Bissau.
Key questions of evaluation and reflection
In order to assess the level of achievement of the different project objectives in terms of relevance, coherence, efficiency, effectiveness, impact, sustainability, continuous learning, catalytic effect, gender responsiveness/sensitivity and risk tolerance and innovation, key questions have been developed to guide the evaluation.
Relevance
- Was the project relevant in addressing conflict drivers and factors for peace identified in a conflict analysis? If there were significant contextual shifts, did the project goals and approach remain relevant?
- To what extent the beneficiaries perceive the intervention as relevant? Were they consulted during design and implementation of the project? To what extent has the project addressed relevant factors of conflict and tension as perceived by the actors and by the communities involved in the project? Special attention will be paid to gender and youth
- Was the project appropriate and strategic to the main peacebuilding goals and challenges in the country at the time of the PBF project’s design? How did this project align with national priorities and commitments and supported national ownership?
- To what extent was the intervention logic/overall strategy relevant in pursuing the Interpeace/Voz di Paz programme’s vision?
- How did the project find synergies with other previous or ongoing initiatives to build on initial findings and maximize impact?
- What adaptations can the donor and recipient organizations (PBF; Interpeace programme) make over the next years to be optimally relevant to the changing context in the country with respect to youth promotion?
Coherence
- Is the project consistent with the organizations’ past and future programming, and with Guinea-Bissau wide peacebuilding programming, including other PBF projects and state strategies?
- To what extent the project was compatible with other interventions and complemented the work among different entities, especially with other UN actors in the country?
Efficiency
- To what extent have the project’s design, strategies, activities, staffing, and inputs been sufficient and well-used for meeting expected outcomes?
- How has the project adapted to changes in the context and emerging challenges during its implementation?
- To what extent do the programme partners have the capacities to achieve the programme outcomes? What areas of capacity strengthening are needed to elevate programme implementation?
- Have the outputs been delivered in a timely manner? If not, how did the project team mitigate the impact of delays? Did delays create missed opportunities to address time-sensitive peacebuilding opportunities?
- Are the project and its components cost-effective? Could the activities and outputs have been delivered with fewer resources or within a reduced timeframe, without reducing their quality and quantity?
Effectiveness
1- To what extent and according to which causal chains has the project strategy contributed to the expected outputs and outcomes of the project? Please provide evidence.
- How could the possible variations from expected to actual outputs and outcomes be explained?
- To what extent are the project approaches and strategies (with a specific focus on intergenerational dialogue, peer to peer capacity building platforms and microgrants mechanism) effective for increasing youth participation and inclusion? What -if any- types of innovative good practices have been introduced to achieve results in this field?
- Did the project have effective monitoring mechanisms in place to measure progress towards achievement of results? To what extent was the monitoring data objectively used for management action and decision making? Was the project monitoring system adequately capturing data on peacebuilding results at an appropriate outcome level?
Impact
- What results and changes in perceptions, attitudes, behavior, relationships, expected and unexpected, can be observed at the end of the project? (Particularly in relation to: young men and young women playing a pivotal role in defining new pathways and models for leadership and participation together with the older generation). Please provide evidence.
- To what extent did the project bring a better understanding, among institutional representatives and within the public, on the opportunities of youths’ inclusion in decision making for the Guinea Bissau society? And what wasn’t but could/should be done to improve that understanding?
- How and to what extent has the project contributed to how partners and other involved actors choose to behave while approaching youth participation and inclusion?
Sustainability
- Is the project supported by national/local institutions? Do these institutions, including Government at the national and regional level, Civil Society, Political Parties, Security and Defence Forces (SDF), demonstrate leadership commitment and technical capacity to continue to work with the project or replicate it to ensure continuity of peace-building efforts after the project closes?
- How likely are key stakeholders and actors involved to sustain choosing to act differently beyond the support of the project?
- Did the intervention design include an appropriate sustainability and exit strategy (including promoting national/ local ownership, use of local capacity, etc.) to support positive changes in youth inclusion after the end of the intervention?
- How can Interpeace programme in Guinea-Bissau maximize sustainability for impact beyond the project period?
Continuous Learning
- What lessons could be learned from the implementation of this project to improve future projects on promotion of youth inclusion and participation in decision making in Guinea-Bissau?
- How can Interpeace program strengthen gender mainstreaming in youth promotion initiatives fostering inclusive governance in Guinea Bissau and abroad?
In addition to the above standard OECD/DAC criteria, the additional PBF specific evaluation criteria below should also be assessed by the evaluation. Within the structure of the evaluation report, the below criteria may either be reflected separately or integrated into the above evaluation criteria. Regardless, the evaluation must identify specific evaluation questions on the below criteria.
Catalytic:
- Was the project financially and/or programmatically catalytic?
- Has PBF funding been used to scale-up other peacebuilding work and/or has it helped to create broader platforms for peacebuilding?
Gender-Responsive/Gender-Sensitive:
- Did the project consider the different challenges, opportunities, constraints and capacities of women, men, girls and boys in project design (including within the conflict analysis, outcome statements and results frameworks) and implementation?
- Were the commitments made in the project proposal to gender-responsive peacebuilding, particularly with respect to the budget, realized throughout implementation?
Risk-Tolerance and Innovation:
- If the project was characterized as “high risk”, were risks adequately monitoring and mitigated?
- How novel or innovative was the project approach? Can lessons be drawn to inform similar approaches elsewhere?
5- Methodology
The evaluator is expected to present, agree upon and apply a conceptual framework of analysis consistent with Interpeace’s peacebuilding and participatory approach.
The evaluator is encouraged to suggest a comprehensive methodology that includes the elements listed below (section 6 of this ToR) and others that the evaluators deem fit for meeting the evaluation objectives. The proposed methodology for data collection should be brielfy included in the proposal, and further described in the inception report, specifically demonstrating how the various elements will be evaluated using specific methods and tools.
The evaluator is expected to use participatory evaluation methodologies which may include but are not limited to: theory-based evaluation goal-independent tools such as most significant change, outcome harvesting, as well as interviews, focus group discussions, key informant interviews, systematic review of monitoring data and internal assessments and evaluations, systematic review of existing, relevant data at the outcome or country context level, systematic review of PBF Eligibility Requests and Annual Reports, on-site field visits, surveys, etc. The methodology used should also contain a comprehensive gender sensitivity framework.
Proposals submitted by prospective consultants should outline a strong mixed method approach to data collection and analysis, clearly noting how various forms of evidence will be employed vis-à-vis each other to triangulate gathered information.
6- Steps and deliverables
The evaluation will be both an objective and a consultative/participatory exercise and is expected to involve the following elements.
While Interpeace anticipates the use of the elements listed below, the list is not exhaustive. The evaluation may include additional elements and approaches as appropriate for responding to the final evaluation questions.
7- Modality
Timeframe
The foreseen duration of the evaluation is approximately 30 working days with approximately 15 days spent in Guinea-Bissau in July 2022. The evaluation starting date is foreseen for the second half of July 2022 with submission of the final report by the first half of September 2020. The final timeframe will be agreed upon with the selected consultant.
Reporting lines
The evaluator conducts the final evaluation of the project and interacts directly with Interpeace and Voz di Paz. The evaluator reports to Interpeace’s Programmes Manager for Guinea-Bissau. An overall lumpsum will be established in the contract as per prior agreement between Interpeace and the evaluator. This lumpsum covers costs related to international travel, accommodation, visa, communication, DSA during the fieldwork.
Location
Interpeace and Voz di Paz’s team are based in Bissau, the capital of Guinea-Bissau.
The evaluator shall be prepared, as per prior agreement, to collaborate with Interpeace and Voz di Paz both remotely and on site in Bissau. Remote collaboration is established through emails, Teams and WhatsApp or land line telephone connection in the case of insufficient Internet connection in Bissau.
Interpeace’s responsibilities
- Providing a focal point at Interpeace for the evaluation, who may or may not travel with the consultant (time and funds permitting);
- Providing a focal point at Voz di Paz;
- Providing logistical support inside Guinea-Bissau;
- Arranging meetings with stakeholders;
- Providing relevant programme reports and documentation in advance;
- Providing success stories and testimonies to illustrate the types of change (see questions on impact) which can then be verified by the evaluator.
8- Qualifications
Interpeace and Voz di Paz are looking for an experienced consultant/team of consultants with the following skills and experience at a minimum:
- At least 5 years of experience in conducting evaluations/assessments. Evalautions of peacebuilding projects in Guinea Bissau will be considered as an asset;
- Strong knowledge of and experience with peacebuilding programmes;
- Demonstrated understanding of participatory processes and methodologies and experience in qualitative and quantitative data collection
- Experience working in Guinea-Bissau or other conflict or post-conflict environments
- Experience in evaluating youth empowerment projects appreciated
- Excellent command of English (report writing) and Portuguese (conducting interviews and exchanging with the programme team). Understanding of Guinea Bissau criol is considered an asset.
- Ability to work effectively and inclusively with people of different culture, race, nationality, gender, political or religious belief, age, sexual orientation, disability, or marital status.
How to apply
Qualified candidates may submit a narrative and financial proposal to [email protected] copying [email protected]. Applications must include:
- CVs and relevant experiences of all members of the consultant team as well as the roles provided for each for the consultancy
- Presentation of the methodology, based on the requests expressed in these Terms of Reference and taking into account gender
- Detailed budget including logistics costs as well as human resources consultancy – please note that the overall availability for this evaluation exercise is 16.000 USD
Deadline for application is on 20 of June 2022. “Evaluation PBF Youth Guinea-Bissau” MUST BE included in the subject line of the application e-mail for the application to be considered.
Interpeace reserves the right to close recruitment ahead of the deadline, and applicants are encouraged to submit their applications as soon as possible. Interviews will take place the first weeks of July.
Please note that due to high volume of applications, ONLY short-listed candidates will be notified.