MENA Program Evaluation Consultant

The American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative (ABA ROLI) is a non-profit organization that has worked for over 25 years in more than 100 countries to promote the rule of law, advance human rights, strengthen judicial institutions, support legal professionals and advance understanding of the law and rights of citizens. To this end, the MENA region at ABA ROLI is looking for external evaluators to conduct mid-term or final evaluations for its programs. The MENA region has programs in Jordan, Libya, Tunisia and Morocco focusing on access to justice, gender-based violence, and trafficking in persons.

1. Responsibilities

The consultant is responsible for:

• Reviewing all program materials, reports, and MEL data;

• Interviewing key informants, program staff, stakeholders and partners, conducting focus groups, and engaging in qualitative (and possibly quantitative) data analysis relevant to the assessments; candidates with backgrounds in quantitative and/or qualitative data methods will be considered for different assignments;

• Analyzing, consolidating and presenting findings and recommendations to ABA ROLI and/or donor;

• Providing recommendations to address the program’s intended or unintended consequences;

• Potentially get involved in MEL design during the proposal phase.

2. Evaluation Purpose, Scope, and Objectives:

• The evaluation will measure progress against project targets, assessing to what extent planned program outcomes were achieved and whether there were any unanticipated outcomes;

• Program effectiveness in building capacity and/or strengthening stakeholders, partners and other local actors;

• Gender and inclusion integration in design, implementation, staffing and partnering;

• Application of ‘do no harm’ approaches in activity design and implementation;

• Sustainability of program interventions post program closure;

• Use program findings to improve future program MEL design.

3. Deliverables

All deliverables must be written and presented in English. The consultant is responsible for the following under each assignment:

• An outline/work plan with a timeline prepared in consultation with the program teams and regional MEL advisor that includes design and methodology, data collection activities and analysis;

• Relevant tools for data collection and collated data;

• Draft evaluation report, following the ABA ROLI template, that includes preliminary findings, conclusions and recommendations. ABA ROLI will review and submit comments and suggested revisions;

• A final evaluation report, following the ABA ROLI template including an executive summary, an explanation of the evaluation methodology with its limitations, the findings, conclusions and recommendations, appendices that contain the data analysis collection and analysis tools used;

• PowerPoint presentation and Q&A session with ABA ROLI team and possibly donor. The presentation must include findings, conclusions and recommendations including recommendations to improve future program MEL design;

• Machine-readable information inclusive of the quantitative data collected in the evaluation, mostly created from surveys carried out during the evaluation.

4. Qualifications

The consultant should be proficient in conducting outcome evaluations using quantitative, qualitative or mixed methods.

The consultant must have:

• A bachelor degree required with 10 years of experience or master degree and seven years of experience;

• Certification in monitoring and evaluation with a focus and expertise in rule of law programming;

• Must have previous experience in conducting evaluation in MENA region; experience conducting evaluations with public sector particularly the legal sector is crucial;

• Previous experience with conducting qualitative data collection via secure online platforms;

• Fluent written and oral English skills are required; French and/or Arabic highly preferred;

• MS Office application proficiency as well as MEL systems and software, quantitative data analysis software (i.e. SPSS) for online surveys and data analysis;

• Advance analytical, written, training, and presentation skills.