Consultancy Service for Project Evaluation

1. Background:

Church World Service (CWS) is an American NGO, which began its work in Vietnam in 1954. Since then, CWS has supported Vietnam continuously with projects primarily focusing on improving health services, access to water and sanitation, nutrition for children, education for ethnic minorities and disaster relief.

During 2015-2017, CWS Vietnam and its project partners have implemented the New Integrated Development Through Essential Action (NEW-IDEA) project to support for Education, Health and Hygiene development for ethnic minority communities in Muong Te district (Lai Chau province), in Pho Yen and Dai Tu districts (Thai Nguyen province). The project is funded by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Under this project, many activities mainly focusing on capacity building, awareness raising, education improvement, and promotion of health and hygiene behaviors in ethnic minority communities have been implemented to achieve the following objectives and expected results of the project:

Project Goal and Objectives

The goal of NEW IDEA is to improve the quality of life for people in especially vulnerable ethnic minority communities in Muong Te district, Lai Chau province and in Phuc Thuan and Quan Chu communes of Thai Nguyen province, with these objectives:

1. Education: Increase educational access and quality for children in priority communities
2. Health and hygiene/sanitation: Improve health service access and quality as well as household hygiene and communal sanitation in priority communities
3. Community development: To increase information-sharing and awareness to build knowledge of (a) children’s rights, including the rights to education and protection; (b) hygiene at the household and community levels and (c) essential health, especially maternal/newborn health basics. Community Culture Houses will be refurbished to support these activities.

Project expected outcomes

• Teachers, teacher assistants and local education officials have increased access to information, expanded awareness, more knowledge and improved skills (altogether: more capacity) to teach and manage education for ethnic minority students.
• Schools are physically improved to foster safe and child-friendly learning environments in classroom, libraries, etc.
• Commune, village and district health care workers, including  traditional birth attendant, have increased access to information, expanded awareness, more knowledge and improved skills (altogether: more capacity) and their networks are strengthened.
• Hygiene/sanitation situation in communes, villages and households is improved.
• Communities are supported to increase their knowledge of (a) children’s rights, including the right to protection from all forms of harm; (b) hygiene at the household and community levels and (c) essential health, especially maternal/newborn health basics.

2. The evaluation:

2.1 Purpose and specific objectives:

The project is now coming to ending in June 2017, and thus there is a need for carrying out an external evaluation to collect information and evaluate achievements and impacts of the project.

The specific objectives are including:

• To assess performance of the project, including relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, process (participation) and sustainability;
• To assess the achievements, successes, and impacts of the project;
• To identify gaps and challenges in the district education and health sectors and to make recommendations for possible future programming;

2.2 Expected outputs:

The evaluation consultant will produce the following deliverables:

• Proposal paper with detailed methodology, field survey plan and data collection tools.
• Project evaluation draft and final reports

The final evaluation report should be submitted both in English and Vietnamese, to CWS, and it should include:

• An assessment of the project’s performance, focusing on relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, process (participation) and sustainability
• A collection of quality photos and stories about project impacts/ stories of change from either institutional or individual beneficiaries, who get involved/ participated/ benefited from the project
• Gaps that may need further resources and recommendations for possible future programming 

2.3 Methodology:

The evaluation team leader is expected to design a proposal paper with participatory approach including interviews, focus group discussions etc. to collect both quantitative and qualitative information for the evaluation.   

At all times the evaluators are expected to collaborate with CWS staff, project partners and project beneficiaries, either in the office or during the field survey. All survey forms, data collection and analysis, draft and final reports should be in consultation with CWS.

2.4 Work locations and timeline:

The consultant service is expected to be implemented within the period from April to June, 2017. As such, the field survey is expected to be conducted in project communes and villages in Lai Chau (Muong Te) and in Thai Nguyen in April-May for the final report to be available by June 20th, 2017. The details of time frame and of major steps in the process should be clearly elaborated in the evaluators’ proposed work plan.

3. The evaluation team and requirements:

It is anticipated that an evaluation team consisting of a leading evaluation consultant and his/her team members is needed. The consultant will lead the team to carry out the evaluation. The team members will report directly to the leading evaluation consultant.

The below are professional requirements for the evaluators:

• Experience in development project evaluations
• Knowledge and practical experience in basic education and in health and hygiene education, promotion of sanitation at schools and at communities.
• Good understanding of gender issues and working experience with ethnic minority populations, particularly those in the north-northwest of Vietnam.
• Fluent written Vietnamese and English skills

The following experience and skills are seen as advantages:

• Experience in child-friendly school library, child-centered teaching methodology, particularly for teaching and learning environment in ethnic minority populations 
• Experience in IEC (Information-Education-Communication) related work and/or the KAP (Knowledge-Attitude-Practice) surveys.
• Good communication, facilitation, analytical and writing skills.

Interested candidates please send an application letter and detailed CVs to [email protected] no later than April 14th 2017.