Hiring an Individual Consultant to Conduct the Baseline Evaluation for “School Health and Nutrition Project”

Save the Children International in Vietnam (SCI Vietnam) has been implementing a project on school health and nutrition, including oral health in three provinces/cities (Hanoi, Hai Phong and HCMC/Tien Giang) since 2011 with the support from Mars Wrigley Foundation. During 10 years of implementation through five phases, the project has been successful in improving knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) of students on oral health care.

In the last phase (2021-2022), SCI has collaborated with Department of Education and Training (DOET) of Hai Phong city and Tien Giang province and Bureau of Education and Training (BOET) of Ha Dong district in Ha Noi city to implement School Health and Nutrition project activities at 106 current schools reaching its outcomes and direct benefit 104,526 people including 99,893 children (51,763 boys, 48,130 girls) and 4,633 adults (961 male, 3,672 female). The project has achieved on improving age-appropriate personal hygiene and nutrition practices of students in project schools. There was an increase in handwashing with soap after using toilets (from 93.9% to 95.5%), brushing teeth twice a day (94.1% to 95.1%), and moderate intake of sugary foods and/or beverages (84.1% to 95.9%). The percentage of parents who participated in parent clubs who could correctly identify at least 80% of common good personal hygiene practices for children increased from 61.7% to 80%.

To continue promoting the project achievements, Phase VI (2022-2024) is designed to maintain the best practices of the previous phases, strengthen the behavior change of children, while orient and implement transition of project documents, and lessons learnt to partners (schools, DOET, MOET and MOH); support partners to actively implement and replicate the models in our schools and to provinces outside the project areas. In this phase, the project has two main objectives: Objective 1: Ensure a supportive environment for students (girls, boys and other gender identities) to maintain education and students’ good health and nutrition habits; Outcome 2: Create a gradual and sustainable transition of project models to government partners.

Due to the change in indicators’ definition and calculation, the project has to conduct a new baseline survey to align with the differences in phase VI.

The purpose of this baseline survey is to capture the start-point of this phase across the three project sites. The primary purpose of the survey is to assess the current situation of School Health and Nutrition (SHN) knowledge, practices and skills of students, teachers, parents in the target provinces. It also aims to identify current status and demand for SHN services (health checkup, hygiene & sanitation services, health management), then giving recommendation and contributing to better implementation during project life.

The detail TOR of this service can be found HERE [1]

The consultant will provide the following services

• Review project documents (project description, project proposal, MEAL Plan, Log-frame).
• Develop inception report and develop study tools.
• Collect the qualitative data.  SC staff will support the consultant on collecting quantitative data with students, parents and teachers at project sites.
• Transcript qualitative data.
• Process and analyze data gathered from the various data collection activities (quantitative & qualitative data). This includes the following:
  
  • Creation of an electronic database for each type of data collected for the baseline. A copy of each electronic database created must be submitted to SC at the end of the assignment. 
  • Cleaning and validation of the data collected including the application of range and consistency checks.
  • Generation of results like the computation of indicators and the construction of statistical tables and graphs.
• Write the first draft and the final version of the baseline report. The final version must include any modifications needed based on the comments given by key partners, SC and Technical Advisors during the presentation of the first draft. The first draft of baseline report must be written in English; and final version of the study report must be written both in English and Vietnamese. The final baseline report will be also shared with the donor, partners.
• Prepare key findings in presentation format
• After sending SC all deliverables, consultant must delete all collected data related to this survey. All documents must comply with Save the Children’s Data protection policy, Safety and Security Policy.

Expected Deliverables

The study deliverables and tentative timeline (subject to the commencement date of the study) are outlined below. The individual consultant and Wrigley Project Managerwill agree on final milestones and deadlines at the inception phase.

Tentative timeline

The tentative duration for the study from 27 June to 30 September 2022. The detail of timeline for each activity will be developed between SC and the consultant.

The consultant will be required for an input as follows:

Estimated commencement date: The first week of July 2022

Estimated end date: The last week September 2022

Experience and set of skills required

Interested individual consultant will be required to submit an Expression of Interest in line with the provided template, which should demonstrate adherence to the following requirements.

• Postgraduate degree in Medicine, Public Health or Social Science. Experience in School Health and Nutrition is preferred.
• At least 5 years of experience in conducting studies in health projects.
• At least 5 years of experience and use of qualitative and quantitative study methods (collection and analysis).
• Understanding of political, cultural, education and social context in Vietnam
• Strong written and verbal skills in communicating technical and/ or complex findings to non-specialist audiences (especially report writing and presentation skills)
• High English proficiency in writing.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office Suite, quantitative & qualitative data analysis software (SPSS, STATA, EPIDATA, NVivo, ATLAS.ti, etc.)

How to apply

The candidate should submit a technical proposal, CVs, financial proposal and 3 reference reports through email address:[email protected]

The deadline for responses is: 01 July 2022 (5pm)