Tender: Evaluation of Christian Aid's UK aid match projects

[Wendy Wheeler]

Christian Aid is seeking a Lead Consultant to carry out an evaluation of UK aid match projects in Burkina Faso, Ghana and Myanmar.  The evaluation will run from late June to mid-December 2015. The Lead Consultant will be expected to manage an Evaluation Team consisting of two local consultants, supported by Christian Aid country staff in the target countries

 

Christian Aid (CA) received UK Aid Match (UKAM) strategic funding of £5m in 2012 as part of a pilot DFID project that ran from 2012 – 2015.  The funding from DFID supported eight Christian Aid country programmes (CP) in Asia and Africa to work with partners to improve access to essential health services and sustainable livelihoods for over 700,000 beneficiaries.[1] The UKAM programme ended in March 2015. 

At Christian Aid, we are committed to reviewing our resilient livelihoods work on a regular basis, using lessons learned to improve and inform thinking within our programmes and across the wider humanitarian and development sectors.  Christian Aid as a service provider and DFID as funder are keen to understand how Christian Aid’s livelihoods and partnership approaches work well in practice and what elements of the frameworks applied need to be revised. Both Christian Aid and DFID are keen to maximise learning from the project and ensure that lessons are learned from other similar projects and vice versa.

The purpose of the evaluation is to learn from and enhance Christian Aid’s livelihoods and partnership work through an evaluation of selected partners in Ghana, Burkina Faso and Myanmar.   These countries have been selected because they have implemented livelihood projects where the components of the framework have been evident.  The sample of countries therefore provides different sets of programme conditions to help to further test and refine Christian Aid’s livelihoods framework.

The evaluation questions will focus on improving our understanding of both the results achieved so far (how big, deep, inclusive and lasting the change has been), and the mechanisms by which these results have been achieved.  Key questions include:

1. To what extent have Christian Aid Country Programmes improved resilience in the target cases through UKAM funding?
2. What results have been achieved in terms of and outside of the livelihoods framework?
3. What mechanisms and context is required that best support the implementation of a livelihoods project?
4. How does the Thriving, Resilient Livelihoods Framework need to be adapted?
5. How has the CA partnership approach affected the livelihoods work of the partners?
6. How does CA’s global Theory of Change on partnership work in practice in the selected livelihoods Programmes?
7. What are the strengths and challenges of the livelihoods and partnership approaches adopted by Christian Aid?

 

We look forward to hearing from experienced development professionals who are keen to take on this interesting and exciting task! The deadline for applications is 5pm on Monday 8 June and submissions – or requests for further information – should be emailed to [e-mail] (Wendy Wheeler, Procurement Manager, Christian Aid). We aim to hold interviews w/c 22 June.

 

For more information about the assignment and the Lead Consultant Person Specification, please see the attached invitation to tender.

 

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[1] The eight country programmes were: Burkina Faso, Ghana, Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, South Africa, Zambia