Consultancy Service to Conduct End-Term Evaluation for RESET Plus – Scaling up the Family Planning for Resilience Building program amongst youth and women in drought prone and chronically food insecure regions of Ethiopia Project 78 views

Amref Background

Amref Health Africa is the largest African-based and led international health development organization serving over 30 million people annually across 35 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.  Strategically engaging with communities, governments, and local partners for the past 65 years, we work through our European and North American network of sister organizations on program implementation, advocacy, fundraising and partnership. Our subsidiaries include Amref Flying Doctors, Amref Enterprises Limited, and the Amref International University.

Our organization is driven by its vision to bring lasting health change in Africa and its mission to catalyze and drive community-led and people-centered health systems while addressing social determinants of health. Amref believes that the power to transform Africa’s health lies within its communities, and therefore strives to ensure that health systems are functioning at an optimal level and communities are empowered to hold these systems accountable for the delivery of high-quality and affordable health care.

Amref has been active in Ethiopia since the 1960s and became fully operational as of 2002. We have been partnering with the Ethiopian government and local communities to co-create solutions and implement diverse health and development project portfolios throughout the country for over twenty years. Aligning with the national Health Sector Transformation Plan II (HSTP II), we work to ensure health equity by serving women and children, reaching the most disadvantaged, inaccessible communities including pastoralist communities and placing an emphasis on youth development.

Our programs are designed to support community level interventions while strengthening health systems at the regional and national levels. With an integrated and multi-sectoral approach, Amref strategically addresses cross-cutting issues through these programmatic focus areas.

Project Background 

Reset plus is progressive project that lasted for over six years focusing on resilience community and Family planning using different initiatives. This project is implemented with many local CSOs to ensure its sustainability and increase the capacity of the CSOs.  Reset plus addresses different intervention areas through its two phases.

The first phase which was implemented from January 15, 2018, to October 15, 2021 in three regions, five zones and 24 woredas by four consortium organizations with Amref Italy lead. The 2nd phase (December 29, 2021- December 28, 2024) is currently implementing   in five clusters/zones of four region at 16 woredas by three organization.  From Southern nation, nationalities and people region (SNNPR) two zones and seven woredas namely Wolaita zone (Damot Pulasa, Duguna Fango, Boloso Sore and Kindo Koysha districts) and South Omo (Hammer, Dasench, and Gnagatom districts); from Oromia region one zone and three woredas by namely Borana zone (Moyale, Dhaas and Arero districts); from Amhara region at one zone of three woredas, Waghimra (Gazgibila, Sekota and Ziquala woredas) and Afar region zone 1 (Afambo, Assiyta and Elidar districts). Amref Health Africa Italy has led; and the project has been implemented with consortium members namely, Amref Health Africa Ethiopia (lead in country), Woman Empowerment in Action, Kulich Youth Reproductive Health and Development Organization (KYRHDO).

The project is highly important to address the following key problems in the implementation areas; Low family planning service utilization; low quality service of SRHR including FP; poor awareness of family planning and its link with resilience building; gender disparities and prevalence of harmful traditional practice; low youth involvement in SRHR promotion, poor multi-sectoral coordination and political engagement, limited institutional capacity of different organized groups and local government to promote family planning service and its link with resilience building.

Objectives of the project

Overall objective: To contribute to the resilience of vulnerable communities through consolidated Family Planning (FP) practices, gender equality and decreased demographic pressure.

The specific objective: to ensure the improvement of social cohesion, sustainable access to quality SRH and FP services, and productive capacity and self-reliance of women and youths.

The project has four expected results- At this time, we expect to have the following major outcomes to be achieved

• Result 1: Increased empowerment of youths and women through strengthening and establishment of grassroots-based groups and access to socioeconomic opportunities
• Result 2: Increased community awareness on the link between FP and resilience, SRHR and gender equity including HTPs
• Result 3: Improved access to quality FP/SRHR services by strengthening the capacity of local service providers
• Result 4: Policy and decision making influenced the consolidation of a comprehensive framework for resilience building including FP and gender equality by scaling up and institutionalization of the program and its approaches at national level.

Major project Deliverables

Project objective verifiable indicators as stated in the project logframe/project document, and this will be shared for the winner to see the full picture of the indicators.

Beneficiaries

Direct beneficiaries are 107,600 (50,000 AY and 57,600 adults), 600 HEWs, 12,000 HWs Indirect beneficiaries: total population in the intervention districts is 807,400

Purpose of this end term evaluation 

The purpose of the end term evaluation is to assess the extent to which the Reset Plus project has achieved its objectives and the overall performance. The objective of this evaluation includes:

General objective:

The overall objective of the evaluation is to assess the extent to which the project has achieved its intended results at long term outcome and intermediate outcome against predetermined targets. And the baseline findings will be used as a reference point to compare changes.

Specific objective:

1. To assess the degree to which project deliverable mentioned above were achieved
2. To examine the changes that resulted from project intervention comparing with baseline findings
3. To assess the relevance, efficiency, effectiveness and sustainability and impact of the project
4. To provide recommendation to partners for scale up and donors for future funding

Results from this evaluation will be used to assess the significance of the intervention and to come up with evidence-based recommendation for scaling up or not. To highlight the project’s achievements/results, the consultant will focus on the results and outcome indicators targeted during project design.

Geographic coverage 

This end term evaluation will be conducted in Four project implementation regions (South region, Oromia, Amhara and Afar), and districts. Selection of representative study units will be the responsibility of the consultant based on statistically sound criteria.

Proposed Methodology

The consultant is expected to propose a scientifically sound methodology that best suits the evaluation objective. Amref is open to considering the consultant’s suggestions. The methodology should include an appropriate sampling approach with robust data collection and quality assurance processes. The methodology should not only inform program decision-makers from a programmatic and scientific perspective, but also generate findings that are suitable for publication in a peer-reviewed journal. The goal is to develop an evaluation approach that is both rigorous and practical, providing Amref with the information needed to make evidence-based decisions, while also producing outputs that contribute to the broader scientific literature in this domain.

Specific tasks to be done by the consultant

The below listed will include main activities to follow;

• Meet Amref Health Africa in Ethiopia head office to present the work plan as per the tasks required as per the terms of reference (ToR).
• Review key databases and researches and other relevant documents like project baseline report, reports, documented data …etc including but not limited to develop the introduction, frameworks and methods will used.
• All reviewed databased should be included in standard referencing software’s preferably endnote program (also share will shared the databases used to Amref for reviewing)
• The firm should get approvals from Amref M&E department on the body of the content, introduction, framework/s and methods used before starting the final tool development.
• Develop the final tool as per the agreed introductions, frameworks and methods.
• Meet Amref Health Africa in Ethiopia head office and project staff at the beginning and at the end of the field work for inception report and debriefing.
• Discuss with Amref program development/program/project managers and M&E staffs
• Identify key partner for interviews from the government and private sectors at all levels
• Develop protocol that clearly defines the methodologies for sampling/ disaggregated by district/urban, data collection, entry, cleaning, compilation, analysis of data and report writing (Approvals required from Amref M&E department) and so that Amref health Africa will have a mandate to follow the process directly or indirectly.
• Recruit qualified data collectors and train evaluation team and pre-test data collection tools;
• The team compositions for the data collectors have to be very well qualified and who has an experience in both quantitative and qualitative research.
• Coordinate data collection, processing, analysis, management and reporting;
• Conduct a final debriefing at an Amref health Africa Ethiopia Office
• Develop and submit final report incorporating all comments given by Amref Health Africa Ethiopia, datasets and Do-files.

Period for Submission and deliverables

• The consultancy firm or team should follow the overall time frame of 60 calendar days starting from signing of the agreement to the finalization of report (incorporating all changes and requests from Amref).
• The consultancy firm will submit and present the inception report that clearly defines the methodologies for sampling and data collection tools in the first week following signing the contract. Final data collection tools will be annexed to the protocol and address the feedbacks in the second week of agreement.
• Training of data collectors and supervisors will take place in the second week following singing the contract.
• By end of fifth week, data should have been analyzed and first draft of report submitted. The actual data collection will take place in third and fourth week following signing the contacts.
• The consultant will update Amref Health Africa in Ethiopia on the progress of the work regularly.

Expected Key Outputs

• Detailed Final proposal: including the consultant’s understanding of the assignment, proposed methodology to be used (for sampling, data collection, and entry, cleaning and data analysis), report structure, deliverables, timelines, budget and CV.
• Final Data Collection Tools (Use Amref data warehouse for data collection)
• Analysis plan and steps
• 1ts draft of the end term evaluation report
• 2nd draft of the end term evaluation Report
• Final report and presentations as required.
• Final Evaluation Report: hard copy, complete data set and analysis syntax / preferably STATA dataset and DO-file.