Consultants (Swedish International Development Agency Project) at Save the Children Nigeria

Save the Children is a leading international organization helping children in need around the world. First established in the UK in 1919, separate national organizations have been set up in more than twenty-eight countries, sharing the aim of improving the lives of children through education, health care and economic opportunities, as well as emergency aid in cases of natural disasters, war and conflict.

In Nigeria, Save the Children has been working since 2001. The early focus was on getting children actively involved in shaping the decisions that affect their lives. Today, Save the Children is working in seven federal states - Zamfara, Yobe, Jigawa, Katsina, Kano, Bauchi and Kaduna - focusing on providing basic healthcare and protecting children.

We are recruiting to fill the position of:

Job Title: Consultant - Evaluation of the Impact of the Swedish International Development Agency Project in Borno State

Job ID: #1162891
Location: Nigeria

Background

• Save the Children has been working in Nigeria since 2001. The early focus was on getting children actively involved in shaping the decisions that affect their lives.
• Today, SC is working in 20 states focusing on child survival, education and protecting children in both development and humanitarian contexts.
• The SIDA humanitarian aid comprises of assistance, relief and protection operations on a non-discriminatory basis to help internally displaced people (IDP), and as a priority, victims’ man-made crises, such as wars and outbreaks of fighting.

Project Summary

• The insurgency that continues in Nigeria's North Eastern States has led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands people. In September 2014, an estimate of 1.5 million IDPs in the six States were reported by the Presidential Initiative for the North East.
• Additionally to the estimated 350,000 IDPs in Maiduguri, Borno State, recent events in Mubi, Adamawa State, have thrown hundreds of thousands of people on the roads and many of them joined Yola, where they can be found living on the streets in terrible living conditions.
• The insurgents now control a number of Local Government Areas (LGAs) in the three states enforcing their vision of Islamic Sharia in those areas. The insurgents have also demonstrated the capacity to launch attacks in major cities far beyond their strongholds including Abuja, Kano and Bauchi. Since the fighting escalated from March 2013, many schools have been attacked and in April 2014 over 200 young girls were abducted from school.
• While many families seek refuge in camps established in or around the city of Maduguri (in Borno state), many others move away from the conflict areas in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states, into the neighbouring states of Bauchi and Gombe.
• Many others are known to be seeking refuge in Niger and Cameroon. The vast majority of those moving within Nigeria are seeking refuge with local households and only a small proportion ever register officially or stay within a camp established by NEMA in Maiduguri .
• This obviously puts enormous pressure on local livelihoods when most families live on or below the poverty line even in normal times. Basic services including health and education are all but non-existent in most communities across the North East and those that do exist are completely inadequate to cope with the influx of displaced families.

Assignment Purpose

• The purpose of this consultancy is to evaluate the impact of the SIDA project and to what extent it has been able to meet its set objectives in the 7 selected IDP camps in Borno State.
• The evaluation should include a thorough assessment against the evaluation criteria, analysing the relevance/appropriateness, connectedness, coherence, coverage, efficiency, effectiveness and impact of SIDA funded humanitarian project.
• The evaluation should also refer to cross-cutting issues (Children, Gender, social exclusion, protection, environment and disaster-risk reduction, Security of aid worker, Respect of Human Rights, Donor visibility).

Evaluation Objectives
The evaluation should effectively address the following criteria:

• Effectiveness: Are interventions broadly on course to achieve their purpose?  Which activities are the most effective or least effective and why? What are the biggest obstacles to the achievement of the purpose of the intervention? What, if any, changes could we make to the programme to make it more effective?
• Appropriateness:Has the assistance provided by our agency met the needs of the population? Which parts of the assistance have been the most appropriate and why? Which were least appropriate and why? To what extent have disaster-affected populations been involved in the design or implementation of the assistance programme? How are the beneficiaries needs now changing? Have protection concerns been adequately considered in the design of assistance? What, if any, changes do we need to make to the programme to make it more appropriate and relevant?
• Connectedness: What types of longer-term development issues are most affected by the response and how? How has the response affected longer-term coping mechanisms? Are all the key disaster hazards for this area being considered in this response? What environmental impact has the response had? What, if any, longer-term impacts is the present programme likely to have? What, if any, changes could make the programme of short-term assistance a better fit with longer-term needs?
• Impact: What has happened as a result of the project? What real difference has the project made to the beneficiaries?
• Coherence: To what extent has our response been coordinated with the efforts of the broader humanitarian community? To what extent has our response been coordinated with the efforts of the government? What internal coordination problems have we faced and how have they been addressed? What have been the biggest successes in coordination? What were the biggest gaps? What, if any, changes could we make to improve coordination of the overall response?
• Coverage: Which group has benefited most from our assistance, how and why? How has our assistance been allocated geographically? Has the emergency response affected children, men and women differently? Has our programme considered the differing needs of men and women, children, adults, the elderly, the able and the disabled? What, if any, changes could we make to the programme to improve the coverage of our assistance?
• Efficiency: measuring the outputs (qualitative and quantitative) achieved as a result of inputs, has the most efficient approach been used (comparing alternative approaches to achieving an output)?

Expected Outputs:

• Evaluation report
• PowerPoint presentation with Save the Children in Abuja

Reporting Format:

• Cover page
• Table of contents
• Executive Summary: Conclusions, Lessons Learned, Recommendations
• Main body of the report
• Annexes:-
• Terms of Reference
• List of persons interviewed and sites visited
• Map of the areas covered by the operations financed under the action
• Abbreviations

Person Specifications
Essential:

• Advanced experience in the evaluation of humanitarian aid, preferably in the field of Public Health, WASH or/and Child Protection
• Advanced Development Research Qualification or equivalent, MSc preferred
• Ability to conduct meetings with senior persons at government, UN and NGO level
• Ability to work on own initiative and to meet deadlines
• Attention to detail and ability to produce and present accurate information
• Ability and willingness to travel to very remote areas, must agree to work in high risk areas
• Solid experience in relevant fields of work to the evaluation and in the geographic areas where the exercise takes place is also required
• Fluent in written and spoken English

Desirable:

• Knowledge of the Northern Nigerian context is obligatory
• Fluent in Hausa
• Experience working with Save the Children or in Child Rights Programming
• Demonstrated analytical, communication and report-writing skills.

Application Closing Date
15th September, 2015.

How to Apply
Interested and qualified candidates should send their C.V., a list of reports or publications that are similar in nature, and a covering letter with a 500-word statement explaining their suitability for the task to: [email protected] In addition, candidates should send an electronic version of a relevant report written in English in which the candidate was a sole author.

Note: Applications received after the Closing Date above will not be considered. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.