Final evaluation service for DANIDA At CARE International

Reducing vulnerabilities for internally displaced persons in Hassakeh and Deir-ez-Zor governorates in Syria

Final Evaluation Terms of Reference
CARE International – July 2023
Background

CARE is a humanitarian non-governmental organization committed to working with poor women, men, boys, girls, communities, and institutions to have a significant impact on the underlying causes of poverty. CARE seeks to contribute to economic and social transformation, unleashing the power of the most vulnerable women and girls. The “Reducing vulnerabilities for internally displaced persons in Hassakeh and Deir-ez-Zor governorates in Syria” project is 18 months DANIDA-funded project running from April 01, 2022, to September 30, 2023.
This project provides Food Security and Livelihoods (FSL), Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH), and Protection services and assistance to the people in need in Deir ez Zor and AlHassaka Governorates. The interventions are focused on Reducing vulnerabilities for internally displaced persons in Hassakeh and Deir-ez-Zor governorates in Syria with a specific emphasis on marginalized members of those communities (including, but not limited to, female heads of households, older adults, and persons with disabilities) in order to reduce negative coping strategies, increase income and increase access to adequate life-saving GBV prevention and response services supported through/by CARE.

Purpose

The purpose of the DANIDA project is to contribute to achieving the purpose of the call through addressing in an integrated manner both the acute, emergency needs related to lives and wellbeing, as well as longer-term humanitarian needs related to building resilience for crisis-affected populations. With a focus entirely within Syria, in Northeast Syria and Central South Syria, the target population includes internally displaced, host communities and other highly vulnerable and at-risk groups including a particular focus on women and girls; all of whom face protection risks. It does so through food security and livelihoods support, resilience building, and protection from violence through a scaled approach where priority in the beginning of the project is cater for immediate needs while commencing the move of people out of reliance on humanitarian aid or other external support and support to recovering basic livelihoods.

CARE conducted a baseline evaluation before launching the project activities, to be followed later by endline evaluation as a donor requirement to ascertain performance against the project indicators and to assess the Protection, WASH and FSL activities that have been carried out to date. CARE will also seek to identify gaps that require additional attention.

The project has three expected outcomes:

1. Vulnerable conflict-affected households in Hassakeh and Deir-ez-Zor governorates have increased ability to meet their basic needs.
2. Vulnerable conflict-affected households in Hassakeh and Deir-ez-Zor governorates are supported to build their self-reliance and resilience.
3. Vulnerable individuals affected by conflict are able to identify and positively respond to protection (GBV) concerns.

To achieve these outcomes, the DANIDA project in Northeast Syria (NES) includes the following key activities:

• Distribution of Multipurpose Cash to provide a safety net targeting particularly vulnerable households unable to work or in the absence of any other activities in the area, particularly focusing on Female/ PLwDs/ disabled/child head household, to meet their immediate needs.
• Provision of Cash for Work to vulnerable households, particularly female headed households.
• Hygiene Promotion at the household level (door-to-door) combined with community campaigns to raise awareness of public health risks and adoption of good hygiene practices.
• Rehabilitation, installation, and operation of water system as well as the rehabilitation, extension and/or repair of small-scale water supply and sanitation infrastructure and facilities to increase the access to water for livestock and domestic use.
• CARE’s GBV safety audit combined with community committee consultations, feedback mechanisms and active engagement by the community’s water committee ensures alignment of the project’s intervention with beneficiary expectations and needs.
• SME cash grants provided to vulnerable households e.g., FHH, and women led businesses to establish Small Medium Enterprises designed to support sustainable and longer-term livelihood options.
• Provision of agriculture inputs (seeds) to local farmers
• Technical Agriculture training to farmers and distribution of Agriculture inputs (seeds)
• Vaccination campaign for livestock in local community

Under the DANIDA Top-Up, CARE’s activities in NES were the following:

• Distribution of jerry cans in Abu Khashab camp to enable sufficient storage of safe water linked to cholera prevention.
• Distribution of winter clothing kits

The Final evaluation will be conducted to assess the Protection, WASH, Rapid Response and FSL activities that have been carried out to date. Specifically, the evaluation will ascertain performance against the project outcomes indicators and recommend adjustments to improve the effectiveness and appropriateness of ongoing and future interventions in the targeted communities. The final evaluation is scheduled to take place in Abo Khashab camp and Kisrah sub-district of Deir Ez Zor and AlHasaka governorates in North East Syria from 1st Oct 2023 to 31st Oct 2023.

The objectives of the evaluation are as follows:

• Review the relevance, appropriateness, and effectiveness of distributions, psychosocial services and WASH interventions, including both CARE and its implementing partners and validity of design/relevance of the project.
• Provide programmatic and operational recommendations to improve CARE’s ongoing and future programming both in Northeast Syria and other relevant contexts.
• Explore and document new lessons learned, which can be used during the remaining project period and provide evidence-based recommendations for similar future interventions.
• Recommend adjustments to improve the effectiveness and appropriateness of overall ongoing and future interventions in the targeted communities.
• Measure the outcome indicators (listed below on page 4).

Scope of work

Time scope

The evaluation will cover the implementation period from April 01, 2022 to Sep 30, 2023. The evaluation is expected to be finished by end of Oct 2023.

Geographical scope

This endline evaluation will be conducted in Kisrah Sub-District of Deir Ez Zor and South AlHasaka Governorates, Northeast Syria.

Technical scope

The technical scope of the evaluation is to assess the relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, and sustainability of the project.

Relevance: Relevance looks at the design of the project and assess the extent to which the stated project objectives address the identified problems or stakeholder needs,

• How much of the project design and implementation was appropriate to meet the project objectives?
• To what extent the project activities respond to the local needs?
• How relevant was the collaboration with other humanitarian organization and line departments in particular area during project implementation?
• How was the consistency/coherence of the activities?
• Did the project prioritized gender mainstreaming and integration approach in designing and implementation?

Efficiency: Efficiency includes the analysis of the cost/benefit ratio for the overall project relating to the relationship between “impacts/outcomes” and “inputs”, the analysis of the cost/benefit ratio for the individual measures applies to the relationship between “input” and “outputs”. In the analysis of the efficiency of the individual measures, calculations of efficiency of the measures themselves (if applicable including calculations of the contribution to the variable gross margin) should be considered.

• In general, do the results achieved justify the costs (human resources, time, budget, materials)?
• Have project funds and activities been delivered in a timely and quality manner?
• Analysis of the cost/benefit ratio for the individual measures (relationship between “input” and “outputs”)
• Is there a clear understanding of roles and responsibilities by all parties involved?
• Review and assess the quality of the project monitoring and evaluation system. Assess the appropriateness of the indicators including any changes made to these indicators during the course of project implementation. Also review the overall monitoring process, e.g., how many field visits/trainings have been conducted? How have findings been integrated into the project?
• Check whether the data has been systematically recorded, but also whether it is being used by the project management.

Effectiveness and outcomes: Effectiveness includes quality assessment of project preparation, planning, steering and execution as well as analysis of the holder.

• Assess the project achieved outcomes against planned outcomes and describe the outcomes (qualitatively / quantitatively) and differentiate according to gender.
• • What were the supporting factors and barriers that affected these achievements?
• • How did the project coordinate with and/or complement other similar actions in the field – geographical and thematic? Was there any overlap?
• • Assess the impacts, outcomes, outputs and project implementation strategies against the “Do no harm” concept.
• • What is the added value of CARE in this project?

Sustainability: should assess the extent to which the benefits of a project is maintained after formal support has ended. Sustainability includes various dimensions (financial, economic, social and environmental) with focus on the continuation of the overall value of the intervention.

• To what extent are the outcomes and results of the project likely to be sustained after the completion of the project (rate the sustainability of different project outcomes)?
• • How can the activities be replicated or scaled-up in other projects of CARE?
• • Assess the roles of the different project stakeholders for the sustainability of the project achievements/outputs.
• • What are the contributing factors and constraints that require attention in order to improve prospects of sustainability of the project outcomes and the potential for replication of the approach?

Methodology:

CARE will seek out from TPM\Consultant to propose the sampling\methodology, but it should be mixed approach using both qualitative and quantitative data, including KIIs, FGDs and household surveys during data collection.

Data Collection:

• TPM\Consultant will create the tools need for this evaluation and the tools should be approved by CARE “baseline tools\ Mid-Term evaluation tools could be share as reference”.
• • Desk review for all data collection has been done during the project implementation. “PDMs, Distribution monitoring, etc.”.
• • TPM\Consultant will train their team in data collection.
• • The data will be collected using both methods qualitative and quantitative on a random sampling basis in different livelihood areas in the selected sub-districts and villages.

Analysis and reporting:

– Data processing (data cleaning, correcting and analysis).
– Comparing the data from the Endline evaluation with the baseline\registration.
– Report writing and submission of a first draft report against key indicators.
– Presentation of the findings and recommendations and validation by key stakeholders “MEAL, program team , Management, SMT, CMP, etc”.
– Half day workshop discussing the evaluation findings with CARE program team and other stakeholders.
– Finalizing the report with feedback incorporated and submission of the final report.

Final deliverables requirements: Deliverable Date, you can find it in the TOR (page#5).

Key indicators to be measured and DANIDA DK310 – Top-Up: you can find it in the TOR (page#6).