Mercy Corps with support from USAID is implementing the five-year Growth, Health & Governance (GHG) program with the overall objective of improving food security in Northern Karamoja. With gender as a cross cutting theme, this program has three strategic objectives (SOs): improved market systems; improved maternal and child health & nutrition; improved local capacity for conflict mitigation, management and governance. The program takes a market facilitation approach to ensure that change is systemic and benefits the poor.

During the program start-up, a gender assessment was conducted and revealed that if left unaddressed, gender and age-related inequalities and harmful socio-cultural norms could negatively impact program outcomes. GHG developed a Gender and Youth Integration strategy to address these concerns. The Strategy is built on three pillars: youth and women’s participation; gender and age sensitive products and services; and gender and youth transformative change. One of the activities that supports the achievement of this strategy is a gender and youth behavior change campaign, which includes message dissemination and outreach with multiple actors, across GHG sectors of work. The methodologies used include: individual coaching; group training; music, dance and drama; radio programming; peer-to peer education; and a male change agent model. Specific behaviours targeted by the program include the harmful consumption of alcohol; the uneven division of labour; unequal decision making; women and youth’s lack of participation in community affairs; youth led crime; and gender-based violence.

Justification

GHG’s gender and youth behaviour change campaign was initiated three years ago, but was recently scaled up and expanded to include youth as a key target group. As the program enters its final year, there is a need to more fully understand the impact of the BCC campaign through a quantitative impact assessment. The purpose of this assessment would be to evaluate if the campaign has been successful at transforming targeted gender and age-related norms, and identify adjustments that can be made in the final year of implementation to accelerate the pace of change, and enhance the overall impact of the program.

Evaluation Overview

The impact assessment will seek to answer the following research questions:

• To what extent have the messages disseminated by GHG and its partners contributed to change in socio-cultural norms condoning gender inequality. For instance are the socio-cultural norms targeted by the program changing, changed or not all?
• How effective are the messages and methodologies used by the program? Are some modalities more successful at inducing change than others? What are the success factors?
• Which age, gender and socio-economic groups responded best to the campaign? Were any groups missed or not reached by the intervention?
• What adjustments should be made to the BCC strategy and more specifically to the content of the messages, their timing, frequency, and mode of dissemination? What are some easy wins and recommended areas of focus over the final year of the program? What inputs are needed to support these recommendations in terms of staff, budget, and external support to develop visual and social marketing materials?
• Did the campaign have any negative, unintended consequences? How can these potential risks /liabilities be mitigated or managed moving forward?

Role of Mercy Corps

GHG’s responsibilities in this study include the following:

1. Provision of the necessary documents for review
2. Connection to local partners, youth groups, beneficiaries and communities reached with messages
3. Sector teams, M&E specialists, Regional Gender Advisor, Mercy Corps’ Director of Youth and GHG Gender and Youth Team Leads will provide input and guidance, as needed, to ensure Consultant has the required information and resources.

Key Deliverables

The consultant will be responsible for:

• Comprehensive work plan submitted to the Chief of party, Program Quality Advisor, Regional Gender Advisor, gender team within 5 days after contract award including;

• • Evaluation methodology and sampling frame
  • Quantitative and qualitative tools for data collection and analysis
  • Suggested improvements to evaluation scope
  • Revised evaluation timeline
• A presentation of initial findings to the GHG team and partners upon completion of the assessment
• An electronic version of the final presentation prepared based upon the initial findings of the evaluation. A summary version of findings should be shared as a final deliverable.
• Electronic files of the clean (final) quantitative and qualitative data collected as a final deliverable.
• One (1) electronic folder of all applications, modules, and scripts developed to organize, process and analyze the data as a final deliverable.
• Draft and final evaluation reports, including:
  • Executive summary of not more than 3 pages.
  • Methodology section.
  • Evaluation of the GHG BCC messages and dissemination findings.
  • A case for further investment in gender BCC
  • Recommendations
  • Scalable gender BCC dissemination plan

Evaluation Timeline

The evaluation will be conducted in October 2016, for a duration not exceeding 31 working days, including field work, data analysis and report write up.

Activity	No of days
Remote Work ·    Program documents shared with consultant ·    Preliminary documents review ·    Evaluation Plan submitted for review ·    Data collection tools designed and shared for review	04
Kotido Field Work
Arrive in Kampala (evening of  8th) and travel to Kotido  on 9th morning	02
Train enumerators on data collection and Pilot data collection tools	01
Data Collection (three days per district)	10
Review collected data	01
Validation of data with GHG team in Kotido	01
Travel from Kotido to Entebbe direct, evening flight)	01
Remote Work ·    Data analysis and report write-up ·    Initial Draft of report due	07
·   Feedback due from Mercy Corps	02
·    Final Report and all Deliverables Due	02

 

Qualifications

• Advanced degree in Gender and women studies, sociology, international development, rural development or other related field required.
• Broad knowledge of women, gender and development issues, agriculture, livelihoods and food security issues in the Karamoja sub-region with substantial experience in designing, implementing and analyzing social and gender analyses and/or assessments in relation to women’s economic empowerment in rural areas required.
• Experience in conducting research on social and behavioral change with illustrated root cause analysis.
• Proven experience combining formal expertise on gender mainstreaming and gender equality with action-oriented research and learning processes, developing gender training tools and delivering trainings on gender-responsive programming
• Demonstrated capacity in research methods including data analysis, qualitative methods and focus group discussions required.
• Experience training others in gender awareness and social inclusion required.
• Demonstrated capacity to analyze complex issues, draw relevant conclusions and produce a comprehensive technical report.
• Must be independent but collaborative, willing to share thoughts and ideas, and able to give constructive feedback to Mercy Corps team.
• Demonstrated cultural sensitivity, particularly in multi-ethnic and multi-religious contexts.
• Experience working for international donors, a plus.