Job Vacancy: Job title: Evaluation Consultant, Beneficiary Feedback Evaluation
Job description: Strengthening Civic Advocacy and Local Engagement (SCALE)
Scope of Work
Beneficiary Feedback Evaluation for the Nigeria SCALE Project
Estimated Level of Effort: 30 days
Estimated Dates: August – September 2023
Assignment Location: Nigeria
Company Profile
About Palladium – Palladium is a global leader in the design, development, and delivery of Positive Impact – the intentional creation of enduring social and economic value. We work with governments, businesses, and investors to solve the world’s most pressing challenges. With a team of more than 3,000 employees operating in 90-plus countries and a global network of over 35,000 experts, we help improve economies, societies, and, most importantly, people’s lives.
Equity, Diversity & Inclusion – Palladium is committed to embedding equity, diversity, and inclusion into everything we do. We welcome applications from all sections of society and actively encourage diversity to drive innovation, creativity, success, and good practice. We positively welcome and seek to ensure we achieve diversity in our workforce; and that all job applicants and employees receive equal and fair treatment regardless of their background or personal characteristics. These include (but are not limited to) socio-economic background, age, race, gender identity and expression, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, nationality, veteran, marital or Indigenous status.
Safeguarding – Palladium is a safe organization, hence safeguarding children and adults in the communities we work in, and our staff is always our priority, we want to ensure that everyone who comes into contact with our organization is safe!
Project Description
Nigeria SCALE project is a USAID-funded 5-year project (Oct. 2020 – Oct. 2025), implemented by Palladium in collaboration with the in-country resource partners. The goal of the Nigeria SCALE project is to strengthen the financial, management, and advocacy capacity of Nigerian civil society organizations (CSOs) and Business Membership Organizations (BMOs) in Nigeria to create a more accountable, transparent, peaceful, and democratic Nigeria with more effective and efficient public service delivery.
The SCALE project supports CSOs and BMOs across Nigeria with a basket of managerial, business strengthening, and advocacy capacity-building interventions aimed at advancing Nigerian CSO sustainability combined with targeted grants to advance mutually agreed upon priorities. The project is designed to enhance Nigerian civil society organizations’ ability to be positive and responsible change agents in Nigeria. The project takes a multi-sectoral approach to civil society strengthening in education, health, water sanitation and hygiene (WASH), governance, economic growth, countering trafficking in persons (CTIP), curbing child early and forced marriage (CEFM), curbing sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), and inclusive participation in elections.
The project has five main components: 1) Component One – Improve CSO organizational capacity, 2) Component Two – Enhance capacity for CSO advocacy, collaboration, and management, 3) Component Three – Improve the policy and regulatory environment for civil society, 4) Component Four – Countering Trafficking in Persons (CTIP), and 5) Component Five – Sector strengthening and advocacy.
Purpose of Assignment
In projects, feedback is a valuable tool for enhancing, refocusing, or modifying project strategies. Project management encompasses various methods to evaluate strategy effectiveness and make necessary adjustments to achieve goals. However, projects in the development sector face challenges operating in complex environments where interventions must precisely address local contexts and need to avoid costly failures. Despite efforts to design, monitor, and evaluate project interventions, ensuring they effectively meet the specific requirements of target groups and align with local contexts remains a challenge. These nuanced issues of quality and local context are difficult to anticipate in advance and may not be adequately captured by traditional performance indicators. Beneficiary feedback plays a crucial role in improving and evaluating development interventions while holding implementing organizations accountable. A functional beneficiary feedback mechanism is context-appropriate and includes soliciting, listening to, collating, and analyzing feedback.
As SCALE enters its fourth year, it has achieved significant successes, including improving the institutional and advocacy capacity of civil society organizations (CSOs), developing democratic policies, implementing reforms, fostering citizens’ engagement with the government, promoting transparency and accountability, and improving services for vulnerable populations affected by violence and human trafficking, among other areas. However, with over 173 civil society organizations across various sectors, such as health, education, good governance, youth development, economic growth, countering human trafficking, addressing gender-based violence, and combating corruption, it becomes imperative to ensure active response and ownership from project beneficiaries, including CSOs, government bodies, persons with disabilities, communities, and citizens, to achieve long-term sustainability beyond the project lifecycle. Implementing a robust beneficiary feedback process will empower beneficiaries to have a greater influence on SCALE and guide project actions, ultimately improving development outcomes.
The SCALE project is seeking an experienced consultant with demonstrable expertise in conducting participatory evaluations to gather beneficiaries’ perspectives on the impact of the SCALE project. This will involve collecting relevant data, particularly stories of improvements experienced by both direct and indirect beneficiaries, and will cover intended and unintended beneficiary outcomes. The consultant will elicit feedback from a wide range of project beneficiaries, including citizens, CSOs, government representatives, and other stakeholders. This feedback will be critical in assessing the project’s effectiveness and impact. The consultant will employ inclusive methodologies to ensure all categories of stakeholders have their voices and perspectives heard and considered throughout the evaluation process.
Objectives:
The evaluation aims to achieve the following: * Identify key successes, challenges, constraints, and lessons learned that have influenced the beneficiaries’ experiences.
- Collect and document success stories from beneficiaries, highlighting the project’s impact as narrated by them.
- Evaluate the value added by relevant project-driven enabling environment activities in relation to the project’s goals and the reported benefits as perceived by respondents.
- Obtain insights into the perceptions of external stakeholders, including partners, regarding the project.
Specific Tasks
Specific tasks include, but are not limited to, the following:
1. Conduct a comprehensive desk review of key secondary data provided by the project.
2. Collaborate with the project team to identify stakeholders for interviews and focus group discussions.
3. Conduct interviews, focus group discussions, and other data collection activities as necessary.
4. Facilitate an analysis workshop to interpret the data, and discuss lessons learned, and achievements.
5. Produce a consolidated final report summarizing the evaluation findings and recommendations.
Deliverables * Work plan outlining tasks, dates, and locations
- The report of a comprehensive desk review of provided secondary data.
- Draft report of assignment
- A compendium of success stories elicited from interviews and focused group discussions.
- Slide deck of key findings and recommendations from the assignment
- A consolidated final report.
Qualifications and Experience
- Professional experience in facilitating participatory evaluations.
- University degree in any of the social sciences
- Understanding of Gender and Social Inclusion issues and programming.
- Strong experience in M&E tools and reporting frameworks, with the ability to gather relevant data and interpret indicators.
- Strong analytical, presentation, and interpersonal skills are required.
- Excellent written and spoken English and report writing skills.
- Willingness and ability to travel within the country as required.
Supervision
The consultant will report to the SCALE Monitoring, Evaluation & Learning Advisor. Deliverables must be approved by the Chief of Party prior to payment of the consultant’s invoice.
Location, Timing, and Level of Effort
The estimated level of effort for this assignment is up to 30 days including workdays. The breakdown of the estimated level of effort is as follows:
- Project briefing, start-up meeting 1 day
- Desk review of materials 4 days
- Project partner/stakeholder visits 20 days
- Report writing, presentation, and finalization 5 days
The consultant may adjust the level of effort as long as it does not exceed the maximum of 30 days. The proposed timing for the assignment is from August 15, 2023 to September 30, 2023 in selected states in Nigeria.
Location: Abuja, FCT
Job date: Sat, 08 Jul 2023 22:10:08 GMT
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