OUTCOME HARVESTING: COFFEE FARMERS IN DIRE STRAITS PROJECT TERMS OF REFERENCE

Fairtrade Africa (FTA) is currently seeking qualified evaluator(s) to undertake an Outcome Harvesting (OH) evaluation to collect evidence of change and assess whether or how the project contributed to that change. The “Coffee Farmers in Dire Straits Project-Climate Academy” has been implemented in the Fairtrade certified coffee Producer Organizations (PO) in Kenya and Ethiopia.

1. INTRODUCTION

Fairtrade Africa (FTA) is the umbrella organization representing Fairtrade certified producers in Africa and the Middle East. Fairtrade Africa is a member of Fairtrade International, the umbrella organization for Fairtrade worldwide. FTA works within the Fairtrade system to support over 1.1 million farmers and workers in over 500 producer organizations spread over 33 countries. The support to producers is aimed at enabling them to maintain their Fairtrade certification which enables them to access better prices, decent working conditions and fairer terms of trade. Fairtrade Africa interventions are guided by the Fairtrade Theory of Change which is a generic theory that visually expresses how Fairtrade´s interventions ultimately lead to the three Fairtrade Goals: Make Trade Fair, Improving Sustainable Livelihoods and Empowerment of workers. **

2. Project Context and Background

The Climate Academy Project aims to increase the climate change resilience of coffee farmers organized in Smallholder Producer Organizations (SPOs) through training and subsequent application of insights, skills and techniques designed to better adapt to climate change. The project consists of three implementation phases that were implemented concurrently: Machakos phase 1 (implementation period from March 2017 until December 2020); Nandi and Kericho-phase 2 (implementation period February 2019 until December 2020) and Ethiopia-phase 3 (implementation period from July 2018 to February 2020). The project reached a total of 18955 beneficiaries.

Key Project Pillars and Objectives

Key pillars and objectives of Coffee Farmers in Dire Straits– Climate Academy Project are:

a) Coffee SPOs have improved their institutional and management capacity to enable them to make decisions and take action to more effectively tackle climate change.

b) Improved farmer’s resilience to climate change through sustainable agricultural land management practices and Disaster Risk Management.

c) Increased opportunities for fairtrade certified producer organizations and women members to promote an energy switch to renewable energy.

d) Increased opportunities for households of smallholder coffee farmers to diversify and engage in alternative income-generating activities.

e) Documentation of climate change best practices and lessons learnt in a climate academy guide.

3. Evaluation Objectives**

Using an Outcomes Harvesting (OH) approach, the evaluation findings are expected to inform the contribution of the project interventions to the outcomes and use the findings from the process to inform programming decisions. The OH evaluation process will be guided by the project’s evaluation reports findings, Fairtrade Theory of change and shall follow the OECD evaluation criteria.

The overall objective of the evaluation is to provide an opportunity for the project team and the organization to understand both the intended and unintended changes that occurred as a result of direct influence by the project.

Specifically, the harvester (evaluator) will:

a) Undertake in-depth desk review to harvest outcomes from the project documents, evaluation reports and existing information linked to the project.

b) Facilitate participatory discussions to gather and understand change processes that have taken place assessing what changed and why, as a direct influence by the project;

c) Ascertain whether, and to what extent, these changes can be traced back to the project interventions.

d) Capture both intended and unintended outcomes of interventions influenced directly by the project;

e) Inform how the project design and implementation evolved within the project’s lifetime and in future programming and suggest areas that can be upscaled.

f) Document key outcomes inform of case studies and testimonials.

4. Evaluation Approach and Methodology

The evaluation will use the OH approach to engage with various categories of project actors with the aim of establishing how they have acted differently as a result of the project intervention. The evaluator(s) will engage the project team, local partners and key primary beneficiaries in substantiating information from the existing projects evaluation reports and document significant outcomes realized during the project implementation. Outcomes will be defined as changes that include actions, relationships and practices of one or more social beneficiary influenced by any of the intervention.

The harvesting of the outcome information shall be collected through:

a) In-depth reviewing of the project end-term evaluation reports, Fairtrade Theory of Change and project documents to identify preliminary project outcomes for substantiation.

b) Engaging with project focal points (project staff, key project partners, beneficiary producer organizations, respective county government representative and any other key stakeholder as mapped out during the desk review process).

c) Substantiating the outcome findings with key project actors.

d) Collecting at least five stories of change using the Most Significant Change (MSC) methodology.

The selected evaluator(s) who in this process is the ‘harvester’ shall:

a) Customize the OH steps and outline how these will be used practically during in-depth desk review of evaluation reports and harvesting process. Information harvested shall use a range of methods to yield evidence-based answers to useful, actionable questions.

b) Substantiate the accuracy and credibility of the final outcomes by engaging project actors who are independent of the interventions and are knowledgeable about them.

c) Analyze the finalized and substantiated outcomes in consultation with informants, classifying the outcomes as they pertain to guiding OH questions.

Fairtrade Africa who in this process is the change agent’ shall:

a) FTA shall provide a list of project primary users of the findings, participants or key informants who are knowledgeable about the changes brought about by the intervention, and independent actors to help substantiate the outcomes of the harvest.

b) FTA will use the finding from the outcome harvesting process as a basis for project adaptive management and inform decision-making and what concrete steps can be taken in response.

5. Outputs/Deliverables

The following deliverables are expected from the evaluator(s) in due process of the assignment:

a) Inception Report: The evaluator(s) shall submit an inception report after signing the agreement detailing the OH methods, tools and work plan.

b) Outcome Report: A draft report will be shared with FTA for feedback. Upon submission of a draft report, the evaluator(s) will be responsible for presenting the most significant findings to the project team and key stakeholders through a meeting and get their feedback on critical areas. The evaluator(s) shall submit a final OH evaluation report in both hard copied and electronic copies along with all data (CSV, Excel, SPSS compatible formats) transcripts of the qualitative data, outcome matrix and photographs. The final OH evaluation report should be no more than 30 pages excluding the annexes.

c) Most Significant Change Stories: One-pagers, one on each identified story of change, which provides: A description of the outcome, who was affected by the change, the details of the change, when it happened, where and at what level it happened, and a very clear explanation of how the ‘change agent-FTA’ intervention contributed to that change and, overall, why that change is significant.

d) Validation Workshop Report of OH evaluation findings with the project team and stakeholders. A short PowerPoint presentation summarizing the main outcome findings and key recommendations shall be documented, presented and shared.

6. Consultancy expertise / Qualifications

The proposed evaluator(s) should have a vast knowledge of the outcome harvesting approach and climate change mitigation/environmental management in agricultural value with bias in the coffee value chain.

The specific qualifications are:

· An advanced degree in any of the following or related disciplines: Social Sciences, Monitoring and Evaluation, Agriculture economics, Climate change and other relevant courses. Demonstrated experience working in a coffee value chain will have an added advantage.

· Demonstrable experience in conducting project evaluations using the outcome harvesting approach.

· Demonstrated experience in the use of qualitative participatory methods of conducting research and evaluations;

· Must have extensive expertise and experience in project planning, project design, applying the logical framework, project implementation and monitoring;

· Have vast knowledge of climate change mitigation strategies, monitoring and evaluation;

· Excellent report writing and presentation skills;

· Strong understanding of the coffee value chain and producer organization contexts;

· Demonstrable understanding of policy on research ethics;

· Understanding of Fairtrade principles, key tools and approaches;

7. Evaluation Management and Coordination

The evaluator(s) will be working closely with the project manager, project implementation team, Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) officer. The day-to-day management of the evaluator(s) is the responsibility of the MEL Officer in consultation with the Project Manager. The project manager shall take charge of the contracting and payment process of the assignment whereas the project implementation team shall provide key linkage between the project actors, partners and sharing of relevant project documents/information.

8. Work Plan and Timelines

The OH evaluation is expected to take place between April 2021 and May 2021 for a duration of 20 working days maximum.