Project Final Evaluation (Consultant)

Finn Church Aid (FCA) is the largest Finnish organization for development cooperation and the second largest provider of humanitarian assistance. FCA operates in twelve countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, and has over 70 years of experience from international aid. FCA specializes in supporting local communities in three priority areas: Right to Livelihood, Right to Quality Education and Right to Peace. Our operations includes long-term development cooperation, humanitarian assistance and advocacy.**Background of the evaluation**
Social & Economic Empowerment for Women”
Project is funded by Women’s Bank of Finland (2019-2021). The Project is based on human-rights based approach as it aims to promote the right to work and adequate standard of living of its target group through implementing FCA model approach which focuses on building entrepreneurial skills of the beneficiaries and support the economic growth of their newly established businesses. It is implemented from 2019 – mid 2020 by Finn Church Aid (FCA) and Bait al Hikmah Foundation (BAF) in Zarqa and Irbid while the project is self-implemented by FCA only in Amman governorates from mid2020 -2021. FCA and its partner aims to achieve the following results: 1. Targeted women have technical and business skills enabling them to start their own business. 2. Targeted women have knowledge of and access to financial resources for business development. 3. Gender related barriers for women to access labor market and entrepreneurship are addressed through community activities An impact assessment conducted for FCA’s Jordan country program in 2017 urged FCA to strengthen its Linking Learning to Earning (LL2E) approach by developing initiatives to support viable start-ups and income generation projects (individual and collective) based on market-potential while not restricting these to 30 years of age.
Social and Economic Empowerment of Women represents FCA Jordan’s first effort to tailor a market-driven initiative to serve specifically the interest of aspiring female entrepreneurs based on these learnings.
Rational, purpose and priority objectives of the evaluation FCA Jordan’s project Social and Economic Empowerment for women will come to its end by end of 2021. In adherence to Core Humanitarian Standards and its own PMER requirements, FCA considers itself accountable to its beneficiaries and donors for achieving the promised outcomes and wants to have a realistic understanding to what extent it has succeeded in delivering the intended outcomes in the mentioned project. This understanding also serves FCA’s goal of being a learning organization that builds its future work on systematic analysis of the on-going and past interventions. More specifically, FCA Jordan needs an external assessment on successes and shortcomings of the project that was implemented in 3 governorates over the course of 34 months, as well as an analysis on the reasons behind them. The main purpose of this evaluation is to document these lessons learnt and to turn them into recommendations for the implementing partners and the donor. Since the project is being implemented in three locations back-to-back over the course of three years, FCA conducted a mid-evaluation covered the time period of the first location only (Zarqa, January 2019 – March 2020).This final evaluation should follow the conducted mid evaluation earlier in 2021 and avoid reiteration from the evaluator targeted area and beneficiaries, thus the evaluation must be conducted in Irbid and Amman only .The implementation period in this assignment will fall within COVID19 pandemic, it should show its impact on businesses , the evaluation shall assess COVID19 impact on the households of business owners (beneficiaries) and how the intervention support accelerated business recovery and/or improve beneficiaries resilience The evaluation will be used to ensure quality of the project and accountability towards beneficiaries and it will also provide the donor with further insight into the project implementation. Focusing on the economic status of the participants and their achievements in that matter will be a priority for the evaluation due to time and resource limitations.
Scope of the evaluation

The project’s ultimate focus is to support MSEs businesses including home based businesses which form the majority of women’s businesses. For the purpose of this assignment only the targeted area mentioned will be evaluated, which was implemented during the period between January, 2020 until December,2020 in Irbid governorate by FCA and the partner and between February 2021 until October 2021 by FCA only. In addition, the same beneficiaries who got the economic empowerment support have had social empowerment support by partner for the period between January until February, 2021. Women group discussion for the period between May, 2021 and August,2021. The Village and Saving and Loan Approach activity has been cancelled due to high default risk proven by evidence at different media channels and implementing actors and this component shall not be evaluated. The evaluation will comply with aspects of quality and accountability as per the Core Humanitarian Standards (CHS) general framework. Due to the nature of this evaluation, it will focus on examining only a limited number of aspects in this project, namely effectiveness, coordination, impact and sustainability that serves projects’ three main results.
Effectiveness
 How do project participants in Irbid assess the usefulness of the provided
1) participatory vulnerability analysis training
2) basic social entrepreneurship training. And How do project participants in Irbid and Amman asses the usefulness of the provided
3) How to Start My Own Business course
4) business coaching in terms of strengthening their entrepreneurial skills
5) Women Group Discussions
6) how do the participants in the advocacy training see the capacity building activity in terms of quality and learning outcomes and how they will use them in their future plans?
Coordination
 Who are the relevant stakeholders of the women’s entrepreneurship development in Irbid and Amman Governorates and to what extent did the project manage to engage with them during the cycle implemented at? What are the views of stakeholders (HH members of beneficiaries who received grants) on project economic impact on the household?
Impact
 What is the perception of project participants in Irbid and Amman of the socio-economic status of their households at the time of the evaluation in comparison with the time prior to the project?  To what extent do they assess the project has contributed to eventual changes AND what other factors do they see shaping their situation?
Sustainability
 How many of the supported businesses in both governorates were still operational at the time of the evaluation and how have their profits developed after the support from the project?  What kind of factors do the participants themselves and the project staff identify for the successes and failures of the businesses in Irbid and Amman as overall?  What have been the key factors that have supported businesses to overcome challenges related specifically to COVID-19 in Irbid and Amman and what are the factors that have made them particularly vulnerable to the pandemic according to the project participants and the project staff?  How do the project participants and the project staff see the future prospects of the surviving businesses?
Methodology required & available data
 The evaluation team will have full access to of the project documents and data through SharePoint and One Drive. The available resources on SharePoint will be utilized to inform the design of the evaluation and relevant assessment tools.
Primarily, the evaluation team will be requested to align the data collection tools with the inputs of logical framework of the project. Evaluation team is expected to design interview tools and survey forms, collect and analyze outputs which address the four main aspects mentioned under section 3-Scope. The evaluation team will store the data they collected be stored on Kobo. In addition to that, the evaluation team will collect qualitative and quantitative data through semi structured and structured interviews approaches. While the quantitative data will be analyzed using Microsoft Excel to provide key business statistics, the qualitative analysis will be done to supplement the results and dig deeper in the issues or challenges raised by the right holders. The analysis of the data obtained through these questions should pay particular attention to differences between Syrian refugees and Jordanian project participants.  The target of the evaluation will be participants of the project’s second and third cycles in Irbid and Amman governorates and who were involved in any component of the project. The total number of beneficiaries is -84 in Irbid and 39 in Amman. For evaluation.  The plan is to have samples of 30% of grant receivers, 30% of trainees enrolled at Participatory vulnerability assessment and social entrepreneurship, 5% of women group discussions participants will be surveyed through quantitative tools, while the evaluation lead will decide on random sample size for the qualitative data collection approach. However, the sampling size and scope will be confirmed by the evaluation lead in alignment with budget allocated for the evaluation.  Mid evaluation report, which has focused on the implementation at Zarqa governorate, will be shared with the consultant to add its results to the final evaluation report. It is expected to be reviewed before the inception report.
Timetable
Document review (Project documents, progress reports, baseline survey report and any other documents) – Evaluation design, methodology and detailed work plan Inception Meeting with FCA Jordan (to be followed by arrangements for the field visits – travel, logistics, interviews – as per approved plan; sometimes feedback is sought from colleagues before approving the inception report so some time needs to be reserved for this)
Deliverable Submitting Inception report Duration:- 6 days
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Data Collection**
Duration:- 10 Days

Data analysis

 Presentation workshop of initial findings (to be followed by a review period of the draft report by FCA, compiling and communicating feedback)

Draft report to be submitted Duration:- 10 Days

 Finalization of Evaluation report incorporating feedback provided by stakeholders  Submission to FCA with a presentation workshop

Final report to be submitted Duration:- 4 days

Total Duration:- 30 Days

Skills and qualifications required

 Post graduate degree (preferably PhD degree) in economics, statistics, social science, or related field

 Proven experience on conducting similar project evaluation preferably within women empowerment thematic area.

 Practical experience or knowledge of the development issues in Jordan is essential.

 Good communication (spoken and written) skills, including the ability to write reports, conduct studies and to articulate ideas in a clear and concise style.

 Consultant should be based in Jordan during assignment period.

Terms of contract
 All information gathered from FCA, partners and beneficiaries must remain confidential and not shared with any party without FCA written consent.
 The Consultant is responsible for payment of all social costs, other employment related costs and insurance contributions and for all other liabilities of a statutory nature.
 The consultant will have to abide by FCA CoC, Child Safeguarding policy and any other relevant policies
 Copyright for the report will remain with FCA.
 FCA do not provide any mean of transportation for consultant