Project overview

The Inclusive Security and Resilient Youth Project (ISRYP) is implemented by Mercy Corps Jordan and funded by the UK Embassy in Amman. The project started on 1 March 2022, and will run until 29 February 2024.

The project is delivered through three components. Component 1 focuses on enhancing the resilience of at-risk youth through transversal interventions in mental health and psychosocial support. The Civic Engagement Program, Nature Club Program, and Support Groups aim to foster the psychosocial well-being of youth, enabling meaningful interactions with their social networks and developing civic engagement skills that set them on positive pathways to becoming non-violent, productive, contributing citizens. Component 1 also aims to equip parents with skills to support their youth’s social, emotional, and cognitive development, for the purpose of strengthening family units. These programs are implemented by trained Community Personnel that are recruited at partner Community Action Hubs (CAHs) in Zarqa, Jerash, and Karak. This approach ensures a more sustainable, cost-effective, and locally-accepted implementation model. Furthermore, Component 1 aims to enhance the self-perception, emotional expression, and body relationship of female GBV survivors housed in the Dar Amneh protection centre, by providing a specialised, focused and trauma-informed four-month art and movement therapy intervention.

Component 2 aims to enhance the trust and gender equal partnership between youth, women, and the local community, and formal local security actors. 

Component 3 seeks to improve national level participation of youth and women in peace and security. This will be achieved through the collaboration with the Ministry of Youth (MoY) to lead the development of the first Jordanian National Action Plan (JoNAP) for the Implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2250 on Youth, Peace and Security (YPS), and by providing institutional capacity support to the newly established YPS unit at the MoY, in line with the unit mandate.

Purpose of the Evaluation

The purpose of the evaluation can be summarised as follows:

Process evaluation: ISRYP aims to assess whether its activities have been implemented as intended. The evaluation would provide an opportunity for understanding how ISRYP interventions work best, under which circumstances and local contexts, and how this can be improved in future interventions.

Outcome evaluation: ISRYP aims to measure the project’s effects on the target population by comparing the progress against the indicators set out for the target population to achieve. This provides a layer of accountability and learning and enables ISRYP and the donor to use evidence to determine the success of the project and understand any shortcomings, particularly as they relate to extraneous contextual factors, for the purpose of informing strategic planning and future intervention design.

Scope of Work

Methodology

The final project evaluation should review all aspects of ISRYP, from the inception phase through to the end-term. The final methodology will be co-developed by the consultant, ISRYP, and the donor, but will generally require the consultant to study ISRYP activities in all locations by conducting a desk review, primary data collection, and review of existing pre-collected M&E data:

Desk review: The consultant will examine project documents including ISRYP’s proposal, inception report, MEL plan, workplan, donor reports, conflict analysis and barrier mapping, monitoring and evaluation reports, and any other documents deemed important for the desk review. These documents will be used to assess what the project aims to achieve, and how the project aims to achieve the goals it set out. These documents will be provided by Mercy Corps Jordan.

Primary data collection: The consultant will conduct interviews with various stakeholder groups including direct participants, partner staff, project staff, and donor representatives. The sample size for each stakeholder group will be determined with the consultant during the inception phase. The purpose of the interviews is to learn more about the effects of the project on all its stakeholders and to better understand how the process of implementation may or may not have aided in achieving project outcomes.

Pre-collected M&E data: The consultant will review existing M&E data collected and analysed by ISRYP, including baseline/endline and participant feedback data. This data will be compared against all other sources of data previously mentioned. An overall picture of ISRYP’s achievements in relation to its performance indicators will be presented in the report and any discrepancies between data and interviews will be highlighted.

Evaluation Criteria and Questions

Through this final evaluation, ISRYP seeks to build an understanding of the project’s challenges and achievements. Certain evaluation criteria and questions have been identified for inclusion in the final evaluation based on the project proposal, theory of change, and results framework. Others may also be added later as the design of the evaluation progresses. The key criteria and questions, based on OECD’s Better Criteria for Better Evaluation, are presented below for consideration in the ISRYP final evaluation:

Relevance: Is the project doing the right things? To what extent do the project objectives and design respond to participants’, national, global, and local institutions’ needs and priorities, and will the project continue to do so if circumstances change (particularly if the political, economic, and/or social context changes (positively or negatively) in Jordan in the next 3-5 years)? How did the different target groups participate throughout the project cycle and in the construct of activities?

Effectiveness: Did the project achieve its objectives? To what extent can the identified changes be attributable to the project rather than extraneous factors? What are the unintended consequences (positive and negative) of the intervention (if any)? To what extent was the project agile in responding to extraneous factors and shocks?

Efficiency: How well were resources used? To what extent did the project deliver results in an economic and timely way? “Economic” is the conversion of inputs (funds, expertise, human resources, time, etc.) into outputs and outcomes, in the most cost-effective way possible, as compared to feasible alternatives in the context. “Timely” delivery is within the intended timeframe, or a timeframe reasonably adjusted to the demands of the evolving context. Efficiency indicators and metrics will be agreed with the consultant during the inception phase.

Impact: What difference did the project make? To what extent did the project generate or is expected to generate significant positive or negative, intended or unintended, higher-level effects? What changes in the capacity, ability, behaviours, and/or attitudes of the target group can be observed? Were benefits distributed fairly between gender, age groups, disability status, and across target locations?

Sustainability: To what extent are net benefits/effects of the project likely to continue beyond project lifetime?

These topics are to be addressed for each of ISRY’s three outcomes (details to be shared with the consultant during the inception phase). 

Required Competencies

• The evaluation should be led by an individual consultant or a team of individual consultants with an extensive background in project/program evaluation within the INGO/development sector. The successful consultant must be able to work independently within the project structure to deliver the required outputs within a tight deadline and with a large and complex interface with a variety of internal and external stakeholders. In particular, the consultant should demonstrate the following through CVs submitted:
• Must hold a bachelor’s degree in research, political science, development studies, economics, or any other relevant field.
• One member of the team must have at least 10 years of professional work experience in the areas of program and impact evaluation, preferably in youth civic engagement, and/or institutional development.
• Extensive conceptual and methodological skills and experience in applying qualitative and quantitative research evaluation methods.
• Extensive experience in qualitative data analysis.
• Experience using quantitative data analysis software tools.
• Experience in facilitating participation in interviews/focus group discussions and in communicating/coordinating with different stakeholders.
• Experience conducting project/program evaluations in Jordan is a must.
• At least one senior member of the team must have full proficiency (speaking, reading, and writing) in Arabic to conduct interviews.
• Fluency in English is a must.

Roles and Responsibilities

Consultant roles and responsibilities

• Develop a final methodology for the project final evaluation, including the research approach, data collection tools, and sample size for the different stakeholder groups, and request support from ISRYP in providing contact information for these stakeholders.
• Schedule, organise, and conduct all key data collection activities including KIIs, in-depth interviews, and/or focus group discussions.
• Provide human resources for all data collection tasks.
• Provide logistical arrangements and bear the financial costs for all data collection tasks.
• Provide transcriptions or incur additional costs for translations from Arabic to English for any qualitative data.

ISRYP team roles and responsibilities: 

• Compile relevant project documents, relevant background reading materials, as well as ISRY’s existing monitoring and evaluation data for the consultant’s use in the inception report, desk review, and evaluation reports.
• Provide contact information for stakeholders being interviewed by the consultant.
• Provide transportation allowance for participants participating in focus group discussions or in-depth interviews.
• Provide contact information for partner Community Action Hubs to schedule and coordinate interview locations and dates
• Review and provide technical feedback on the consultant’s key deliverables outlined in the “Schedule of Tasks and Deliverables” section.

Description of Deliverables

Duration

Mercy Corps Jordan is looking to contract a consultant that meets the stated requirements as soon as possible. The deliverables of these terms are due based on the timeframe set on the “Schedule of Tasks and Deliverables” section. The starting date is 26 December 2023, and the ending date is 29 February 2024. The estimated level of effort (LoE) for this engagement is 44 days.

Schedule of Tasks and Deliverables

The consultant is expected to complete the tasks and produce the deliverables listed below. The consultant will be expected to provide a revised schedule during the inception phase, noting that the start and end dates of the consultancy period are fixed.

• Inception Report (suggested LOE 10 days; timeframe 26 Dec to 8 Jan): The inception report should include a detailed description of the planned evaluation including:

1.  Methodology to answer the evaluation questions with the proposed source of information and data collection approaches (to be co-developed with the ISRYP team and the donor)
2. Detailed work plan
3. Desk review summary: Summary of the internal ISRYP documents reviewed by the consultant
4. Primary data collection tools (including interview protocols and guidelines for each group of stakeholders)

• Primary data collection (suggested LOE 20 days; timeframe 9 Jan to 5 Feb): Consultant will share with ISRYP a list of the identified interviewees and the timeline for the scheduled interviews.
• First Draft of the Evaluation Report (suggested LOE 7 days; timeframe 6-14 Feb): The first draft report should include the following main sections (Page limit: 30-40 pages, excluding annexes):

1. Cover Page
2. List of Acronyms
3. Table of Contents
4. Project Description
5. Methodology and Limitations
6. Findings (for all three components)
7. Conclusions
8. Recommendations (for future projects)

• ISRYP review of First Draft and feedback submission (suggested LOE 0 days; timeframe 15-20 Feb)
• Final Draft of the Evaluation Report (suggested LOE 6 days; timeframe 21-28 Feb): The final draft report should include the following main sections (Page limit: 30-40 pages, excluding annexes):

1.  Cover Page
2.  List of Acronyms
3.  Table of Contents
4.  Executive Summary (2-3 pages)
5. Project description
6. Methodology and Limitations
7.  Findings (for all three components)
8.  Conclusions
9.  Recommendations (for future projects)
10.  Annexes (list of people interviewed, key documents consulted, data collection tools and guides, etc.)
11. Sources & Acknowledgements

• Evaluation presentation (suggested LOE 1 day; timeframe 29 Feb): The consultant will present the results of the evaluation to ISRYP and the donor.

Consultant Payment Schedule

Payments shall be made within 30 days from the completion of each deliverable (as approved by Mercy Corps Jordan) and receipt of invoice and completion certificate as proposed below:

• 20% of the payment amount will be made for successful completion, submission and approval of Deliverable 1: Inception Report with final methodology and data collection tools.
• 30% of the payment amount will be made for successful completion, submission and approval of Deliverable 2: First draft of the Evaluation Report.
• 50% of the payment amount will be made for successful completion, submission and approval of Deliverable 3: Final draft of the Evaluation Report with all data sets and transcripts.

Proposal Structure

Consultants applying for this evaluation will need to bid by submitting a detailed proposal to [email protected] by 16 December 2023, with the email subject “ISRY Final Evaluation Consultant”. The proposal should include all of the following main sections:

• Document 1: Technical proposal outlining a basic strategy and technical approach to the SoW, team composition (if team), and initial timeline/work plan (2-5 pages)
• Document 2: Financial proposal (separated from the technical proposal) in Jordanian dinars (and its equivalent in USD) with a breakdown of budget covering consultancy fees and all related expenses to implement the activities of the consultancy including travel and transportation, accommodation (if needed), all logistical requirements for organising data collection activities, and translation. The financial proposal should be built around the deliverables outlined in the “Schedule of Tasks and Deliverables” section.
• Document 3: 2-3 work samples (program evaluation and/or impact research)
• Document 4: CVs of all members of the evaluation team (not more than 3 pages each)
• Document 5: Two-three reference letters (full letters, not just list of references) from previous clients, including their contact information (full name, email address, phone number)

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

Achieving our mission begins with how we build our team and work together. Through our commitment to enriching our organisation with people of different origins, beliefs, backgrounds, and ways of thinking, we are better able to leverage the collective power of our teams and solve the world’s most complex challenges. We strive for a culture of trust and respect, where everyone contributes their perspectives and authentic selves, reaches their potential as individuals and teams, and collaborates to do the best work of their lives. We recognize that diversity and inclusion is a journey, and we are committed to learning, listening and evolving to become more diverse, equitable and inclusive than we are today.

Equal Employment Opportunity

We are committed to providing an environment of respect and psychological safety where equal employment opportunities are available to all. We do not engage in or tolerate discrimination on the basis of race, colour, gender identity, gender expression, religion, age, sexual orientation, national or ethnic origin, disability (including HIV/AIDS status), marital status, military veteran status or any other protected group in the locations where we work.

Safeguarding & Ethics

Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts toward accountability, specifically to our stakeholders and to international standards guiding international relief and development work, while actively engaging communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring and evaluation of our field projects. Team members are expected to conduct themselves in a professional manner and respect local laws, customs and MC’s policies, procedures, and values at all times and in all in-country venues.