Final Project Evaluation

An INGO is currently looking for consultancy services from reputable firms/individuals for its project titled Strengthening of learning and protection of children living in slum areas of Islamabad. Interested Organizations/Consultants should apply with their profiles, technical & financial proposals and their tax/registration certificates. Only shortlisted Organizations/consultants will be contacted. Detailed ToRs and project details are as under.

Project Information Project Title: Strengthening of learning and protection of children living in slum areas of Islamabad. Thematic focus: Education, Child Protection Project Implementing Agency: Solidar Suisse Project Duration: February 2022 – July 2024

1.      Introduction

This document outlines the Terms of Reference (TOR) for the end evaluation of the Strengthening of learning and protection of children living in slum areas of Islamabad project. The evaluation aims to assess the project's performance against its objectives, identify key achievements, challenges, and lessons learned. The evaluation findings will inform future project development and implementation.

2.      Introduction of Solidar

Solidar Suisse is a non-profit civil society organization based in Switzerland, active in the areas of development cooperation and humanitarian aid, committed to achieving a socially, politically, and economically just society. In its development cooperation work it is specialized on the topics of ‘decent work’ and ‘democracy and participation’. Solidar Suisse presently has over 60 projects running in four continents. Solidar Suisse was founded by Swiss labour unions and the Social-Democrat Party. It is a member of the SOLIDAR Network, which comprises over 50 European relief agencies and development NGOs.

Solidar Suisse started working in Pakistan after the floods of 2010. Solidar Suisse in Pakistan has been supporting;

a) the education and protection of the children who are the most vulnerable to the worst forms of child labour, violence and exploitation and

b) the humanitarian assistance to the most marginalized people who are the worst affected by natural disasters/human calamities.

Since 2010, Solidar’s humanitarian assistance activities have supported over half a million vulnerable people including the most marginalized communities in different parts of Pakistan.

Solidar Suisse is implementing the Project Strengthening of learning and protection of children living in slum areas of Islamabad, Pakistan. The project aims at enhancing the capacities of teachers, children, and parents, fostering self-reliance in sustaining the holistic well-being of children. The initiative concentrates on providing access to education while establishing robust protection mechanisms.

3.      Background of the Project

The WHO declared the COVID-19 pandemic as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) on January 30, 2020. The first case of COVID-19 was reported in February-March 2020 followed by country wide strict lockdown measures including closure of schools. The year 2020 and 2021 saw various variants of COVID-19 affecting different areas. The education of children was among the worst affected areas. However, after September 2021, lockdown measures were relaxed and CSOs were encouraged to continue or re-initiate their activities for vulnerable communities taking particular measures related to COVID-19 and its impact on children learning and protection.

The lack of adequate education, training and employable skills are known to be the major reasons causing such vulnerabilities. People living under the shadows of such vulnerabilities remain too enfeebled to have their children attend schools and equipped with employable academic and vocational credentials. Resultantly, according to UNICEF latest report of July 2021, 22.8 million children remain out of schools. These out-of-school (OSC) children remain highly vulnerable to abuse, violence, trafficking and the worst forms of child labour. Also, an enormous majority of the children who attend public/private education system/schools are found to be in severe need of enhancing learning outcomes in addition to be subject to abuse, violence and exploitation. Eventually, the children within the age bracket of 5-16 years form one of the most disadvantaged groups of society.

The children living in slum areas in particular are amongst the most marginalized segments of the population and the COVID-19 pandemic has further deteriorated the learning and protection of these children. Those who are yet able to attend schools are;

 a) on the verge of dropping-out due to declining household incomes and

b) having limited access to quality learning. 

All in all, disadvantaged children remain struggling in mastering the basic skills in literacy and numeracy. Children belonging to vulnerable communities are not offered an effective conducive learning environment at homes either. Lastly, children before the pandemic and after the pandemic are not the same; the pandemic has taught new lessons not only in education but in all other fields. The pandemic has had transformative effects on education as use of new technologies was widely emphasised during the pandemic for continuation of learning/education process. However, such a disposition further emboldened the fundamental inequalities of digital divide between the children of haves and have-nots, as marginalized communities had little/no access to such technologies[1]. 

Additionally, the COVID-19 severely let down the overall learning outcomes.

It is in this context, that Solidar Suisse proposed project in four slum areas of ICT intending to target 3000 children, 12 schools, 104 teachers and communities aiming at enhancing;

a) teachers’ capacities to improve learning outcomes and retention of children in schools,

b) children’s competence to improve their protection by means of strengthening their preventive [to abuse and violence] competence, and

c) communal support to anchor and sustain interventions meant to espouse children’s overall well-being/welfare particularly focusing on access to quality education and effective protection mechanisms.

      The details about target beneficiaries and locale is given in table below:

Note: The initial project period was two years, however, it was extended for six months thereby enhancing the overall targets as well.

4.      Project Objective:

The overall approach of this project was to strengthen the competence of teachers, children, parents and community organizations/CSOs to become self-reliant in terms of sustaining capacities to espouse children’s overall well-being/welfare particularly focusing on access to quality education and effective protection mechanisms. The school/education system hence becomes the collective place to gather and strengthen all these stakeholders.

5.      Project Location

The project was implemented in four slum areas of Golra, Bari Imam, Pir Wadhai and Khanna Pull encircled in the below map of Islamabad. Project locations and beneficiaries were selected through a comprehensive assessment intended to reach out to the most disadvantaged groups of children in four clusters of slum areas namely Golra, Bari Imam, Pir-Wadhai and Khanna Pull. In particular, the assessment identified 12 schools’/education systems where children of these slum areas ought to arrive [known as catchment area within government’s educational parlance] to access education.

6.      Evaluation Objectives/Key Questions to explore

The overall objective of the evaluation is to provide a comprehensive and independent assessment of the Strengthening of learning and protection of children living in slum areas of Islamabad project. The specific objectives/questions are as following:

Project performance evaluation

How was the initial project set up, and its approach utilized throughout its cycle? How have we, if any adapted our approach when/if we have identified emerging needs? How the project has been adaptive in managing the implementation?

• to what extent did the project succeed in taking into account the very specific context of slum areas of the project's target groups?
• What concrete changes have been brought in by the project in the life of children in terms of ensuring learning and enhancing protection prospects.

Promoting dialogue with stakeholders

• Involving teachers in the evaluation process, to know about how they have benefitted from the project (training, capacity building, coaching etc.)
• Having a dialogue with the parents who have appreciated the need of education and protection for children need to be consulted to understand what moved them and be the agents of change and motivate others in the community.

Enabling learning process

• enable learning by identifying key challenges and lessons learned, particularly in relation to the changing post-covid context and the situation of slum community life
• Analyze factors that contributed to or hindered project performance.
• To share key recommendations for helping build future projects.

7.      DAC Criteria/ Key Evaluation Questions

DAC Criteria	Evaluation questions
Relevance	to what extent the project was relevant with the needs and challenges with regards to education and protection in the context of slum areas of the project's target groups, in the post covid 19 scenario?
Coherence	To what extent the project design, objectives and activities were coherent with the prevalent conditions and how these activities complemented to the efforts of the schools and other actors working in the areas in enhancing learning outcomes and protection prospects for children living in the slum areas
Effectiveness	To the extent the project contributed in advancing knowledge, attitudes and practices within the realm of accessing learning/ education and prevention of protection issues in a post covid scenario?
Efficiency	To the extent the project activities and outputs did suffice the principles of subscribing to economical solutions and that conditional with the needs of intended beneficiaries vis-à-vis post-Covid peculiar requirements?
Impact	The ways in which and the extent to the project rendered capacities behind and that focusing children’s access to learning/education as well as prevention of protection risks?  What are key indicators that best illustrate the project impact? What concrete changes have been brought in by the project in the life of  children, teachers, and mothers and others involved in the project? To what extent has the project been successful in supporting parents as agents of change and in motivating others in the community? Is there any unintended change brought by the project?
Sustainability	The extent to which the project fostered communal ownership of the challenges pertaining to children’s access to learning/education as well as prevention of protection risk?

8.      Key Stakeholders for the evaluation

The following is a list of key stakeholders. The evaluators will have to do sampling for conducting field visits and interviews with the potential beneficiaries and stakeholders. The selected evaluator will propose his methodology for conducting interviews/FGDs with teachers, children, selected community members (CCPMs) and other stakeholders based on the level of involvement and importance in during the inception phase in consultation with Solidar country team.

External stakeholder	Level of involvement	Expected change / impact due to the project
Students / Children (Phase 1: 4,000) + (Phase 2: 2,000) = Total 6,000)	High	High – Enrolment of out of school children, Orientation of children on child protection,  Overall child welfare with regards to overcoming learning barriers
Teachers (250)	High	High – strengthened competencies (subject based teaching, multi grade teaching, student assessment’s, classroom management, Non Formal Education methods/ curriculum)
CCPM Members/ Mothers (200)	Medium	Medium – awareness raising of mother groups on child protection, overall well-being and education of children
School Management (30)	Medium	Medium - the collaboration and coordination for project implementation.

 

Internal stakeholder	Level of involvement	Degree to which they will use the evaluation results
Project team	High	High - for future programming

9.      Evaluation Methodology

The evaluation will employ a mixed-methods approach, utilizing both quantitative and qualitative data collection methods. Specific methods may include:

• Document review: Project documents, reports, monitoring data, and relevant literature.
• Key informant interviews: Interviews with project staff, beneficiaries, stakeholders, and partners.
• Focus group discussions: Discussions with beneficiaries and stakeholders to gather their perspectives.
• Field visits: Visits to project sites and interact with beneficiaries.

The specific data collection methods will be further elaborated upon in the evaluator's inception report.

10.   Evaluation Deliverables

The evaluation will deliver the following outputs:

• Inception Report: A detailed plan outlining the evaluation methodology, data collection tools, and data analysis plan.
• Draft Evaluation Report: A comprehensive report presenting the evaluation findings, conclusions, and recommendations.
• Presentation: A presentation summarizing the key findings and recommendations for stakeholders.
• Final Evaluation Report: The final report incorporating feedback received on the draft report.

11.   Evaluation Timeline (August 2024 – September 2024)

The evaluation is expected to be completed within 40-45 days following the signing of the contract.

12.   Evaluator Qualifications

The evaluation team should possess the following qualifications:

• Demonstrated experience in conducting project evaluations, preferably in the education and protection sector.
• Understanding and familiarity with the slum life and its challenges
• Strong understanding of monitoring and evaluation principles and methodologies.
• Experience in using mixed-methods research approaches.
• Excellent analytical and communication skills.
• Fluency in Urdu and English

The evaluation team would be given following support from Solidar

• Provision of project documents/ Reports
• Facilitation in conducting KIIs and FGDs with key stakeholders
• Sharing the locations of partner schools

13. Confidentiality and Ethical Considerations

The evaluation will be conducted following ethical considerations research principles. All data collected will be treated confidentially and anonymized where appropriate. Informed consent will be obtained from all participants in the evaluation.

14. Contents of the Proposal

We invite interested organizations/firms to submit the following application documents for conducting this evaluation:

a)                      Expression of interest addressing expertise and track record – max 2 pages;

b)                      Proposed methodology, rationale, and work plan

c)                      Financial proposal in lump sum must be submitted in PKR and inclusive of all applicable taxes;

d)                     Organization’s brief and relevant profile.

15. Logistics and Procedures

Solidar will facilitate the evaluator/s for identification of project locations and reaching out to the beneficiaries for data collection, visiting communities and conducting meetings with other stakeholders. The evaluator/s would be required to make all travel and logistical arrangements using their own resources. Solidar wouldn’t be able to extend any support for making such arrangement. The cost must be included in the overall budget. Solidar would only assist in access to beneficiaries or authorities involved in the evaluation.

The evaluator/s would be responsible for compliance with all tax and social security obligations resulting from this contract and has to cover for required insurance coverage on its own account and expense. The evaluator/s may become legally obliged to contribute to the public pension insurance of his/her country of residence. It is understood that such contributions are not payable by Solidar and are to be borne by the evaluator/s itself. 

16. Approval Process

The final evaluation report will be submitted to Solidar Suisse’s Headquarters for review and approval.