Format for Terms of Reference for Evaluation

SIDA1 (8)

Terms of Reference: Evaluation oftheSIDA/Gender Links Gender Justice and Local Government Programme

(01 September 2014 – 31 December 2016)

Type of Contract: Consultancy

Based in:Zimbabwe

Consulting days: 20 Days

Time period:September 2016

Application deadline: Thursday, 07 July 2016

Evaluation Objective and Scope

The Evaluation covers GL Zimbabwe’s programme with Embassy of Sweden in Zimbabwe from 01 September 2014 to 31 December 2016.The Embassy of Sweden in Zimbabwe requires that an independent assessment be undertaken within the last six months of the programme to determine its continuation. The aim of the evaluation is to determine whether the programme purpose has been achieved. The evaluation will also assess how the programme has contributed to the overall Sidaobjectives of strengthening capability, accountability and responsiveness to make governance work for the poor. Through an honest examination of what actually happened against the planned results, important lessons for future programmes can be learned.

The purpose of the evaluation is to:

Identify the impact of the programme and ways that this may be sustained
Record and share lessons with intended users
Account to local stakeholders for the programme’s achievements
Improve future programme design and management
Verify funds were used effectively and efficiently to deliver results- Think through why you want this evaluation: Are you looking for accountability? Assessing progress? Do you suspect specific problems? Do you intend to use the evaluation as a tool for learning and/or accountability and improvement? Is this a routine exercise that is part of an earlier plan?

- Adopt a utilisation-focused approach. You should state clearly: For whom is it undertaken? State who the intended users of the evaluation are. Intended users should be identified and involved early on in the evaluation process and be given an opportunity to contribute to the evaluation design, including issues to be addressed and questions to be answered. The evaluation is to be designed, conducted and reported to meet the needs of the intended users.

-How is the evaluation to be used by the various users?

- Consider a joint evaluation. A joint evaluation, conducted collaboratively by more than one agency and/or partner country, can contribute to harmonisation, alignment and an efficient division of labour and resources of donor-agencies and partner countries. But note that it will require additional co-ordination and you will need to be careful that the evaluation purpose does not become too broad and the evaluation questions too all-encompassing.

Common pitfalls:

- Many ToR fail to describe the overall purpose and utilization of the evaluation, i.e. its intended use is not clearly stated.

- Some ToR miss important questions and issues, and a learning process for intended users as intended users were not sufficiently consulted.

Intervention Background

This programme is an extension of the first 18 month phase (August 2012 - December 2013) of the Embassy of Sweden funding to GL Zimbabwe for a further three years following the evaluation of the first phase that recommended a continuation of the programme. The first phase saw GL Zimbabwe successfully working with 33 urban and rural councils which have adopted and are implementing gender action plans.The overall grant to support gender mainstreaming in local government covers the period September 2014 to December 2016. The overall goal of the programme is to contribute towards gender balance and responsive local governance in Zimbabwe by 2016 in accordance with the provisions of the SADC Protocol on Gender and Development.

The second phase from August 2014 to December 2016 covers 60 urban and rural councils by December 2016. By end of 2014, GL had worked with 43 councils. In this reporting period, GL worked with 15 new Centres of Excellence (COE) councils bringing the number to 58 (63% of the 92 councils in Zimbabwe) while providing continued technical support to strengthen and increase the achievements within the first phase councils through backstopping. Ten new councils committed to the COE process in 2016. GL therefore anticipates covering a total of 68 councils by the end of the programme in December 2016 (10 more than target).

Key actions of the programme in Zimbabwe include:

Extensive training of women in local government through –

the training of new Women in Local Government Forum (WiLGF) members and WiLGF Executive Members;
Supporting WiLGF carry out 50/50 campaigns in 40 councils and communities.

Conducting a Training of Trainer (TOT) workshop for Gender Focal Persons (GFPs) and Gender Champions (GCs) and partners in implementation.
Rolling out the ten stage COE process in 10 new councils.
Localising the National Action Plans to end Violence against Women in 10 councils.

GL currently works in 58 of the 92 local authorities in Zimbabwe. This represents a direct interface with 63% of the local authorities, and indirectly reaching to an estimated 77% of the total population of Zimbabwe. With only 18% women in local government, GL’s COE programme is strategically placed to enhance women’s effective leadership and make the case for increased representation of women in leadership to advance Zimbabwe’s development.

The programme involves the annual Gender Justice and Local Government Summit which is a platform to cater for the increasing response; broaden profile and participation at country level; increase competition and quality of entries; strengthen partnerships and ownership of the process in gender mainstreaming. The summit serves to profile the COE programme in Zimbabwe; strengthen partnerships and garner support for the roll out phase. Award of certificates to the pioneering COE’s at the summit was preceded by on-the-ground verification of work to date.

GL facilitates peer learning, gathering of evidence and sharing of good practices through the annual district level, national, and regional SADC Protocol Summits and provide on-going support to the Women in Local Government Forum (WLGF) that is spearheading a 50/50 campaign for the increase in women’s political representation in the 2018 elections.

The implementation methodology is a practical, hands-on approach for localising these targets that includes gathering local level evidence, using this to develop action plans, on-the-job-capacity building, peer learning and sharing throughdistrict, national and regional Gender Justice and Local Government Summit.

Through research conducted over the last decade. GL has identified local government as a glaring gap in the gender and governance discourse. GL’s seminal research study, At the Coalface, Gender and Local Government has provided the first comprehensive data on women’s representation, participation and impact in local government in Southern Africa including in Zimbabwe.The baseline national GBV indicators researchstudy in Zimbabwe established levels of gender violence in each province.

An important theory of change underpinning this programme is that gender is successfully integrated in the work of local councils to influence 1) reduced levels of GBV and 2) changes in attitude. The programme further looked at how working from the ground upwards will transformed into meeting the targets of the SADC Protocol on Gender and Development. The Centres of Excellence are the target councils whilst the GBV indicators study was implemented in all provinces of Zimbabwe.

3.Organisation, management and stakeholders

The programme under evaluation targets women councillors, councils, local government associations, parent ministries, civil society organisations, survivors of GBV and communities in target localities. -Who are the stakeholders?

-Outline the organisation and management structure for the evaluation, including the stakeholders involved and their respective roles. GL has worked closely with UCAZ with whom the Embassy of Sweden in Zimbabwe has a long- standing partnership. In its formative first years, GL Zimbabwe operated often from the UCAZ office. The programme involves supporting the Women in Local Government Forum (WilGF) formed by UCAZ.GL has a standing MOU with ZILGA. GL enjoys strong working relationships with the Ministries of Gender and Local Government, as well as several NGOs in the sector, such as the Women in Politics Support Unit (Wipsu) that also leads the governance cluster of the Southern Africa Gender Protocol Alliance. GL Zimbabwe is also working with the following partners; the Ministry of Local Government, Urban and Rural Development, the Ministry of Gender; ARDC and Civil Society organisations that include Women’s Coalition; Padare Trust and Musasa Project.

The evaluation will be led by an external and independent consultant with extensive experience in Monitoring and Evaluation, who has not been involved in the design or implementation of the programme. The programme management team and advisors involved in programme M&E will participate in the reviews, but not in the judgments being made to ensure impartiality.

The DAC (1991) Principles for Evaluation of Development Assistance within the section on impartiality and independence state:

The evaluation process should be impartial and independent in its function from the process concerned with the policy making, the delivery and the management of development assistance.
Impartiality contributes to the credibility of evaluation and the avoidance of bias in findings, analyses and conclusions. Independence provides legitimacy to evaluation and reduces the potential for conflict of interest which could arise if policy makers and managers were solely responsible for evaluating their own activities.

The evaluation should cover:

An assessment of impact
A statement of the extent to which the impact has directly or indirectly contributed to increasing voice, accountability and responsiveness[1] and to reducing poverty.
Lessons and key recommendations to eitherEMBASSY OF SWEDEN IN ZIMBABWEorGL and implementing partners.- To ensure that learning from the evaluation takes place, stakeholders should be included in the evaluation process. Outline in general terms how different stakeholder groups are to participate in and contribute to the research, reporting and dissemination phases of the evaluation.

- Specify to the extent possible at this stage which stakeholders should be given the opportunity to comment on the draft report/s. It is important that the users are involved when defining the evaluation purpose.

- In order to increase ownership of development and build mutual accountability for results- you should involve all relevant stakeholders, such as government, politicians, civil society, intended beneficiaries and international partners, when it is suitable in the evaluation process.

Quality Control

- You should, depending on the evaluation’s scope and complexity, stipulate what kind of mechanisms for quality control and consultation that is foresee, such as. peer review, advisory panel, or reference group.

- These “external” mechanisms can be very useful, particularly for building ownership for the evaluation process, but may also include significant transaction costs and lead to delays.

- The ToR shall also require theconsultant to specify how quality assurance will be provided handled “internally”

- Sida evaluations shall apply to OECD/DAC quality standards.

Common pitfalls:

-Stakeholders do not have the opportunity to participate in the process or comment on the proposal report and the resulting findings are of no relevance or use to them.

- Quality assurance is not given sufficiently attention, creating problems further ahead in the evaluation process.

Evaluation Questionsand Criteria

The purpose of the evaluation is to:

Identify the impact of the programme and ways that this may be sustained
Record and share lessons
Account to local stakeholders for the programme’s achievements
Improve future programme design and management
Verify funds were used effectively and efficiently to deliver results - Ideally, the ultimate users of the evaluation should influence the choice and formulation of the evaluation questions. Ideally this should be a part of the development of the ToR.

- List the issues you want covered, i.e. questions you and other stakeholders want answered. Then structure them (to the extent possible) according to the OECD/DAC criteria (see below).

- The evaluation objectives should be translated into relevant and specific evaluation questions, for example, what types of results (output, outcome, impact) are to be assessed?

-The questions should neither be too narrow nor too broad in scope. The questions should capture both intended and as well as unintended changes.

- Make sure that the formulated questions can actually be answered! Consider whether it is practically possible for an evaluation team to obtain the information (primary or secondary data) needed . Also consider your resource envelope. Is it possible to obtain the information and make the necessary analyses with the resources and time available?

- The evaluation questions should also address what are generally referred to as cross-cutting issues, such as gender, environment and human rights, and the Swedish policy commitments associated with these issues. This may be done either by formulating specific questions in these areas or by integrating them in other questions.

-There is always a trade-off between depth and breadth in terms of what can be assessed within a given timeframe and budget. To attain adequate precision and reliability, it is often a good idea to limit the number of questions in order to allow them to be addressed with sufficient depth.

- The evaluation shall normally apply the agreed DAC criteria for evaluating development assistance: relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, impact and sustainability[2]. The application of these and any additional criteria, such as coverage, co-ordination and coherence, depends on the evaluation questions and the objectives of the evaluation. It is not a Sida requirement that all evaluations should include all evaluation criteria. It is often good to focus on a few of them. However, all criteria should be considered and if a particular criterion is not applied and/or any additional criteria added, this is to be explained in the ToR.

- General evaluation questions,based on the DAC evaluation criteria, that you can use are:

Effectiveness- To what extent has the development intervention achieved its objective?

Efficiency- To what extent can the costs for the development intervention be justified by its results, taking alternatives into account?

Impact- What is the totality of the effects of the development intervention, positive and negative, intended and unintended?

Relevance- To what extent does the development intervention conform to the needs and priorities of the target groups and the policies of recipient countries and donors?

Sustainability- To what extent is there (or what is the likelihood of) a continuation or longevity of benefits from a development intervention after cessation of development assistance?

- The DAC criteria are rather general and can be applied in different way. Ask the evaluators to explain how they will apply the criteria (e.g. relevance to what? Fulfilment of objectives at what level?).

Common pitfalls:

-Unrealistic expectations, too many and too broad questions. Many ToR ask for more than the evaluator possibly can deliver, given the time and resources available to them.

The questions that form assessment of the programme and evaluation criteria are:

4.1.Relevance:

Details of the programme’s significance with respect to increasing voice, accountability and responsiveness within the local context.
How well does/did the programme relate to governance priorities at local, national or internal levels?
How well does/did the programme relate to SIDA’s country assistance plans?

4.2.Impact:

Details of the broader economic, social, and political consequences of the programme and how it contributed to improved governance and transparency outcomes and to poverty reduction.
What was the programme’s overall impact and how does this compare with what was expected?
Did the programme address the intended target group and what was the actual coverage?
Who were the direct and indirect/wider beneficiaries of the programme?
What difference has been made to the lives of those involved in the programme?

4.3.Economy:

Has economy been achieved in the implementation of programme activities
Could the same inputs have been purchased for less money?
Were salaries and other expenditures appropriate to the context?

4.4.Efficiency:

How far funding, personnel, regulatory, administrative, time, other resources and procedures contributed to or hindered the achievement of outputs.
Are there obvious links between significant expenditures and key programme outputs? How well did the partnership and management arrangements work and how did they develop over time?
How well did the financial systems work?
How were local partners involved in programme management and how effective was this and what have been the benefits of or difficulties with this involvement?
Were the risks properly identified and well managed?

4.5.Effectiveness:

Assessment of how far the intended outcomes were achieved in relation to targets set in the original logical framework.
Have interventions achieved or are likely to achieve objectives?
How effective and appropriate was the programme approach?
With hindsight, how could it have been improved?

4.6.Equity:

Discussion of social differentiation (e.g. by gender, ethnicity, socio-economic group, disability, etc.) and the extent to which the programme had a positive impact on the more disadvantaged groups.

How does/did the programme actively promote gender equality?
What is/was the impact of the programme on children, youth and the elderly?
What is/was the impact of the programme on ethnic minorities?
If the programme involved work with children, how are/were child protection issues addressed?
How are/were the needs of excluded groups, including people with disabilities and people living with HIV/AIDS addressed within the programme?

4.7.Value for money:

Good value for money is the optimal use of resources to achieve the intended outcome

Is there an optimum balance between Economy, Efficiency and Effectiveness?
What are the costs and benefits of this programme?
Overall, did the programme represent good value for money?

4.8.Sustainability: