TERMS OF REFERENCE FOR FINAL EVALUATION OF MDG-F JOINT PROGRAMME

Improving Nutrition, Food Safety and Food Security For China’s Most Vulnerable Women and Children

General Context: the MDG-F

In December 2006, the UNDP and the Government of Spain signed a major partnership agreement for the amount of €528 million with the aim of contributing to progress on the MDGs and other development goals through the United Nations System. In addition, on 24 September 2008 Spain pledged €90 million towards the launch of a thematic window on Childhood and Nutrition. The MDG-F support joint programmes that seek replication of successful pilot experiencesand impact in shaping public policies and improving peoples’ life in 49 countries byaccelerating progress towards the Millennium Development Goals and other key development goals.

The MDG-Foperates through the UN teams in each country, promoting increased coherence and effectiveness in development interventions through collaboration among UN agencies. The Fund uses a joint programme mode of intervention and has currently approved 128 joint programmes in 49 countries. These reflect eight thematic windows that contribute in various ways towards progress on the MDGs, National Ownership and UN reform.

The MDG-F M&E Strategy

A result oriented monitoring and evaluation strategy is under implementation in order to track and measure the overall impact of this historic contribution to the MDGs and to multilateralism. The MDG-F M&E strategy is based on the principles and standards of UNEG and OEDC/DAC regarding evaluation quality and independence. The strategy builds on the information needs and interests of the different stakeholders while pursuing a balance between their accountability and learning purposes.

The strategy’s main objectives are:

  1. To support joint programmes to attain development results;
  2. To determine the worth and merit of joint programmes and measure their contribution to the 3 MDG-F objectives, MDGs, Paris Declaration and Delivering as one; and
  3. To obtain and compile evidence based knowledge and lessons learned to scale up and replicate successful development interventions.

Under the MDG-F M&E strategy and Programme Implementation Guidelines, each programme team is responsible for designing an M&E system, establishing baselines for (quantitative and qualitative) indicators and commissioning a final independentevaluation.

The MDG-F Secretariat also commissioned mid-term evaluations for all joint programmes with a formative focus. Additionally, a total of nine-focus country evaluations (Ethiopia, Mauritania, Morocco, Timor-Leste, Philippines, Bosnia-Herzegovina,Brazil, Honduras and Ecuador) are planned to study more in depth the effects of joint programmes in a country context.

The following points should be provided by the joint programme team

  • Describe the joint programme, programme name and goals; include when it started, what outputs and outcomes are sought, its contribution to the MDGs at the local and national levels, its duration and current stage of implementation.

While China's progress on eradicating poverty and hunger is widely acknowledged to be among the world's best, it is estimated that there are still approximately 120 million Chinese people undernourished and that 7.2 million of the world's stunted children (4%) live in China. With the participation of eight UN agencies and more than 20respective national partnersincluding government ministries, research institutions and civil society organizations, the joint programme on "Improving Nutrition, Food Safety And Food Security For China's Most Vulnerable Women And Children"(CFSN) will support the Chinese government to achieve UN MDGs by piloting a comprehensive approach to food security, child and maternal nutrition in six of the poorest counties with an at-risk population of approximately 1.8 million children and women of child-bearing age. After extensive consultation with relevant central and local government agencies and UN partners, the programme activities will be carried out in Shaanxi province and Yunnan province and Guizhou province. Implementation commenced since December 4, 2010, and will last three years. The Joint Programme is currently in its third year.

Joint Programme outcomes and ten outputs.

Outcome 1: Informing policy decisions so they can be better targeted for optimized effect by development of reliable and up-to-date evidence on the magnitude, distribution, types and causes of undernutrition in China.

Output 1.1 Food security situation in pilot counties understood by policymakers

Output 1.2 Targeting and monitoring improved through availability of an improved national database on nutritional status of women and children

Outcome 2: Development and application of an integrated and targeted approach for alleviating child hunger and under nutrition through a focus on increasing exclusive breastfeeding, safer and more nutritious complementary foods, school-based interventions and iron supplementation for women of reproductive age.

Output 2.1 Exclusive breastfeeding increased and improved quality of complementary food with micronutrient supplements

Output 2.2 Household dietary intake of micronutrient-rich, locally-available food increased in 3 pilot counties

Output 2.3 National plan for food fortification in place and implemented

Outcome 3: Food produced, processed and prepared for infants and young children will be made safely through shared responsibility.

Output 3.1 Food production for children made safer in pilot areas

Output 3.2 Handling and preparation of food for infants and children made safer

Output 3.3 New national food safety law successfully implemented

Outcome 4: National child nutrition and food safety policies, guidelines, regulations and standards are revised according to results of the pilots and lessons are scaled up nationwide.

Output 4.1 10,000 copies of an advocacy package produced and meetings held at national and participating provincial and county levels by Year 3

Output 4.2 Media training of at least 100 journalists in pilot counties

The Joint Programme contributes to theUNDAF Outcome 1: Social and economic policies are developed and improved to be more scientifically based and human centered for sustainable and equitable growth, and Outcome 2: Enhanced capacities and mechanisms for participation, co-ordination, monitoring and evaluation for effective policy implementation in the social sectors.

The Joint Programme contributes toMDG 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. Target 1.C: Reduce by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger;MDG 4 Reduce child mortality. Target 4.A: Reduce by two-thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate; MDG 5 Improve maternal health. Target 5.A: Reduce by three quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio

  • Summarize the joint programme’s scale of complexity, including its components, targeted participants (direct and indirect), geographical scope (regions) and the socio-economic context in which it operates.

Despite the fact that China has become the second largest economic body in the world, due to lack of knowledge, uneven development of urban and rural areas, the occurrence of anemia due to under-nutrition in children of 6 months to 24 months old is as high as 30% in the urban area and 40% in the rural area. The estimated figure of school kids suffering from anemia is 20 Million. Stunting occurs in 17.3% of the under 5 years old rural kids which is 2.5 times higher than those in urban area and the figure is as high as 33.3% in some poor western areas. The occurrence of Vitamin A deficiency for rural kids is four times those living in urban areas. The accessibility to nutritious food due to financial insecurity is believed to be the main reason which is also aggravated by other important contributing factors like food safety incidence and lack of knowledge of nutrition and food safety. The issue is particularly outstanding with left behind children of those migrant workers.

There are no national surveys on breastfeeding using internationally accepted standards, but according to UNICEF, the rates of exclusive breastfeeding are extremely low. One study conducted in Zhejiang using UNICEF’s standard definition for exclusive breastfeeding found rates as low as 1-10%. Most workplaces do not facilitate breastfeeding for working women. On top of this, the gains made in nutritional status due to general economic development may be thinning out. Thus the focus needs to be on those successful interventions with proven effectiveness in addressing undernutrition.

In addition to undernutrition, foodborne illnesses are estimated to affect 300 million people in China annually. The Chinese national foodstuffs survey found that nearly 15% of food for domestic consumption failed to meet acceptable standards in the first half of 2007. Recent events have shown that consumers in countries which import Chinese food products may also be affected. Inadequate food safety is especially worrying for poor undernourished children, whose resistance to disease and access to healthcare is limited. Despite efforts to promote breastfeeding, infant formula is still widely used for children under 6 months of age and beyond. A widely covered incident in late 2008 involved a nation-wide recall of infant formulas after many batches were found to be contaminated with the chemical melamine highlighted vulnerabilities in the system and in the population. China’s Ministry of Health reported over 50,000 children were hospitalized and almost 300,000 suffered adverse consequences.

Despite ratification of ILO Chemicals Convention (No.170) in 1995, accidents related to poor chemicals management in food-processing industry are common. Outbreaks of food poisoning are regularly linked to food prepared in schools and kindergartens. Thus the joint programme will support the Government’s efforts to improve food safety, focusing in particular on products aimed at children, and on safe food preparation in hospitals, schools and kindergartens. It will use a rights-based approach in engaging civil society, particularly women’s groups, in training on the new food safety law and its complaints system.

The Joint Programme will focus on the at-risk population of approximately 1.8 million children and women of child-bearing age by piloting a comprehensive approach to food security, child and maternal nutrition in six of the poorest counties. The pilot counties selected have been identified through statistical analysis as scoring poorly on a composite of indicators such as food availability, physical and economic access to food, nutritional intake, access to water, health facilities and sanitation. They are located in mostly remote areas.

The Joint Programme will aim to do the following:

1.Improve the evidence of women and children’s food security[1] and nutrition through a baseline study and mainstreaming of internationally recognized nutrition indicators in national maternal child health surveillance exercises.

2.Improve nutritional intake through the promotion of exclusive breastfeeding for six months; provision of nutritional supplements for women and children; and formulation of a national food fortification strategy.

3.Improve food safety, especially for child nutrition products, through introduction of international standards in production, processing, testing and preparation of food; awareness of food safety issues will be promoted through schools, consumer groups, women’s groups and the media; and support to implementation of the new food safety law.

4.Gather the evidence gained through the demonstration projects in the pilot counties to build an advocacy package aimed at persuading policymakers to scale up interventions.

Responding to the complex child nutrition issue in China, CFSNaims to promote evidence based effective international approaches like exclusive breast feeding and supply of micronutrients packages to the poor infants and young kids as well as locally available nutritional crops. Establishment of quality and safety system in the food manufacturing enterprises and capacity building for food quality and food safety inspectors, law practitioners, community workers and women federation staffs and improving the nutrition and food safety knowledge of target women and children will help to ensure the Safety ofnutrients and food for children.

In terms of participants targeted, CFSNis working to change attitudes and understanding of women and children groups in the pilot counties and staff of relevant government authorities and public interest institutes:

-Women and children in the pilot counties – From lack of knowledge and resources to awareness of nutrition needs and knowledge

-Officials and institutions as service providers and duty bearers– From ignoring the child nutrition issues and to giving priority to child nutrition work

-Enterprises and private companies -- From ignoring the food safety and quality issues and maternal rights to observing the requirements for food safety and quality and maternal protection rights

In terms of geographic coverage, CFSNoperates in 9 sites distributed in 6provinces, including Shaanxi Province, YunnanProvince, GuizhouProvince.

For more information please refer to the Programme Document.

  • It is also useful to describe the human and financial resources that the joint programme has at its disposal, the number of programme implementation partners (UN, national and local governments and other stakeholders in programme implementation).

CFSNinvolves eightUN Agencies, more than twenty national partners and more than 100 local partners at pilot sites. UN agencies and national partners work simultaneously on several CFSNoutputs with multiple partners. There are more than 100activities under CFSN’s ten outputs but in fact more activities as partners break down one activity into smaller activities or add activities to address a changing context, reach established targets and maximize sustainability.

  • Changes noted in the programme since implementation began, and how the programme fits in with the priorities of the National Development Strategies as well as the MDG Fund.

Government policy and practice with respect to maternal and child nutritionand food safety in China is advancing quickly so CFSN must keep pace with the change and remain flexible so as not to duplicate effort while taking advantage of emerging government policy and practice. Some changes in implementation, such as expansion of TORs for research, adding a new pilot site covered by research and change target age group of researches in order to ensure the effectiveness and credibility of researches, have been adopted to make work more significant. In the summer of 2011, CFSN underwent its mid-term evaluation, which examined the progress of CFSN implementation, coordination and management in the first half, and proposed recommendations to improve implementation in the second half. The CFSN team responded very positively to the recommendations, thoroughly reviewed the budget for year 3, and decided to contribute 3 percent of planned year 3 funds to implement recommendations of the mid-term evaluation. New activities added responding to MTE recommendations include to develop an integrated policy advice, hold a final event to disseminate the policy paper and other CFSN achievement, and also prepare joint advocacy materials and conduct media campaign to ensure the sustainability of the achievements of this joint programme.

The commissioner of the evaluation is seeking a high-qualified consultant to conduct the final evaluation, of this joint programme.

1. OVERALL GOAL OF THE EVALUATION

One of the roles of the Secretariat is to monitor and evaluate the MDG-F. This role is fulfilled in line with the instructions contained in the Monitoring and Evaluation Strategy and the Implementation Guide for Joint Programmes under the Millennium Development Goals Achievement Fund. These documents stipulate that all joint programmes will commission and finance a final independent evaluation.

Final evaluations are summative in nature and seek to:

  1. Measure towhat extent the joint programme has fully implemented their activities, delivered outputs and attained outcomes and specifically measuring development results.
  2. Generate substantive evidence based knowledge, on one or more of the MDG-F thematic windows by identifying best practices and lessons learned that could be useful to other development interventions at national(scale up) and international level (replicability).

As a result, the findings, conclusions and recommendations generated by these evaluations will be part of the thematic window Meta evaluation, the Secretariat is undertaking to synthesize the overall impact of the fund at national and international level.

2. SCOPE OF THE EVALUATION AND SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES

The final evaluation will focus on measuring development results and potential impacts generated by the joint programme, based on the scope and criteria included in this terms of reference. This will enable conclusions and recommendations for the joint programme to be formed within a period between six to eight months. The final evaluation will be a continuous process taking place in the second half of the third year. Final evaluation activities will be integrated into the regular project implementation and M&E missions, in order to allow the consultant to see and understand the real joint programme implementation.

The unit of analysis or object of study for this evaluation is the Joint Programme on Improving Nutrition, Food Safety and Food Security for China’s Most Vulnerable Women and Children (CFSN), understood to be the set of components, outcomes, outputs, activities and inputs that were detailed in the joint programme document and in associated modifications made during implementation.

According to the MDG-F Monitoring and Evaluation Strategy, all joint programmes lasting longer than two years arealso subject to a mid-term evaluation. Mid-term evaluations are formative in nature and seekto generate knowledge, identifying best practices and lessons learned and improve implementation of the programmes during their remaining implementation.

The final evaluation shall be placed under the whole framework of MDG-F Monitoring and Evaluation Strategy and avoid repetition and overlapping with the mid-term evaluation. In comparison with the mid-term evaluation conducted at the mid-way point of the joint programme implementation, the final evaluation takes place at a more advantageous timing to assess the results and sustainability of the joint programme

The final evaluation shall also be placed in the whole Joint Programme monitoring and evaluation framework. Existing M&E reports, such as base line and end line survey reports, research reports, etc. serve as important information resources for the final evaluation. In comparison with activity or output focused M&E reports, the final evaluation shall measure the synergies and coherence of outputs and the results of YEM at outcome level and overall joint programme level.