(Please note this Terms of Reference replaces the earlier one published in July 2021)
PROJECT NAME: MENCARE CAMPAIGN EASTERN AND SOUTHERN AFRICA
BUDGET: R100 000
TERM: 4 MONTHS: SEPT – DEC 2021
Project Background
Many practices that violate children’s rights still exist in the African region, including sexual, physical, and emotional abuse, amongst others. Data on violence against children suggests that between 30 and 40 per cent of girls in some countries have suffered from sexual abuse in their lifetime. Despite numerous legal advances aimed at protecting the rights of children, many actors are often unaware of these instruments. Save the Children East and Southern Africa Regional Office (Regional Programming Unit), in partnership with Sonke Gender Justice (Sonke), initiated the implementation of a pilot project titled the East and Southern Africa MenCare/Fatherhood Campaign in 2016.
The broader intent of the project focussed on three key themes namely engaging fathers to end violence against children in the home and in all spaces including corporal/physical punishment, improving unpaid caregiving by fathers, and working with fathers to end child marriages. These priorities speak to observed trends in the Region (and in the continent) pertaining to childcare that is observed to be highly prevalent in the practice of physical/corporal punishment in homes and the negative effect it has on the physical, emotional, and psychological wellbeing of children.
The project also encouraged dialogue on gender-equitable parenting by promoting the inclusion of men in caregiving and advocating for an environment that allowed men to be more involved in childcare, hence the priority on improving unpaid caregiving by fathers. Noting the high rate of child marriages in Africa, with an estimated 39% of girls married before the age of 18 (Girls Not Brides, 2014), the project sought to collaborate with men and fathers in an effort to challenge and end the practice of child marriage.
The implementation of the partnership prioritized working with Save the Children Country Offices in the East and Southern Africa Region, (Mozambique, Ethiopia, Zambia, Kenya, Tanzania & Zanzibar), aiming to enrich existing initiatives for family strengthening, with particular interest in parenting programmes. Trainers from partner organisations in each focus country were equipped with skills and knowledge on the MenCare programme to increase fathers’ involvement in gender equal and non-violent parenting.
The project leveraged on Save the Children’s Parenting without Violence Common Approach in strongly aligning with its core focus of providing fathers, mothers and caregivers with the knowledge, skills and attitudes to parent positively without violence, and strengthening equitable and gender-sensitive child protection systems.
Goal, Objectives, Outcomes, and Indicators
The goal of the project centered around the following three aspects:
- To increase fathers’ involvement in childcare and protection;
- To reduce the prevalence of violence against children through the direct engagement of men and boys in care and protection in six focus countries in Eastern and Southern Africa;
- To challenge the practice of child marriage.
Objectives of the project
| Objective 1 | To equip trainers from partner organisations in each focus country with skills and knowledge on the MenCare programme to increase fathers’ involvement in gender equal and non-violent parenting. |
| Objective 2 | To strengthen organizations’ responses by building capacity on how to engage men and boys in challenging and preventing child marriages. |
| Objective 3 | To contribute to media campaigns seeking to influence attitudes and policy change on the involvement of fathers in childcare and protection in East & Southern Africa. |
| Objective 4 | To strengthen collaboration in regional advocacy for the promotion of a gender-transformative approach to ending violence against children with a focus on physical and humiliating punishment and child marriage. |
| Objective 5 | To strengthen project implementation through continued knowledge exchange and sharing of good practices on child rights and protection in East & Southern Africa. |
Project Outcomes & Indicators
| Outcome | Outcome Indicators | |
| 1 | Trainers demonstrated adequate capacity to promote gender equal attitudes to parenting, support for positive discipline, and resistance to child marriage. | Level of capacity of trainers to implement MenCare activities. Increased number of people trained/capacity built by trained trainers (ToTs). |
| 2 | Organizations gained sufficient capacity to provide a positive response in addressing child marriage through the specific inclusion of men and boys | Availability of a suitable manual on “Supporting men and boys in their involvement in ending child marriages”. The extent and frequency to which this manual was used. No. of organizations that utilized and integrated the manual in their initiatives. |
| 3 | Parents/caregivers and members of the public and policy makers expressed more support for gender-equal and non-violent parenting. | Parents/caregivers and general audience that demonstrated shifts towards positive attitudes pertaining to gender equal and non-violent parenting. |
| 4 | Regional and National Civil Society and Government Actors accelerated the implementation of commitments on addressing VAC using a gender transformative lens. | Increased number of joint inter-agency advocacy initiatives. Increased number of Violence Against Children (VAC) initiatives by Government/Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), that have included gender-transformative aspects. |
| 5 | Project implementation was informed by lessons learnt by programme staff from the various learning and exchange forums within the Save the Children network. | Increased number of Save the Children trainings/learning events that Sonke staff attended. Increased opportunities for linkage of this project with Save the Children Country Office implementation on positive parenting. Reports by programme staff with evidence of lessons learnt indicating what these lessons were. |
Note: The full logic framework will be shared with the consultant with additional project documents.
Project Strategies
The strategic approaches in this project were:
- Training/Capacity building: Trainers from partner organisations in each focus country were equipped with skills and knowledge on the MenCare programme to increase fathers’ involvement in gender equal and non-violent parenting.
- Community education and mobilization activities: Partner organizations implement educational interventions such as MenCare Fathers Groups, and the Positive Discipline in Everyday Parenting manual. Building on existing positive parenting programmes in each country, this approach would result in the mobilisation of capacitated groups to improve childcare and protection in the villages and neighbourhoods. This would be achieved by equipping parents to engage with amongst others, health and social welfare service providers, to improve services to children.
- Media campaigns: For these campaigns the central set of MenCare materials (posters, radio scripts and audio files for public service announcements) was adapted to each country’s context, i.e. language and relevant themes. It was assumed that the central resource kit would be sufficiently generic to allow for its use in the different countries in Eastern and Southern Africa.
- Policy development and advocacy: To ensure that partner organisations would be sufficiently equipped to advocate for progressive policies and laws, and to monitor effective implementation of these policies and laws once enacted.
Objectives and Purpose of the End of Term Evaluation
The objectives of this end of term evaluation are four-fold. Firstly, to determine the extent to which the project has achieved its stated outcomes. Secondly, the evaluation must highlight challenges experienced in the implementation of the project and how/if these challenges affected the programme implementation. Thirdly to critically assess the strategies employed to overcome the experienced challenges and finally to report lessons learnt from this project.
The findings of this evaluation will be used to inform future engagements in similar spaces and will shape future project proposals by Sonke, strengthening the organisational capacity towards improved implementation of projects of similar nature. Towards this end the focus of data collection and analysis for this evaluation should be on the following aspects:
- The collection of accurate and independent information on the implementation of the project and the project’s outcomes;
- Analysis of the likely sustainability of the observed and reported project achievements;
- Analysis of the effectiveness of different project components and contextual factors influencing outcomes;
- Present lessons learnt by practitioners and recommendations to enhance future programme implementation and innovation.
Evaluation Scope
The scope of this evaluation includes all activities within the project MenCare Campaign Eastern and Southern Africa that were conducted under the auspices of the Save the Children/Sonke partnership programme, for the period 2017-2021. The six countries involved are Mozambique, Ethiopia, Zambia, Kenya, Tanzania and Zanzibar.
Evaluation Criteria & Questions
The following evaluation criteria and accompanying evaluation questions should be considered by the external evaluator in planning for data collection, analysis, and interpretation.
- Relevance
- To what extent did the project meet the expectations of the key stakeholders?
- Impact
- Has the project succeeded in achieving its overall goal and objectives? This must take into consideration intended and unintended outcomes; including, but not limited to, the following:
- Policy advocacy in relevant target countries;
- Changes in levels of familiarity with engaging men and boys for gender equitable, positive parenting and how to use relevant research findings and reports within civil society organisations and government departments;
- Provision of technical support to organisations implementing MenCare programmes.
- Effectiveness
- How and why has the project been able/unable to achieve its outcomes? Key issues to consider under “effectiveness” include, but are not limited to, the following:
- The extent to which the project has achieved its objectives and outcomes;
- The extent to which the outcome-based framework indicators demonstrate the realisation of the intended outcomes;
- The main factors contributing towards achieving the outcomes;
- How were risks dealt with and were there processes in place and followed in order to minimise risks in the programme implementation?
- Efficiency
- How efficient was the project in terms of quantity, quality, and timeliness? Consideration should be given to what was planned, reflecting on the following:
- What was the cost efficiency to quality ratio?
- Were changes made to the programme design (objectives/ collaborations, etc.) and what were the effects of these changes on programme implementation efficiency?
- Sustainability
- To what degree will the benefits resultant from the project continue after the external support has come to an end? This should take into consideration the following:
- The relevance of skills transfer initiatives;
- The degree to which transferred skills are used/applied;
- The likelihood of the continued used/application of skills transferred in training initiatives after conclusion of the project.
- Programme management and administrative arrangements (including governance)
- This should consider whether the management of the project and administrative arrangements implemented were sufficient to ensure good governance for the project. It should take into consideration the following:
- The efficiency of the day-to-day management of the project;
- The responsiveness of management to the issues raised by stakeholders and staff regarding the project;
- Whether the project was adequately and appropriately staffed;
- The quality of planning, monitoring, and reporting, taking into consideration annual and quarterly plans, meeting minutes, resource and personnel management, and financial management.
Methodology
The evaluation must make use of a qualitative research design employing data collection methods such as virtual face-to-face interviews and the compilation of case studies.
Secondary data sources required for the evaluation will be made available to the appointed consultant and these sources need to be scrutinised closely.
Due to budget constraints as well as the realities related to the current Covid 19 pandemic the appointed service provider will not be required to travel to the respective countries but rather engage in face-to-face discussions with key stakeholders via applicable and available virtual platforms.
In answering the defined evaluation questions and thus collecting relevant and required data, collaboration with partnering countries will be essential. Sonke will assist in establishing and initiating these collaborations, however, it will be the responsibility of the appointed service provider to manage the data collection process and to coordinate engagements following the initial introductions.
Following a briefing meeting with Sonke, the appointed consultant will be required to submit a detailed evaluation plan. In this evaluation plan the following aspects needs to be addressed:
- Required information/ data fields;
- Data sources for the above (i.e. programme documentation, key informants);
- Data collection methods as applicable to the respectively defined data fields/ required information (i.e. face-to-face interviews, programme documentation, case studies);
- Data collection instruments (i.e. interview schedules);
- Defined deliverables and milestones.
All data collection instruments will be subject to the comment and approval of Sonke prior to being applied in the data collection process.
Key activities & time schedule
The estimated duration of the evaluation is four months, that is inclusive from September to December 2021.
The external evaluator is expected to produce within two weeks from signing of the contract an Inception Report, including a feasible evaluation plan. By end of September an Inception Workshop will be conducted to approve the research instruments and data collection plan. Following the submission of a draft report, by the end of November, the appointed consultant team will be required to present the main findings and recommendations to Sonke. After this presentation the consultant team will be required to make final changes to the report and submit the final report by an agreed-upon date in December 2021.
8.1 Evaluation Plan
The evaluation plan includes key elements from the analysis of the project documents outlined for the evaluation as well as expected outcomes of the inception workshop. The plan must also detail the final process, methodology, and tools to be employed to achieve the objectives of this evaluation as well as the work plan for data collection and analysis.
8.2 Presentation of field findings, reflections & feedback
The presentation of the findings will be shared with Sonke Gender Justice. The presentation will outline the main findings of the evaluation and recommendations towards the sustainability of the programme and implementation of similar projects in the future.
8.3 Evaluation Report
The evaluation report must present a clear description of the evaluation methodology applied in the study, presentation and discussion on the findings, conclusions, and recommendations.
The draft report is due for submission the end of November 2021. A presentation of the main findings and recommendations is to be presented within 2 weeks of the report submission. At the presentation comments and suggestions from Sonke will also be discussed after which the appointed service provider will be required to submit a final report. Dates to be set at the presentation meeting and further submission of the final report before end of December.
The report will consist of the following sections:
- Executive Summary (max 2 pages);
- Preliminary pages – Acknowledgements, Acronyms, and Table of Contents;
- Background Information: Brief on the project and context;
- Evaluation Purpose and Objectives; study limitations; expected outcomes of the study and who will use it;
- Methodology: Design, methodology, research instruments, data collection process, limitations to the study, addressing limitations;
- Findings: Analysis based on objectives and interpretation as well as evaluation criteria;
- Lessons learned and opportunities for improvement;
- Recommendations;
- Bibliography;
- Appendices: Data collection tools, ToR, list of respondents, etc.
The language of the report(s) must be in clear and concise English language. The report must not exceed 30 pages excluding annexes. All data transcripts must also be submitted to Sonke.
Required competencies & expertise
The evaluation team will consist of a team of people who collectively have a good amount of experience evaluating development projects focussed on gender equitable and positive parenting, including positive discipline strategies within the African region. Proven knowledge and expertise in qualitative research methodologies, research report compilation and writing, and social change regarding gender equality and parenting. The team must be skilled in participatory monitoring and evaluation and they must have demonstrable analytical, writing, and communication skills. There must be a main point person for the project.
10. Budget
The budget for this project is estimated at R100 000.
The project coordinator from Sonke will support the consultant as required. The Save the Children country office coordinator will also be required to assist the consultant to reach out to the stakeholders who were part of the project.
Mandate
The appointed evaluation team is entitled and expected to discuss matters relevant to this evaluation with pertinent persons and organisations. However, it is not authorised to make any commitments on behalf of Save the Children or Sonke Gender Justice.
How to apply
Should you wish to apply, please send a detailed CV, motivation letter, and a short proposal brief (including methodology and activities proposed to achieve objectives of evaluation, tentative timeline, and financial proposal) to:
Nombulelo Mazwi
Research, Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning Unit Administrator
Email: nombulelo@genderjustice.org.za
Deliwe Menyuko
Regional Programmes Coordinator
Email: Deliwe@genderjustice.org.za
