Midterm Evaluation For Power To You(th) Programme

Overview of Programme

Power to You(th) (PtY) is a five-year program from 2021 – 2025, that seeks to empower adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) to increase their agency, claim their rights, address gender inequalities, challenge gender norms, and advocate for inclusive decision-making. The Power to You(th) (PtY) consortium, funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is led by Amref Netherlands, in collaboration with Sonke Gender Justice and Rutgers, and supported by KIT and CHOICE as technical partners. 

As part of its efforts to learn from results and gather insights that could improve the implementation of the second half of the programme (2024-2025), the PtY consortium will carry out a mid-term evaluation of the PtY programmes in all 7 implementing countries during the period [November 2022 – July 2023], as well as at global and regional level. In the 7 implementing countries part of the MTE will be carried out by national consultants, who will be recruited by the PtY country teams. The results of the 7 evaluations will in turn feed into the global MTE.

These terms of reference details the specific tasks that will be required for a consultant to carry out the coordination of the Mid Term Evaluation, as outlined below: 

Countries of implementation: Ethiopia, Ghana, Indonesia, Kenya, Malawi, Senegal and Uganda

Application Deadline: 23rd October 2022

Timeline for data collection: 1^st November 2022 – 28^th February 2023 

Evaluation period: 2021 – 2022 (2 years)

Budget: £ 70,000

Mode of work: Hybrid – to work with Programme staff and Local/National consultantsSubmission of Final report: 1^st October 2023

The partnership is looking for an experienced consultant with skills evaluating regional/global programs to evaluate program approaches, document lessons learned, best practices, success and challenges for outcome sustainability, and future programming. The information below provides the learning questions and scope for the Midterm Evaluation.

Programme Background

The Power to You(th) program places an emphasis on young people’s ability to participate meaningfully in dialogues and decisions that affect adolescent girls and young women. By increasing the participation of young people from a range of backgrounds and groups in political and civic space, the program aims to improve youth led and focused advocacy and accountability in relation to unintended pregnancy (UP), sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), and harmful practices such as child marriage and female genital mutilation/cutting. The partnership strengthens civil society organizations (CSOs) to empower and increase the voice of adolescent girls and young women (AGYW). 

Power to Youth works with supportive actors to create change:

• Young people from underserved communities – particularly AGYW – who are most at risk of HPs, SGBV, and unintended pregnancies are our primary stakeholders and beneficiaries.
• CSOs – our strategic partners that are operating at local, national, and global levels, they are embedded in local communities, these CSOs have legitimacy in working on SRHR with local groups and organizations.
• Societal actors/reformists including, men/boys, women/girls, parents and caregivers, and religious, traditional, and opinion leaders. Influential progressive societal actors can advocate for, challenge, and counter restrictive social norms and mobilize a critical mass of people that become influential enough for a community to change its practices
• State actors/reformists including, local authorities, national governments, and regional and global governmental bodies, and service providers at public institutions

Overall Objective

The purpose of the Mid Term Evaluation is to make the Power to You(th) programme better, so the focus is on learning and improvement. The midterm will be a participatory evaluation, involving different stakeholders such as young people, CSOs, social and state actors in order to capture their voices, review programme strategy and provide insight on the way stakeholders/target groups value our programme. The midterm will be centered around outcomes evidenced through Outcome Harvesting (OH) and storytelling based inquiries involving the youth.

More specifically, the objectives of the mid-term evaluation are to use the evaluation findings to:

1. Inform the planning for 2024-2025 at country, regional and global level.
2. Use the evaluation findings to change or confirm the overall theory of change, which will inform planning for 2024-2025 at country, regional and global level.
3. Improve the partnership at consortium level, including how the partnership implements its principle on Southern Leadership.
4. Update the context analysis, risk analysis and cross cutting themes at country level.
5. Meet the accountability requirements of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs

The mid-term evaluation will thus look at programme implementation at country, regional and global level, as well as at the partnership at both in-country level and consortium level, and the interlinkages between those levels.

Besides using the evaluation findings, the evaluation process will be used to include evaluation users, programme staff and youth as active stakeholders in all phases of the evaluation so that they can strengthen their capacity on evaluative thinking, which will allow them to (better) reflect on the programme’s progress and actively provide feedback throughout the rest of the programme.

The mid-term evaluation of the global PtY programme is planned to be finalized by June 2023. The PtY country evaluations will be carried out between November 2022 and March 2023. The global evaluation is being led by the PMERL manager of the PtY programme, who is the evaluation manager, and one independent Global consultant who will coordinate together with National consultants throughout the process.

Midterm Evaluation Specific Objectives, Overall Guiding Questions

The midterm review will be used to thoroughly reflect on the first 2 years of the program, including how the context, program, and partnership have evolved, in order to learn and inform program adaptations and developments for the remainder of the program in order to maximize the expected impact and outcomes by 2025. The midterm will also investigate learning questions about PtY partnership and inform the partnership’s reflections on how to make its own operation more inclusive and effective (considering cross-cutting elements such as southern leadership, Meaningful Youth Participation and Engagement (MYPE), Gender Transformative Action (GTA) and innovation).

In this there will be 8 “contexts” where programming is taking place. These 8 contexts include the seven country programmes (Ethiopia, Ghana, Indonesia, Kenya, Malawi, Senegal, Uganda) and the programme at global and regional level.

Some of the questions that the evaluation seeks to answer (which are not exhaustive) are:

Questions related to objective 1 and 2, the programme and its theory of change:

1. What results have been achieved by the programme, and to what extent do those results contribute to achieving the intended outcomes included in the Theory of Change? 
2. Which programme strategies or external factors were most effective in contributing to achieving the intended outcomes included in the Theory of Change? 
3. Do programme participants (youth) perceive a contribution by the programme to their (increased) inclusion in decision-making processes regarding harmful practices, SGBV and unintended pregnancies? 
4. Do programme participants (youth) think their inclusion in decision-making processes is now (more) meaningful and contributing to (policy) improvements related to harmful practices, SGBV and unintended pregnancies? 

Questions related to objective 3, the partnership, are:

1. How is the partnership functioning (in – countries between the CSOs, between consortium partners and countries, between consortium partners at the regional and global levels), what are its weaknesses and strengths, and how could it be improved to enable the (better) achievement of results?
2. What does the collaboration with the Dutch embassy look like, and how could the collaboration be improved?

Questions related to objective 4, the context- and risk analysis at country level, are:

1. What is the status of the context analysis, how is it used, and what could the programme team do to increase its relevance and usefulness? 
2. What is the status (up-to-date or out-dated) of the risk analysis, how is it used, and what could the programme team do to increase its relevance and usefulness? 
3. Countries, technical working groups, and the partnership as a whole may add specific evaluation and learning components based on their priorities and needs.

MTE Specific Objectives at context

Note that the specific objectives will be finalized during the inception phase

At Country Level

At the country level, the global consultant will collaborate closely with the local consultant as well as the program team to conduct a participatory evaluation, involving different stakeholders who include young people, CSOs, social and state actor in order to capture their voices, review programme strategy and provide insight on the way stakeholders/target groups value PTY programme. The direct involvement of PtY management and staff increases the chances that the evaluation’s recommendations will actually be used through concrete follow up actions. 

Specific objectives to be achieved by the National consultants will be:

To assess the evaluation objectives at country level and in addition:

• To assess and determine the extent to which the country management teams have made progress of the overall PtY goal in relation to the theory of change 
• Assess and reflect on programme advocacy approaches and its effectiveness by PtY partners in achieving results which will inform planning for 2024-2025 using methodologies such as storytelling and outcome harvesting
• To identify lessons learnt and best practices from programme implementation, linking advocacy issues from local to national levels and addressing gender and inclusivity issues
• Identify mechanisms to be put in place to ensure programme strategy sustainability
• To assess and provide recommendations and conclusions
• Context analysis and risk analysis (including SEAH, fraud and corruption), 
• Cross-cutting themes (gender, youth, climate)
• Challenges, lessons learned and good practises
• Relevance of CSOs and networks/platforms in strengthening PtY CSO civic space and capacities and country specific evaluation of learning agenda across the PtY thematic areas and pathways

Regional and Global Level

Power to youth works through technical working groups (TWGs), to effectively implement advocacy activities through global youth groups, gender transformative action, Meaningful youth inclusivity and participation, lobby and advocacy with different global and regional bodies including governments, to measure the soundness of the mechanisms put in place by PtY for outcome sustainability, 

• Assess progress of Lobby and Advocacy (L&A), Global youth group (GYG) and Gender transformative action (GTA) in line with the global goals and targets from regional to global spaces including bodies relevant to power to Youth programme 
• Contribution to Collaboration success and challenges of partners at various levels including countries
• Evaluate the effectiveness and relevance of technical working groups, as well as their contribution to the partnership, including the factors that impede and promote their function ability
• Provide lessons learnt and recommendation for how the technical working groups can work collaboratively to achieve their set objectives
• Provide recommendation on strategic partnership decision making, coordination and strategic planning for the remainder of project cycle for linking and learning

Consortium Level

The Consortium fosters ownership at the country level, with locally formed coalitions and representation of beneficiaries in programme governance, here the consultant will:

• Assess strategies that are aligned with PtY thematic areas and how they will be sustained through collaborations and relationships among consortium partners.
• To assess the extent to which PtY structures and internal coordination have achieved Partnership linking from the context/local/country to the global level and influence on performance
• To provide recommendations on how to improve the consortium’s support and contribution to the realization of the TOC to increase impact in 2024-2025 and beyond.

Overall PtY Programme

• Evaluate the progress of PtY Core Principles and how the partnership is incorporating this in the project cycle (are we operating within these principles?
• Southern Leadership – capacity of all actors is recognized, used optimally in learning, and contributes to sustainability
• PtY programme Partnership with its partners, Ministries, embassies and other external partners – approaches to incorporate the voices of people at all levels of the programme, paying particular attention to power dynamics
• Scale – deliver interventions that combine the effectiveness of evidence-based models with designs that can be taken to scale
• Innovation and digitization – increase efficiency and effectiveness; optimize linking and learning; and develop solutions for youth to claim their agency with regard to SRHR
• From a general view of the data collected, from all the 8 context (Ethiopia, Ghana, Indonesia, Kenya, Malawi, Senegal, Uganda) and the programme at global and regional level
• Assess how well programme strategies at all levels are being implemented and how appropriate they are including governance and adapt where needed
• Reflect the implementation of the country ToC, including national-level activities and alignment at the regional and global levels, as well as with the Power to You(th) Lab.
• Assess the achievements and challenges of governance and program structures, including budget for coordination and joint planning mechanisms at various levels and contexts (Governance).
• Provide recommendations for the programme to increase impact in 2024-2025 and beyond.

1. Expected Outcomes

Power to Youth’s seven country programs, as well as the global and regional programs, are included in the evaluation, each context has its own dynamics and change process, which all deserve to be investigated and, if necessary, improved for the duration of the program. To achieve this, the MTE will adhere to the following principles:

• Forward looking – Based on the current trajectory, the evaluation will “look backward (what has been) to inform the future (what might be)” (what is happening now). The evaluation will look at what has worked and what has not worked in the past, not just to document history, but also to inform the future.
• Utilization-focused – The utility of the product will be assessed. No matter how technically sound or methodologically elegant an evaluation is, it is not truly good unless the findings are used. The recommendations provided should be context-specific rather than generic.
• Meaningful and Inclusive Youth Participation (MIYP) – Young people can work in organizations and at all stages of programming and policy-making, such as design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation, where they can play an active role and ensure their voices are heard and respected. Meaningful Youth Participation can be achieved by structurally integrating it at all levels of decision making and throughout all program phases. For this reason, the consultant should demonstrate mechanisms they will be put in place for young people to have an active role in this MTE, in which their voices are heard and respected. 
• Efficient and time-sensitive – Ensuring full participation and representation of key stakeholders in MTE processes for transparency, by keeping them updated and on time, as well as avoiding overburdening stakeholders and being aware of any additional workload created

2. Approach of the consultancy

The evaluation will take a hybrid approach involving both external and internal personnel, with the Global PMERL manager serving as the Evaluation lead and internally ensuring the participation of the PtY teams, Country management teams (CMT), and Technical working groups for learning and ownership purposes. The majority of the work will be led by a global external consultant, it is expected that the successful consultants will collaborate with local/National consultants in the program countries for reasons of context specificity, and ownership of the process. The National consultants will be chosen in close collaboration and agreement with each country’s power to youth team.

Overall Methodology 

• The Global consultant is expected to assess Outcomes Harvested (OH). We envisage that by 2023, all country teams will have made good progress in OH. In each country and at global/regional level one Outcome Harvesting (OH) sequencing face to face workshops will be organized between December 2022 – March 2023. The workshops will last a maximum of 3 days and include the sequencing, interpretation, analysis and story writing of the harvested outcomes of 2021 and 2022
• Partnership survey, conduct desk review on the partnership surveys collected within the programme and in addition assess partnership at different levels as discussed by the steering committee
• The evaluation will collect stories from youth (programme participants) in intervention communities about their experiences as part of the programme
• Interviews of relevant stakeholders to achieve the evaluation objectives

3. Deliverables and Timelines

Intended users and uses of the evaluation

The global consultant will work closely with the evaluation steering committee who are leading. Intended use by intended users is the main focus of this Midterm Evaluation; this evaluation will be designed and carried out with the needs of these intended users in mind from start to finish. To ensure that the evaluation specifically addresses the users’ values and needs, the external consultant should maintain frequent interaction and involvement with the steering committee as well as the users. The intended users and their intended use of the evaluation findings for this MTE are:

Those in management positions in the 8 contexts, thus the 7 Country Management Teams (CMTs) and staff implementing the programme at Regional and Global level including Global management teams, as they are in the position to:

• Make decisions about their context-specific activity plans for 2024-2025,
• Inform decisions about adapting the overall theory of change.
• The Global Management Team (GMT), as they are in the position to:
• Make decisions about changes in the overall theory of change,
• Make decisions about improving the partnership.
• Technical working groups
• Examines learning/knowledge requirements and meets them through capacity building
• Coordinating bodies that connect countries at the regional and global levels (central role)
• Provide information to global management for decision-making purposes, 
• identifies synergies and opportunities for global learning labs, and plays a key role in linking and learning across contexts.

The evaluation report will be shared with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands (the primary donor of the programme) and the Dutch development sector in particular.

The final process will be designed and revised by all participants over the course of the assignment.

Deliverables

• Inception report detailing approach of the assignment, proposed methodology, timelines and budget
• Initial findings report: draft consolidated MTE report containing findings (not yet conclusions and recommendations)
• 1 consolidated final overall MTE report by 1^st October 2023, including:
• Description of evaluation process and how participants (including internal personnel) were included at each context (at country, regional and Global levels)
• Detailed methodology for countries, partnerships and annual reflection/validation facilitation reports
• Develop, in collaboration with the evaluation steering committee, a comprehensive midterm evaluation plan for carrying out the MTE, including a training plan for data collectors and national consultants.
• Production of 7 country level analysis documents and 1 programme level analysis document of data/information collected by the national consultants including any story-based inquiry
• Overall analysis of harvested outcomes (objective 1) 
• A graphic and narrative describing the adjusted overall Theory of Change (objective 1)
• Overall findings
• Overall actionable recommendations fom validation and recommendation workshops
• 7 country reports from countries(provided by National consultants), and 1 report for Global and Regional technical working groups which detail and includes:
• Analysis of harvested outcomes, Outcome Story (objective 1) and Analysis of story-based inquiry (objective 1)
• Findings of the MTE per country, as compiled by National consultants and that of regional and Global levels
• Report from validation and recommendation workshops
• Actionable recommendations
• Partnership survey report, including actionable recommendations (objective 2)

4. Tasks of the Global consultant

Tasks of the global MTE consultant

• Support the national consultants throughout the process, including a briefing on the terms of reference and training on one of the data collection tools;
• Facilitate face to face OH workshops which entail sequencing, interpretation, analysis and story writing of the harvested outcomes of 2021 and 2022
• Provides comments on the draft national evaluation reports (CMTs approve) (country evaluation reports are annexed to the consolidated MTE report);
• Facilitate 8 Outcome Harvesting sequencing workshops: 7 in each country and 1 at global/regional level conducted online, ensure reporting is done, each workshop report is annexed to the consolidated MTE report and facilitate a participatory process to design the story-based inquiry;
• Analyze the data collected through partnership survey and produce 1 analysis document (annexed to the consolidated MTE report);
• consolidate data from all sources to answer the evaluation question at overall programme level, and write an Initial Findings Report (not yet containing conclusions and recommendations); 
• facilitate a participatory process (validation and recommendation workshops) to support PtY stakeholders to draw conclusions based on the findings and formulate recommendations to improve the programme, by conducting several online workshops with mixed groups (tailored to address the evaluation questions) and add these conclusions and recommendations to the final draft of the MTE report.
• In addition, the global MTE coordinator will communicate regularly with the MTE steering committee and the MTE manager and adjust the planning when necessary.

5. Expected profile of the consultant (s)

The PtY partnership, through its central coordinating body, the coordination lab, wants to contract one (lead) organization, research institutes, independent researchers, or consultants to conduct the evaluation process, who are willing to travel and collect the necessary data within the timeline. PtY requires that the consultant collaborate closely with local researchers who will be hired directly by countries due to their knowledge of the context, command of the local language, and agreement or understanding with respective country management teams.

The consultant is expected to meet the following requirements:

• Master’s degree or Bachelor’s degree with extensive work experience in Sexual Reproductive Health Rights and advocacy related topics
• At least 7 years of relevant professional experience
• At least 3 years of experience in conducting evaluations of multi-country programmes
• Excellent facilitation and coordination skills 
• Knowledge in outcome harvesting and evaluating advocacy programmes
• Thematic expertise (SRHR, women and youth participation, meaningful youth engagement, gender)
• Experience in qualitative and quantitative research methodologies
• Experience training data collectors in conducting surveys
• Strong analytical skills and proficiency in writing in English
• knowledge and experience  in outcome harvesting and storytelling methodologies is considered an asset
• Good knowledge of French is considered an asset
• Knowledge and experience of the programme intervention countries is considered an asset
• The ability to travel to the 7 countries

6. Response Proposal Specification

Interested consultants must include in their application a detailed technical and financial proposal with the following components in not more than 10 pages:

• Interested and eligible candidates should submit:
• A CV (maximum 3 pages) outlining profile of the consultant
• A cover letter highlighting their relevant experience for this assignment and indicating how the candidate meets the requirements
• Up to two examples of their work on a previous similar assignment (evaluation or research reports) 
• Two references
• A work plan (time and activity schedule) and budget for the assignment, including the estimated number of days and daily rate (in EUR) within the 12 months.
• Detailed cost proposal in Euros including the number of days you would spend on the assignment and daily fees (budget should cover all costs in-country as well, including local research teams and logistical costs)

7. Submission of proposal

Submit complete applications by email with the title “Application Power to Youth Evaluation” to coordinationlab@powertoyouth.org by 23^rd October 2022.

8. Evaluation and Award of consultancy/additional notes

Power to Youth will evaluate the proposals and award the assignment based on technical and financial feasibility. Power to youth reserves the right to accept or reject any proposal received without giving reasons and is not bound to accept the lowest or the highest bidder