Call for EOI – Impact Assessment of Local Right Programme (LRP) State, Delta

Introduction

ActionAid Nigeria (AAN) is an affiliate of ActionAid International, a global alliance of organisations working towards achieving a world without poverty and injustice in which every person enjoys the right to a life with dignity. As a large and visible development organisation, ActionAid works in more than 40 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and America. At AAN we work within poor and excluded communities to promote respect for the human rights of all. Our work extends beyond the people in these communities to relevant authorities with a view to empowering the people to take necessary action to end poverty. Since 1999, AAN has focused on social justice, gender equality and poverty eradication using the Human Rights Based Approach. AAN functions on the premise that protecting and fulfilling the human rights of people living in poverty will contribute to the eradication of poverty and injustice in Nigeria

Objective and Project Overview

As part of ActionAid Nigeria’s phase out process from one of its Local Rights Programme (LRP) state  Delta safter a long-term partnership iseeking to  evaluate the impact of its work with the poor and excluded, government and civil society in the state.  To this end AAN intend to conduct an independent assessment of performance, value for money and lessons learnt from this programme. It will also use the opportunity to assess the sustainability of established structures in the programme communities.

The core strategy for the LRPs is in accordance with the AA global strategy as spelt out in the AAN CSP –working in partnerships to eradicate poverty. This partnership involves the state based partner, women, men, girls and boys in poor and marginalized communities, the local and traditional leadership, local Government officials and Government agencies, the private sector and development actors working in the LRP, in a connected effort to ensure that those who are poor and marginalized secure sustained improvement in the quality of their lives, through promoting access to basic rights and services.

The critical input involves capacity building and nurturing local structures and the people themselves to continuously analyse their situation, identify workable actions and have the skills to take the needed actions which may often include engaging duty bearers, to ensure equity in the allocation of resources. This involves the use of some analytical tools and frameworks for the analysis of social and power relations in the communities and taking appropriate actions in favour of the excluded and marginalized.

It is in this light that ActionAid Nigeria seeks to engage a consultant to conduct an Impact Assessment of its Local Rights Programme in Delta State.

Specific Objectives of the consultancy 

1. Effectiveness of the established systems and structures in the communities and state to address rights denial issues.
2. Overall use of resources and other inputs to give desired results in the programme.
3. AAN and partners management and coordination of the project.
4. Government commitment, strategic roles played in supporting programme delivery.
5. Political commitment and strategic institutional relationships and coordination to support programme delivery.

Purpose of this Call

ActionAid Nigeria is seeking to recruit aqualified consultant to conduct an Impact Assessment of its Local Rights Programme, providing evidence on rights work, partnership and changes in the lives of the poor and excluded in Delta State. Engaging stakeholders in a technically grounded, consultative and participatory evaluation process, to include extensive consultations with public sector partners and the private sector. The outcome will guide development of impact documentation highlighting good practices, lessons learned and making recommendations to improve subsequent Local Rights Programme establishment and implementation in states. 

The Consultant will:

• Evaluate achievement of strategic objective of poverty eradication in line with the contextual analysis and ActionAid Nigeria Strategy “Social Justice To End Poverty”
• Review mobilisation of communities using Human Rights Approach and participatory methodologies such as Reflection Action, Inclusive Forum for Accountable Society in analysing actions on issues perpetrating poverty in their environment
• Review linkages between Government and the people living in poverty in actualisation of poverty eradication programmes and provision of access to gender responsive services to the poor and excluded
• Analyse establishment of networks and movements within the constituencies of the poor and excluded communities through promotion of interest groups
• Review work with vulnerable groups in communities, persons with disabilities, widows, orphans and other vulnerable groups
• Evaluate child sponsorship programme and its impact on sponsored children, their families and communities.

The key evaluation questions to be answered are presented below:

Effectiveness and Impact

1. How far has the Local Rights Programme achieved poverty eradication and social justice in its communities and the state?

2. What factors explain progress or lack of it? Were major blockages identified, and if so, what was their cause?

Sustainability

3. What was the level of political and institutional ownership and buy-in?

4. Are the achievements of the Local Rights Programme, likely to be sustainable?

Efficiency

5. Were resources adequate to implement programme activities?
6. What was the total cost spent on women, children, youths, local authorities’ activities in addressing rights denial issues?
7. Were there opportunities taken by the project to minimise costs through collaboration and utilisation of resources between relevant stakeholders?

Relevance

8. Was the programme strategy appropriate?

9. How has the Local Rights Programme strategically adapted (or failed to adapt) to the changing political and operating context.

Management and Coordination

10. Was the Local Rights Programme partner strategically positioned and adequately capacitated/resourced to deliver tangible results in years of operation using memorandum of understandings and partnership agreements?
11. How effectively has the state LRP partners coordinated child message collection, programme design and execution, M&E and lesson learning?
12. Has AAN and any coordination mechanism through MoU and M and E frameworks, made coordination and joint working more effective?

13. Has AAN’s coordination mechanism supported an effective engagement with high level actors in Federal and state Governments to promote poverty eradication and social justice?

Evidence

14. What is the evidence available for key results delivered by the programme?
15. What is the quality of emerging evidence overall?

16. Did projects have appropriate M&E systems in place to back up the results and evidence presented?

Value for Money

17. Did the approach to poverty eradication under the programme demonstrate good value for money and contribute towards a sustainable approach to delivering those improvements?

     

Lessons and Recommendations

18. What are the lessons to be learned on the Local Rights programme?
19. Was the programme systematically generating and recording lessons, and sharing these?
20. What mechanisms were in place for lesson learning and sharing especially across the programme states and with other governance, anti-poverty programmes and civil society?

Methodology and Approach

This impact assessment will be centered around the established systems and structures in the communities and state. This includes:

1. Women Peer Education Group
2. Accountability cells
3. DELBAG and Inclusive Forum for Accountable Society

4. Other existing relevant stakeholders’ components utilized by the project

The assessment will review each scope highlighted using the mixed approach of qualitative and quantitative methods to conduct impact assessment of the programme. It will adopt various data collection techniques such as Focus Group Discussions (FGD) and Key Informant Interviews (KII) to gather data from 3 LGAs and 6 communities in Delta State. This will represent 100% of the target areas in the state.

It is expected that the following groups of people, beneficiaries and partners will participate in the review process at the state, LGA and community level. They include, AAN staff, partner staff, state and local government officials, traditional rulers and religious leaders, women, men, youth groups and children.

The impact assessment team will include ActionAid Nigeria’s Local Rights Programme unit, Impact Assessment and Shared Learning (IASL) unit, Communications unit, Women’s Right unit.

Output of Impact Assessment and Presentation of Report

 Debriefing session for project implementation team and implementing partners will be done followed by a report validation. Preliminary findings, conclusions and recommendation will be presented for discussions.

• A draft Impact Assessment report (excluding the Executive Summary of not more than 2 pages and documents consulted and people met as annexes)
• A final Impact Assessment report (including Executive Summary and all annexes) within 2 weeks of conclusion of field work.
• A power point presentation to be presented during validation session

Timeline of the Impact Assessment

The impact assessment will take place from 20th February – 5th March 2025.   The total duration for this consultancy is 11 days.

Competencies

Corporate Competencies:

• Demonstrates integrity by modelling ActionAid’s values and ethical standards
• Promotes the vision, mission, and strategic goals of ActionAid
• Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability

Functional Competencies:

• Communication, interpersonal and professional skills required for collaboration with Government agencies as well as various stakeholders.
• Ability to prioritize work and produce the required outputs in the given timeline.
• Strong oral and written communication skills.
• Excellent presentation skills.
• Excellent drafting and analytical skills.
• Excellent computer skills 
• Must be result-oriented, a team player, exhibiting high levels of enthusiasm, tact, diplomacy and integrity.

Education:

Master’s Degree or equivalent in Social Sciences, Economics, Development Studies or related field.

Experience:

The consultant is expected to have the following qualifications:

• Background knowledge of the state and the ability to speak common/local language of the state which the assessment will be conducted with
• Hands on experience conducting similar impact assessments
• Knowledge of research, monitoring and evaluation methodologies, including quantitative and qualitative
• Demonstrable experience of producing high-quality, credible research/assessments (sample report of such is required).
• Evidence of experience in use of HRBA in programming
• Experience of working in poor, rural communities of Nigeria
• Understanding and experience of working with state and non-state actors (at all levels) and international organisations
• Knowledge of local governance and poverty contextual issues (desirable)
• The individual’s or his/her organisation’s work responds to the needs and interests of poor and marginalised women, men, aged, people living with disabilities and other forms of diversity
• Evidence of having undertaken similar assignments in the past
• Should be available within one week of consultancy offer

Place of Work & Administrative Support

1. The consultant shall work from his/her place of business and in Delta state for the field work using his/her own tools. A workstation will be made available to the consultant if required.
2. Availability within one week of offer on contract.
3. The selected consultant will sign a contract with AAN for the purpose of this consultancy.

Ownership of outputs

The expected outputs of the assignment – impact assessment executive summary and detailed report shall belong to AAN.

Terms of Payment

ActionAid shall deduct the statutory 5% With Holding Tax (WHT) for individuals and 10% for limited (LTD) and public companies (PLC), and remit to relevant authority. On the date payment becomes due and upon satisfactory completion of assignment and production of detailed report, the consultant will submit an invoice requesting payment and clearly stating his/her Tax Identification Number (TIN).

SHEA and Safeguarding

ActionAid is committed to preventing any form of sexual harassment, exploitation and abuse (including child abuse and adult at-risk abuse) and responding robustly when these harms take place in line with our zero-tolerance approach to Safeguarding concerns.

Compliance documents:

• Company profile
• Evidence of previous work
• Proof of registration with FIRS
• Evidence of previous audit
• Minium of 2 reference letter must be submitted showing evidence of related work
• CAC registration certificate.

Reporting Lines

The consultant will work closely with the Partnership and Local Rights Programme Specialist while reporting to Head of Programmes. All documentation and resources developed will be submitted to same.

Submission of Expression of Interest

Interested candidates are invited to apply by sending a CV detailing competency. Applications must be submitted electronically in one Ms Word file to: Procurement.Nigeria@actionaid.org using the subject line Impact Assessment of Local Rights Programme in Delta State not later than February 19th, 2025. Failure to adhere to instructions on submissions could invalidate your application.

Please note that only the successful applicant will be contacted.

Job Type:        Contract

Closing Date: February 19th 2025

Locations: Abuja and Delta