Consultant for the Final Evaluation of the Nourishon and Young Child (ANJE) Project Tender

Procurement Summary

Country : Comoros

Summary : Consultant for the Final Evaluation of the Nourishon and Young Child (ANJE) Project

Deadline : 27 May 2019

Other Information

Notice Type : Tender

TOT Ref.No.: 33080741

Document Ref. No. :

Competition : ICB

Financier : United Nations Secretariat

Purchaser Ownership : -

Tender Value : Refer Document

Purchaser's Detail

Purchaser : UNITED NATIONS CHILDREN'S FUND
B.P. 497 Hamramba - Moroni Tel: 773 0993 / 773 0369 / 773 5573 Fax: 773 0069
Comoros
Email :moroni@unicef.org
URL :http://www.unicef.org/

Tender Details

Tenders are invited for Consultant for the Final Evaluation of the Nourishon and Young Child (ANJE) Project in Comoros.

1 . Purpose and use of the evaluation



The purpose of this evaluation is to determine the effects produced by the "Nutrition" component of the World Bank-funded "Safety Nets" project in the Comoros. It will focus on measuring the contributions of this component to improving the nutritional status of children under 5 years of age as well as the levels of knowledge of mothers of children under 5 about good nutrition practices. Infant and young child (IYCF).

The results, lessons learned and recommendations that will emerge from this evaluation will feed the ongoing reflection at the level of the Ministry of Health, Solidarity, Social Protection and the promotion of gender for possible scaling up. this type of intervention to overcome the malnutrition that affects almost a third of Comorian children.

Indeed, the Comoran government is about to conclude with the World Bank a financing agreement in support of the health sector including nutrition. The design and programming of interventions of the Nutrition part of this new project "Health will undoubtedly benefit from the results of this evaluation on the social safety nets / Nutrition project.

2. Objectives

The purpose of this evaluation is to support the efforts of the Comorian Government to provide the goods and services needed to ensure the nutritional and health status of the general population and children under five years in particular. The final evaluation of the nutrition sub-component will therefore make it possible to measure the direct and even indirect effects of the interventions implemented in the 69 villages, on the nutritional status of children under 5 years of age, as well as on the improvement of the levels of knowledge of children. mothers of children under 5 years, distinguishing those under 0 - 23 months of those 24 to 59 months.

More specifically, this assessment will provide the Government of Comoros and its partners with strategic information on:

§ The relevance, effectiveness and viability of the mechanisms put in place for the prevention and management of malnutrition of children under five Special attention will be paid to gender equity but also geographical (according to the islands ), and especially the capacity of access and use of the services in place by the most vulnerable layers of the Comorian society.

§ The successes and challenges of the current protection systems and the lessons learned from them, the institutional and community potentials to support a national scaling up of the fight against child malnutrition.

3. Background

The Union of the Comoros presents alarming nutritional indicators specifically affecting children under 5 years old. According to the Demography-Health 2012 survey (EDS-MICS 2012), chronic malnutrition affects 30% of children under 5, severe acute malnutrition 11% and underweight 16%. These nutritional indicators are exacerbated by unsuitable nutritional and dietary practices that are harmful to children's health. According to the same survey, 12% of children under 6 months are exclusively breastfed and only 6% of children in the 6-23 month age range are fed optimally according to international recommendations. Hygienic conditions are not left behind with only 16% of households having access to handwashing facilities at home.

The Union of Comoros has benefited from a $ 6 million grant from the World Bank to finance the social safety nets project aimed at increasing access to social safety nets and nutrition services in poor rural communities. three islands. This project has three main components, including (i) the provision of a productive and responsive protection net in the event of a disaster, (ii) the improvement of the nutrition of young children and mothers from poor communities and (iii) ) strengthening the management, coordination, monitoring and evaluation of the safety net.

Activities implemented during the project period contributed to the achievement of the project development objective (PDO) of increasing poor communities' access to safety net and nutrition services. The targeted nutrition component 9, 200 children under 5 including 2, 800 children under 2 years of age and approximately 6, 400 children aged 2 to 5 years.

4. Scope

The envisaged evaluation will essentially cover the actions accomplished on the ground and the results obtained with regard to the objectives set as well as the strategies implemented with a view to ensuring an effective participation of all the actors, in particular the beneficiaries. It will focus on the lessons learned during the project implementation period, by examining the different nutrition policies, strategies and legislation developed by the Ministry of Health, as well as their operationality in the field, both at central level only at the island level (Anjouan, Mohéli and Grande Comore). It will have to develop recommendations on the intervention logic in view of the context, problems and needs,

5. Criteria and questions

The evaluation of the "Nutrition" component of the Comoros safety nets project will be conducted according to the OECD DAC criteria: relevance, coverage, effectiveness, efficiency, sustainability, impact and coherence.

§ Relevance :

§ Are the objectives of the IYCF project adapted to the national needs of children's nutrition?

§ Is the project consistent with national and regional priorities, policies and the involvement of sectoral authorities?

§ Efficiency:

§ To what extent have the objectives of the IYCF project been achieved? What were the main factors that influenced the achievement or not of the objectives?

§ Has the intervention been implemented as originally planned? If not, why? What measures have been taken to remedy this?

§ Efficiency:

§ In order to achieve the results obtained, did the implementation of the project use the minimum necessary material, financial and human resources?

§ Has the intervention been designed and / or modified during implementation to optimize the use of financial resources?

§ The impact:

§ Is there any evidence of change in the nutritional status of Comorian children in general, as a result of the implementation of this IYCF project? If so, what factors contributed to this change? If not, why?

§ To what extent have different groups, including children and other vulnerable groups, benefited from the intervention on different levels?

§ Viability:

§ To what extent do the results and benefits of the IYCF project persist after the end of the intervention (ie external funding)?

§ To what extent have the project stakeholders and beneficiaries appropriated the activities developed and the knowledge acquired during the project so as to integrate them into their professional and / or daily practices?

§ Equity:

§ To what extent has the implementation of this IYCF project contributed to women's empowerment, participation in decision-making within the family and community on health and development issues? of the child?

§ How has this IYCF project improved the living conditions of children from poor and vulnerable families so as to increase the chances of developing their full potential?

The analysis following each of the above criteria should lead to lessons learned and good practices that can inform the development of a large-scale intervention on child nutrition in the Comoros.

6. Methodology

This evaluation will use a combination of methods (i) review of strategic documents and project implementation reports; (ii) the quantitative measurement of the evolution of key indicators of the nutritional status of children under five; (iii) qualitative analysis from the point of view of the actors concerned on the application of the knowledge acquired, the difficulties encountered in the implementation and the sustainability of the interventions.

The quantitative measurement of the evolution of the nutritional status of the children should make it possible to make a comparative analysis of the relative indicators between beneficiary and non-beneficiary areas of the project. In this perspective, a survey (by sampling) will be carried out and the questionnaires will be administered to households in the target areas (the 69 beneficiary localities of the project) and to control households outside the project area but having the same characteristics as the target households.

The survey will have two main components: the taking of anthropometric measures in children under 5 and the evaluation of infant and young child feeding practices. Other issues related to access to care for pregnant women will be integrated. The consultant or design office selected will be responsible for the sampling of the preparation and administration of the issue, encoding, data entry and analysis under the technical supervision of a team of specialists to be put in place for this purpose and which may help to interpret the results. Also, the consultant or design office in charge of the evaluation will recruit and train support staff who will



7. Evaluation team and chronogram

The evaluation will be conducted by an international consultant who will rely on a national field staff for a period of three calendar months from 1 st June 2019. The exact number of days with specific deadlines should not exceed 60 days and should be proposed by the consultant and confirmed by UNICEF when signing the contract. The consultant will rely on the services of a steering committee which will be set up for this purpose. The International Consultant will be based in Moroni in Grande Comore and may be required to carry out missions to the islands of Mohéli and Anjouan.

The indicative timeline for the tasks related to this formative evaluation exercise combined with the mapping of the protection

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