Country Programme Evaluation

Fastenaktion (FA; aka Swiss Catholic Lenten Fund SCLF; until 2021 Fastenopfer) is seeking an evaluation team for the evaluation of its Country Program (CP) in the Philippines. The evaluation will take place between January and March 2023. The final evaluation report must be ready by end of March 2023. The evaluation team should have extensive knowledge and experience in designing, planning and conducting evaluations of international development cooperation programmes, as well as in-depth knowledge in right to food, agroecology and gender issues, and if possible in human rights and advocacy/lobbying.

Fastenaktion and its Country Programme in the Philippines

FA is a Swiss organisation for international development cooperation, committed to solidarity and justice. It was founded in 1961 at the initiative of the Catholic youth movement. The head office is in Lucerne, Switzerland. FA is working with partner organisations in 14 countries and Switzerland.

FA’s engagement in the Philippines dates back to the 70’, when FA was working with church-related organisations and defending human rights. Over the years, the focus of FA’s CP in the Philippines has shifted. For the cycle 2017-2024 it focuses its activities on Right to Food and cooperates with 12 Partner Organisations (POrgs.) – half of them Church-related and half of them secular NGOs – that are working at national level or in one of the regional clusters: Eastern Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao.

The CP’s objectives are:

1. Food security and livelihoods of women and men are improved to reduce the impact of disasters and climate change.
2. A&L leads to secured access for farmers, fishers and IPs to natural resources – land aquatic/marine, water, seeds, appropriate technologies and traditional knowledge systems and practices.
3. Communities have enhanced psycho-social well-being, are effective in community development, and empowered to claim their rights and hold the state accountable.

In 2021, the CP reached a total of 17’600 persons under the topic Right to Food.

DEV. SOUTH CONSULTANCY, established as a consulting firm in 2014, is FA’s Programme Coordination Unit (PCU) in the Philippines that provides Programme Cycle Management accompaniment and coaching services to the currently 12 POrgs. co-funded by FA in the Philippines.

Purpose of the evaluation

FA’s current strategy, its CPs and International Programmes (IP) must be renewed by mid 2024. FA is thus planning evaluations of all CPs and IPs. These evaluations shall inform the formulation of the new CPs, IPs, and FA’s new strategy beyond 2024. Where possible, they shall also complement and contribute to the mid-term-review of the Sufosec Alliance (to be completed by May 2023) of which FA is part

The head of the International Cooperation department (IZA) and of the Country Programme section (LPE) commits three external evaluations of CPs, namely in the Philippines, Colombia and Kenya with international and local experts. For the other CPs, the programme managers (PM) and PCUs will undertake self-evaluation with their POrgs.

The CP evaluation include aspects of both accountability (what have we achieved?) and learning and improving (how can we do better?).

Background

The evaluations of the Country Programmes (CPs) of Fastenaktion (Fastenopfer until 2021) are part of the evaluation of the International Cooperation department (IZA), which in turn is embedded in FA’s corporate evaluation carried out at the same time. They are conducted at the request of the head of the IZA department and FA’s management board.

In its strategy “Dare change – foster global justice” FA defined its strategic framework for the period of 2017 to 2022 and decided to focus its activity consistently on transformation[1] with a focus on Right to Food.

Each of FA’s 14 CPs formulated programme objectives, expected results and indicators. Due to financial constraints, FA decided in 2019 to waive the CPs in Brazil and South Africa by 2021. However, FA continued to be present in Brazil and South Africa through its IPs.

A mid-term-review (MTR) of all remaining programmes was conducted in 2019 (external MTR of the CP Guatemala, self-evaluation of all other programmes, incl. the Philippines). In the Philippines it led to an updated context analysis and to some adjustments at the level of target values and the reformulation of indicators.

In 2019, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), FA’s main institutional funder, decided to amend its criteria for its “programme contribution” (co-funding of international cooperation activities of Switzerland-based NGOs) as from the contribution period 2021-2024, providing incentives for medium to small NGOs to team up to access funding through alliances or merged organisations. During 2019, FA thus joined forces with Aqua Alimenta, Skat Foundation, SWISSAID, Vétérinaires sans Frontières Suisse and Vivamos Mejor to form together the Alliance for Sustainable Food Systems and Empowered Communities (Sufosec). The six alliance members agreed on a common results framework with indicators under five distinct outcomes, of which four are relevant for the international cooperation. Most of these indicators were defined as “basket indicators”. In each CP and IP, efforts were made to link existing programme indicators to the Alliance’ basket indicators, sometimes leading to amendments or replacement of programme indicators.

To align with SDC’s contribution period, FA decided to prolong its strategy, the CPs and IPs until 2024. The extended strategy 2017-2024 underwent a minor revision, taking into account the results of the MTR, and defining Right to Food as its sole core theme, complemented with the two transversal topics Gender and System Change. After their extension, FA’s current strategy, CPs and IPs must be renewed by mid 2024.

As part of the annual monitoring and reporting, the CP’s context and risk analysis have been regularly updated, progress made in relation to the set objectives/milestones documented (since 2021 including the contribution to Alliance-indicators), and evidence and estimates of the effectiveness are made in the form of impact statements.

Scope

The evaluations of the CP Philippines, together with the other CP evaluations, shall be used by different stakeholders for the following purposes:

• The Board of FA shall give its okay to use the evaluations for communication and accountability;
• The Board of FA shall include key conclusions and recommendations of the evaluations in the formulation of the new FA strategy;
• The Head of the IZA department and of the LPE section shall draw conclusions on necessary modifications in the next programme period;
• The PMs and PCUs shall use the evaluations as basis for elaborating the new CPs in collaboration with the POrgs.

With regard to the six DAC criteria, the dimensions of relevance, coherence, effectiveness and efficiency are at the forefront of the CP evaluations.

Evaluation Questions

Rather than an overall-assessment of achieved results and impact, the CP evaluation will focus on the following evaluation questions:

1. Relevance
   1. How appropriate and relevant is the CP’s thematic and geographic focus in the light of the poor population’s need in the country?
   2. How appropriate and relevant is the CP’s target group and to what extent does it include left-behind groups, and which ones (in the sense of Leave No-One Behind – LNOB)?
   3. To what extent has the CP collaborated and networked with relevant actors, including church-related organisations, to achieve its objectives?
2. Coherence
   1. Internal coherence: To what extent has the CP met FA’s minimal Gender criteria? What are highlights and what are the most important shortcomings the CP should address in the next phase?
   2. External coherence/Country Ownership: To what extent does the CP contribute to national development objectives and strengthening civil society?
3. Effectiveness
   1. Based on the available monitoring data and reports, to what extent has the CP achieved the desired results (outcome and impact) as formulated in the TOC? What are the tangible changes in people’s (i.e. women’s and men’s) lives? To what extent has the CP contributed to transformative processes?
   2. To what extent have the different main strategies of the CP focus on right to food (see chapter 3.2 of CP) contributed to the target group’s (i.e. women’s and men’s) food sovereignty[2]? Where have the CP’s partners encountered the greatest challenges?
   3. To what extent has the CP responded to the specific needs of left behind groups (LNOB)?
   4. To what extent has advocacy and lobbying (A&L) improved the farmers’, fishers’, and IPs’ access to natural resources – land aquatic/marine, water, seeds, appropriate technologies and traditional knowledge systems and practices?
   5. To what extent has the CP supported humanitarian aid projects during the programme period and what were the main results and challenges (resources, knowhow, funding…)? What is needed and at what level to strengthen the humanitarian-development nexus?
   6. What are the main achievements of the CP in creating synergies with other organisations or state institutions such as the Local Government Units (LGUs) at municipality and Barangay levels as well as Church institutions and leaders? What are the lessons learnt?
4. Efficiency
   1. What are the strengths/opportunities and weaknesses/risks in the cooperation with the IPs?
5. Sustainability
   1. What kinds of partnerships were developed with community-based people’s organizations (POs)? To what extent have these partnerships led to strengthening local ownership and community empowerment?
6. Questions related to the Programme Management / Partner Organisations
   1. To what extent is the number and type of POrgs. accurate for the CP in view of the CP’s efficiency and effectiveness?
   2. To what extent are the cooperation and processes between the POrgs., PCU and PM accurate and efficient? To what extent have the POrgs. had leverage on programme related decisions?
   3. How has the funding of the POrgs. evolved (diversification of funds and/or increase of own funds)? What have been enhancing factors and hindering factors for POrgs.’ financial sustainability?
   4. To what extent has the CP profited from the support from FA’s Programme Development section (PRE)? What additional or improved resources and tools would be needed from FA, especially from PRE section?
   5. In which thematic or methodological areas could the POrgs. and thus the CP progress the most? What gaps still need to be addressed in the future?

Methodology and Deliverables

A field visit (3 projects) and a 2-3 days workshop with the POrgs., the PM and the PCU will be at the core of the evaluation process.

Deliverables:

• field visit (3 projects) and data collection
• workshop with the POrgs.
• key informant interviews (see stakeholders below) and focus group discussions with target group
• draft and final version of the evaluation report (in English, 10 to max. 20 pages excl. annexes). The evaluation report must contain an executive summary, evidence-based replies to all evaluation questions and a list of recommendations.
• online restitution workshop with the POrgs., the PM and the PCU

The Head of IZA/LPE will provide a short individual management response in written, with appraisal of the reported results and conclusions/recommendations. He will thoroughly inform about the preliminary conclusions at a virtual exchange in August/September 2023, which will also be an opportunity for further strategic discussions.

Stakeholders

The following stakeholders will be involved in the Philippines CP evaluation:

• programme manager (PM);
• programme coordination unit (PCU);
• partner organisations (POrgs.) and target population;
• head of LPE section / IZA department;
• Thematic Officers (PRE section) for thematic/methodological support.

Qualifications of the evaluator team

The evaluation will ideally be carried out by a gender-balanced team meeting the following qualifications:

• Master’s degree in social sciences (sociology, anthropology, development studies) or another relevant field.
• In-depth knowledge of quantitative and qualitative evaluation techniques and methods with at least 3 years of experience as evaluator/evaluator and consultant.
• Proven experience in participatory evaluations of international development programmes and projects in South-east Asia.
• Living in the Philippines and working experience in the field of development work or human rights related advocacy work.
• Sensitivity to cultural, religious and gender equality issues.
• Familiarity with the Catholic church and related institutions is an asset.

Budget

Fastenaktion foresees a workload of a maximum of 35 consultancy days.

The logistical costs related to the workshop with the POrgs. and costs for local travel and accommodation will be directly covered by FA and are not to be included in the budget of the consultancy. Apart from that, the budget must include all costs, taxes and fees.

[1] Fastenaktion understands transformation as a process that demands, initiates and supports a new way of thinking worldwide – at the personal, social, economic and political level. The aim of transformation is to ensure access to secure livelihoods for all. The change necessary to achieve aims at a sustainable lifestyle and framework conditions that favour access to secure livelihoods.

[2] Food sovereignty is the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems (Declaration of Nyéléni).

How to apply

Offers are to be addressed to Ms. Natacha Schnyder Guzman, Secretary of IZA, [email protected], by the latest on 2nd November 2022.

The offer must include a short proposal on how the consultant would approach the assignment, and the financial offer (max. 3 pages in total). The CVs of the evaluators must be attached.

Candidates are requested to provide the contact of two reference persons and to attach one reference document that demonstrates his/her evaluation skills.

The offers will be evaluated based on the following criteria: Thematic Background and experience with similar tasks: 30%; understanding of the ToR and quality of the proposal: 40%; Financial offer: 30%.

Interviews with shortlisted candidates will be held on 10th November 2022.