Organization: Mercy Corps
Country: Kyrgyzstan, Svalbard and Jan Mayen Islands, United States of America
Closing date: 22 Mar 2019

Background:

Since 2012, Mercy Corps has served as the implementing partner of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) McGovern-Dole Food for Education and Child Nutrition program (FFE) in the Kyrgyz Republic. This program is implemented in support of the National School Feeding Program developed by the Ministry of Education and Science (MoES) of the Kyrgyz Republic, which is a key stakeholder for this program.
In 2012-2018, Mercy Corps supported 154 public schools and 481 kindergartens across the country by providing over 2,000 metric tons of supplementary commodities (enriched flour, rice, split peas, and vegetable oil). Over 55 million hot meals were prepared for more than 32,000 primary grade students and 50,000 children in kindergartens.
Another important program activity is rehabilitation of school kitchens and purchasing new kitchen equipment to enable them to serve hot meals to primary grade students on a regular basis. Mercy Corps also provide a number of infrastructure grants based on school needs, including construction or repair of sanitation and handwashing facilities, installation of heating systems and improved windows, etc. All infrastructure grants and kitchen rehabilitation are supported by local community contributions (up to 30% of the total project cost on average). Mercy Corps also builds and improves capacity of key stakeholders through a series of workshops and trainings on program management for members of school administrations, local government, and other beneficiaries. Moreover, Mercy Corps works with parents of primary school children to improve nutrition and hygiene behaviors at home. Last but not least, all cooks working in the target schools attended professional courses to upgrade their skills with a focus on child nutrition and learn safe food preparation and storage methods.
Over the course of the implementation period to be evaluated (March 2017 – May 2019), the program worked with the following 3 groups of educational institutions:

• 70 ; public schools that entered the program in 2012 and graduated the program in May 2018. Mercy Corps continues providing technical support to these schools in 2018-2019 academic year, but food commodities are no longer provided.
• 84 schools that enrolled in 2017 and currently continue receiving full programmatic support under the new Food for Education 2017-2021 program: food commodities, infrastructure grants, trainings and workshops, etc. These schools will receive food commodities for one more school year (2019-2020).
• 61 recently opened kindergartens that received full set of USDA food commodities for one school year (2017-2018), as well as professional courses for cooks and training sessions for parents. Infrastructure and kitchen rehabilitation support was not provided.

Purpose / Project Description:

This Final Evaluation will cover the implementation period of March 2017 – May 2019 (No-Cost Extension) and has several key objectives:

• Assess and provide evidence on the performance and results of the program against set objectives and targets.
• Highlight program achievements and successes supported by evidence gathered during this evaluation.
• Identify key lessons learned and provide specific, actionable and evidence-based recommendations for the ongoing and future Food for Education programs.
• Evaluate the degree of school feeding sustainability in target schools after several continuous years of program implementation.This Final Evaluation will also assess how the achievements are viewed through the perspectives of program stakeholders: MoES officials, school administration and staff, local community and local government.

Consultant Objectives:

This Final Evaluation should answer the following key evaluation questions with the main focus on sustainability of the intervention:

Relevance: (1) Was the program’s design an appropriate solution to meet the stated objectives and results? (2) How did stakeholders perceive the program’s design and its activities? (3) To what degree was program implementation aligned with the goals and objectives of the relevant government ministries (MoES, MoH)?
Effectiveness: (1) Did the program meet indicator targets? (2) How do program staff and stakeholders perceive the effectiveness of the processes and resources used by the program? (3) Did program activities show signs of creating unintended positive or negative outcomes? If yes, which activities contribute to this?
Efficiency: (1) Have any programmatic or financial adjustments been made during the course of the program? Why? If so, were they appropriate to the situation? (2) To what degree was feedback from the previous FE and stakeholder input incorporated into the program? (3) Could the same results have been achieved with alternative, and less resource intensive, approaches?
Impact: (1) To what degree have there been changes in each of the following that are attributable to the program: (a) health, nutrition and dietary practices at the schools; (b) government financial support for literacy and school feeding activities, including local government; (c) nutrition behaviors of families for children at home. (2) To the degree that attribution is possible, what combination of activities is responsible for the above impacts?
Sustainability: (1) To what extent are school administrators, local and national government agencies showing signs of their commitment and ability to continue primary school feeding beyond the program? (2) To what extent are school administrators, local and national government agencies showing signs of their commitment and ability to continue improved literacy instruction practices beyond the program? (3) What incentives are in place to ensure program stakeholders will continue activities? (4) Have the program activities contributed towards improved information sharing between primary schools and local and national MoES officials? (5) What key factors have contributed to the variation in target schools’ degree of feeding program success as measured through dietary diversity, continuous community support, and other aspects of program implementation?

Consultant Activities:

Bidding evaluation entity is required to design and propose a mixed methods evaluation methodology including, but not limited to the following data collection methods:

• Quantitative analysis of existing monitoring data collected throughout the program against set indicator targets;
• Semi-structured interviews with key program staff, stakeholders from MoES and other relevant government bodies at district and community level;
• FGDs with adult program beneficiaries: parents, school staff and administration, local government representatives;
• Structured observations carried out in a sample of program schools;
• Document review;
• Qualitative methods such as contribution analysis, to understand the effectiveness of program interventions and how they led to the observed changes.The evaluation methodology will be a non-experimental study that will employ several collection tools to explore program results related to key program indicators, and to answer evaluation questions listed above. Appropriate sample size and sampling approach should be suggested by the bidding evaluation entity in the application; it should be taken into consideration that the program is implemented in all 7 oblasts in the country.

It should be noted that given the different programmatic approaches applied to the 3 groups of beneficiary institutions outlined in section 3, this FE is expected to use a tailored approach to each group:

• 70 graduated pilot schools: full evaluation with particular attention to long-term sustainability; this group of schools should be the main focus of this FE.
• 84 schools currently enrolled in the program: partial evaluation aimed at assessing program implementation progress to date and providing actionable recommendations for their remaining year in the program (2019-2020).
• 61 kindergartens: partial evaluation with qualitative methods focused on assessing the role of USDA-provided food commodities in establishing feeding programs in recently opened kindergartens.The details of the evaluation approach, including methods and design, will be further discussed and negotiated with the selected evaluation entity.

Consultant Deliverables:
The Consultant will:

• Develop evaluation methodlogy, sampling framework and data collection plan.
• Develop and submit to MC inception report outlining methodology, data collection plan and proposed tools.
• Conduct document review and analysis of existing program monitoring data.
• Train data collection team, test and finalize data collection tools.
• Carry out data collection across the Kyrgyz Republic in program sites, as well as among key stakeholders in Bishkek and Osh.
• Conduct data cleaning and analysis.
• Draft evaluation report and submit to MC for review.
• Address all comments and requests from MC, USDA and other stakeholders.
• Finalize the evaluation report.
• Submit all raw data collected and analytical products developed during the assignment to MC.**Timeframe / Schedule:**

March 2019: Document review, methodology design, tools development, inception report drafting and review
End of March 2019: Inception report submission with the data collection plan and finalized tools
April 8-26, 2019: Field data collection in-country, including training on tools (3 weeks)
May 2019: Data analysis and report drafting
End of May 2019: Draft Evaluation Report submission
June 28, 2019: Final Evaluation Report submission

It is important to be able to carry out field data collection no later than end of April 2019 for the following reasons:

• To have access to program schools and be able to observe school feeding process before public schools go on spring break in early May;
• To allow sufficient time for the second semester (Jan-May 2019) to pass in order to capture as many program results as possible.Exact dates for key deliverables and the overall evaluation timeframe will be discussed with the selected evaluation entity and specified in the contract.

The Consultant will report to:

Country Director, MC Kyrgyzstan

The Consultant will work closely with:

MEL Manager, MC Kyrgyzstan

Required Experience & Skills:

• Lead Evaluator/Team Leader with at least 10-15 years of evaluation experience, particularly of long-term development programs and complex and dynamic contexts; experience with evaluating food assistance and/or school feeding programs will be a significant advantage.
• An M&E/Data analysis expert proficient in processing and analyzing quantitative and qualitative program monitoring data and working with complex M&E systems.
• An Evaluation/Research expert with expertise in designing mixed-methods evaluations and data collection tools, including providing training, troubleshooting during data collection, and conducting interviews and/or FGDs.
• A technical expert with in-depth knowledge on child nutrition and/or school feeding programs.

• 5-10 data collectors/enumerators to conduct interviews, FGDs, and site visits for observations; it is crucial for the field data collection team to have relevant language skills (Russian and/or Kyrgyz) and in-depth knowledge of the local context. MC Kyrgyzstan strongly recommends hiring the field team locally through a number of existing data collection and research companies.In addition to the technical skills and expertise outlined above, it would be advantageous to have the following:

• Knowledge of and field experience in the Kyrgyz Republic;

• Previous experience with carrying out evaluation assignments for USDA;

• Previous experience with Mercy Corps MEL policies and requirements, as well as organizational culture and programming;

• Experience with programs based in educational institutions, particularly in the post-Soviet space.**Application deadline is February 22, 2019.**

How to apply:

Apply Here