Consultant for External Evaluation
Project: “Improved Health and Hygiene Promotion for Ethnic Minority Groups in Muong Te district, Lai Chau province of Vietnam”
1. Background:
Church World Service (CWS) is an American NGO, which began its work in Vietnam in 1954. Since then, CWS Vietnam has supported Vietnam continuously with projects primarily focusing on improving health services, access to water and sanitation, nutrition for children, education for ethnic minorities and disaster relief.
Starting from January 2008, CWS Vietnam and its project partners in Muong Te district, Lai Chau province began the project “Improved Health and Hygiene Promotion for Ethnic Minority Groups”. The project is funded by the Finish Evangelical Lutheran Mission (FELM) and lasts for three years, 2008-2010. Under this project, many activities mainly focusing on capacity building, education and promotion of health and hygiene behaviors in ethnic minority communities of the Muong Te district have been implemented to achieve the following specific objectives of the project:
Objective 1: Improved access to and quality of health service provided at communal clinics and district hospital
Objective 2: a) Increased knowledge and practice of hygiene behavior for kindergarten, primary, and junior secondary students and village communities;
b) Improved partner capacity in project implementation and management.
2. The evaluation:
2.1 Purpose and specific objectives:
The project is now coming to its end in 2010, and thus there is a need for carrying out an external evaluation to collect information and evaluate project achievements as well as to measure initial impacts of the project.
The specific objectives are including:
- To assess performance and progress of the project, including strengths and weaknesses, relevance, efficiency, effectiveness and sustainability;
- To assess the achievements and initial impacts of the project;
- To identify gaps and challenges in the district health and hygiene sector that may need resources for further possible programming;
- To make recommendations for possible project extension or future programming;
2.2 Expected outcome:
- A final report, in Vietnamese, for submission to CWS that includes:
- An assessment of project progress compared to work plans and a description of why plans were or were not achieved
- A comparison of the project performance, focusing on relevance, efficiency, effectiveness and sustainability, and recommendations on strengthening of project implementation
- A collection of case studies of the project impacts on both particular institutional beneficiaries (health centre, clinics, etc.) and “personal stories” from individual beneficiaries (health officials, village health workers, IEC facilitators, midwives, villagers, children and their parents, etc.)
- Gaps that may need further resources and recommendations for possible project extension or future programming
2.3 Methodology:
The evaluation team leader is expected to design a proposal with suitable approaches for the evaluation, but doing a participatory evaluation and applying both quantitative and qualitative tools are recommended.
At all times the consultants are expected to collaborate with CWS staff and project partners in Muong Te, either during the field survey or in the office. The consultant is also expected to prepare a presentation on initial findings of the evaluation to CWS and project partners to get their opinions, feedbacks and comments for informing the draft report. All survey forms, data collection and analysis, draft and final reports should be in consultation with CWS.
2.4 Work locations and timeline:
The consultant service is expected to be implemented within the period from May to July, 2010. As such, the field survey (of about 10 days including travel time) is expected to be conducted in project communes and villages in Muong Te during late May early June for the final report to be available by July 15th, 2010. The details of time frame and of major steps in the process should be clearly elaborated in the consultant’s proposed work plan.
3. The evaluation team and requirements:
- It is anticipated that an evaluation team consisting of a consultant and his/her assistant is needed. The consultant will lead the team to carry out the evaluation. The team members will report directly to the team leader.
- The below are professional requirements for the evaluation consultants:
- Knowledge and practical experience in health and hygiene training and education and/or promotion of environmental sanitation.
- Good understanding of gender issues and working with ethnic minority populations, particularly those in the north-west of Vietnam.
- Experience in IEC (Information-Education-Communication) related work and/or the KAP (Knowledge-Attitude-Practice) surveys.
- Good communication, facilitation, analytical and writing skills.
Interested candidates please send an application letter and detailed CVs to [email protected] no later than May 11th 2010.