Consultancy Service for Assessment / Evaluation of the Project “Legal Assistance to Contract Farming”
Terms of Reference for
Assessment / Evaluation of the Project “Legal Assistance to Contract Farming”
Introduction
ADDA, Vietnam, has been cooperating with the Vietnam Lawyers’ Association since 2007 under successive phase of the Project entitled “Legal Assistance to Contract Farming”. The Project began at the beginning of October 2015 and is due to end on July 31, 2018. The Project seeks to support poor farmer from rural areas, with special emphasis on the Ethnic Minority groups in the 3 provinces (Lao Cai, Son La and Lai Chau) by strengthening legal capacities for the stakeholders involved in contract farming within ethnic minority areas in Northern Vietnam. Activities include training of Local Facilitators at the commune level, village heads and heads of Community-based Organizations (CBOs) likes Farmer Groups, conduct of Legal Aid Clinics for farmers and workers in agro-industry companies, provide legal information and training for agro-industrial companies, offering advice/mediation and free representation to poor households with court cases... The program is implemented through the Legal Consulting Centres in the respective provinces and coordinated through the equivalent LCC in Hanoi.
Interviews with the Project staffs suggest that the interventions under the Project have been welcomed by the rural population, most of which has had no previous chance to obtain such free services. Observations of training courses and Legal Aid Clinics suggest that these are being conducted in an open and participatory manner and indeed that they serve some vital needs. Monitoring visits from ADDA Denmark have also been positive. However, there has been no attempt to collect systematic information about the impact of the activities. With under 4 months to go before Project closure, it seems important to correct this situation, especially with a view to offering harder information which can be presented to policy makers to persuade them that such activities should be supported by funds from Government or through application to other donors. The following Terms of Reference are set out as the basis for a qualitative assessment by local consultants to conduct such a study.
Terms of Reference
1. Target Population
The Assessment should focus on the following key actors in the Project:
Service Providers
- Members of the Legal Consulting Centers in Hanoi and the three project provinces, including
- The Project Director, the Project Manager
- The Provincial Project Directors
- Duty Solicitors seconded to the LCC
- Key Trainers, including
- Legal Consultants
- Local Facilitators
Beneficiary Groups, namely
- Farmers, Village Heads, agro-industry companies
- Leaders and Members of Community-based Organizations
- Attendees at Mobile Legal Aid Clinics
It is expected that for most of the above groups, investigation will be in the form of individual (key informant) interviews. The exception will be the members of the LAC meetings, who will be interviewed as a group.
2. Scope of Enquiry
The study should investigate the impact of the Project through interviewees / meetings with the above groups, focusing on
- For the Service Providers
- Their roles in the Project
- The amount of time spent on Project activities
- In the case that they themselves received training under the Project (such as in the case of Training of Trainers for the Local Facilitators)
- The content of that training
- The appropriateness of the training content and methodology
- Their ability to pass on the content of the training to local people
- Problems experienced in the TOT and the forward training
- How the Project has changed their work / widened their experience
- Their views of how the Project differs from other sources of legal assistance to the rural population
- Their views on the key positive / negative characteristics of the Project
- Their views on the most effective / less effective parts of the Project
- Suggestions for improvements in the Project
- For the Project Primary Beneficiaries
- Their involvement in the Project
- The perceived benefits they derived from the Project
- Their views on the content of training received, the appropriateness of the training content and methods
- Ideas about other content or training methods
- Their ability to act on the learning received from the training and, if not, why not
- Criticisms about the operation of the Project
- Suggestions for improvement
The Assessment Team should initially consult secondary materials in the ADDA office to understand the background of the Project, but the bulk of the assignment should be spent in field visits to the provinces concerned.
The Assessment Team should, wherever applicable, supplement the interviews by photographs and video clips illustrating the conduct of the field activities and recording the replies of the respondents.
3. Schedule of the Assignment
The Assignment should begin as soon as possible and be completed within a period of two months, by the end of May 2018 at the latest. The Proposal for the study should be email ([email protected]) or delivered to the ADDA Office at R407-408, Block A2, Van Phuc Diplomatic Compound, 298 Kim Ma, Ba Dinh, Ha Noi by 4 p.m. on March 16, 2018 at the latest so that the selection of the Consultant may be completed by the end of March 22nd .
It is expected that a total of 25 working days will be adequate for the assignment, comprising
- 3 days of desk study for preparation of the Inception report and field arrangements
- 15 days of field investigations and travel between the sites
- 4 days for preparation of the draft report
- 3 days completion of the final report
4. Composition of the Team
The Assessment team should comprise two persons, the Team leader who is expected to have some familiarity with the legal issues relating to land facing the rural population of the Northern Mountains of Vietnam. If a Vietnamese national, she/he should have a good command of spoken/written English. The second member of the team should be a photo-journalist.
5. Reporting
Prior to the start of field data collection, the Assessment Team should draw up a brief Inception Report, setting out their plan for field activities, for discussion and agreement with the ADDA Program Management. This Inception Report will include further details of the costs of the field activities.
The Assessment Team should present a draft final report to ADDA Project Management ten days before the end of the assignment (i.e. by May 21 at the latest). Following comments by the Management, the Final Report will be presented by June 1st , 2018.
6. Expected outputs:
The following outputs are expected:
- Final impact evaluation report in both Vietnamese and English
- 3 video clips, one for each province, with subtitles in both Vietnamese and English