ActionAid Ghana Young Urban Women’s project: Terms of Reference for hiring an evaluator/small
team of evaluators for a final evaluation
1. Introduction
ActionAid Ghana seeks Expressions of Interests (EOIs)from senior consultants in the sector with
extensive technical expertise in gender, sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and
livelihoods and experience of conducting evaluations from a feminist lens to support the end-line
evaluation process for its multi-country Young Urban Women’s project (YUW project). Nationally and
globally, the final evaluation findings will contribute to the organisation’s programmatic interventions
and policy and advocacy work with young women in poor urban areas.
About ActionAid
ActionAid is an international NGO that puts women’s rights and gender equality at the centre of its
work. One of the five strategic objectives of ActionAid’s 2012-2017 strategy is to: “Ensure that women
and girls can break the cycle of poverty and violence, build economic alternatives and claim control
over their bodies.”
The “Young Urban Women” programme contributes to meeting this organisational objective. The
“Young Urban Women” programme aims to influence both decision-makers at a local and national
level in India, South Africa and Ghana as well as decision-makers at the international level. The
programme works on young women’s economic rights, Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights
(SRHR), and development of leadership capacities. It is innovative in that it attempts to bring together
these two key areas of ActionAid’ s women’s rights work that are frequently dealt with separately in
development interventions despite the strong linkages between these two issues in women’s lives. In
targeting both, ActionAid foresees that this programme will have a greater impact by empowering
young women to claim their rights.
ActionAid’s theory of change
ActionAid works through a human rights based approach to development, which places a
commitment to building the active agency of people living in poverty at its centre. Our approach is
one that is deeply concerned about challenging unequal power, which we see as the source of rights
violations and injustices visited upon those living in poverty. For the young women involved in this
programme, their age, gender, class and migrant status intersect. Discrimination and inequality
perpetrated on this basis gives rise to violations of their rights to decent work and sexual and
reproductive health rights. Our approach asserts the indivisibility and interconnectedness of rights,
recognising that for young women to enjoy their rights we must work to challenge policies and laws,
as well as practices and behaviours that perpetuate inequality. We must therefore address their access
to decent work1 and sexual and reproductive services simultaneously in three key ways –
empowerment, campaigning and solidarity:
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We hope to build on the extensive work and experience of ILO who sees productive employment and decent
work as a key development goal. Decent work sums up the aspirations of people in their working lives. It involves
opportunities for work that is productive and delivers a fair income, security in the workplace and social
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Empowerment = the process through which we enable young women living in poverty to become
rights activists. We do this by making them more aware and more critical of power relations and by
strengthening their own power.
Campaigning = harnessing young women’s power through organisation, mobilisation and
communication around a simple and powerful demand, to achieve a measurable political or social
change.
Solidarity = the process of uniting allies in a politically supportive relationship that may cross
geographies or “areas” of struggle to support and strengthen young women’s movements for change.
2. Project background and overview:The Young Urban Women programme is a multi-country programme that is currently being
implemented in seven poor urban and peri-urban areas across India, South Africa and Ghana (Tamale
and Accra). These cities were carefully selected because of their large young urban poor populations,
high levels of poverty and inequality and the presence of strong ActionAid partners in the ground.
Over all Programme goal: Our goal is that in 3 years, 5,800 young urban women living in poverty in
India, Ghana and South Africa will have greater dignity through more economic independence and
control over their bodies, and their voices will be heard and recognised in international forums.
In Ghana, we aim at 2,000 young urban women living in poverty to have greater dignity through more
economic independence and control over their bodies, and their voices will be heard and recognised
in national and international forums.
Expected outcomes:
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Outcome 1: Young women have safe and decent work and livelihoods, and can exercise greater
control over their income
Outcome 2: Young women's informed choices about their sexual and reproductive health are
increasingly realised
Outcome 3: Young women in the areas we programme in are empowered and supported by allies
and responsible stakeholders to effect change in their own lives, their families, their communities
and different levels of government
Target group and indirect beneficiaries: The project works with 2,000 young women in Ghana. Across
the programme, there are a total of 5,800 young women. The project will be finishing in December,
2015 and in June, 2016 in India and South Africa. The project has a result framework with quantitative
indicators of change, and has also developed a plethora of participatory monitoring tools to gather
qualitative information. The project conducted a simple baseline in 2014 and a mid-term review in
2015. Now an end-line evaluation will need to be conducted in December, 2015 in Ghana.
3. Aim of the evaluation
protection for families, better prospects for personal development and social integration, freedom for people
to express their concerns, organize and participate in the decisions that affect their lives and equality of
opportunity and treatment for all women and men.
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The aim of this assignment is to conduct the end-line evaluation process over a period of three months
(including field-testing, finalisation and implementation of the evaluation).
Evaluation objectives
The overall objective of the final evaluation is to assess to what extent the programme has achieved
the changes that were sought, for instance, how and to what extent the project contributed to
changes in power relationships in favour of the rights of young urban women within the family,
community and wider civil society, and what other, perhaps unintended outcomes the project has
contributed to. The evaluation will also explore how sustainable some of the outcomes are.
As the project has piloted a new programmatic approach at ActionAid to combining work on themes
of decent work, sexual and reproductive health and rights and building young women’s leadership, a
key component of the evaluation is to ‘test’ the project’s ‘theory of change’, reflecting on whether
the changes sought materialised in the ways that were expected, what the combination of thematic
approaches added to the project, which were the most effective, and what the challenges were.
The specific objectives of the evaluation are to:
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Assess the extent to which the project has achieved its objectives and contributed to any
observed changes in young urban women’s enjoyment of rights in terms of access to
decent work, SRHR, unpaid care work, feminist leadership and advocacy skills in relation
to the Results Framework;
Identify other, and unintended (including negative) outcomes as a result of the
programme interventions;
Assess the relative effectiveness and challenges of different intervention strategies;
(testing TOC and the integrated programming model)
Assess the ways in which the project was implemented, particularly with regards to:
a. The extent to which young women were placed at the centre of project.
b. The extent to which the project was implemented in line with ActionAid’s Human
Rights Based Approach (HRBA) Principles (particularly with regards to women’s
rights, accountability to people living in poverty, and power dynamics); and
c. To what extent resources were used efficiently to deliver the planned activities,
outputs and outcomes.
d. Identify three case studies from each country which highlight the best practices
from the project.
Make specific, actionable recommendations for sustaining, up-scaling and replicating
project results and approaches in the project countries and more widely in the Federation.
4. Proposed methodology
The International Consultant will develop the tools and methodologies on the lines described below.
Under the guidance of the over-all International Consultant and in consultation with the ActionAid
country and regional teams, the identified consultant at the national level will be expected to conduct
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field testing and finalise the following proposed methodologies for the evaluation. In addition, she
will be expected to lead the evaluation process.
We will expect the national consultant to select and work with a team of young women data collectors,
to train them on the following methodology and the tools, over-see and ensure over-all quality of the
data collected. She will also be expected to develop the final national level evaluation report.
Retrospective survey with YUW
The retrospective survey will consult a sample of young women to explore how their knowledge,
attitudes, behaviour, opportunities and access to services have changed during the course of the
programme. The survey will be interviewer-administered, with a questionnaire covering themes of
the key project indicators, adapted from the baseline/intake survey.
Focus group discussions using participatory tools
Participatory tools will be used to probe on issues arising from the survey with a selection of young
women, for instance to evaluate the extent to understand if and how power equations have shifted
in favour of the young women, and also to understand how the young women have understood
oppressive gender norms, and staked claims over their own bodily integrity, have voiced their opinions
and demonstrated leadership capacities.
Interviews with project and external stakeholders
In order to triangulate/corroborate the change women have identified in themselves, we will also
speak to a select number of people who come into contact with them, such as their family and
community members, where appropriate. In order to explore views of partners implementing the
project on the approaches used, their effectiveness and challenges, semi-structured interviews with
project staff and other stakeholders will be conducted.
The national consultant is expected to interview a select number of external stakeholders, such as
local government representatives, other CSOs with whom the partners have built solidarity and
employers in order to understand how the programme may have contributed to changing views, the
agenda, policies and practices around decent work and SHRH.
Analysis and validation
The national consultant will be expected to analyse the data coming out of Accra and Tamale and
develop a national evaluation report.
At the national level the evaluation findings will be shared and validated with the young women and
community members and partners to enable them to reflect on the journey they have undertaken
from the beginning of the programme to its closure. For this purpose a national level validation
workshop will be organised. The national consultant is expected to support the AA country offices to
support the workshop facilitation.
This will be followed by an international final evaluation workshop to be organised in India in June
2016.
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Evaluator tasks
Using a feminist approach to monitoring and evaluation, the consultant/organisation will be required
to undertake the following:
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Review the national and global baseline a n d M i d - t e r m r e v i e w reports and any
other M&E related documentation including the existing participatory monitoring tools and
intake forms.
Finalise the end-line survey tools in consultation with AA country office and ActionAid
International Secretariat.
In consultation with ActionAid International and A A country team finalise participatory
tools to be used in the end-line assessment for qualitative data gathering.
Conduct trainings of data collectors.
Ensure data analysis and high quality of data collection by being present during data
collection process and provide continuous technical and monitoring support to data
collectors.
Ensure that a common coding system is developed and used across the different cities to
enable analysis of qualitative data in a quantitative manner.
Write the final national evaluation report based on the country reports.
Facilitate the national end-line evaluation workshop.
5. Time-frame
Consultation and methodology finalisation
National level end-line survey data collection
and national level report finalisation
National evaluation workshop
Final national evaluation report
December, 2015- January, 2016
January,2016
February, 2016
February, 2016
The consultant will need to provide a total of 30 days of support to the project starting from December
2016 to February 2016, with the final national evaluation report expected by the 19th of February
2016.
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Consultant/agency specifications:-
Extensive experience in conducting multi-country evaluations using quantitative and
qualitative approaches.
Good knowledge and experience of designing surveys and sampling methodologies.
Proven experience in participatory approaches to designing monitoring and evaluation
processes.
Extensive experience of developing monitoring and evaluation (MEL) systems and evaluation
design from a feminist lens.
Extensive experience of M&E work on women’s rights with some experiences on Decent Work
and SRHR.
Extensive technical expertise on gender, particularly on young women.
Proven cross-regional/global experience would be preferable.
Excellent facilitation skills.
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6. Application procedure:Please share the following documents as part of the application procedure:A proposal of not more than 3 pages (excluding annexes and CVs), elaborating how you meet the
above criteria, including:
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A brief proposal of the methodology;
Updated CVs;
A tentative budget; and
Examples of similar previous evaluations, including any feminist M&E work undertaken.
Email: Henrietta.Lamptey@actionaid.org; Muazu.Ibrahim@actionaid.org
Deadline: 14th December, 2015
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