Terms of Reference
Base-line study for the project “Up-scaling of Pro-poor Rattan/Bamboo Value Chain
Development for Women and Ethnic Minorities in Nghe An”
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Introduction
Oxfam is an international confederation of 17 organizations networked together in 94
countries, as part of a global movement for change, to build a future free from the injustice
and poverty. In Viet Nam, Oxfam is recognized as one of the leading international nongovernment organizations, especially in rural development, disaster risk reduction and
humanitarian response, civil society development, ethnic minorities and women’s
empowerment.
Oxfam and its partners have been supporting poverty reduction initiatives in Nghe An for
over the last two decades, with a strong focus on ethnic minorities in the poorest districts.
The new project on ‘Up-scaling of Pro-Poor Rattan/Bamboo Value Chain Development for
Women and Ethnic Minorities in Nghe An” has received funding from Swiss Agency for
Development and Cooperation (SDC) for 3 years (2013-2016). The overall goal of the project
is to reduce poverty, increase livelihood diversification and enhance resilience of ethnic
minorities and women in the poorest and most marginalized upland areas of Vietnam through
pro-poor value chain development of rattan and Lung bamboo.
The project targets the marginalized poor men and women as actors within rattan and
bamboo value chains comprising growers, producers, collectors, pre-processors and traders
in four districts of Nghe An province: Que Phong, Quy Chau, Tuong Duong and Con Cuong.
Oxfam manages the project through its Pro-Poor Markets program team, in collaboration and
partnership with Vietnam Rural Industries Research and Development Institute (VIRI) and
Government line agencies (DARD, DOIT) at national, provincial, district and communal levels.
The project will be monitored on the basis of the M&E framework. In order to provide the
M&E process the most accurate reference, an in-depth baseline study needs to be
conducted. This document outlines the specific Terms of Reference for the Base-line study
for the project “Up-scaling of Pro-poor Rattan/Bamboo Value Chain Development for Women
and Ethnic Minorities in Nghe An” (hereafter called the Task).
Oxfam is seeking for qualified individual consultants or Organizations/ Consultancy Agencies
to undertake this Task. A selected Consultant team will carry out this Task.
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Task Objectives
The general objective of the consultancy work is to conduct effectively and efficiently the
baseline study with supports from Oxfam’s staff and partners. Results and findings from the
consultancy will be accessible to related stakeholders in rattan/bamboo sector in Nghe An
province and other interested agencies.
The primary objectives of the surveys are:

To gather quantitative and qualitative data on socio-economic situation (especially on
total income of household, employment, and poverty situation) of the target
groups/beneficiaries in rattan/bamboo project before project implementation –
particularly in terms of their livelihood options;
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
To establish a threshold level for the project, which will serve as its impact
assessment, especially in terms of income (and livelihood) improvement for the poor.
The above objectives will be the ultimate result of the following major expected outputs that
the Consultant will deliver:
Output 1: Consultancy Proposal
A detailed consultancy proposal will be developed 2 days after signing the consultancy
contract. The proposal must be clear and agree on, amongst others:
-
The appropriate methods to conduct the baseline study; Even the methodologies
must be provided in the proposal, the Consultancy proposal should again present the
methods, tools as discussed with Oxfam staff during contract negotiation;
-
Same as the data collection tools1.
-
Activities and responsibilities division amongst consultant team, Oxfam’s staff and
partners;
-
Timeline and milestone showing the progress of consultancy work;
-
Reporting time and outline (if possible);
-
Proposed budget for the Task
Output 2: The baseline values of all key indicators
The baseline data collected will provide the minimum information required to assess the key
of aspects of the individual project interventions, and more importantly, measure the
development results including the eventual impacts. Therefore, the deliverables should
include the following aspects:

Who are the project participants? This attempts to understand what resources and capital
(in terms of financial, social and human capital) that the participants have. This will be
important to know as, if the project is successful; this will provide an understanding of
what level of poor can benefit from the project intervention.

What agricultural (service or other) activities are the project participants, and those in the
surrounding areas, engaged in? This will again provide a more nuanced idea of the
types of agricultural farming systems / combinations of agricultural products that can
combine with the project interventions to develop positive developmental impacts, should
the project be successful.

Are the agricultural products that the proposed project participants grow for their ownconsumption or trade? Ideally, in very poor areas trade of agricultural products is low with
farmers focusing primarily on household food self-sufficiency. Moving away from own
consumption to trade increases the monetization of the rural area and the potential for
greater multiplier effects from the project interventions.

Have the project participants ever produced the agricultural product(s) (rattan/bamboo)
that the project proposes? If yes, what are the incomes currently derived from these
products? What labor input is required and what is the gender and ethnic composition?
These set of questions ultimately test the effectiveness of the project intervention in terms
of raising the incomes of the poor and the impact on their main resource endowment, that
of labor.

What are the current total incomes of the project participants and their total income
before joining the project? This ultimately provides an understanding of not only how
1 The table in Output 3 give some recommendations for data collection tools/means
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important the project intervention will be in terms of their overall incomes but how the
composition of total income at the household level has changed.
The baseline study is expected to collect basic information and understanding of
Responsible Wellbeing in local context, based on four main domains/dimensions
including Self-sustenance, self-esteem, self-sustainability and social responsibility.

As requested by SDC and Oxfam, the Consultant has to provide Oxfam, by the end of her/his
work with the accurate values/information as listed in the third column of the below table.
Note: The column 4 recommend questions to be answered in order to get the
values/information required in the column 3. The Consultant should give her/his comments
on the recommendation:
Table 1:
#
Change
(1)
1
Increased
net income
2
Rattan
nurseries
production
4
Rattan
plantation
5
Rattan
processing
Key indicators
(2)
- Income from Rattan seedlings
- Income from Rattan harvesting
- Income from inter-cropping
Income from Lung harvesting
Information
to be
gathered
(3)
Income of
beneficiaries
before joining
the project
Additional net
income
(additional
sale minus
additional
costs)
accrued to
targeted HHs
as a result of
the program
per year
Recommended
questions
(4)
 How is the net
income now
(January 2013)
per HH per
geographic
area?
 How is the
income from
rattan/bamboo?
 Who in the HH
contributes to
the income?
 Related to this,
how is the
composition of
a HH?
- Income from Rattan
processing
- Income from Lung processing
Income from handicraft
production
- Number of Rattan nurseries
- Number of seedlings produced
- Number of RNIGs
No. beneficiaries in RNIGs

- Number of RPIGs
- No. beneficiaries in RPIGs
- Rattan plantation area
No. of trained farmers and
related topic

- Number of Rattan processing
units
- No. beneficiaries in rattan
processing
Amount of Rattan processed
(tons)
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#
Change
(1)
6
Lung
processing
7
Handicraft
production
Key indicators
(2)
Information
to be
gathered
(3)
Recommended
questions
(4)

- No. beneficiaries in Lung
processing
Amount of Lung processed
(tons)
- Number of supported
handicraft units
- No. beneficiaries in handicraft
production
- Total selling volume (USD.) of
handicrafts
- Exhibitions and trade fairs
- Products sold by on-line
bazaar
Products certified by CoC
- Ensured market for all
products
- Demand vs. supply


Table 2: Specific requirements for indicators relating to income of different
groups/production stages
Production
stage
Seedling
production
Cost
Investment:
100
million VND/yr (incl.
seedling,
nursery
material)
Labour: 70 working
days/person
InterInvestment:
100
cropping
million VND/yr per
month
(fertilizer,
seedlings)
Labour:15 working
days/person
Harvesting Investment: Almost
(raw rattan) 0 (only knife)
Labour:
15-20
days/person
Harvesting Investment: Almost
(raw Lung) 0 (only knife)
Labour:
75
days/person
Rattan
Investment:
40
processing million
VND/yr
(electricity,
depreciation
of
machines)
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Before
project
Income
per capita
(VND/yr)
Estimated
beneficiaries
Women
Men
?
8 million
VND/yr
40
40
1 million
VND/yr
600
200
1 million
VND/yr
500
500
5 million
VND/yr
300
300
10 million
VND/yr2
20
20
?
?
?
?
Net profit, after deducting the investment costs (purchase of raw material), electricity and depreciation.
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Lung
processing
Labour:
days/person
Investment: 0
Labour:15
days/person
80
?
1 million
VND/yr
100
100
The consultants are, therefore, expected to submit to Oxfam:



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The baseline study report and cleaned raw data on SPSS/STATA/excel formats (for
review/ comments and consolidation into program baseline information).
List of HHs in the beneficiary population living under the poverty (for measuring the
impact on poverty reduction of the program).
The contacts detail and profile of the interviewed HHs for the end-line study.
Methodologies
The study will be led by a consultant/s with experience in quantitative and qualitative
research method, experience in conducting participatory research and conversant with the
ethnic minority in mountainous area such as Nghe An province
 The baseline study will be applied “Before and after” approach project intervention to
measure changes over time in the activity location alone, typically from the
commencement of the activity to the end of the activity, but limited scale of “with and
without” is also possible.

Simple sampling approach possible: drawn at random from a list of all households
used in the sampling frame.
Using “rules of thumb” for sampling sizes: a confidence level of 95% with a confidence
interval (more commonly referred to as margin of error) of +/-5 points (i.e., high accuracy).
Suggestion of sampling size: Total estimated number of beneficiary households of the project
is 2,920; The size of sample should be discussed to get the high or medium accuracy (5%,
10% - 292 hhs or 15 % of total number of households).
The research areas will be covered in 4 districts of project site in Nghe An province: Tuong
Duong, Con Cuong, Quy Chau and Que Phong.
The baseline survey will employ a semi-structured interview methodology to collect
information from the identified sample. This method requires a balance between open-ended
and focused interviewing. The open ended questions will allow respondents to give answers
using their own language and has the added advantage that can suggest new ideas that
might have been missed in developing a questionnaire that is solely closed ended. The
qualitative nature of the information gathered here will be useful in providing greater nuance,
and will help at the end of the projects when case studies and more “real life” examples of
the projects need to be demonstrated.
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Task Management and Structure
The Consultant is expected to fulfil the following tasks in order to deliver successfully the
desired outputs. The Consultant would propose further activities that she/he find relevant and
sufficient.
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A selected Consultant team will be hired for the Task, with assistance of OHK staff, who will
report to Oxfam’s PPM Officer. A Letter of Agreement covering the Task will be signed
directly between OHK and Consultant team. The Team will be wholly responsible for the
management of any inputs and contractual arrangements with the use of any sub-consultant
associated with the completion of the Task.
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Timescale
The Task will be starting at the first week of November , 2013. All deliverables will be
submitted no later than December 15th , 2013, except for prior written agreement with OHK.
Time for each activity will be discussed and agreed between Oxfam, key partners, local
authorities in the target districts and consultant.
See the tentative schedule as bellow.
No
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2
3
4
6.
Activity
Tentative schedule
Invite proposals/EOI from potential consultants
17- 24 October
25 – 29 October
Selection of consultant (interview and appraisal)
Desk review
Design survey method and tools on the task
Conduct the study in the field
Data analysis and report writing
29 – 8th November
2nd – 4th week of November
1st -2nd week of December
Reporting
The assignment is considered completed after receipt and approval by Oxfam of all the
expected outputs as mentioned above.
All outputs are required to be submitted to Oxfam in both English and Vietnamese language
in hard copies and in electronic format, in hard copy as complete files fully formatted with all
figures, tables and maps included within the text.
A debriefing will be held at OHK office with the participation of all interested stakeholders.
The main results of the study will be presented for validation. Comments and
recommendations emerging from the debriefing will be noted for incorporation into the final
report.
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Qualifications for the consultants
The consultants should have proven skills and experiences in conducting baseline and/or
impact assessments.
They must be committed to and able to meet the deadline. They are willing to work at field in
remote areas where data is retrieved from poor households.
Furthermore, the consultant should have strong computers skills, SPSS/EPI Info/STATA
software, as well as strong written and oral communications skills, including fluency in
English and Vietnamese.
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Proposal Submission
The Consultant Proposal should be submitted in English by email to nqtuan@ohk.org.vn
before 5PM on 24th October 2013. The Proposal should be specified in terms of:
- Introduction of the Consultant’s profile and related experience
- Technical methods to achieve the assignment objective and deliver the expected
outputs timely;
- The activity plan;
- The proposed personnel (with CVs);
- The breakdown financial proposal
Note: Only those candidates selected for an interview will be contacted.
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Contact person
The contact person at Oxfam:
Mr. Nguyen Quoc Tuan
Email: nqtuan@ohk.org.vn
Pro-poor Markets Programme Officer
Oxfam
22 Lê Đại Hành, Hanoi, Vietnam
Tel: +84 (0)4 3945 44 06 - Ext: 417
Fax: +84 (4) 3945 44 05
Mobile: +84 (0) 904 46 48 46
E-mail: nqtuan@ohk.org.vn
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