Description
Background & Context
Mercy Corps is a leading global organization powered by the belief that a better world is possible. In disaster, in hardship, in more than 40 countries around the world, we partner to put bold solutions into action โ helping people triumph over adversity and build stronger communities from within.
The Gender and Youth Activity (GAYA) is an Associate Award under the IDEAL project, funded by USAIDโs Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA), with Save the Children as the prime and Mercy Corps as the sub-awardee. GAYA works to improve the quality and impact of emergency and non-emergency food security and resilience activities by addressing the barriers and challenges implementing partners (IPs) face when integrating gender and youth within their work. Mercy Corps and Save the Children started work on this five-year award in late August 2021.
GAYA has two intermediate results:
IR1: BHA IP staff demonstrate improved application of gender and youth resources and research from peer learning activities.
IR2: BHA IP staff demonstrate improved application of gender and youth analyses.
GAYAโs current activities include:
Nourishing Inclusion: The blog series offers a platform for a diverse group of food security IPs to share their experiences and learning around gender and youth integration.
Regional BHA Emergency Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) Workshops: GAYA facilitated sessions on gender and youth topics in MEL at two regional emergency program workshops.
Cultivate Fellowship: GAYA offers this capacity-strengthening opportunity for field-based emergency and resilience food security activity (RFSA) implementers who are interested in using qualitative methods to increase gender and youth inclusion. Over three months, members participate in both an in-person workshop, online meetings, and independent work to develop innovative solutions to increase gender and youth inclusion in their programs.
Refine and Implement (R&I) Year Engagement: GAYA tailors in-person and online workshops to support the development, implementation, and integration of gender and youth research into RFSA program design and implementation.
Small Grants Program (SGP): GAYA oversees three small grants on gender and youth topics, including youth labor market assessment, identifying and tailoring emergency programs based on the needs of young people, and capacity strengthening on gender and youth topics in MEL for African organizations.
Stakeholder Consultations (SHCs): GAYA convenes annual SHCs with IPs and BHA, when available, to brainstorm solutions to key challenges in gender and youth integration in RFSAs.
This Statement of Work (SoW) provides the framework for a joint midcycle learning exercise and the programโs annual survey (IP Survey) for a consultant. The purpose of the midcycle learning exercise is to assess the relevance, coherence, effectiveness, and sustainability of the GAYA Activity. The midcycle learning exercise will inform the readiness of GAYA to execute its intermediate results during the end of Year 3 and all of Years 4 and 5 of the award and will provide concrete solutions for any proposed adaptations recommended. The purpose of the IP Survey is to collect routine, annual data to assess the gender and youth integration knowledge, attitudes, and practices of IPs and several of GAYAโs annual quantitative indicators. The midcycle learning exercise and IP Survey are being combined this year to reduce stakeholder fatigue, as there is overlap in the stakeholder groups. They are, however, two distinct assignments with discrete deliverables for each.
Objectives and Scope of Assignment
The primary purpose of the midcycle learning exercise is to take stock of GAYAโs workstreams implemented to-date and ensure that they are relevant to and effective for GAYA stakeholders. The midcycle learning exercise will:
Inform activity leadership on the effectiveness of GAYAโs efforts to date to improve gender and youth integration.
Provide recommendations for the GAYA team structure and programming to better meet the needs of the food security implementing community. Specifically, determine if the GAYA Activity is appropriately structured to best influence stakeholders (IPs, other stakeholders, and BHA) to achieve its workstream goals (see section above).
The midcycle learning exercise should be focused on strategic and participatory reflection on completed activities and the current Year 3 Work Plan to inform and improve the quality, reach, and breadth of GAYAโs programming through the Life of Award (LOA).
The secondary purpose of this consultancy is to share useful, collected data back with the IPs themselves by building upon existing interactive web-hosted dashboards.
Midcycle Learning Exercise
RELEVANCE
Assess the degree to which GAYAโs functional and organizational design enables the activity to meet its goal and purposes.
Specifically, is GAYAโs strategic direction and programming around its work streams appropriate to meet BHA and IP needs in Year 4 and Year 5?
Assess the extent that GAYA fills a necessary gap in implementing partner organizations?
COHERENCE
Assess the degree to which GAYA is fit for purpose and fits into the system as a whole, specifically:
Are GAYA staffing and workstreams appropriately structured to support the goal of improving the quality and impact of emergency and non-emergency food security and resilience activities by addressing the barriers and challenges IPs face when integrating gender and youth within their work?
Is GAYAโs current size and structure appropriate to meet the continuing IP and BHA needs and to achieve its purposes and goal? The structure includes the functional teams within GAYA as well as the working relationships with its Associate Awards, IPs, BHA, and other stakeholders.
To what extent does GAYA fit within the larger food security and resilience support ecosystem, and which linkages are most tied to the success of GAYAโs interventions?
To what extent does GAYA fit within the larger emergency food security support ecosystem, and which linkages are most tied to the success of GAYAโs interventions?
EFFECTIVENESS
Assess if the GAYA activity is being implemented effectively. Identify barriers the activity encountered and assess if the activity adapted appropriately. Specifically:
What is working and what is not working, and why? Are GAYAโs internal processes and ways of working effectively achieving their desired outputs and outcomes?
What changes can be made to strengthen and enhance GAYAโs performance through the LOA?
To what extent has the GAYA activity been successful in achieving its stated objectives/outcomes and meeting its reporting targets?
To what extent are GAYAโs reporting indicators in the most recent Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) Plan appropriate? Is the internal monitoring system sufficient to capture and report on progress towards indicators?
SUSTAINABILITY
Assess the GAYAโs current preparedness for the activityโs completion. The consultant will have access to GAYAโs current thinking on sustainability. The consultant will examine which activities will not (or should not) be sustained, which ones will (and can) be sustained, and if any are somewhere in the middle (partial sustainability)? Specifically:
Building off of GAYAโs current thinking of the sustainability of activities, which activities, improvements, changes, or learnings will continue after the end of activity support? What additional supports are required?
Have GAYA IP stakeholders begun to establish their own capacity to do capacity strengthening?
IP Survey
In addition to the research questions, this consultancy aims to measure the following relevant performance indicators (as outlined in GAYAโs M&E Plan):
Percentage of respondents applying GAYA-promoted behaviors following participation in GAYA activities.
Percentage of respondents participating in GAYA activities reporting use of gender and youth resources and research.
Percentage of respondents participating in GAYA gender and youth analysis/assessment capacity strengthening, reporting improved application of gender and youth analyses.
Percentage of GAYA activity participants who self-identify as โimplementing staffโ with favorable attitudes towards using gender and youth analysis/assessment findings or MEL data to inform or adapt IP program design.
Percentage reporting that GAYA activities are accessible.
Percentage of participants reporting that their learning needs relevant to the GAYA activity were met.
GAYA anticipates that the measurement of these quantitative indicatorsโthrough the IP surveyโwill yield valuable insights for some of GAYAโs โeffectivenessโ research questions and will be further triangulated/explored through qualitative data collection outside of the IP survey.
GAYA also anticipates that the qualitative components of this research would measure GAYAโs qualitative performance indicator: Programs reached by GAYA with increased program changes or adaptations as a result of gender and youth analysis/assessment findings or monitoring, evaluation, and learning data.
Design and Methods
The methodology will employ a mixed-method approach, combining quantitative and qualitative methods to capture a comprehensive understanding of the GAYA program's effectiveness, relevance, and sustainability.
This will include a detailed review of existing sources of GAYA data, primary quantitative research through the IP survey, and primary qualitative research with GAYA participants and stakeholders. The Evaluation Team will propose a detailed methodology aligned with GAYAโs M&E Plan and share this with GAYA for approval before data collection.
It is expected the consultant will first conduct a desk review and interview GAYA leadership to inform the final methodology. Findings from the desk review will inform the methods and tools utilized for primary quantitative and qualitative data collection.
The mid-term evaluation is expected to primarily utilize qualitative methods, although using secondary quantitative data may be helpful for some lines of inquiry. GAYA will provide the evaluation team with full access to monitoring data and activity documentation. A detailed evaluation protocol will then be developed by the evaluators.
IP Survey
As with past GAYA IP surveys, this survey will measure the gender and youth knowledge, attitudes, and practices of IPs via an opt-in online survey distributed to IPs via email.
Importantly, the IP Survey has historically provided a means by which GAYA could share IP Survey data with respondents via dashboards. These PowerBI dashboards currently incorporate disaggregated data in an easy-to-use format, hosted on the FSN website. It is expected that the consultant will build from these existing dashboards by adding a new round of data collection (Y3 IP Survey) and, ideally, by improving the functionality and accessibility of the dashboards. The existing dashboards will incorporate:
Organizational key performance indicators to allow organizations that generate sufficient responses to measure their own key questions.
A โreal-timeโ dashboard linked at the end of the survey, which individuals could click to see the aggregated responses to date.
A summary dashboard through which implementers could view and filter global IP results.
Customized organizational dashboards for participants from organizations who submitted a sufficient number of responses.
The consultant will be responsible for translating and verifying translations for the survey tool into French, Spanish, Arabic, and Russian and/or Ukrainian. Bidders should assume translation and verification in the same languages.
SAMPLING
The sampling approach for both the quantitative and qualitative components of this SOW will be discussed and agreed upon between the selected consultant and GAYA during the inception phase of this consultancy.
Two important data collection activities will continue in line with previously collected data:
Quantitative โ IP Survey: As GAYAโs primary participants are BHA IPs, and the true size of this population is difficult to estimate, GAYAโs approach to sampling for prior IP surveys has emphasized including respondents from a variety of regions, types of roles, and types of programs. As a result, this voluntary sample is non-random and non-representative. There are no specific sampling criteria as the survey is designed to be open to anyone who receives the link.
As with past surveys, GAYA will direct email the survey link to over 1,500 unique individuals - representing a diversity of BHA-funded countries, types of programs (RFSA and emergency), GAYA participants/non-participants, and staff types. GAYA will also share the survey via the FSN and LinkedIn to approximately 2,000 subscribers. Finally, GAYA anticipates sharing the survey link with BHA for forwarding to priority survey countries.
Qualitative โ Cultivate Fellowship (cohort two) ex-post assessment interviews: GAYA anticipates that this would involve reviewing the GAYA-authored ex post report (from cohort one), adapting the two sets of interview tools (one fellow-facing and one leadership-facing), and then using those tools to evaluate the second Cultivate Fellowship cohort in August 2024 (a total of 14 interviews). Interview respondents would be purposively selected to maximize the diversity of program type, gender, and position.
In addition to prior data collection activities, GAYA anticipates that this consultancy would deploy qualitative methods to engage other GAYA stakeholders (potentially including GAYA team members, BHA, IDEAL and Associate Awards, and IPs). GAYA suggests a purposive sampling approach to gather rich and diverse perspectives, considering factors such as frequency/depth of GAYA participation, role, region, and program type.
DISAGGREGATION
Disaggregation categories for both qualitative and quantitative data should include: position type (program leadership, gender or youth technical expert, other implementation staff), level, gender, age, language used in survey or FGD, region of program implementation, type of IP program (emergency or RFSA), role, and number of GAYA activities in which they participate(d).
OTHER METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS
The selected consultant will be asked to provide a data analysis plan and propose design considerations related to validity and reliability, triangulation, data cleaning, ethical considerations, and informed consent. In addition, GAYA notes the following key considerations:
Study population: GAYA understands IP staff to include the following: headquarters staff, regional hub staff, country staff, field implementation staff, sub-awardee or partner staff, and local organization staff, inclusive of entry, mid, and senior-level professionals across regions and geographies, and across both BHA emergency and RFSA programming. IPs also include technical experts, program directors/managers/chiefs of party, gender experts, youth experts, and field officers. The study population also potentially includes GAYA team members, BHA, IDEAL, and Associate Awards. Additional categories of IPs may be identified by the consultant or through conversations with the consultant, GAYA, and BHA.