Short Term Consultancy – MEAL Workshop Facilitator at War Child Canada

Background

War Child Canada is an international charity organization registered in Toronto, Canada, dedicated to helping children and their communities overcome the devastating effects of active and post war. Its vision is “Accelerating Peace by disrupting the cycle of violence” and its mission is “Driving Generational Change for The Hardest Hit by Investing in The Power of Local Communities”.

Since being founded in 1999, War Child Canada has worked in 20 countries across the world and we are currently operational in Afghanistan, Yemen, Sudan, South Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and Uganda.

Oxfam Canada is an affiliate of the Oxfam International Confederation networked in more than 90 countries as part of a global movement for change. Its vision is “A just and sustainable world” and its mission is “We fight inequality and patriarchy to end poverty and injustice”. Since its foundation in 1963, Oxfam Canada has been working directly with communities, partners, and women’s rights organizations to challenge the systems that perpetuate inequality and keep people poor. They seek to influence those in power to ensure that women trapped in poverty have a say in the critical decisions that affect them, their families and entire communities.

The Geared for Success Project: War Child Canada (WCC) and Oxfam Canada (OCA) in partnership with 6 community-based organizations in South Sudan and Uganda will be implementing the $13.8m Global Affairs Canada (GAC) funded project “Geared for Success’ – IDP-led and RLOs driving education in Uganda and South Sudan” (GFS).WCC, OCA, and our partners will implement the 5-year gender-responsive project (2022- 2027) in South Sudan and Uganda and a public engagement component in Canada. Although GFS will directly reach people in Canada, the ultimate project participants are students/learners in Uganda and South Sudan.

The project uses the Canadian Government’s Results-Based Management (RBM) approach to assess project progress and achievements. The ultimate outcome of the project is: “enhanced equitable and inclusive learning outcomes for ‘refugee, internally displaced and host community children and youth, particularly girls and adolescent girls’ in the districts of Yumbe, Terego and Obongi in Uganda and Wau, Malakal and Awerial in South Sudan”.

The intermediate outcomes of the project are outlined below.

• Improved performance of CBOs working on gender-responsive education
• Increased access to gender-responsive quality education for refugees and internally displaced children and youth, particularly girls and adolescent girls, enabled by CBOs
• Enhanced collective action of CBOs to advance the right to gender- responsive quality education for refugee and internally displaced children and youth, particularly vulnerable groups

GFS will achieve this outcome by increasing access to gender responsive quality education for ultimate project participants, driven by local refugee-led organizations (RLOs) and internally displaced people (IDP)-led community- based organizations (CBOs).

CBOs are on the front lines of providing essential education services for refugees and IDPs. To ensure that CBOs are ‘geared for success’, this project will facilitate and provide technical and financial resources to improve their performance -with more female leadership and community support, allowing them to enable access to education and to successfully advocate for the right to education for ultimate project participants. GFS will also strengthen Canadians’ (including diaspora) contribution to education for refugees/IDPs and to the ‘Together for Learning’ Campaign and will advance the evidence base on the role of CBOs enhancing gender-responsive quality education for refugees and IDPs.

Consultancy summary

As part of project start up and coordination activities, a MEAL workshop will be held in Uganda at the end of June 2023 for five working days. War Child Canada and Oxfam MEAL and project management staff will participate in the workshop along with project partner staff. The workshop will utilize participatory approaches built from the SMILER1 process to engage relevant project staff in the review and development of MEAL documents and processes. The workshop facilitator will be responsible for development of the workshop agenda and contents, and delivery of the workshop in Kampala.

Expected Objectives of the Workshop:

• Creating a sense of team and mutual accountability
• Developing a common understanding on the program (TOC, Logic Model etc.)
• MEL review and development of documents and processes

The consultant will be responsible for arranging their travel and logistics, with coordination and input from War Child Canada and Oxfam project team members in Uganda.

Approach and Deliverables:

The consultant will review all project documents and existing project data in advance to carrying out the assessment. Based on this information and discussion with project staff, the consultant will develop the workshop agenda, activities and content, in collaboration with War Child Canada and Oxfam project staff. The consultant will be responsible for finalization of the workshop content and delivery of the workshop in Kampala. The consultant will provide the following deliverables:

• Inception report with detailed workplan
• Agenda outline with top level activities
• Send relevant docs to partners and staff 1 week before workshop (including simplified agenda and any pre-reading materials)
• Detailed final agenda with activity descriptions and workshop content
• Workshop report with recommendations and next steps for finalization of MEAL work

Budget should include 4 days LOE for the workshop and additional days for preparation of workshop content and familiarization with the project content.

The workshop is planned to occur at the end of June 2023, with dates to be confirmed in early June 2023.

Experience, skills

Consultancy team must demonstrate the following:

• Previous experience conducting participatory MEAL workshops with stakeholders from diverse contexts
• Ability to relate to stakeholders at multiple levels
• Experience utilizing feminist M&E principles and practices
• Proven ability to develop MEAL plans, tools, and processes using collaborative approaches
• Experience working on projects related to children’s rights and protection issues and education programs in similar context
• Strong understanding of child safeguarding and PSEA practices
• Strong understanding of the GAC program design, result-based model, and evaluation system and standards
• Experience working in Uganda and South Sudan
• Strong English language skills required; other local languages an asset