HEARTLAND ALLIANCE INTERNATIONAL
Request for Proposals
Evaluation of the WE-LEAD project in Haiti
Background
Heartland Alliance for Human Needs & Human Rights (Heartland Alliance) is a non-profit 501©3 umbrella organization that has been responding to the needs of marginalized and vulnerable populations in Chicago over 125 years. Using the expertise acquired through the delivery of these programs, Heartland Alliance International was founded as an independent organization within Heartland Alliance to allow the organization to expand its reach to the countries where many vulnerable and displaced persons originate, and which have been adversely affected by war, violence, and poverty. Now working in 15 countries across four continents, Heartland Alliance International works to secure the rights and well-being of marginalized people and communities—particularly the poor, the isolated, and the displaced—through the provision of comprehensive and respectful services and the promotion of permanent solutions leading to a more just global society.
Rationale
In late 2010, with funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Heartland Alliance International launched Women Empowered to Lead and Advocate for Development (WE-LEAD) to build the leadership capacity of women's groups in Haiti and enable them to insert their priorities into the country's post-earthquake reconstruction and development processes. The program has three pillars: empowerment (through the establishment of a women's resource center), capacity building and advocacy. At the heart of the WE-LEAD program is a resource and cyber center that provides a safe space for women and women's organizations to meet, learn, and strategize. Since opening its doors in February 2011, over 1500 women and girls have visited the center to use its resources an average five times each. Hundreds of adolescent girls have come to do school work, write CVs, or link with their peers on Facebook. They have been offered access to additional services such as a women's rights library. They have met informally with older women leaders who came to the resource center to conduct research, edit project proposals, and participate in workshops on women's rights. Together, they formed a "Popular Education Debate Club" to discuss issues of women's needs and rights, ambition, and careers. Women have grown and increased their self-esteem, ambition, and ability to find employment, and engaged in the defense of women's rights.
The WE-LEAD team based in Port-au-Prince has worked with over thirty different women's from across the country that have participated in organizational development trainings or quarterly civic participation and advocacy workshops. These workshops have covered gender inequality, the reconstruction process and advocacy techniques and have led to two separate campaigns: 1) gender mainstreaming in national development policies and 2) the fight against sexual harassment, an obstacle to women's participation in reconstruction.
Heartland Alliance International also partnered with two organizations during the implementation of the program, MADRE, a US-based women's rights organization, and KOFAVIV, a Haitian women's organization. These partners were responsible for developing an overall advocacy campaign against national and international gender-based violence (GBV). KOFAVIV also worked in twenty internally-displaced persons (IDP) camps to mobilize community networks, conduct prevention activities and raise awareness about GBV, and support survivors of sexual violence. MADRE supported members of KOFAVIV to represent women's groups at high level international meetings with UN agencies.
In two years, the WE-LEAD program has become a successful model of girls and women's empowerment. The program has increased the organizing capacity of women's groups and contributed to efforts to place sexual violence at the top of the political agenda. The WE-LEAD program has developed training materials on Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and gender issues in cooperation with the Haitian Ministry of Women. The program has built the capacity of local women's organizations in project management and monitored the living situation of women in IDP camps. The WE-LEAD program has contributed to the visibility of women's priorities in Haiti's reconstruction and the revitalization of the Haitian women's rights movement.
Objective
As the USAID project approaches its term, ending March 30, 2013, Heartland Alliance International will ensure that the vision stays alive and the Haitian team continues to build upon its accomplishments through the development of proposals to extend the initiative. In this crucial transition period, Heartland Alliance International wishes to conduct a thorough evaluation of the project with three specific purposes:
1. To evaluate the USAID-funded program, measuring to what extent and how efficiently the project:
- Reached its goals of strengthening the women's movement and enhancing women's participation in the reconstruction process.
- Achieved expected results following the initial strategy.
2. To improve on-going services within the WE-LEAD center's facility by adapting them to the needs and expectations of the beneficiaries.
- The consultant will analyze best practices for measuring social change and empowerment and propose a tailored evaluation strategy to this program.
- The consultant will notably be asked to document the impact of the services delivered at the center on user's leadership skills and trajectories through survey and focus groups.
3. To orient future development of the project by
- Producing recommendations susceptible to increase efficacy and relevance.
- Improving monitoring and evaluation tools.
Key questions to be addressed
1. Evaluate the USAID-funded program
In its original proposal to USAID, Heartland Alliance described WE-LEAD's objective as following: The WE-LEAD program"will help build the leadership, networking and advocacy capacity of Haitian women's organizations, enhance women's participation, and support women advocates to mainstream a gender perspective in policy formulation related to post-disaster reconstruction and long-term development." Two years later, as Heartland Alliance International envisions an extension to the project, the vision is similar. The development hypothesis for future programming is that by empowering Haitian women through a strengthened grassroots women's movement and by providing them with the tools, information, and networks they need to affect change at individual, community, and national levels, women will emerge as capable leaders and shape Haiti's long-term development process.
To what extent is this vision accurate and how far were these objectives achieved using the proposed strategy? More specifically, the evaluation will tell how far and how constructively the project contributed to:
- Strengthening women's collectives (structure, vision, visibility, capacity development, etc.)
- Structuring the women's movement (new alliances, networking, solidarity, campaigns, etc.)
- Mainstreaming gender in development policies (of NGOs, donors, government)
- Increasing women's participation in and benefit from the reconstruction process.
- The safety of women in IDP camps and the promotion of women's rights in Haiti (gender based violence)
Other questions that the consultant will have to address are the following:
- How did the strategy adapt to external factors and to the evolution of the needs?
- Did the project gain more efficacy and coherence in the course of two years?
- Has funding being efficiently managed and invested?
She/he will also describe if and how local actors took ownership of the project, estimate the project's "multiplier effect" and explore the overall impact of the activities implemented, above and beyond the initial definition of the project.
The study will not only focus on measuring outcomes but will also try to assess challenges and unexpected consequences, unanticipated actors, activities or additional resources that were instrumental in the overall effect of the project implementation, i.e. how change happened and what worked.
2. Improve on-going services within the WE-LEAD center's facility
A specific effort (and section of the final report) will be directed toward evaluating the impact of the services offered at the WE-LEAD center in Port-au-Prince on approximately 1,500 women and girls using the center. Heartland Alliance International wants to know the extent to which the systematic articulation of computer literacy activities and feminist popular education helped women and girls experience increased:
- ambition and self-esteem
- decision-making power at family, community, professional and political levels
- capacity to work hard and study successfully
- career evolution, and other economically beneficial results (livelihood securities)
- control over their sexual and reproductive health and rights
- participation (engagement) in the country's cultural, social, and political life
This list is only indicative. The consultant will select and formulate the questions most appropriate to capture the true effects of the services provided.
3. Orient future development of the project
The consultant will contribute to the efforts currently invested by Heartland Alliance International to optimize sustainability and allow for the replication of its approach towards women's empowerment in Haiti.
The consultant will help refine the model, shape arguments and present compelling data to support replication and scale up. In doing so she/he will also refine the indicators, the methodology and the tools for further monitoring and evaluation exercises.
The consultant will work at individual, household, community and structural levels. Keeping in mind that the project was implemented on a short period of time under high political instability, she/he will measure progress in dynamic terms and propose useful tools to track social and political changes over a longer period of time.
Preferred approach
WE-LEAD's approach to women's empowerment is systemic where the personal, collective and political dimensions fuel each-other to initiate long term dynamics for change. The nature of this approach as well as the structural complexity of the problem addressed (gender inequities tangled in a patriarchal society) make it difficult for linear theories of evaluation to fully capture the effect and relevance of the strategy implemented. Focusing on activities and outcomes instead of actors may limit understanding of the processes and people involved in change. The consultant will be selected based on his/her capacity to propose a mixed methodology of evaluation and answer the three levels of questions stated above in the most accurate manner: tracking individual empowerment, movement building and growing influence, potential for change and actual impacts at the structural level, using Haitian women's voices and experiences to inform the evaluation framework.
Geographical scope
International: the project addressed women's rights issues at an international level, advocating against gender-based violence through high level meetings in Geneva and New York (Commission on the Status of Women and the Haiti
Universal Periodic Review) and at the national level in Haiti. The consultant will consider communicating with stakeholders in the USA and will travel to Port-au-PrinceHaiti to assess the impact of KOFAVIV and MADRE's work on national policies.
National and local: the project team conducted several important activities in the cities hardest hit by the earthquake in the South East and South department of Haiti. The consultant will consider traveling to the cities of Jacmel, Ti-Goave, Grand Goave, and Leogane (maximum two hours from Port-au-Prince).
Institutional scope
Heartland Alliance International is based in Chicago, and opened its offices in Haiti in January 2010. Its sub-contractors and main partners for this project are MADRE, a women's rights foundation based in the US, and KOFAVIV, a Haitian women's organization based in Port-au-Prince. Both will be approached by the consultant for the purpose of this evaluation. Other important institutions are notably the Ministry of Women (MCFDF) and the Ministry of Justice in Haiti, members of the parliament and offices in charge of coordinating the reconstruction efforts, and a few international and local NGOs active in the country, as well as a range of influential women's organizations in cities listed above. The consultant will pay particular attention to Haiti's unstable political context along the project's implementation and show maximal diplomacy when reaching out to past and current members of the government. She/he will consult with Heartland Alliance's Senior Gender Advisor before reaching out to key partners, advocates and stakeholders involved in policy matters.
Consultant profile
Consultancy agencies and individuals are welcome to apply. The main consultant should have an extended evaluation experience and proven interest and expertise in gender. Language skills required: English as a working language, French fluency, Creole a plus.
Deliverables and Timeframe
The technical proposal is due February 15, 2013 and should be submitted to Heartland Alliance International through electronic mail at the following address:
welead@heartlandalliance.org. The selected consultant will adapt the evaluation methodology for validation before February 20, 2013. Field mission should take place from March 4-18, 2013. The consultant will submit a first version of her/his evaluation report before March 25, 2013.
- February 15, 2013: Design of the Methodology / technical proposal
- February 20, 2013: Approval of final methodology
- February 20 to March 4, 2013: Preparatory phase
- March 4-18, 2013: Implementation phase
- March 18-25, 2013: Data analysis and reporting phase
- March 30, 2013: Final deadline for full report
Conditions of the agreement
The consultant will submit a budget together with a methodology and a description of the evaluation team including CVs. Heartland Alliance International willconfirm its choice of a candidate based on the quality of the final evaluation methodology. It is foreseen that the work described above will take up to 21 working days.
Resources available
Heartland Alliance International will provide the following documents to the selected candidate:
- Strategic documents: Technical proposals to USAID for year 1 and 2, no-cost extension contract.
- Proposals for extension: 3 years extension plan, development concept notes, etc.
- Monitoring and Evaluation materials: Heartland Alliance International and partner's quarterly and annual reports and other key monitoring documents, including data from a pilot impact evaluation survey.
- Other materials will be provided upon request.
Confidentiality Statement
All data and information received for the purpose of this assignment are to be treated confidentially and are only to be used in connection with the execution of these Terms of Reference. All intellectual property rights arising from the execution of these Terms of Reference are assigned to Heartland Alliance International according to the grant agreement. The contents of written materials obtained and used in this assignment may not be disclosed to any third parties without the expressed advance written authorization of HAI.
