Project Overview-
Search for Common Ground (www.sfcg.org)
is an international peacebuilding organization that strives to
transform the way the world deals with conflict, away from adversarial
approaches; towards collaborative problem-solving. it is working in 35
countries across Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and the USA. It
works with governments, civil society, state institutions, youth, women,
media organizations, and other stakeholder groups to promote peace,
reconciliation, tolerance, and collaboration across dividing lines.
Search
has been working in Indonesia since 2002. As a diverse country,
Indonesia is facing challenges in managing social harmony and tolerance
within the heterogeneous society. Search, in collaboration with local
partners, is supporting the process of building peaceful culture through
media programming, dialogues, outreach activities, and capacity
strengthening. Search Indonesia works primarily with youth, especially
in the universities and schools, government agencies and officials, and
communities in the vulnerable areas to prevent violent extremism as one
the challenges of peace and tolerance in Indonesia.
Objectives of the Assignment
Search
Indonesia is seeking to hire a consultant to carry out a final
evaluation for its project SOLID-ID - “Solidifying Religious Freedom in
Indonesia”. For this consultancy, Search Indonesia seeks to procure the
services of an independent, external consultant(s) to design, plan and
conduct a rigorous project final evaluation. The objective is to obtain a
report on the analysis and evaluation of the 18-month project on
religious freedom in Indonesia..
Background of the project
Despite being widely studied as a
tolerant country, considering the diverse religions and ethnicities
present, many ideals of the country’s core identity, including religious
freedom, are increasingly under threat, with increased violations of
religious freedoms in recent years. In response, the project uses
innovative approaches, from inter-religious training to art festivals
and social media personalities, to bring diverse stakeholders together,
including local and national government, youth and local communities.
These diverse groups are invited to collaboratively contribute to
improving state protection for religious freedom and building a more
cohesive and diverse Indonesia.
Project objectives
The overall objective of the project is to promote the
values and norms of diversity and tolerance within state institutions,
youth, and local communities, which would create an enabling environment
for the strengthening of religious freedom in Indonesia.
The specific objectives of the project are:
Objective 1: To
improve national and local government’s role in ensuring the protection
of religious minorities in exercising religious freedom.
Objective 2: To enhance the roles of key actors (religious leaders, artists, and media) in actively promoting religious tolerance.
Target groups for the project:
Primary target groups: State
actors, religious leaders (inter-faith dialogue organization), youth,
Civil Society Organization (CSO), journalists/media, public attorney,
paralegal organizations, and young artists in Jakarta, Bogor, Depok,
Bekasi, Yogyakarta and Bandung.
Secondary target groups (Government counterparts): Universities, Religious Harmony Forum (FKUB), Indonesian Ulema Assembly (MUI), local government institutions, Ombudsman..
The project outputs and activities include the following:
- Policy and Legal Framework Assessment and Public Perception Survey regarding religious freedom and interfaith tolerance in Indonesia.
- Multi-Stakeholder Forum to develop working guidelines in responding to violent religious intolerance.
- National policy discussions and local public consultation events to acquire and provide substantive input to the bill on the protection of religious freedom.
- Training for religious leaders on tolerance, interfaith and religious freedom.
- Intra- and inter-faith dialogues on religious tolerance for religious leaders and their congregations, including youth and women leaders.
- Media Content Analysis, Workshop on Peace Journalism and Media Gatherings for key national and regional media companies.
- Social media literacy workshop for youths to counter cyber hate speech and intolerance.
- Common Ground Art Residency Program and Art Festival.
Objectives of the Evaluation
Search
as an organization is committed to conducting evaluations for its
projects in order to maximize the effectiveness of its programming and
engage in continuous improvement and learning within programs and across
the organization. The evaluation will be carried out in consultation
and in participation with key relevant stakeholders, appropriate
community groups or key civil society individuals. The final evaluation
intends to measure the immediate impact of the project, specifically
whether the stated goal, objectives and results have been met.
Evaluation criteria and key evaluation questions
The
purpose of the evaluation is to document achievements of the expected
results and lessons learned through a participatory process engaging
Search, CSOs, local communities, and other key society stakeholders,
taking note/assessing the effectiveness, efficiency, intermediate impact
and sustainability of the SOLID-ID project. The evaluation will aim to
ascertain if and how the project yielded its intended results.
The
evaluation will be based on the OECD-DAC peacebuilding Evaluation
Criteria (relevance, effectiveness, intermediate impact,
efficiency and sustainability), investigating their set of questions,
and utilizing and/or addressing the performance indicators described in
the project document:
Relevance
1. To what extent did this project comply with the targeted community needs and existing issues?
2. What is the relevance of the interventions as perceived by beneficiaries and stakeholders?
3. How
relevant were the instruments (capacity building workshops, community
dialogue sessions etc.) used during the project to the local
communities’ needs and capacities
Effectiveness
- What are the major outputs and outcomes of this project?
- To what extent were the project and its activities successful in achieving its stated goals and objectives? What major factors are contributing to achievement or non-achievement of objectives?
- To what extent was the project effective in building youth civil society capacity in religious freedom?
- How effective was the media seminar in building the capacities of media professionals to better report on dialogue processes, and provide conflict-sensitive information to the public?
- How effective were the dialogue sessions, ideas marketplace and other activities in shifting participants’ attitude and behavior and relationships?
- To what extent did the project contribute to improving relationships among groups experiencing religious discrimination?
Efficiency
- Have resources (funds, human resources, time, expertise, etc.) been allocated strategically to achieve outcomes? Have resources been used efficiently?
- Have activities supporting the strategy been cost-effective? In general, do the results achieved justify the costs? Could the same results be attained with fewer resources?
- Have project funds and activities been delivered in a timely manner?
Sustainability
- Is there a project exit strategy developed? If yes, how it frames the sustainability aspect of the project?
- To what extent the objectively verifiable results has to potential to sustain beyond Search support?
- Have new mechanisms been designed to continue any work initiated by this project? If yes, will the initiatives sustain post-project?
- To what extent the participating stakeholders, government agencies, youth and community members have taken ownership of the project?
Intermediate Impact
- How has the project contributed in promoting the values and norms of diversity and tolerance within state institutions, youth, and local communities?
- How has the project contributed in promoting religious freedom in target locations?
- How has the project contributed in improving national and local government’s role in ensuring the protection of religious minorities in exercising religious freedom?
- How has the project contributed in enhancing the roles of key actors (religious leaders, artists, and media) in actively promoting religious tolerance?
- What are the broader changes, positive or negative, intended or unintended, of the interventions in the context?
Lesson learned:
1. What could have been done differently to make the project be of higher quality and of greater impact? What are the major lessons learned that would help inform similar initiatives in the future?
2. What are the good practices emerging out of this project implementation?
In
addition to the above lines of inquiry, the evaluation is expected to
provide information on specific indicators listed in the Project
Tracking and Monitoring Evaluation Plan, taking into account that some
of the targets and/or indicators may change depending on ongoing
discussions with the donor:
- Percentage of youth civil society participants who report increased collaboration and strengthened relationships with community leaders (disaggregated by gender and age).
- Percentage of community leaders surveyed who report increased collaboration and strengthened relationships with youth civil society members and/or organizations (disaggregated by gender).
- Percentage of local community members surveyed who report that local-level initiatives created constructive engagement with local leaders (disaggregated by gender where possible).
Methodology of Evaluation
a) Approach
The
SFCG approach to evaluation is grounded in the guiding principles of
our work: participatory, culturally sensitive, committed to building
capacity, affirming and positive while honest and productively critical,
and valuing knowledge and approaches from within the context. SFCG and
the hired evaluator will agree upon a joint set of evaluation standards
when negotiating the final contract of agreement.
b) Scope
The
evaluation will interview key relevant stakeholders, appropriate
community groups or key civil society actors in six (6) project
locations; Jakarta, Bogor, Depok, Bekasi, Bandung and Yogyakarta. The
evaluation sample should adequately cover the project target areas and
be representative of the community structure.
c) Methodology
The
evaluation will employ both quantitative and qualitative methods. Both
quantitative and qualitative data will be analyzed with a gender, age,
locations and ethnicity/religion disaggregation. The qualitative and
quantitative findings are expected to be synthesized in accordance with
the project indicators.
The
sampling methodology for the tools and/or instruments will be designed
by the consultant, referring to the project’s Monitoring Tracking and
Planning and in coordination with Search Project Manager, SOLID-ID
Project Officer, DME Coordinator and the Senior Regional DME Specialist.
The sampling methodology should include at least 40% female in the
sample size of the evaluation to represent the female beneficiaries. The
quantitative sample size should be calculated based on 95% confidence
level and 5% confidence interval with additional 10% sample added for
the potential non-response error. The total sample size should be drawn
from the total target population of the project locations. The
qualitative sample size should be agreed with SFCG before signing the
contract.
Furthermore,
as part of the data collection and analysis process, the consultant is
required to respect the following Ethical Principles:
- Comprehensive and systematic inquiry: Consultant should make the most of the existing information and full range of stakeholders available at the time of the review. The consultant should conduct systematic, data-based inquiries. He or she should communicate his or her methods and approaches accurately and in sufficient detail to allow others to understand, interpret and critique his or her work. He or she should make clear the limitations of the review and its results.
- Competence: Consultant should possess the abilities, skills, and experience appropriate to undertake the tasks proposed and should practice within the limits of his or her professional training and competence.
- Honesty and integrity: Consultant should be transparent with the contractor/ constituent about: any conflict of interest, any change made in the negotiated project plan and the reasons why those changes were made, and any risk that certain procedures or activities produce a misleading review of information.
- Respect for people: Consultant respect the security, dignity, and self-worth of respondents and program participants. The consultant has the responsibility to be sensitive to and respect differences amongst participants in culture, religion, gender, disability, age and ethnicity.
- All of the data produced by this study belongs exclusively to Search and all remaining copies of the data will be stored to Search database.
Deliverables
The final deliverables of the evaluation will include the following documents:
- A 6-10 pages (excluding annexes) long inception report, containing an evaluation plan matrix, outlining the specific data collection strategy, responsibility, data collection tools/draft questionnaires and a detailed work plan within 10 working days after signing the contract. The plan should consider the following principles:
- Inclusiveness, the methodology should include a wide range of viewpoints, specifically gender and age-sensitivity.
- Mixed-method approaches, both qualitative and quantitative methods need to be present in the methodology.
- Rigor of evidence, gathered information needs to be reliable and transparent.
- Ethics, the methodology needs to consider ethics in order to ensure that the evaluation is fully objective.
- A draft final evaluation report for review by Search staff within (3 weeks) of the completion of the data collection.
- A fully English edited final evaluation report (in MS word format), due within (5 weeks) of the completion of the data collection. The report should be no more than 30 pages in length (excluding appendices) and be based on the requirements in the Search External Evaluation Guidelines (available on the web), including actionable, data-based recommendations for Search as well as suggestions for similar future programming.
- Final electronic copies of all data collected (this includes survey data entered through excel; the format needs to be approved by Search before use; also, notes of all FGDs done).
- The final evaluation report should strictly be written in English language and should not exceed 30 pages (excluding annexes). It should be submitted electronically in an MS-Word document. It may include:
- Cover page
- Executive Summary of key findings and recommendations;
- Introduction, including brief context description
- Methodology
- Evaluation findings, analysis and conclusions with associated evidence and data clearly illustrated. The findings section should be sub-divided as sub-chapters according to the evaluation criteria.
- Recommendations for the future, which should be practical and linked directly to findings and conclusions;
- Appendices, including evaluation tools, questionnaire, and brief biography of evaluator.
- Search will maintain consultant independence in writing their findings. Both the final and the summary report will be credited to the consultancy team and will be placed in the public domain, including on the Search website (www.sfcg.org/ilt/evaluations) and the DME Learning Portal (www..dmeforpeace.org).
Duration & Deadlines
The
duration of the contract will be a total period of eight weeks to begin
December 2018/January 2019. The consultant will negotiate final dates
and deadlines with the Search Indonesia DM&E Coordinator.
Logistical Support
SFCG will provide preparatory and logistical assistance to the evaluator, which include:
● Background materials (project proposal, implementation plans, progress reports, success stories, etc.)
● Quantitative and qualitative documentation of project activities.
● List of potential Interviewees (and their contact information) for KIIs and FGDs
● Technical assistance with the review and approval of tools and reports.
● Meeting arrangements with stakeholders and beneficiaries
Team Members
The
evaluation will be conducted by an individual/consultancy managed by
the evaluation focal point at Search with technical oversight form
Senior Regional DM&E Specialist.
Evaluator’s Competencies
search seeks an experienced evaluator(s) with the following qualifications:
- Masters degree in conflict resolution, international relations, a related social science field or statistics
- Having past experiences of doing quantitative and qualitative research and experience in peacebuilding projects.
- Understanding of the country context, especially the violent extremism and interreligious dynamics in Indonesia.
- At least 3 years of experience in project evaluation and conducting baseline and final evaluations, including collecting and analyzing data from interviews, surveys, focus groups discussions, etc.
- Sound knowledge of research methods and data collection skills
- High level of speaking and writing proficiency in English
- Strong communication and writing skills
- Understanding of and experience working with civil society organizations
- Ability to be flexible with time and work schedule
To apply:
Interested candidates should send the following items to phandayani@sfcg.org:
- Letter of interest
- Technical proposal (including proposed deliverables)
- Financial proposal (detailing the cost calculations), and
- Resume
This position will close on 30 November 2018.
Short-listed
offerors will be invited for a further discussion about the proposed
approach. Incomplete applications will not be accepted
Only applicants invited for an interview will be contacted. No phone calls, please. Please see our website www.sfcg.org for full details of our work.
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