Consultancy for end evaluation of project “multi-sectoral emergency response to conflict affected populations in South-West Cameroon”

1. Purpose of the consultancy

The DRC is looking for a consultant as part of its BHA-funded project to conduct the final evaluation of the project. The objective of this evaluation is to measure the overall impact of the project’s activities, namely food assistance, economic recovery, and protection, to understand how future projects could be qualitatively improved.

2.Intended use of the Evaluation findings and recommendations

The results of the evaluation will allow DRC to design appropriate food assistance, livelihoods and protection programs that will improve the food security situation, restore livelihoods, and enhance protection services of affected households. Thus, the findings and recommendations will initially be used by DRC teams involved in the design and implementation of projects in the Southwest region of Cameroon but may be extended to other contexts to improve DRC’s interventions and chosen modalities. In the same way, these findings could be used by BHA for its future programming.

The consultant will present the preliminary findings of the evaluation to the DRC base in Buea and then to the DRC coordination team in Yaoundé at the end of the field visit. These sessions will allow DRC to own the key findings and recommendations at different levels. The results of the evaluation will be shared through a report including clear recommendations for future programming; a presentation will also be prepared, and a final restitution session organised with DRC and BHA teams. They will be shared with key donors and coordination partners and will be presented in relevant clusters (food security, cash working group, protection cluster) to ensure the learning can benefit the wider humanitarian community.

3.Context

This 24-month project (from 2021, July 1st to 2023, June 30th) funded by BHA and implemented by DRC aims to provide a rapid, coordinated, and effective response to address the acute food security and protection needs of conflict-affected populations in southwestern Cameroon, while contributing to longer-term psychosocial and livelihood needs.

The project has been developed in a context of internal displacement due to the crisis affecting the Northwest and Southwest regions of Cameroon. Indeed, since 2017, the number of displaced people in the NWSW regions has risen exponentially due to the continuing violence between the central government and numerous non-state armed groups (NSAGs) fighting for separation of the predominantly English-speaking regions from the Francophone part of Cameroon. The conflict has caused the ongoing internal displacement of 573,900 Cameroonians within or from the NWSW and forced 71,800 individuals to seek refuge in neighboring Nigeria (OCHA, Jan 2022). Families often face multiple displacements, and many leave their communities daily to avoid conflict and sleep in the bush, exposing themselves to the weather elements, and being at increased risk of protection violations such as sexual harassment and abuse. Nearly 30% of the assessed villages (MSNA, IOM, Aug 2021) in the SW region reported pendular displacements, the majority (58%) to nearby bushes or the nearest village (26%). In the Fako division, 31% of villages from the MSNA reported that most persons have undergone pendular displacements more than 5 times within the last month. Human rights violations and protection risks are acute for displaced people and host communities. Humanitarians identified food security as a priority through the various MSNA rounds.

The designed action aims to:

• Improve the food security situation for 3,350 conflict-affected households in Meme and Fako divisions through unconditional food assistance.
• Enhanced protection services for conflict-affected communities in Meme and Fako divisions through protection assistance and psychosocial support for 17,044 individuals.
• Restore the livelihoods of 500 households in Fako division.
• A first phase of the project was implemented between July 2021 and June 2022 and the project then continued with phase 2 (Cost extension with same activities) from July 2022 to June 2023.

4.Objectives of the evaluation

As part of its BHA-funded project, DRC is seeking a consultant to conduct the final evaluation of the project. The objective of this evaluation is to measure the overall impact of the project’s activities, namely food assistance, economic recovery, and protection, to understand how future projects could be qualitatively improved.

In addition to increasing accountability, transparency, and learning within the DRC country office, this evaluation will assess the project’s performance based on an examination of the criteria of relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, connectedness, and effect/impact. The effect/impact criteria will include a focus on an assessment of the changes, whether planned or unplanned, direct, or indirect, that would be attributable to the project.

The specific objectives assigned to this evaluation are to:

• Provide project stakeholders with a final assessment of progress toward the project’s expected project results.
• Critically and objectively examine effectiveness of the implementation strategy.
• Analyse the sustainability of the intervention.
• Identify successes, good practices, and lessons learned.
• Formulate relevant recommendations for improvement in the event of a continuation of the project.

5.Evaluation scope and Methodology

a. Evaluation scope

The evaluation will assess the effectiveness of the implementation strategy and the impact achieved. This will include the appropriateness of the intervention to the context, the implementation modalities, beneficiary participation, replication, and sustainability of the project. The evaluation will include assessing the project design. Project management includes the implementation strategies; project activities; it will assess the extent to which the project results have been achieved, its replicability to a larger scale and cross cutting issues of mainstreaming gender and environment. It will also assess whether the project implementation strategy has been optimum with a view to recommending areas for improvement and identifying key learning. To achieve these objectives, the evaluation will focus on the key evaluation questions (see below).

The evaluation will be conducted in May 2023 before the end of the BHA-funded project in June 2023. It will focus on food security, economic recovery and protection sectors by surveying households who previously benefited from food security assistance through vouchers or received support in restoring their Income Generating Activity (IGA), and/or benefitted from the protection assistance through IPA, SNF, CPA, and/ or community-based protection support.

b.Evaluation criteria

The evaluation should use and refer to those of the OECD DAC evaluation criteria for humanitarian action that are assessed to be relevant:

• Relevance/Appropriateness (access, design and focus of the project);
• Effectiveness (whether activities, outputs and outcomes have been achieved?)
• Connectedness (how the various activities included in the project were connected between each other and with other interventions of DRC and external partners)
• Efficiency (were inputs (staff, time, equipment) used in the best possible way to achieve outputs; could implementation have been improved/was there a better way of doing things?);
• Impact/effect (assess the positive and negative changes produced by the project interventions, directly or indirectly, intended or unintended).

In addition, the following DRC Operational Principles should be considered:

• Protection: DRC incorporates protection analysis and protection response throughout the program / project cycle.
• Resilience: DRC tries to make people more resilient to future shocks.
• Do No Harm: DRC understands the conflicts of interest where DRC works to do no harm with its action.
• Local Partnerships: DRC seeks partnerships which foster local capacity and commitment to deliver and safeguard the rights of the displaced and other conflict-affected people.
• Sustainability: DRC always searches for options to ensure lasting, positive effects of its interventions

6.Methodology

DRC suggests a mixed methodology, including quantitative and qualitative methods. The main source of data should be quantitative surveys of a sample of households who received DRC’s assistance under BHA funding since the start of the project in 2021. Qualitative approaches may include focus group discussions with different and relevant groups (women, men, youth, people with disabilities, etc.) and semi-structured in-depth interviews with relevant key informants to obtain additional information and deepen the findings as well as reflect an Age, Gender and Diversity (AGD) perspective in all primary data collection activities carried out as part of the evaluation – particularly host communities, IDPs, Person with disability.

The evaluation’s methodology should use the criteria identified in the section above. The methodology should be explicitly designed to answer key evaluation questions within the constraints of evaluability, budget, and timing.

In addition, the evaluation should be conducted using a participatory and inclusive approach, involving a wide range of partners and stakeholders.

The evaluation process will include an inception phase, a period for data collection followed by analysis and a series of presentation of preliminary findings and sensemaking meetings with DRC and BHA colleagues at various levels of the organization.

The consultant will ensure neutrality in the evaluation and will take the lead on the design of the questionnaires, conduct key informant interviews, and analyze the data. The consultant will work in close cooperation with the DRC team in the field and the technical coordinators based in Yaoundé to ensure the design of the questionnaires are appropriate for the context and match the objective of the evaluation. Considering the complex security situation in the Southwest region, DRC will be responsible for the recruitment of enumerators to collect the data on the ground and the training on the questionnaire will be done jointly between the DRC MEAL team and the consultant.

DRC will make recommendations on relevant field sites in Fako and Meme divisions to be physically visited and others where interviews will be conducted by phone. The targeted localities are: Ekona, Lelu, Masuma, Owe and Ikata in the Fako division; and Diffa; Ediki and Mabunji in the Meme division.