Mid Term Review: Le Chéile: Together for an inclusive better world, Ireland’s Civil Society Partnership for A Better World (ICSP) programme

Call for Expression of Interest: Mid Term Review

Consultant to conduct Mid Term Review in the Le Chéile: Together for an inclusive better world, Ireland’s Civil Society Partnership for A Better World (ICSP) programme

Title: Le Chéile: Together for an inclusive better world, Ireland’s Civil Society Partnership for A Better World (ICSP)

Location: Remote but ideally to include Cameroon, Senegal, Sierra Leone or Liberia

Anticipated Consultancy Duration: 3 January 2025 to 31 October 2025

Background:

Sightsavers Ireland’s programme ‘Le Chéile: Together for an inclusive better world‘, also known as Ireland’s Civil Society Partnership for A Better World (ICSP) Programme, aims to bring about positive transformative change in systems, services and experiences for target populations especially people with disabilities, women and girls, to reach those furthest behind first in selected Central and West African countries. These countries are Cameroon, Liberia, Senegal, and Sierra Leone. Five thematic areas are covered by the programme – Eye Health, Inclusive Education, Citizenship & Political Participation, Global Citizen Education and Climate Action. To achieve this, the programme focuses on sustainably strengthening citizenship, education, health systems and climate actions so that targeted populations can claim their rights to healthcare and education and contribute to decisions that affect their lives. Sightsavers Ireland works in partnership with governments and civil society – including organisations of people with disabilities (OPDs) – to ensure policies, structures and systems are more inclusive.

• In the social inclusion thematic area, the focus of the programme is on enhancing citizenship and political participation. The programme aims to enhance inclusivity in governance systems and processes in Cameroon, Senegal and Sierra Leone ensuring these systems and processes are accessible, and responsive to people with disabilities, women and youths to ensure they can meaningfully engage in decision-making and active citizenship.
• For education, the purpose is for strengthened inclusive education systems to result in increased access and quality of inclusive education for girls and boys with disabilities in Cameroon and Senegal. This will be achieved through ensuring that improvements in the education system are strengthened, including Inclusive Education policy, Education Management Information Systems (EMIS), government agencies and institutions and supporting national scale-up of inclusive education provisions.
• In eye health, the programme supports improved and more equitable access to quality eye health services for all target populations in Liberia, Senegal and Sierra Leone, with a focus on women and people with disabilities. To do so, the programme will strengthen eye health policies, wider health strategic plans and governance frameworks in the implementing countries. The programme will develop and strengthen partnerships with local stakeholders and develop and implement inclusive strategies and solutions to improve access to eye care.
• Climate Action is a cross-cutting theme, and the programme’s work aligns with the UN’s SDGs which set out global actions for countries and organisations to follow in alleviating poverty and avoiding catastrophic climate change. People with disabilities, particularly women and girls, are disproportionately at risk from the adverse effects of climate change as they face additional barriers and challenges accessing services and resources. Sightsavers Ireland is committed to ensuring environmental considerations are included at the organisational and programmatic level.

In Ireland, the programme aims to deliver a high-quality Global Citizenship Education (GCE) project to build awareness, understanding and solidarity with disability inclusion, and enable the Irish public to act in support of disability rights.

Programme Impact and Outcomes:

• Programme level Impact statement: Positive transformative change in systems, services and experiences for target populations – especially people with disabilities, and women and girls – to reach those furthest behind in selected Central and West African countries.
• Programme level Outcome statement: Citizenship, education and health systems are sustainably strengthened so they meet the priorities and uphold the rights of targeted populations.
• Outcome statements for each thematic area
• Citizenship and Political Participation (CPP): Governance systems and processes in Cameroon, Senegal and Sierra Leone are more inclusive, accessible, and responsive to people with disabilities, so they can meaningfully engage in decision-making and active citizenship.
• Inclusive Education (IE): Strengthened inclusive education systems result in increased access to, and quality of, inclusive education for girls and boys with disabilities in Cameroon and Senegal.
• Eye Health (EH): Improved and more equitable access to quality eye health services for all target populations in Liberia, Senegal and Sierra Leone, with a focus on women and people with disabilities.
• Climate Action (CA): Increased integration of climate action initiatives, especially on climate adaptation and mitigation, into eye health, education, citizenship and political participation work in Cameroon, Liberia, Senegal, and Sierra Leone.

Purpose of the Mid Term Review Consultancy:

Context and Purpose:

The ICSP programme is a five-year programme, and an End-term Evaluation (ETE) is planned to take place in 2026, covering data from the first three years of the programme. The rationale to conduct a Mid-Term Review (MTR) in 2025 is primarily to inform internal learning and implementation, to better understand the capacity development needs of partners, and to strengthen evaluability at the end term.

Additionally, Sightsavers Ireland has committed to reviewing and updating the ToC on an ongoing basis, as part of an adaptive management approach. The midpoint of a project is an opportune time to review the programme logic and revise some of the specific change pathways to make sure that they reflect the reality on the ground. It is also important to ensure that all elements of the programme are included in the ToC which may not have been made explicit at the design stage. Therefore, Climate Action will be a particular focus area. The revised ToC will also have an important role in informing the ETE.

Sightsavers takes an inclusive and participatory approach to evaluation and learning activities and the MTR will seek the perspectives and experiences of the people and communities we serve. The structure of the MTR approach is designed to incorporate and reflect the lived experiences of people with disabilities and provide a structure for which it can be fed into programme learning.

The target audience for the findings of the MTR will be the Sightsavers programme staff, global programme support and advisory teams within Sightsavers Ireland, project partners in each country, and the consultants who will conduct the ETE. Although the MTR is not a contractual requirement, the final outputs will also be shared with the donor.

Scope

The MTR will cover the programme period from its inception in January 2023 up to the end of December 2024. The MTR will cover all thematic areas, with a particular focus on Climate Action, as well as cross cutting workstreams such as gender, young people and locally led development. The review will also seek to involve people with different types of disabilities and impairments to understand a variety of different experiences. The review will be small in scale, in comparison to the size of the programme, and it will not be feasible to conduct in-depth enquiries into all aspects of the programme.

Methodology

This MTR will take a participatory and inclusive approach, ensuring that the views and experiences of the people and communities we serve, including women, girls and people with disabilities, are listened to and reflected. There will be two main evaluative activities as part of this MTR:

• Most Significant Change (MSC) story collection and selection (Q1-Q2 2025)
• ToC review workshop (Q2 2025)

Outputs and Deliverables

• A draft and Final Inception Report in English and French (tbc) detailing the overall technical approach and detailed methodology
• Delivery of MSC story collection workshops and selection committees in selected projects
• Summary of the selected MSC stories in a short report (in English and French), including 2 rounds of feedback and revisions
• Delivery of Theory of Change review workshop (for each thematic area)
• A proposed revised Theory of Change (programme level, GCE)
• Data sets (Excel or Word files) for all collected data (quantitative and qualitative)
• PowerPoint slides in French and English summarising the MTR process and key outputs from the review.
• Final report in English and French, including 3 rounds of feedback and revisions. The report will bring together all of the MTR activities into a cohesive report with key learnings and recommendations

Consultant specifications

The above activities will be contracted to an external independent consultancy company or team through a competitive open tender process. It would be beneficial if some team members are located in the programme countries (Cameroon, Senegal, Sierra Leone or Liberia). Team members should have the following core competencies and experience:

• Extensive experience in monitoring and evaluation for international development project/programmes, with strong skills in both qualitative and quantitative approaches.
• Experience using Most Significant Change and other participatory evaluation methods is essential
• Prior experience working in some, if not all, of the programme countries is essential, including primary data collection and participatory workshops.
• Thematic expertise in inclusive eye health, citizenship and political participation, inclusive education is essential with comprehensive understanding of Climate Action, and preferred practices/policy issues at national and global levels.
• Strong expertise in disability inclusion and gender mainstreaming.
• Experience of carrying out multi-country reviews and Theory of Change review exercises of an appropriate scale
• Ability to source and manage additional support with relevant services such as data collection, translation, sign language interpretation, and transcription, in the programme countries
• The team lead should have significant experience of managing multi-national teams to conduct evaluations including complex data collection. An experienced team member dedicated to evaluation coordination, administration, and logistics would be highly beneficial.
• Ability to produce clear, concise, and analytical reports in English, with excellent attention to detail, and to meet agreed deadlines.
• Experience of producing learning and summary documents to share findings and recommendations with diverse audiences in clear and engaging ways. Familiarity with accessible design principles would be advantageous.
• Excellent communication skills in written and spoken English. It is essential that some team members are fluent in written and spoken French, in order to facilitate smooth data collection in francophone areas. Knowledge of other local languages in the programme countries is also highly desirable.

For full details of the background to this work, the approach, methodology, timelines, and budget, please see the Terms of Reference