National Evaluation Consultant Philippines: Safe and Fair mid-term evaluation

Philippines

Organization: UNWOMEN - United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women
Location: Philippines
Grade: Consultancy - International Consultant - Internationally recruited Contractors Agreement
Occupational Groups:
- Operations and Administrations
- Women's Empowerment and Gender Mainstreaming
- Monitoring and Evaluation
Closing Date: Closed

Background

Background and Purpose of Evaluation

Safe and Fair: Realizing women migrant workers’ rights and opportunities in the ASEAN region (2018-2022) is part of the multi-year EU-UN Spotlight Initiative to Eliminate Violence against Women and Girls. Safe and Fair is implemented by the ILO and UN Women, in collaboration with UNODC, with a total budget of Euro 25.5 million.

Safe and Fair delivers technical assistance and support with the overall objective of making labour migration safe and fair for all women in the ASEAN region. Safe and Fair engages with ASEAN Member States’ government authorities; ASEAN institutions; workers’ organizations; employers and recruitment agencies; civil society organizations; community-based organizations; families and communities; research institutions and academia, media networks, youth, and the general public and supports programming in Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Viet Nam.

Programme Background

Roughly half of the approximately 10 million migrants in the ASEAN region are women. Women’s labour migration is an important aspect of labour mobility in the region and can be a crucial source of empowerment for women with women migrant workers making vital social and economic contributions to their communities and countries of origin and destination. However, the positive experiences and contributions of women migrant workers can only be fully ensured if their labour and human rights are fully protected.

Whether migrating through regular or irregular channels, women migrant workers face a risk of violence, trafficking and abuse from intermediaries and employers, as well as from partners and others, due to intersecting vulnerabilities and discriminative factors that compound each other, such as poverty, gender, ethnicity, immigration status, education and limited access to information.

Additionally, for women migrant workers survivors of violence, there are many barriers to access essential services such as health care, legal, justice, police and social services, even when they are legally working in the country.

Violence against women migrant workers is part of the broader spectrum of violence against women,and the cultural and gendered norms that drive it. Those cultural and gendered norms – including the use of gender specific bans – impact the migration experiences of women, including their decision to migrate and the opportunities available to them, restricting their ability to access regular migration into skilled, safe and well-paid employment. Migrant women commonly work in agriculture,

manufacturing, services and construction, often in lower paid, informal employment with few if any labour protections. They are also significantly over-represented in domestic work.

Safe and Fair programme

Given the above, there was seen a need for a programme which addresses both the need for stronger gender-responsive migration governance in order to increase better and regular migration opportunities for women into protected labour sectors; and the need for improved information and enhanced coordinated quality services for women throughout the migration cycle to prevent and respond to VAW and trafficking. This programme was designed to promote gender-responsive labour migration laws, policies, practices and services, and support the organization, leadership, empowerment of women migrant workers. It aims to address the legal, policy and institutional gaps and barriers faced by women migrant workers, as well as enhance their access to fair and safe migration by addressing exploitation, forced labour and trafficking. To address violence against women migrant workers, the programme aims to strengthen peer networking, mobilize communities, enhance access to information on available services and support front-liners to provide coordinated services. Addressing the root cause of violence- gender inequality, gender stereotypical knowledge and attitudes, the programme aims at changing these. Collection of data and evidence – starting from labour migration flows to VAW data is fundamental to achieving programme results.

Mid-term Evaluation objectives

The ILO and UN Women are currently undertaking an independent evaluation of the Safe and Fair project. The HLE is led by a two-member team of independent international evaluators. It is managed by an ILO Senior Evaluation Officer and the UN Women Regional Evaluation Specialist and aims:

to assess the relevance of the Safe and Fair Programme within the ASEAN and COVID-19 context and the extent to which the model responded to the priorities and needs of women migrating for labour;
to assess the coherence of the Safe and Fair Programme with respect to the UN system efforts and joint approach;
to identify effective strategies, barriers and challenges to progress towards the specific objectives;
to determine the extent to which the Programme is cost-effective and was implemented in the most efficient manner including the role of the management and coordination mechanisms in supporting and guiding the programme management team
to assess the extent to which the Safe and Fair implemented a human rights and gender responsive approach in the design and implementation.
to propose lessons learned and recommendations for the subsequent phase of Safe and Fair.

Duties and Responsibilities

Key tasks

Participate in evaluation management meetings
In coordination with the international evaluation team, project management and country offices, schedule (remote) interviews and focus group discussions, mostly within the target country, but also in other countries in ASEAN, when needed. The contact information of constituents/stakeholders/partners to be interviewed will be made available by the project management and Country Offices.
Undertake interviews/FGDs using the interview tool provided by the international evaluators. Make sure to follow ethical protocols during data collection, as outlined by the international evaluators. Share the notes of the interviews with the international evaluation team
Provide translation during interviews conducted by the international evaluation team when requested;
Conduct/Support a total of 30/40 interviews/FGDs

Deliverables and schedule for payment

The National Evaluation Consultant is expected to support data collection for the mid-term evaluation of the Safe and Fair Programme, especially a case study on quality service provision to women migrant workers. The situation of COVID-19 will need to be assessed to determine whether the work of the consultant will be primarily home-based and will thus need to complete data collection via online communication platforms or whether the consultant can make a field trip to meet with rights holders following health and safety guidelines of the WHO / UNCT. Payment will be made in one instalment upon satisfactory receipt and approval of the following deliverables:

Deliverables

Activities

Proposed deadline for payment

Data collection and analysis

Schedule (remote) interviews and focus group discussions, mostly within the target country, but also in other countries in ASEAN, when needed.
Translate the interview tool provided by the international evaluators in Tagalog. Undertake interviews/FGDs. Share the notes of the interviews with the international evaluation team
Provide translation during interviews conducted by the international evaluation team when requested;
Conduct/Support a total of 30/40 interviews/FGDs, following ethical protocols, as outlined by the international evaluators. Submit all interview notes to the team leader in English.
Provide a briefing on the visit/interviews through online meeting.

Deliverable: Translated interview tool; finalized schedule of interviews/FGDs; Validated interview notes; Recording of the online briefing on the interviews/FGDs conducted/supported.

April 15th 2021

All data collected by the National evaluation consultant must be submitted to the international evaluation team and EVAW programme specialist in Word format and is the property of UN Women. Proper storage of data is essential for ensuring confidentiality and should be in line with UN Women Policy on data management and security. The evaluation report will also need to follow the United Nations Editorial Manual, which can be found here. The Evaluation Manager (Regional Evaluation Specialist) and peer reviewers will quality assure the evaluation report against UN Women Evaluation Report Quality Assurance (See Annex 1). All products submitted by the consultant are subject to quality review. All data collected through the evaluation is property of UN Women.

Ethical code of conduct

UN Women has developed a UN Women Evaluation Consultants Agreement Form for evaluators that must be signed as part of the contracting process, which is based on the UNEG Ethical Guidelines and Code of Conduct. These documents will be annexed to the contract. The evaluation’s value added is its impartial and systematic assessment of the programme or intervention. As with the other stages of the evaluation, involvement of stakeholders should not interfere with the impartiality of the evaluation. Additionally, if the evaluator(s) identify issues of wrongdoing, fraud or other unethical conduct, UN Women procedures must be followed and confidentiality be maintained.

Competencies

Key competencies

Sound understanding of the ILO’s and UN Women’s respective mandates.
Strong understanding of the national developmental context including
Proven skill in qualitative and quantitative data collection, especially for the purpose of evaluations
Strong writing skill in English is required.

Core Values

Respect for Diversity
Integrity
Professionalism

Required Skills and Experience

Consultant skill requirements

UN Women is seeking to appoint one National Evaluation Consultant with thematic experience in ending violence against women and labour migration to support the conduct of the Safe and Fair programme mid-term evaluation in the Philippines. The National Evaluation Consultant is expected to be able to demonstrate evidence of the following experience and capabilities:

Bachelor’s degree in a field of relevance for the evaluation (Gender, Sociology, Political Science, Anthropology, or other Social Science degree)
Experience working with the UN, ILO, UN Women and in the ASEAN region;
Experience in evaluating VAW and/or labour migration programmes;
At least 3 years’ experience in evaluations or research of policies, strategies, country programmes and organizational effectiveness
Experience applying human rights and gender based approaches to evaluation
Experience conducting country programme evaluations for UN organizations is an asset
Expertise in qualitative and quantitative evaluation methods and an understanding of issues related to validity and reliability;
Proficiency in English and Tagalog ***

Evaluation

Applications will be evaluated based on the cumulative analysis.

Technical Qualification (100 points) weight; [70%]
Financial Proposal (100 points) weight; [30%]

A two-stage procedure is utilised in evaluating the applications, with evaluation of the technical application being completed prior to any price proposal being compared. Only the price proposal of the candidates who passed the minimum technical score of 70% of the obtainable score of 100 points in the technical qualification evaluation will be evaluated.

Submission of application

Interested candidates are encouraged to submit electronic application online through UNDP website with CV and financial proposal in one file or via email to hr.bangkok@unwomen.org no later than 4th March 2021, Midnight New York, USA.

Submission package includes: