Senior Evaluation Consultant

Background

The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) is the United Nations entity dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women. A global champion for women and girls, it was established to accelerate progress on meeting their needs worldwide.[1]

The UN Women Independent Evaluation Service (IES) evaluates the work of UN women to enhance organizational accountability, provide evidence-based information for decision-making and to contribute to learning on gender equality and the empowerment of women.  It is currently undertaking a Country Portfolio Evaluation (CPE) of the UN Women Country Office in Brazil’s Strategic Note for 2017-2021.

[1] UN Women website: http://www.unwomen.org/en/about-us

Under the supervision of the Chief, IES, and in close collaboration with other evaluation team members, the consultant will develop and execute a scoped independent strategic evaluation of UN Women’s policy advocacy work. The main objectives of the evaluation are to evaluate UN Women’s contributions to effective policy advocacy and the effectiveness of UN Women as a policy advocacy organization; evaluate the relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact and sustainability of UN Women’s policy advocacy work; and to make recommendations to strengthen UN Women’s policy advocacy function.

To support the Senior Evaluation Consultant on this assignment, IES will make available a Research Consultant, an IES Evaluation Specialist and an IES Evaluation Analyst for approximately three weeks of scoping and inception report development, three weeks of data collection and analysis and one week of report drafting. These personnel will contribute to background research, data collection, data analysis, report drafting, and other tasks as required. The Chief, IES will be responsible for assigning responsibilities to the Senior Evaluation Consultant and other team members. Independent technical subject matter expertise may be engaged by IES (and funded by IES) if and as needed on the basis of the concept note and inception report and discussion with the Chief, IES.

The evaluation must adhere to the revised UN Women evaluation policy, the IEAS charter, the United Nations Evaluation Group (UNEG) Norms and Standards for Evaluation, and it should apply and incorporate the criteria of UN Women’s Global Evaluation Reports Assessment and Analysis System (GERAAS) standards to the highest degree possible.

Duties and Responsibilities

From the commencement of the contract, the consultant will be responsible for:

1. Finalize a Theory of Change and model of effective advocacy (1 week) based on review of current models, discussions with stakeholders, programming documents and literature review.

Deliverable: A theory of change model and model of effective advocacy with visual representation and narrative descriptionExpected timeframe: Mid-June 2021

1. Drafting of an inception report (3 weeks) based on substantive inception interviews, literature review and desk review of key UN Women documents. The inception report will be reviewed and cleared by the Chief, IES and the Director, IEAS and then presented to an internal and external evaluation reference group for feedback. Relevant feedback will be incorporated into a final inception report.

Deliverable: Written draft inception report (not to exceed 35 pages plus Annexes 50 pages) containing the following minimum major sections: Introduction, Background on UN Women’s policy advocacy work, Stakeholder mapping, Key emerging issues from the inception phase, analytical framework and evaluation matrix, evaluation approach and methodology, oversight and quality assurance, ethical standards, work plan, and annexes, including data collection tools.

Expected timeframe: End-June 2021

1. Data collection and initial discussions on emerging findings (5 weeks)

Deliverables: Qualitative transcripts, clean quantitative datasets, initial results PowerPoint presentationExpected Timeframe: July – September 2021

1. Analysis and drafting of the evaluation report (5 weeks) reviewed and cleared by the Chief, IES and the Director, IEAS and then presented to an internal and external evaluation reference group for feedback.

Deliverable: Draft evaluation report (not to exceed 50 pages and Annexes 50 pages) containing the following minimum major sections: Executive Summary, Background, Evaluation Context, Description of Evaluand, Findings, Lessons Learned and Promising Practices, Conclusions, Recommendations, Annexes

Expected timeframe: October - November 2021

1. Finalization of an evaluation report (1 week) taking into account relevant comments of reference group and final review of Chief IES and Director, IEAS.
   • : Final evaluation report, including all annexes and data

Expected timeframe: Mid-December 2021

Key success factors:

• Discuss emerging evaluation findings with key stakeholders in an independent but open, participatory, and transparent manner. Prepare a clear, concise inception report and final evaluation report that summarizes the results of the assignment.
• Identify, triangulate and report on insightful analysis that highlights key achievements of UN Women and key areas for improvement in the scoped area. The evaluation analysis should help to highlight what works and what does not for learning and accountability purposes.
• Develop specific, implementable, and impactful evaluation recommendations to help influence the performance and learning of UN Women in the scoped area (and beyond, if appropriate).
• Prepare adequate evaluation file papers to support the work done and conclusions reached (and provide copies of these to the evaluation team on conclusion). Address questions from quality assurance review conducted by supervisor, reference group.
• Maintain a positive and productive working relationship with the IES personnel assigned to the assignment as well as with key stakeholders.
• Raise and escalate issues of concern in prompt manner with the Chief, IES so that these may be resolved in a productive manner.
• Adhere to UN Women and IES ethical and data protection guidance and protocols.

Competencies

Functional Competencies:

• Demonstrated ability to conceive, lead and report on independent strategic gender-responsive evaluations in a UN or similar setting.
• Ability to identify good practices and areas for improvement, in particular root causes, in the areas of relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact and sustainability, and provide specific, feasible and helpful recommendations and solutions.
• Ability to produce timely, quality outputs.
• Ability to multi-task and work independently with little supervision.
• Strong interpersonal, negotiation, presentation and communication skills including ability to listen actively and responds effectively.
• Strong resourcefulness, logical thinking and report writing skills.
• Demonstrated ability to use Microsoft office and qualitative and quantitative data analysis software for evaluation.

Required Skills and Experience

Education

• Advanced university degree in Social Sciences, Statistics, Evaluation, Gender Studies, International Development or related field, or a first-level university degree in combination with two additional years of qualifying work experience may be accepted in lieu of an advanced university degree.

Experience

• At least 10years-experience in conducting independent strategic evaluations of organizational programmes and thematic areas using a wide range of approaches and methods including utilization focused, gender and human rights responsive, and mixed methods required.
• At least seven years of experience acting as team leader for complex evaluations and proven ability to manage a diverse evaluation team and stakeholder base required.
• Demonstrated experience evaluating policy advocacy interventions and strong knowledge of policy advocacy models, policy development and policy change processes.
• Srong knowledge and understanding of the UN system, UN reform processes, and UN programming at the country level preferred.
• Strong understanding and experience in the areas of gender equality and women’s empowerment, gender mainstreaming, gender analysis and the related mandates within the UN system, particularly in relation to policy advocacy; experience/knowledge of women’s movements preferred.
• Experience and knowledge on human rights issues, the human rights-based approach to programming and evaluation, human rights analysis and related mandates within the UN system.
• Excellent analytical, facilitation and communications skills and the ability to engaged and negotiate amongst a wide range of stakeholders.

Languages

• Fluency in written and spoken English is required.
• Working level knowledge of French, Spanish, Russian or Arabic languages is an asset.

Payment Plan

A lump sum consultancy fee based on UN Women standard consultancy rates will be paid in three tranches upon satisfactory certification of the following deliverables:

• First tranche to be paid upon completion and acceptance of the inception report (30%),
• Second tranche to be paid upon completion and acceptance of the draft report (50%)
• Third tranche to be paid upon completion and acceptance of the final report (20%)

No travel is expected. All work will be home based.

Application requirement

• Please include a brief cover letter (which can be pasted in front of the CV/P11 form), where the applicant should clearly outline how their experience relates directly to the requirements, particularly highlighting their experience in conducting evaluations around policy advocacy interventions, policy advocacy models, policy development and policy change processes.