Background

UN Women is the United Nations organization dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women, grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations.

A global champion for women and girls, UN Women was established to accelerate progress on fulfilling their needs, works for the elimination of discrimination against women and girls; the empowerment of women; and the achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security.

Placing women’s rights at the center of all its efforts, the UN Women leads and coordinates United Nations system efforts to ensure that commitments on gender equality and gender mainstreaming translate into action throughout the world.

It provides strong and coherent leadership in support of Member States’ priorities and efforts, building effective partnerships with civil society and other relevant actors.

UN Women Sierra Leone is seeking the service of an international consultant to commission the evaluation of the IRISH Aid projects: 1) The Protection and Empowerment of Women for Equality, Resilience and Development (POWERED) from July 2021 – November 2022 and 3) the Promotion of Women Empowerment & Rights in Sierra Leone (POWER SALONE) Project August 2022 – September 2024.

The evaluation will follow the OECD/DAC criteria for evaluations namely: relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact, and sustainability.

The evaluation will further document lesions learnt and best practices for replicability of project’s intervention as well as challenges that arose from project implementation.

Duties and Responsibilities

The international consultant will be reporting to the Head of Office and will be supported by the Programme Specialist (EVAW) for contract management and contract payment. The Monitoring and Evaluation officer as the evaluation manager for this assignment will validate all deliverables

The scope is to conduct evaluation for the IRISH AID funded projects to assess the performance of the projects using OECD/DAC criteria.

Below are the specific deliverables:

Task 1: Inception phase: Evaluability assessment, development of survey methodology, tools, sampling plan, workplan, and incorporation of feedback on draft inception report

Task 2: Conduct field data collection including Conduct preliminary desk review of relevant documents and existing data and primary data collection.

Task 3: Data Analysis, synthesis, Interpretation, draft report, and Knowledge transition materials: Focusing on data analysis, synthesizing the data, interpretation of findings and drafting of an evaluation report and knowledge transition materials using a standard template.

Task 4: Final Evaluation Report and knowledge transition materials: A final evaluation report that addressed the comments and feedbacks from evaluation stakeholders (EMG, ERG) and Donor including a concise Executive Summary and knowledge transition materials will be produced and circulated internally including PPT, Executive summary.

Task 5: Submission to UN Women for EMG validation and approval.

Consultant will submit the final report for validation by the EMG and further disseminate to stakeholders during a webinar and stakeholder engagement session.

This is a home-based consultancy.

The consultant is required to work 13 full days in UN Women office and 10 days on field work across the 7 operational districts.

Competencies

Core Values:

• Respect for Diversity
• Integrity
• Professionalism

Core Competencies:

• Awareness and Sensitivity Regarding Gender Issues
• Accountability
• Creative Problem Solving
• Effective Communication
• Inclusive Collaboration
• Stakeholder Engagement
• Leading by Example

Please visit this link for more information on UN Women’s Core Values and Competencies:

https://www.unwomen.org/en/about-us/employment/application-process#_Values

FUNCTIONAL COMPETENCIES:

• Strong knowledge of gender equality and women’s rights issues, political science, law, and development.
• Demonstrated ability to interact effectively with government representatives of Member States as well as CSO representative.
• Proven networking skills, and ability.
• Strong writing and communication skills.
• Knowledge and understanding of UN system and familiarity with inter-governmental processes.
• Strong IT skills, including databases, extranet and office software packages.
• Strong analytical and interpersonal skills

Required Skills and Experience

Education and Certification:

• Master’s degree in social science, research, gender, international development, or other relevant field; PhD is an advantage.

Experience:

• Minimum 7 years of experience in conducting endline / baseline surveys and evaluation of international development projects.
• Minimum 5 years of work experience evaluating gender and/or VAW and related development projects is a distinct advantage.
• Extensive experience in designing and conducting community surveys, particularly on prevention issues.
• Good knowledge of best practices and indicators to measure positive changes relevant to decreasing VAW, promoting gender equality, and advancing women’s empowerment.
• Good understanding of ethical considerations and safety guidelines in researching VAW and how to adhere to these in practice during the survey design and administration.

Languages:

Fluency in English is required

• Personal CV or P11 (P11 can be downloaded from: https://www.unwomen.org/sites/default/files/Headquarters/Attachments/Sections/About%20Us/Employment/UN-Women-P11-Personal-History-Form.doc )
• A cover letter (maximum length: 1 page)