Back Midterm Evaluation Study Partners for Justice Project

Search for Common Ground

Search for Common Ground (Search) is an international conflict transformation NGO that aims to transform the way individuals, groups, governments, and companies deal with conflict, away from adversarial approaches and towards collaborative solutions. Headquartered in Washington DC, USA, and Brussels, Belgium, with 52 field offices in over 30 countries. Search designs and implements multifaceted, culturally appropriate, and conflict-sensitive programmes using a diverse range of tools, including media and training, to promote dialogue, increase knowledge and determine a positive shift in behaviors.

The Project

Despite the various efforts made in Lebanon to achieve gender equality and end violence against women and girls (VAWG), the situation remains troubling. In 2021, Lebanon ranked 132th out of 156 countries in the world on the World Economic Forum’s global gender gap index and ranked 16h among the 19 MENA countries. Patriarchal social structures and practices limit women’s access to economic resources and to political and leadership positions, while reinforcing gender-based violence in public policy.

Theory of Change: *IF* men and boys are provided with a safe platform where they can deconstruct and change their own attitudes around the socially built norms of masculinity that push men and boys to play the role of “protector” and “controller” of women and girls in the public and private space, AND they understand and embrace the role men and boys can play to contribute to shifting communities’ attitudes toward the permissibility of violence against women and girls, THEN they will become women’s and girls’ allies, model positive behaviors, ultimately contributing to changing negative social norms around violence against women and girls in Lebanon.

The Partners for Justice project’s overall objective is to reduce violence against women and girls in Lebanon. Search and ABAAD-Resource Center for Gender Equality (ABAAD) have built on their expertise and experiences to raise awareness on gender equality and equitabel masculinities and shape attitudes of men, women, boys and girls around VAWG, and to create opportunities for men and boys to become allies in ending violence against women. This has been supported by the following specific objectives:

• SO.1 Engage men and boys to positively work with women and girls to become allies and champions of gender equality and prevention of violence against women and girls;
• ER 1.1.: Youth-led organizations are more aware of issues and assumptions related to the social constructions of masculinities and violence against women and girls;
• ER 1.2: Youth-led organizations show increased capacity to reflect on masculine identities and gender equality in their communities.
• SO.2 Foster a change in communities’ perceptions and attitudes in target areas around violence against women and girls and all of the assumptions related to it.
• ER 2.1: Media stakeholders and youth-led organizations are better able to address negative social dynamics that justify violence against women and girls and/or perpetuate victim blaming; and
• ER 2.2: Target communities and audience, especially male members, change attitudes towards the permissibility or justification of violence against women and girls.

The first part of this project is focusing on working with youth organizations and their representatives by providing them with knowledge and building their capacities on gender equality and positive and equitable masculinities as well as on participatory and youth-led research ethics, methodologies and approaches. With these activities being done, the youth leaders will demonstrate an increase in their skills on exploring and analyzing narratives of masculinities in the contextual settings where the youth organizations are working, and will support providing men and boys with a safe space to reflect on their own behaviors. Of note, selected representatives from youth organizations already carried out research in the target geographies to identify local-level barriers to positive and equitable masculinities and gender equality as well as to identify characteristics of alternative masculinities the project seeks to encourage.

In the second part of the project, Search and ABAAD selected media professionals to participate in a workshop on media for social change, along with the youth representatives. Afterwards, the youth-led research on gender and masculinities (completed under SO1), the series of working sessions with youth and media professionals, and the knowledge sharing opportunities will feed into the design of a national awareness and advocacy media campaign that is relevant to Lebanon rural and urban contexts. This campaign will 1) aim to enhance national and regional knowledge and understanding on masculinities and VAWG through a youth-led approach; 2) influence policy and decision-making processes by targeting key influencers; 3) create a momentum for local and international organizations to support youth in their cutting-edge research findings and research-informed campaign and 4) inform and support future work on engaging men and boys in preventing VAWG drawn from empirical research and contextualized definitions and understandings of masculinities.

Please click here the full terms of reference

Requirements of Consultant(s)

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Education:

• Lead consultant(s) must have at least a Master’s degree (PhD preferable) in research methods and/or evaluations, development, conflict or peacebuilding, M&E or any related social sciences.

Skills and experience:

The following skills and experience are expected by Search for our evaluator for this project:

• Excellent proficiency in English and Arabic - written (including professional English reporting) and spoken;
• More than five years of experience in programme/project evaluation, including collecting data in interviews, surveys and focus groups and analysis;
• Experience in conflict analysis, working with justice, governmental and gender-related topics;
• Experience in doing evaluations for peacebuilding and democracy, human rights and governance programmes in MENA region;
• Experience working with international organizations;
• Experience conducting quantitative surveys and analysis;
• Monitoring and Evaluation methods and data collection skills; and
• Familiarity and experience with contextual challenges in the geographic location(s) where the study will take place.

13. Selection Criteria

Consultant proposals will be selected for:

1. Relevance of proposed methodology to the goal, objectives, and research questions for the project.
2. Quality of proposed methods, conflict sensitivity approaches, and quality control measures.
3. Qualifications of the candidate(s).
4. The proposed budget in relation to the proposed methodology, deliverables and team.
5. Timeline for proposed activities.