Back Consultant- Third Party Monitoring

Project/Consultancy Title: “Building Agricultural Resilience and Providing Food Assistance in Northeast Syria”

Project Location(s): Northeast Syria (Al Hassakeh, Ar Raqqa, Der e Zor governorates)

Background:

Mercy Corps has been working in Northeast Syria since 2014 delivering assistance and support both before and during the ongoing civil war. We are supporting those affected by the conflict in both Syria and neighboring countries by providing emergency assistance to meet basic food/non-food needs, WASH needs, creating safe spaces for youth, increasing economic opportunities and more. In 2018, we provided assistance to an estimated 0.4 million people in Northeast Syria.

Purpose / Project Description:

Mercy Corps is launching a large-scale, multisector project to respond to the chronic food needs of an estimated 50,420 conflict-affected individuals in Northeast Syria (NES), specifically in Al-Hasakeh, Ar-Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor governorates. The purpose of this work is to support vulnerable, crisis-affected communities in NES to ensure that they are food secure and have increased agricultural production through improved access to quality agriculture inputs and services.

The primary goal of the proposed project is “Vulnerable, crisis affected communities in NES are food secure and have improved access to quality agricultural production and market infrastructure”. The project has 4 key outcomes as defined below:

1. Crisis affected communities (IDPs, returnees) in targeted areas have improved access to adequate food and non-food items through MPCA
2. Vulnerable and food insecure crises affected households in targeted areas, meet their immediate basic food needs
3. Vulnerable and food insecure crises affected farming households in targeted areas, are able to rebuild their livelihoods
4. Humanitarian organizations are effectively coordinating and sharing the information with each other.

During the implementation of this project, Mercy Corps is seeking a Third Party Monitoring (TPM) firm to undertake the monitoring activities in all targeted areas (particularly those areas where MC don’t have direct access) to support Mercy Corps PaQ department to enhance transparency, efficiency, effectiveness and quality of programming.

Consultant Objectives:

TPM will be responsible to conduct monitoring activities mentioned above mainly in the areas where Mercy Corps team don’t have direct access.

Consultant Activities:

The TPM service provider will perform monitoring services on behalf of Mercy Corps in NES. Main monitoring activities will include the following activities with the exception of any additional data collection or assessment which will be required as per the contextual changes in working areas.

1. Program Participant’s verification: TPM will be responsible to verify the program participants as per MC’s verification process using mercy corps verification template. An estimated number of HHs which needs to be verified are 3600 HH for Multipurpose cash assistance, 4400 HHs for Regular food assistance and 1400 HHs for winter crops and 1400 HHs for livestock support.
2. Distribution monitoring: Where MC does not have direct access, the TPM will attend 100% distributions conducted by MC implementing partners. A distribution monitoring checklist needs to be filled by TPM staff per distribution and 8 to 10 participant’s satisfaction surveys needs to be conducted per distribution using Mercy Corps standard templates.
3. Post Distribution Monitoring surveys: Each distribution needs to be followed with a sample based survey after 15 days of distribution. TPM will conduct the PDM surveys and will provide the PDM reports from partner led areas of NES. PDM surveys will observe and solicit feedback from participants using agreed PDM questionnaire, which could include an assessment of quality / safety / appropriateness of the intervention depending on the sector.
4. Event/training monitoring: TPM staff will attend and monitor the training events in farmer field schools, community health workers and any other training event in working location to verify that the event/training takes place and to observe process and behaviour of staff based on agreed observation/quality checklist and interview a few participants to solicit feedback. The TPM will also be expected to collect case-based interviews when possible with training participants to elicit qualitative feedback.
5. Market assessments/Price Verification: TPM will collect market price data on a monthly basis and will perform market assessments as necessary using mercy corps templates.
6. Value-Chain assessment: local or sub-national assessment of a particular livelihood value chain, including situational assessment of market system actors.
7. Baseline/Endline data collection: TPM will be responsible to collect the endline data collection for all partner’s led areas under all components of the project.
8. Post-harvest survey: TPM will collect the data for post-harvest survey for summer and winter crops under the FFP project in partner’s led areas.
9. Complaint fact-finding:** Mercy Corps may engage TPM to collect additional information pertaining to feedback from partner led areas. This may include informant interviews, customised PDM data collection, KIIs, FGDs of interviews of local council members.

To conduct the above monitoring activities, TPM will be responsible to follow the process below:

1. Tools Development & Refinement: sometimes TPM will be requested to develop/refine the tools, translate and train the field team (following confirmation from Mercy Corps). Mercy Corps will provide its standard tools and/or training to TPM and/or field team.
2. Sampling: TPM will follow the Mercy Corps defined sampling methods and sample for a particular monitoring service.
3. Training & Management of Primary Data Collection: Where TPM enumerators are conducting primary data collection, the TPM is responsible for adequate training, management and quality assurance of the exercise. Support on Mercy Corps minimum data protection standards and requirements will be made available.
4. Reporting & Dissemination: TPM will be responsible to provide reports for verification, distribution monitoring, post distribution monitoring, market surveys and complaint investigation however Mercy corps would need data sets for all activities including, post-harvest surveys, baseline/endline surveys and market assessments.

5. Geographic coverage:

The TPM must have physical access and on ground staff to perform monitoring activities in the following locations.

GOVERNORATE: Al-Hasakeh, Ar-Raqqa, Deir ez-Zor

DISTRICT: Al-Hasakeh, Ar-Raqqa, Ath-Thawra, Tel Abiad, Deir ez-Zor

SUB-DISTRICT: Shadadah, Areeshah, Till Timer, Ar-Raqqa, Karama, Jurneyyah, Tel Abiad, Ein Issa, Sur

TPM needs to propose the estimated budget for at least 4 field monitors for each district and 1 field supervisor per district.

Consultant Deliverables:

The TPM will be responsible to submit the following reports:

● Verification report for each verification exercise

● Distribution monitoring checklist filled for each distribution monitoring event

● Brief field reports for all primary data collection activities, documenting noteworthy events

● Data set and report for beneficiary satisfaction survey at distribution.

● Data set and summary reports for all PDM surveys on a monthly basis (8 PDM reports)

● Datasets for PHS and baseline/end line surveys (2 PHS reports)

● Dataset and 1-page summary dashboards for all market assessment and price surveys (8 Monthly market price survey comparison reports)

● Work plan will be agreed based on the locations and ongoing activities once the TPM will be taken on board.

Mercy Corps PaQ team will provide full orientation about the MC monitoring tools, processes, interventions and key monitoring activities to TPM staff. An induction meeting will be planned with the Key staff of TPM to agree on the requirement and minimum reporting frequencies.

Timeframe / Schedule:

The successful tender will be contracted for 10 months commencing February with services provided as per the agreement until November 2020. The successful firm will be engaged in monitoring of all ongoing activities as per the agreed work plan and monthly review meetings will be conducted with TPM by program and PaQ.

The Consultant will report to:

The TPM will work under the direct supervision of Performance and Quality Manager- NES

The Consultant will work closely with:

The TPM will work closely with PAQ director, humanitarian director NES, all PMs, Area Director of Programs, Area Director.

Required Experience & Skills:

1. Experience with theoretical and practical background and experience in providing TPM.
2. Proven track record of high-quality monitoring services to humanitarian & emergency response and development programming organizations.
3. Experience with data management including the ability to structure and collate data sets for ease of analysis.
4. Details regarding locations of access within Syria (Physical existence of team in NES would be preferred)
5. Evidence of policies covering staff due diligence, data protection, consent, gender sensitivity or quality assurance in MEL activities
6. Staff fluency in spoken and written English, Arabic and/or Kurdish. (Detailed CVs needs to be attached)
7. Proposed budget. The budget should be itemized by person days and costs against the proposed timeline, with line items for international and local travel, accommodation of data collection team, resources, travel/logistics and others as relevant
8. Work plan would be not needed at this stage and it will be finalized during the induction phase.

Payment:

• Payment will be done in monthly basis upon receiving the month report as defined in SOW.

• Service completion report from PaQ manger stating satisfactory report on monthly basis.

How To Apply:

Send the email to tenders@mercycorps.org requesting tender package, same email id to submit the bids

Time Line:

Opening date: January 06, 2020

Closing date: January 17, 2020