Back Evaluation Consultant (117377)

TERMS AND CONDITIONS

DUTY STATION: Bangkok, Thailand

CONTRACT TYPE: International Regular Consultancy - Level II

DURATION: 11 months (maximum)

WFP offers a competitive compensation package that will be determined by the contract type and selected candidate’s qualifications and experience.Please visit the following websites for detailed information on working with WFP. http://www.wfp.org Click on: “Our work” and “Countries” to learn more about WFP’s operations.

ABOUT WFP

The World Food Programme (WFP) is the leading humanitarian organization saving lives and changing lives, delivering food assistance in emergencies and working with communities to improve nutrition and build resilience.

WFP’s Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific in Bangkok, Thailand oversees operations in 15 countries plus the Pacific, reaching 30 million people with assistance valued at US $3 billion. The portfolio ranges from humanitarian aid in Afghanistan, to school meals in Cambodia and Laos, supporting government social protection schemes in India and Pakistan, climate change adaptation in Nepal and Sri Lanka, nutrition for mothers and children in Bangladesh and Timor Leste, to emergency preparedness in Indonesia and the Pacific.

ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXT

As a major part of WFP’s accountability framework, evaluations assess the performance and results of WFP’s policies, strategies, programmes, and activities for accountability and learning to inform future direction. In line with WFP Evaluation Policy (2016-2021) and Corporate Evaluation Strategy, the Regional Evaluation Strategy for Asia and the Pacific (2018-2021) aims to strengthen WFP’s contribution to ending global hunger by embedding evaluation into the core of its culture, ensuring evidence-based decision making in all its work.

The newly established Regional Evaluation Unit in RBB also seeks to support around the roll-out of the recently approved Regional Evaluation Strategy for Asia and the Pacific (2018-2021) and of the other workstreams established by the corporate evaluation strategy. Moreover, the recent IRM approach has substantially augmented the needs for mainstreaming evaluations into WFP project design and planning.

JOB PURPOSE

To design and manage programmes of moderate size or complexity that effectively meet food assistance needs, or contribute to policy formulation and/or provide technical advice or oversight on programme strategy and implementation.

Sharing of evidence generated by WFP’s operations is becoming more and more important. In the era of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), WFP is asked to provide evidence on the progress towards achieving SDG 2 and 17, and its contribution towards other SDGs. WFP’s Strategic Plan 2017-2021, Country Strategic Reviews and Country Strategic Plans provide a solid foundation for building a stronger evidence base and demonstrate results. In view of WFP’s strategic shift from implementer to enabler, it will become increasingly important for WFP to share its evidence and information analytics systems with national, UN and NGO partners and to strengthen partner capacities in data collection and analysis on food security and nutrition-related indicators.

During the RBB Regional Strategy Meeting held in August 2018 in Bangkok, Country Offices sought support from the Regional Bureau with generating an evidence base on food security and nutrition in RBB countries to measure progress towards zero hunger. To make evidence a game changer for WFP’s operations, the Bureau was requested to cover a range of activities, from guidance on analytical processes along the evidence value chain to technical support on how to define impact pathways and rationalize indicators. The Bureau was also encouraged to guide and support Country Offices’ partnerships with research institutions and to facilitate knowledge sharing on innovations, lessons learned and good practices among WFP country offices, but also among governments in the context of South-South and triangular cooperation.

Against this background, the Programme and Evaluation Units of RBB conducted a cross-functional workshop on evidence generation and sharing designed for VAM, monitoring, evaluation and reports officers from Country Offices and RBB in November 2019. The workshop aimed to strengthen synergies and cooperation between the involved functions and offices. In addition, RBB’s cross-functional ToC and Evidence Generation missions to Country Offices were conducted to help strengthen the evidence base and streamline generated data in those programmes.

One of the main lessons learned from the exercises, but also from RBB Programme and Evaluation teams’ assessment of Country Office capacities in CSP planning and evidence generation, was that there is a need for CSP-level and Activity-level Theory of Changes to serve as a basis for improving WFP’s evidence base on food security and nutrition. More specifically, a Theory of Change and Evidence Generation exercises help i) enhance Programme evaluability; ii) determine how implemented activities are leading to Country Office specific as well as WFP’s strategic objectives, iii) determine how Country Offices can answer their most urging questions through regular monitoring practices, the mandatory mid-term reviews, decentralized and centralized evaluations, and special studies and research, iv) determine where data gaps are and evidence generation need to be strengthened and v) ensure adequate and streamlined data collection and use.

KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES (not all-inclusive)

Under the direct supervision of the Regional Evaluation Officer (REO), the incumbent professional will support the operationalization of the Regional Evaluation Strategy for Asia and the Pacific (2018-2021) approved in June 2018 and support Country Offices (COs) in the Asia and the Pacific region on evaluation-related matters.

More specifically, the Evaluation and Evidence Generation Consultant will be expected to contribute to the following activities: (1) Evaluation Planning and Evidence Generation; (2) CO Technical Support on Evaluations, (3) Staff and Partners’ Capacity Development and Learning as further detailed below.

Responsibilities

Evaluation Planning and Evidence Generation

1. Ensure that the findings and recommendations of Country Strategic Plan Evaluation (CSPE) are well incorporated into the new CSP designs
2. Support Country Offices in evidence generation, including evaluability assessment, developing evaluation subject and questions, developing evaluation designs and methodologies, and indicators and other tools to generate evidence
3. Act as a focal point for evaluation in the RBB evidence workstream group (Programme, Monitoring, VAM, Evaluation), coordinating all related activities such as the development of the “evidence support package” , cross-functional evidence workshop and other evidence-related initiatives

CO Technical Support on Evaluations

1. Support and advise Country Offices in scoping, designing and managing meaningful decentralized evaluations (DEs) remotely or through missions as described in Decentralized Evaluation Quality Assurance System (DEQAS)
2. Support Country Offices in managing the corporate evaluations (CSPE, thematic and impact evaluations etc.) and using the findings and recommendations
3. Support Country Offices in disseminating lessons learned, recommendations and knowledge derived from programmatic evidence from the evaluations
4. Keep corporate information management systems related to DEs (MIS, Regional Evaluation Plan, DE Library, other matrices) updated

Staff and Partners’ Capacity Development and Learning

1. Identify capacity building related needs in the region and help addressing them through various forms of training, in-country missions, coaching, mentoring, etc.
2. In collaboration with the Monitoring Unit, organize and facilitate regular M&E webinars for Country Office M&E Officers to build their evaluation capacity and share lessons learned from the region
3. Act as learning focal point for the Evaluation Learning Group in the RBB region

Deliverables

1. Findings and recommendations of CSPEs are well incorporated into the new CSP designs
2. Evidence generation exercises have been conducted for new CSPs and requested countries
3. Quality evaluations have been produced and used by WFP Offices and stakeholders to generate knowledge
4. Contributed to staff and partners’ evaluation capacity building and organizational learning culture.

STANDARD MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS

Education

• Master or Advanced University degree in one of the following fields: social sciences, statistics, development economics, performance management, monitoring and evaluation; or First University degree with additional years of relevant work experience and/or training/courses.

Experience

• Minimum five years of relevant professional experience in evaluation in development and/or humanitarian international cooperation, of which minimum of three years should be field experience, including strong experience using a variety of quantitative and qualitative analytical tools & methods.
• UN experience working in the area of Evaluation and Learning preferred.

Knowledge and Skills

• Broad knowledge of diverse planning, monitoring and evaluation practices, concepts, and principles, particularly Theory of Change (ToC) and evaluability
• Has knowledge of and ability to develop high-quality monitoring and evaluation plans with focus on evaluation questions. Has knowledge of a range of evaluation designs, methods, data collection and analysis methods seeking advice where appropriate
• Broad knowledge, skills and experiences of evaluation methodologies, designs, approaches and methods
• Knowledge and practical experiences of applying gender responsive evaluation
• Knowledge and experiences of facilitating evaluation training
• Experience of coaching staff and partners on evaluation
• Has strong analytical and thinking skills
• Has strong understanding and skills of developing organisational learning and knowledge management

Communication

• Demonstrates excellent communication and interpersonal skills
• Strong client orientation
• Intellectual curiosity
• Proactive problem-solver

Ethics

• Strong understanding and practices and sensitivity of gender and social vulnerabilities
• Understands the specific implications of ethics in evaluation and social research activities and is able to consistently ensure that appropriate actions are taken to safeguard ethics
• Demonstrates ethical behavior at all times and communicates WFP’s expectation that all WFP personnel act ethically in furtherance of the ideals of the UN and WFP’s mission

Language

Fluency in English in writing and oral communication. Intermediate knowledge of another official UN languages.