The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) - For 70 years, UNICEF has been working on the ground in 190 countries and territories to promote children's survival, protection and development. The world's largest provider of vaccines for developing countries, UNICEF supports child health and nutrition, good water and sanitation, quality basic education for all boys and girls, and the protection of children from violence, exploitation, and AIDS. UNICEF is funded entirely by the voluntary contributions of individuals, businesses, foundations and governments.

If you are a committed, creative professional and are passionate about making a lasting difference for children, the world's leading children's rights organization would like to hear from you.

POSITION : National Team Member - National Consultant (NOC Level)

Duration: 15 Days

Objectives
The objectives of this independent assessment are two fold:

• To assess the effectiveness, relevance, coverage, efficiency, timeliness, coordination, and gender and equity of UNICEF's humanitarian response to date.
• To use findings of this AI to propose corrective measures, including improving current responses and scale up.

Methodology and Technical Approach
As an independent assessment focused on facilitating rapid learning for improvement, it is essential that it will follow a participatory, interactive approach with major stakeholders in order to strengthen its validity, promote feedback and ensure ownership, buy-in and utilization of the results. An approach that examines and cross-references various available sources, including triangulation to reach conclusions and validate findings will be employed, and may include and not be limited to the following:

• Systematic review of existing documents for understanding of the planning and response and the context, and including desk review of key documentary evidence sources using document review tools, as necessary;
• Systematic secondary analysis of programme data/statistics (including existing national monitoring outputs, CO section collated information and Humanitarian Performance Monitoring outputs);
• In situ direct-observations (e.g., sites, service delivery points);
• Key informant interviews (by phones and face to face) and focus group discussions; interviews will not only concern in country selected key informants, but also HQ and RO level. Thus, in addition to visits in countries, another visit will also take place collect data through key informants, existing data analysis, as well as delivering a debriefing meeting after the data collection and analysis at all levels is completed.
• Rapid data collection among beneficiaries (i.e., semi-structured interviews and/or focus group discussions among purposively sampled subset of the affected population) or other methods, as appropriate (where security restrictions permit).

Standard relevant information sources that should be drawn upon include:

• Rapid assessments / needs assessments reports
• Humanitarian Situation Reports (Sitreps)
• Maps, Dashboards
• Humanitarian Needs Overview (HNO) documents
• Humanitarian Response Plans (HRPs)
• CO Response Plans
• Internal REMT documentation (Note for the Record, etc.)
• Funding information
• HR data (OSM)
• Supply data
• Various reports: e.g. trip reports, ETF meeting reports, ORS, cluster reports 2015

It is expected that 10 days will be spent in each country. Data analysis should go concurrently with the data collection, in such a way that a summary debriefing is provided to each of the four country offices at the end the data collection in each country.

A larger regional debrief will take place following the completion of field visits to each of the four countries, in which preliminary findings and recommendations will be shared across countries as well as regional office and HQ to foster cross-fertilization and further validation and consensus building.

During field visit, any critical issues that may require immediate attention will be communicated to the RO and the NCO along with the assessment management steering committee to take the necessary action, and priority action should be taken on these by the respective NCO, WCARO or HQ.

Activities, Tasks, Outputs and Deliverables
As per the ToR for this exercise, the IA National Team Member will be an integral part of the IA Team and, under the supervision of the IA Team Leader, will be responsible for carrying out following tasks (and corresponding outputs) according to the schedule included in the project timetable:

• Output 1: Complete IA preparatory work prior to the in-country arrival of the other two international team members. This task will need to be carried out according to the instructions provided by the IA Team Leader and the CO focal point responsible for the IA.
• Output 2: Support the team in organizing, scheduling and conducting interviews, direct observations, and other data collection activities in country, as outlined in the inception report, both remotely and on site in each of the country offices. This task will also include in-depth review of existing documents related to the local humanitarian crisis, secondary analysis of relevant program data/statistics, and identification of new contextually relevant information; all in line with evaluation quality and ethical standards
• Output 3: Support summary debriefing to be held with senior management and technical colleagues at CO: the event, scheduled at the end of the in-country field data collection, will aim to outline preliminary findings from the fieldwork, including any management-relevant recommendations for immediate action
• Output 4: Contribute to the analysis of both primary data collected during the field work and secondary data identified under Output 2, as well as to the draft report containing an executive summary of less than 2,000 words and a main text of less than 10,000 words

ROMP Reference, Budget and Remuneration:

• The payment schedule indicated in the TOR will be contingent upon successful and timely completion of each of the above outputs, as determined by the IA Management Steering Committee.

Qualifications and Specialized Knowledge/Experience Required
Required qualifications and experience are as follows:

• Master's or Advanced Degree in related subject area (Public Health, Social Services, Sociology, etc.);
• At least 5 years' experience progressively responsible experience, including evaluative and analytical work on humanitarian performance at an organization- or interagency-level for an organization comparable to UNICEF;
• Strong knowledge of the local humanitarian context, including institutions, people and relevant local research publications;
• Strong knowledge of results-based management and monitoring concepts;
• Very good interviewing and focus group discussion facilitation skills in emergency settings;
• Strong knowledge of current evaluative and analytical literature on the humanitarian sector in general;
• Excellent English and French speaking and writing skills; Desirable qualifications include:
• Strong knowledge of gender issues and analysis in humanitarian contexts
• Strong quantitative data analysis skills
• Experience with the use of mobiles and GPS for research/evaluation purposes
• Experience with qualitative data analysis software

Conditions of Work

• UNICEF recourse in case of unsatisfactory performance: Payment will only be made for work satisfactorily completed and accepted by UNICEF.