The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Nigeria in Abuja is seeking to employ a suitable and qualified candidate for the position below:

POSITION : Consultant Facilitator (Household Economic Strengthening Capacity Assessment)

Objective

• To facilitate Household Economic Strengthening (HES) technical capacity assessment by 4Children’s Implementing Partners through the use of a HES Capacity Assessment Tool (HES-CAT).

Background
In January 2016, 4Children began a two-year, USAI D- funded technical assistance project in Nigeria. The overarching objective of the project is for 4Children to provide TA to USAID and CDC IPs in responsible graduation and transition of OVC, households, communities, LGAs and states as part of the PEPFAR pivot and reflective of PEPFAR 3.0 priorities. 

The project also included a focus on supporting prioritized actions and strategies for the geographic areas identified by PEPFAR as scale-up local government areas (LGA5). The technical assistance provided by 4Children over the next two-year period will achieve the following:

• Development of guidance, strategies and tools to support improved HES and parenting.
• Strengthened linkages among and referrals between community and clinic based OVC services, including strategies for reaching more children living with HIV (CLHIV) within the OVC population.
• Strengthened capacity of government systems (LGA and state level) to advocate, plan for and use funds for OVC.
• Strategies for delivering critical OVC services at clinical facilities.
• Guidance and examples of interventions targeting adolescent girls and young women that address their increased vulnerability to both child protection concerns and HIV and can be easily integrated into existing programming.

To successfully address many of the issues related to graduation and transition, high quality HES services must be available and focused on rapidly improving the ability of OVC caregivers to meet the basic needs of the children they care for now and over time. However the initial scoping visit revealed that the HES technical capacity of the 16 PEPFAR OVC IPs varies In addition, each IP works with numerous civil society/community-based organizations (CSOs) who provide direct service delivery to beneficiaries. While there is no official county, the PEPFAR OVC program is working with hundreds of these smaller organizations. 

Therefore, in order for 4Children to develop its HES capacity strengthening approach additional information is needed about each partner The purpose of the HES CAT is to assess, classify and plan for HES capacity strengthening activities targeting PEPFAR OVC IPs (and their partner CSOs) so that they can more effectively support OVC-households to responsibly graduate from PEPFAR supported programming

4Children intends to hire consultants to be trained to facilitate the lP HES capacity assessments in collaboration with the IPs and with support from 4Children staff and the HES-CAT developers. After the assessment the tool facilitators will assist in developing capacity improvement plans with the IPs Once the data are collected and analyzed, they will be used by key members of the 4Children team including the Organizational Capacity Strengthening Technical Advisor, HES Technical Director MEAL TA HES Technical Specialists and Agricultural Livelihoods Technical Advisor, and Zonal Coordinators to classify lPs into cohorts and develop appropriate capacity building interventions based on the initial improvement plans.

Description of the Household Economic Strengthening Capacity Assessment Tool (HESCAT)

• The methodology w41 be guided self assessment that encourages active participation of a range of staff members from the IP who are involved in supporting HES activities either as the whole or partial focus of then role The assessment should include management staff as well as those responsible for implementation
• The facilitator and participants should meet and discuss each area to determine the level of capacity and performance in each of the capacity domains.
• Facilitators will ask open-ended, probing questions to encourage group discussion and will seek to establish a consensus on the ranking score selected. For each domain, participants will be asked to provide evidence that supports the ranking decision and to suggest actions to address identified gaps.
• Facilitators will complete the template provided, capturing rankings, supporting evidence, suggested actions and any other relevant discussion points. IPs should use the data gathered to develop improvement plans to build sustainable capacity in HES for their organization/implementing mechanism.
• Completed capacity assessments and improvement plans will be shared with 4Children who will use the information to identify, prioritize and sequence capacity strengthening approaches for lPs. The findings will also be used by 4Children to allocate IPs to cohorts for HES training appropriate to their level of capacity. The anticipated process is explained in the diagram below.
• The majority of the IPs implement via local civil society organizations (CSOs). Thus the challenge for this assessment tool is not only to assess the HES capacity of IPs themselves, but to gauge their capacity to be able to manage and support CSOs implementing HES activities. ,Many of the CSOs have been focused upon ‘care and protection services for OVC and are new to HES.
• However, for the PEPFAR objectives in relation to graduation to be realized, they now need to strengthen their HES activities. Thus IPs working with CSOs will also require a methodology for systematically assessing the CSO capacity in HES in order to plan for their capacity development needs. Thus the tool will serve the primary purpose of assessing the capacity needs of the lP to support capacity development of the CSOs and a secondary purpose of acting as a guide for the capacity assessment of the CSOs (which will not be part of the IP capacity assessment).

Purpose of the Consultancy:

• 4Children Nigeria seeks consultants to carry out technical capacity assessment relate to Household Economic Strengthening of 16 implementing Partners (IP).

Duration of the Consultancy

• The contract is for 19 days including 4 days of training, between 8 to 12 days of conducting the HES-CAT (TBD, depends on number or IPs assigned, 2 days for each IP) and 2-3 days for report writing and debriefing.

Role and Responsibility of the Consultant

• Attend a four-day training and practice workshop
• Using the HES-CAT facilitate a self-guided assessment of Ips:
  • Explain desired capacity objectives and indicators to IP HES staff
  • Use descriptions and probing questions to score current status of each capacity indicator
  • To collect relevant evidence that supports scoring decisions on current capacity levels, such as tool kits, guidelines and evaluations.
  • Assist in analyzing results and formulating development plans to inprove HES capacity
• Report overall (aggregate) findings from implementation of the HES-CAT and recommendations for future (follow-up) assessments and using a version of the H ES-CAT by I Ps themselves to assess HES capacity of their CSO partners
• Debriefing with 4Children

Specification

• Interested candidates MUST have a degree in Business, Organization Development, Development Studies or relevant Social Sciences.
• A Master’s degree in Business Administration or Management or Development studies is desirable Candidates must have at least 3 years professional experience with Economic Strengthening (or related economic recovery or livelihoods programming, microfinance, especially community led savings groups financial literacy training, microenterprise development and market assessments) especially targeted at orphans and vulnerable children and their caregivers.

Other Skills:

• Experience interviewing and facilitating skills (such as those used in conducting focus group discussions) to obtain and enter accurate and complete qualitative findings.

How to Apply
Interested and qualified consultants should send their expression of interest (EOI) along with a detailed resume as attached MS word documents to:ng_hr@global.crs.org

Note

• The resume should include but not limited to the following: Expected daily rate, personal profile, skills, competencies and suitability for the assignment as well as readiness for immediate short-term consultancy plus a copy of such previous work.
• Only qualified persons will be contacted and invited for screening.