Terms of Reference for the Evaluation Expert

Published on July 1^st, 2019         

Project title: Social entrepreneurship as a tool for the economic empowerment of women and girls victims of trafficking

Project is carried out by NGO Atina – Citizens' Association for Combating Trafficking In Human Beings and All Forms of Gender-Based Violence with the support of UNWOMEN (United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women), in cooperation with the Coordination Body for Gender Equality of the Government of the Republic of Serbia, and with the financial support of the European Union within the project "Key Steps toward Gender Equality".

Introduction

NGO Atina’s aim is to support the transition process in Serbia toward development of society which will fully respect the rights of women and children. It stands for the establishment of equal status of all members of society in public and private spheres, through identification of, and struggle against, gender-based marginalization, discrimination and violence, and provision of direct assistance and support in reintegration of victims of trafficking and sexual and labor exploitation.

More specifically, the aim of Atina's work is to create a sustainable system for the social inclusion of marginalized and multiple discriminated groups (above all - victims of trafficking and other forms of exploitation).

Core program of Atina is Comprehensive Social Inclusion Program with its three components - Transition house, Open club - Reintegration Center and Field support team - that provides direct assistance to women and girls survivors of human trafficking and other forms of violence against women, including safe accommodation, psychosocial, legal and medical assistance, family mediation and consultation service, school enrollment, and economic empowerment through professional trainings and practice.

Other programs are Prevention, Policy Development with two sub-programs – Research and Studies and Public Advocacy, then Capacity Building and Social Entrepreneurship.

Rationale

The Republic of Serbia’s Strategy for Employment 2014-2020 identifies women as the largest vulnerable group on labor market, which due to its heterogeneity is difficult to target with specific employment programs. However, the Strategy does identify the lack of adequate employment programs for women in general, and also lack of programs specifically designed for women facing multiple discrimination.

Besides women, strategy defines other specifically vulnerable groups on the labor market and victims of human trafficking among them (Roma population, refugees and internally displaced people, young women, uneducated people, rural population without land, etc.). What is important to emphasize is that these groups overlap, so many victims of human trafficking are young, uneducated, often Roma or from rural areas, victims of domestic violence, which in practice means several layers of multiple discrimination those persons are facing on daily basis.

In Serbia, the poverty incidence clearly decreased as the educational attainment of the household head rose: from 20.2% for individuals without complete primary education, to only 1.0% for those with university education. Those with complete or even incomplete primary education prevailed among the poor: they accounted for 61.5% of all poor, although their share in the total population was only 29.5%. Although those with secondary education had a poverty incidence below the national average, their number was, nevertheless, high – they accounted for 36.3% of all poor, which is certainly due to their high total number (as many as 54.2% of the population of Serbia). This strong relationship between educational attainment and poverty clearly indicates that raising the qualification levels of workers, in particular those lowest-positioned, is a direct and efficient path toward poverty reduction in Serbia.

These results resonate with experience of NGO Atina – despite the prevailing attitude of activists in the field of human trafficking that all citizens can become victims of human trafficking, practice obtained in this area indicates that victims of human trafficking in most cases (98%) are persons affected by multiple discrimination, and those from completely socially deprived backgrounds (the poorest, from families with the experience of long-term violence, incest, from families where the parents are illiterate or uneducated, refugees and displaced persons, returnees under readmission agreement, residents of social institutions, foster families, etc.). Thus, the causes of entering into the situation of trafficking, taking into account the existing practice in the Republic of Serbia, can be described through all the aspects of social exclusion - from material poverty, through unavailability of health and education system, to gender-based violence and discriminatory and oppressive practices of a society. Most beneficiaries of NGO Atina have never been enrolled in school, nor have they completed primary education. In addition to the trauma, and consequences of the situation of violence, all of the above makes them hard-to-employ population. The recovery program is difficult to achieve if these persons are not enabled to regain control over their lives, i.e. to become financially independent and regain their freedom. One of the consequences of economic crisis is dramatically reduced capacity of existing systems to, using their interventions, enable the process of integration of victims, and above all - their sustainable integration and empowerment through full inclusion into the education system and labor market. Their inclusion in those systems is one of the guarantees of integration of the victims of trafficking and exploitation.

Key information on Project to be evaluated

1) Increased capacities for employment of 20 beneficiaries of NGO ATINA through training and practice in Bagel Bejgl social enterprise;

2) Increased capacities of 10 CSOs on social entrepreneurship as a tool for economic empowerment;

3) Raised awareness of general public through Bazaar and website section on social entrepreneurs on Atina's website.

Purpose and Objectives of the Evaluation:

NGO Atina is commissioning an evaluation of the project Social entrepreneurship as a tool for the economic empowerment of women and girls victims of trafficking in order to evaluate the results, assess the project’s contribution to the overall objectives and the relevance of project impact to targeted population as it is currently designed and implemented to provide recommendations on the way forward. The evaluation will be disseminated to staff; stakeholders and other interested parties for lessons learned and further possible replication and future programming.

The specific objectives of the evaluation are as follows:

1. To independently assess results and impact achieved against the objectives and outputs specified in the original project proposal, so that NGO Atina can provide feedback internally as well as to the donor and other partners including beneficiaries.
2. To highlight any lessons learnt and innovative aspects of the project, and make recommendations as appropriate for project replication and future programming.

Scope of work

The evaluation will consider the following three project components of the project Social entrepreneurship as a tool for the economic empowerment of women and girls victims of trafficking, corresponding to the expected results of the project:

Raising capacities for employment of victims of human trafficking – The ultimate goal of Atina's activities are beneficiaries capable to participate in society on equal grounds, empowered to deal with various challenges, including some oppressive practices in institutions and society. This comprehensive vocational training program in combination with psycho-social services Atina provides is setting firm foundation of employment empowerment program for Atina's beneficiaries. These results will be achieved through implementation of the vocational training and organization of training and practice for 20 beneficiaries.

Empowering other CSOs to establish their own social enterprises – Atina's experience of running a social business, is a valuable know-how that could support the efforts of other organizations in thinking or implementing similar activities. In order to expand that knowledge and share that experience, there will be a one-day introductory seminar with 10 CSOs to introduce the model and map the possibilities of future development of activities in this field.

Raised awareness of general public through Bazaar and website section on social entrepreneurs on Atina's website - In order to promote social entrepreneurship and its activities Atina will organize Bazaar directed to the general audience that will have the festive character, thus raising the profile of women's social entrepreneurship in our society. Social entrepreneurship is still unfamiliar to many people, so this public event will be used to promote the idea and strengthen relations to general public. This event will especially promote partners and mapped social entrepreneurship initiatives implemented by rural women. Bazaar will promote Bagel Bejgl shop and at least 10 peer social enterprises. Bazaar will feature panel discussion on social entrepreneurship discussing the benefits and challenges of social entrepreneurship from the position of women as stakeholders. Additional component of the promotion and visibility of social entrepreneurship is production of knowledge through permanent web campaign.

The following key elements will be addressed: Effectiveness, Efficiency, Innovation, Relevance, Sustainability, Impact, and Scale-up.

Evaluation design and methodology  

The evaluation should provide a systematic and objective assessment of the project Social entrepreneurship as a tool for the economic empowerment of women and girls victims of trafficking, in terms of the programme design, implementation, results and sustainability solution(s) achieved. The evaluation should use participatory qualitative approaches to triangulate data from a number of sources.

Information Sources should include: narrative and financial report, list of participants, minutes from meetings, feedback from participants, other secondary data if needed, information from representative sample of stakeholders directly or indirectly involved in the project, partner organizations, trainers, and the wider community that did not participate in project implementation but might have witnessed the project activities in one or another way.

Timeline and Deliverables

Timeframe	Activities
15/07/2019 – 22/08/2019	Preparation of the detailed Action plan of the Evaluation
22/07/2019 – 29/07/2019	Evaluation design (including data collection methods and tools)
29/07/2019 – 12/08/2019	Creation of the Preliminary Draft of the Expert Evaluation Report form comments and inputs of the project team
12/08/2019 – 19/08/2019	Expert is expected to produce a written Final Evaluation Report and deliver a Final Version in English
19/08/2019 – 26/08/2019	Presentation workshop for the project staff where Expert will present finding of the evaluation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Budget

NGO Atina will negotiate the number of days of engagement with the selected expert on the basis of the financial offer (gross amount) that will classify the following:

	Activity description	Days	Rate per day	Total
Activity 1
Activity 2

*Add columns as needed depending on the number of activities needed to perform the assignment

            Subtotal                                               RSD__________

            Other costs (specify)                            RSD__________

            TOTAL                                                 RSD__________

The total cost should cover all preparatory work regarding the job description, communication costs between Project team, expert and organizations (e-mail, telephone, fax, mail).

 

Bidding procedure

Interested consultant should develop and submit the bidding proposal in English language to respond to above mentioned specific tasks no later than 8th July, 2019. The bidding proposal should include:

1. Description and contact details of the expert applying;

2. A Budget Proposal (in the required form);

3. CV of expert involved emphasizing experience;

 

Selection criteria

Project team will make a decision on the selection of the most successful bidder, subject to the available budget, on the following four criteria:

• University degree in the relevant field;
• A minimum of 3 years of relevant experience;
• Experience of the candidate in performing similar projects or programs;

 

Deadline for the submission of BID

All bids need to be submitted no later than 8th July 2019 at 5PM in electronic version, to the email marija.pantelic@atina.org.rs (link sends e-mail). A selection will be made no later than 10^th July 2019 and the selected consultant will be contracted no later than 12th July, 2019.

Only the selected candidate will be informed.