Back Ground of Mid term review
Afar Region has experienced two consecutive failed rainy seasons in 2015, which have devastated pastoral and agro-pastoral livelihoods. The 2015/2016 drought, triggered by the deep and prolonged El Nino episode, has resulted in severe water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), health and nutrition, food security and livelihoods crises.
According to the 2015 Pre Belg/ Sugum joint assessment report, the drought has caused serious food insecurity at the household level in zones 1, 3 and 5 woredas of Afar region, which in turn contributed to increased cases of malnutrition in children under five, pregnant and lactating women. Depletion of household livestock holdings, increase in market price of cereals and low terms of trade due to poor body condition of the livestock have aggravated the problem. The loss of livestock asset and declining livestock to cereal in terms of trade has significantly limited households’ ability to access food
As far as prevalence of malnutrition in the region is concerned, admissions of severely acutely malnourished children to feeding programs were 40 percent above the 2011-14 average. A massive increase in admissions of malnourished children has been recorded since late 2015 According to the HRD document, in 2016, a total of 136,000 acute malnutrition cases were registered among children (6-59 months), pregnant and lactating women (PLW) in Afar. This has been partly explained as the result of the reduction in cow/goat milk availability, which is an important component of local diets. PLW were hardly getting enough food or water, leading to malnutrition during pregnancy, and milk reduction during lactation.
On top of malnutrition, the region has been affected by WASH related crises. According to the 2015 Karma seasonal assessment, a total of 246,276 of the population and 147 institutions have been affected by the WASH related drought emergency.
There has been low pregnancy and birth rates reported among all livestock species caused by the poor rainfall in the last consecutive seasons. Massive livestock deaths have taken place and livestock holdings of the households have decreased leaving them unable to continue the pastoral system. Matched with poor nutritional levels due to pasture conditions, livestock health problems highly affect herd productivity and resilience and are the main reason for mortalities. An estimated 566,372 livestock died in 2015.
In addition, the rangelands are degraded and invaded with bushy and unpalatable vegetation species due to weakening of communal resource management, fragmented land use systems and effects of global climate change.
To mitigate the above problems and build the resilience of the community, Save the Children International in Ethiopia as a lead agency and with three consortium members of international NGOs as sub partners, namely LVIA, AMREF and VSF Germany, are implementing a 40 months’ project - Improving Livelihoods and Building Resilience in Afar Regional State – in eight Woredas of Afar region. The project aims to improve asset holding for the poorest families, increase access to savings and related services, enabling a more business focused mindset; and help disadvantaged youth to develop marketable skills. Additionally, the project promotes local capacity for sustainable natural resource management, climate change adaptation and disaster risk management (DRM).
As the project has been underway Since October 2016 in the selected woredas of the region, the need to undertake a participatory mid-term review is salient to gain insight and understanding of the implementation progress of the project in general and review workability of the intervention logic, principles, working modalities and strategies at large. This will help to draw lessons on the areas that made good progress so far on the one hand and critically identify improvement areas and suggested solutions for acceleration of intervention efforts on the other hand for achieving best results in the remaining project implementation period to come.
The consultant(s) who will be involved in the research should have a solid experience in social and applied research on strategic programs of wider operational coverage. The research team members should also have a solid understanding of the research area context and national and regional strategies and policies on health and nutrition, wash, livelihoods and DRM.
Specifically, the evaluation team members should have at least an MSC level qualification in livelihoods and food security, rural development, pastoralism, public health and nutrition, water engineering, disaster risk management, etc. The team members should also have a minimum of 10+ years relevant quantitative and qualitative research experience and especially program evaluations and design in pastoral livelihoods and health and nutrition, wash, hygiene and sanitation, disaster risk management, preferably in the proposed project intervention areas of Afar region.
The composition of the team should be balanced to enable complete coverage of the different aspects of project components. The consulting firm should deploy multidisciplinary professionals composed of relevant background as stated above.
The research team members should have a diverse group with preferable mix of understanding of the context and needs and challenges of various groups (men, women, children, etc.). A good knowledge of gender and child participation will be necessary during evaluation work. A team coordinator should be assigned to coordinate the team and facilitate communications in the evaluation location. Team member’s knowledge of the context and local languages will be an asset.
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