Evaluating the Effectiveness of Competency-Based or Level-I Training for Women Development Army Leaders of the Women Development Army Strategy of Ethiopia
1. Background about L10K 2020 Project
The Last Ten Kilometer (L10K) project—What it Takes to Improve Health Outcomes in Rural Ethiopia—has been implemented by JSI Research & Training Institute, Inc. (JSI) through funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation since 2007. The project has been striving to improve reproductive, maternal, neonatal, and child health (RMNCH) care behaviors and outcomes in four regions of the country – Amhara, Oromia, Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples (SNNP), and Tigray. The first phase of funding (2007-2015) was focused on supporting 115 woredas and their health facilities in the four regions in the implementation of high impact innovative community-based solutions poised to improve RMNCH care practices and outcomes.
Since 2015, the project was designed to address challenges of the post-Millennium Development Goal (MDG) era related to barriers to achieve maternal, newborn and child mortality targets. However, based on the foundations guidance and need to align with the Ethiopia Integrated Health Program (EIHP), the project has been redesigned through a collaborative process involving experts from Ministry of health (MoH), regional health bureaus (RHBs) and zonal health departments to address systemic challenges by harnessing the project’s comparative advantage areas including community engagement, quality, equity and information use in October 2017. Accordingly, the project has been providing system strengthening support to address the health system challenges at national and regional and zonal levels. The project systems support focuses on increasing the capacity of the health system to (i) implement woreda transformation agenda, (ii) plan, improve and assure quality, (iii) increase equity and (iv)enhance the utilization of valid data to improve RMNCH care practices and outcomes.
As part of its health system support, L10K 2020 intends to respond to the recent request of MoH to evaluate the effectiveness of Competency-Based Level-I Training (CBT) for women development army (WDA) leaders. L10K seeks to hire a consultant/consulting firm that would work in tandem with MoH and project staff in evaluating the competency-based training of WDA leaders.
Purpose: Since its launching in 2011, the WDA strategy has been implemented to support the Health Extension Workers (HEW)—community health workers of the health Extension Program (HEP)—in enhancing the reach of HEP to the community. Women have been organized in groups of 1:5 and 1:30 to influence each other, identify targets to health services and link them to the HEWs. To increase the capacity of WDA leaders to play their roles effectively, MoH planned to provide competency-based training to about 3 million WDA leaders nationally.
The competency based training or Level-I training was designed to increase the capacity of the WDA leaders’ knowledge of HEP and enhance their skills to communicate and influence their neighbors. So far, about half a million (16%) of 3 million WDA leaders have been trained. To inform the efforts to providing the training to the remaining WDA leaders and make appropriate modifications, the ministry seeks to evaluate the effectiveness of the training in terms of increasing the knowledge and skills of WDA leaders to be role models for their neighbors and influence their neighbors.
Objective: The main objective of the assignment is to evaluate the effectiveness of competency-based level-I training of WDA leaders in increasing their competency to implement HEP packages and influence their neighbors to implement the HEP packages.
Specifically, the task will evaluate;
· The reaction of trainees, trainers, and organizers to the training
· The change in knowledge of WDA leaders and their network on HEP packages and skills in communication and negotiation skills through the training
· The change in household-level practices of WDA leaders related to HEP packages and
· The response of neighbors of WDA leaders to their influence in terms of implementing HEP packages
Task: The individual consultant or consultancy firm will work in collaboration with the L10K project team specifically with the Monitoring, Evaluation, and Research unit throughout the process under the guidance of the experts from the HEP directorate of MOH. The consultant is expected to undertake the following tasks:
· Discuss with the technical team from L10K 2020 project and HEP directorate of MOH to clarify the terms of reference and operations
· Propose a plausible robust evaluation design and discuss with the technical team from L10K 2020 project and HEP directorate of FMOH
· Develop an inception report
· Design a complete research protocol with data collection tools
· Conduct the data collection and produce clean data
· Conduct the data analysis and generate a draft report along with the technical team from the HEP directorate and L10K 2020 project
· Present the preliminary findings of the assessment to the national TWG
· Incorporate comments from relevant experts and produce and submit the final report
This assignment will have an office as well as field-level activities including Addis Ababa (MOH), Amhara, Tigray, Oromia, and SNNP regions and Dire Dawa City Administration to get insight or information from Regional Health Bureaus.
The effectiveness evaluation of the CBT can employ the Kirk Kirkpatrick model to measure the reaction of trainers, learnings from the training, behavior change among WDA and their neighbors and communal changes. The consultant/firm will be allowed to present an alternative model along with the evaluation designs and can be accepted after discussion with the technical teams.
Timeline: The consultant will have time as per the following table from the date of signing the contract agreement with L10K( it will be modified as necessary). This is an urgent assignment that needs to be delivered with the short latitude of time provided by the MOH. The consultant/firm should have time or staff to be dedicated to this assignment with no other competing priorities during the assignment period. The consultant will sign a contract agreement once the inception report is approved by L10K and the MoH team.
Table 1, Key deliverables for the consultancy work and the timeline
Key Deliverable | Timeline |
Inception report on research protocol | February 24, 2020 |
Approval from an ethical review body and completed consent forms | May 8, 2020 |
Cleaned data of the research | May 30, 2020 |
Draft research report | May 30, 2020 |
Final research report including executive summary | June 10, 2020 |