Terms of Reference for Rwanda ACE 2.0

Bridging phase Baseline Evaluation 

Background

Spark MicroGrants’ key innovation, the Facilitated Collective Action Process (FCAP), is a model for local development which combines a facilitated community planning process with a village micro grant. The FCAP’s most important domains of impact are (1) improved livelihoods and (2) strengthened social cohesion. Within these domains, demonstrated results include greater food consumption, increased household assets, improved trust among neighbours, greater transparency in leadership, and increased involvement of women in decision-making and leadership.

In 2017, the government of Rwanda approached Spark Microgrants, requesting support to strengthen citizen engagement, increase the uptake of government social programs, and improve rural livelihoods. Spark has formulated a participatory village development approach that leverages historical Rwandan social organizing practices, including, imihigo, and umuganda. Imihigo is a precolonial tradition where individuals or communities publicly set goals and promise to achieve them. Imihigo has been formalized in Rwanda into performance contracts which hold public officials accountable on an annual basis. Umuganda is a practice derived from the precolonial Rwandan culture of self-help and cooperation. In March 2019 (updated January 2020), LODA signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Spark for a strategic collaboration to: (a) develop a National Framework for Participatory Village Planning for all 14,000 villages in Rwanda; and (b) strengthen existing decentralization initiatives by building on historical Rwandan traditions. This partnership opened up a timely opportunity to address important gaps in Rwanda’s approach both to rural poverty reduction and local governance.

During this partnership, Spark worked with the government of Rwanda to support 249 villages in 4 Districts of Burera, Gakenke, Gicumbi and Huye from 2021 to 2024. As this project comes to an end, Spark is setting up a bridging phase that will see the partnership with Government take on an extra 200 villages (in 2024) in preparation for a national scale phase that will cover thousands of villages in the country.

Components of the 200 village bridging phase.

• Component 1: Village and Local Government Capacity Building. This component will build the capacity of local government officials at the district, sector, cell, and village levels to facilitate village-driven village development processes to enhance citizen engagement and improve rural livelihoods. It will also build the village capacity to engage in development planning and to manage village level subprojects.
• Component 2: Component two finances priority sub projects identified in the VDPs to improve livelihoods. Each target village will be provided an average grant of 12,000 USD disbursed over two years. The government in each of the target Districts will contribute five percent of the total grant amount, while village members will make contributions in-kind. MicroGrant eligibility is guaranteed for every target village provided eligibility conditions are met, including the election of a Village Leadership Committee, completion of the VDP and submission and approval of a subproject proposal.
• Component 3: Project Management, Monitoring and Evaluation, and Knowledge Dissemination. This component includes overall project management, monitoring and evaluation, communications and knowledge dissemination.

Evaluation of the Project and Model

Spark is seeking an independent research partner to lead a baseline evaluation that will set a strong foundation for; a) impact evaluation of the FCAP interventions at endline, b) generation of information that will contribute to the evidence base for livelihoods-enhancing and climate-resilient CDD projects and initiatives to enhance citizen engagement at endline; and c) generation of evidence to inform national scale-up of these approaches in Rwanda at endline. At this point, the research partner will only conduct a baseline study in a manner that enables us to achieve objectives a, b and c at midline and endline.

Research Design

This evaluation is required to set a basis on which to generate both clear evidence of average ‘treatment’ effects, as well as explore a range of operational and policy questions at midline and endline. As such, a mixed-methods approach which employs quantitative and qualitative methods is required.

The baseline survey is expected to take on a quasi-experimental design given that the villages in which the expansion is going to happen will be selected in consultation with the government ahead of time. The consultant will therefore be expected to identify a control group of villages using robust statistical and geospatial techniques to ensure that the control villages are as similar to the intervention villages as possible.

The consultant is expected to utilize qualitative techniques to contextualize learnings in the social, cultural, and political context in which they are embedded, and in doing so, to explore the more nuanced aspects of the research questions.

Sample Size

The consultant will be expected to apply appropriate sample size computation techniques to come up with a sample size that enables us to detect a minimum project effect of 10% from baseline to endline and also sufficient to test out the effect of the grant size on the impact of FCAP at endline.

Scope of the Evaluation

The Baseline study is expected to be conducted in the Northern and Southern Provinces of Rwanda In the Districts of (Burera, Gicumbi, Gakenke, Huye, Nyanza.) where project expansion is expected to happen. Spark will provide a list of all villages where FCAP will be implemented and the consultant will then undertake a matching exercise to select control villages within the same vicinity but in a manner that minimizes contamination as much as possible.

The baseline evaluation is expected to take place from Mar to Jun 2024 in time for the project field activities to start.

Evaluation Questions

The baseline study should set a strong basis for us to address the following broad research questions at midline and endline:

1. What is the impact of the project on citizen participation in local development processes and advocacy efforts?
2. What is the impact of the project on household well-being?
3. What is the Impact of the project on Village-level social cohesion?
4. What is the Impact of the project on local government officials?
5. What is the impact of FCAP on community based climate change adaptations?

Spark will provide the consultant with our theory of change and further detailed information about how the FCAP aims to impact each of the above areas.

Brief description of the evaluation questions

Citizen Participation in Local Development Processes: The measurement should examine the impact of the FCAP on citizen participation in local development and democratic processes, looking at both supply and demand sides of local citizen engagement - meaning changes in local Government officials and in citizens, and how they interact. This may include assessment of; (i) the role of elected leaders by citizens (including levels of trust in elected leaders and the impacts of trust in local leadership), ii) changes in knowledge, expectations, and beliefs about local government services and processes by citizens, and (iii) changes in behavior and perceptions of local government towards villagers’ engagement in inclusive development processes, including changes in downward accountability of local government officials.

The research partner will look to employ a wide range of survey modules to assess these three key areas of citizen participation. Topics to be explored could include, but are not limited to: motivation for engagement; examples of advocacy efforts; integrity; self-efficacy; financial literacy; perceptions of accountability of local government officials; perceptions of power and of feeling “listened to” by those in power; trust in government; and bureaucratic incentives/management tools. These topics are specifically to be designed to be disaggregated by traditionally excluded groups that include but are not limited to women, elderly, youth and persons with a disability. To measure engagement in local government processes, the consultant will rely on both directly observed outcomes as well as survey measures. To measure norms, the consultant will use incentivized survey items to assess the extent to which there is consensus between empirical and social expectations with respect to accountability, transparency and monitoring behavior. Attempts should be made within the survey instruments to understand the causality between the knowledge, awareness and behavior of local government officials and the resulting effects on citizen participation.

Household wellbeing: We hypothesize that the project will affect wellbeing through two principal channels - firstly by addressing the constraints alleviated by the selected Spark funded community project, and secondly through gains from improved social cohesion and citizen engagement. The project is expected to increase household income, household assets, consumption, savings and reduce the rates of malnutrition (for children under the age of 5 years) within the beneficiary villages. The consultant will examine and test this hypothesis of household wellbeing, again specifically targeted to and designed to be able to disaggregate by traditionally marginalized groups, and assess differences in outcomes based on different profiles of community members (for example, considering gender, wealth status, local leadership status, profession/livelihood, etc.). The consultant is expected to conduct anthropometric measures for all the children under the age of 5 years in all the surveyed households.

Social Cohesion: We hypothesize that through training for community members (especially leaders), facilitated participatory planning activities, and facilitation of spaces for collaborative development planning and implementation, there will be increased social cohesion within target villages. This may be experienced as (but not exclusive to) a greater sense of shared purpose, collective action by community members, more inclusive and broad-based cooperation advocacy and civic engagement, and a greater sense of trust between village members. The consultant will examine and test this hypothesis, developing a methodology to define and measure social cohesion relevant to the intervention scope and context, and aligned with broader industry literature. The consultant should also ensure that the definition of social cohesion within the highlighted dimensions cover the general principles of bridging, bonding and linking.

Gender and inclusion: At the core of the FCAP model is emphasis on inclusion of all participants within the community. Spark is currently in the process of completing a study about Gender and inclusion indicators that we hope to test out during this baseline and a full list of these indicators will be provided at inception.

Local government officials:

Local government officials at Sector level are trained as supervisors for the CBFs. Their capacity is built in soft skills of facilitation, project management and supervision. This is to ensure that they are well equipped to support CBFs during FCAP implementation within their areas of jurisdiction. At baseline, the consultant is expected to assess the level of involvement of government officials in development projects funded by non-governmental organizations and their opinion of the state of social cohesion and livelihoods of the communities qualitatively.

Climate change: Our climate change interventions include communities constituting a committee that will guide and monitor community efforts towards sustainable environmental conservation, setting up early warning systems to provide communities with advance information on potential weather/climate changes (based on meteorological forecasts) so that they are better prepared to deal with any eventualities that might happen as a result of these changes, and training communities on potential climate change adaptation strategies. Also as part of the interventions, communities will analyze the impact of their potential pathways with their Environmental Technical Advisors, hence selecting pathways that minimize the vast impact of climate shocks in their communities. To complement this, they will implement a mitigation pathway. The consultant is expected to provide a comprehensive set of indicators to measure this (in addition to the few suggested in the results framework) based on the stated interventions above.

Outcomes to be measured

Within explorations of the research questions above, the consultant must ensure the inclusion of assessments against the indicators in the results framework below (noting that the full scope of the assignment is expected to go beyond the result framework, but must cover these outcome areas). The consultant is expected to provide more detailed outcomes to measure the FCAP impact on climate change in consultation with Spark.

Malnutrition

The consultant will also have core responsibilities to work with Spark to clearly define all terms laid out above within the research questions prior to any survey instrument being designed.

Role of Spark

• Spark will provide a list of treatment communities and work with the consultant to develop a list of control communities.
• Spark will support the consultant to receive government approval to work in all identified treatment and control areas. It will be the responsibility of the consultant to ultimately get this approval.
• Spark will lead in the request for administrative data from national and local governments.
• All project sign offs, approvals and liaison between the consultant and Spark will be through the M&E Director.
• Spark will work with the consultant to clearly define all terms laid out within the research question prior to any field work being conducted.

Activities

The expected activities to achieve this are as follows:

All deliverables must be reviewed, verified, and approved by the Spark M&E Director.

Application Details:

Applications in the form of a technical and financial proposal are welcomed from individuals, or teams, who are able to demonstrate the capacity to deliver the piece of work set out above, within the RWanda context.

The following skills and experiences are essential criteria for all applicants:

• Expert understanding of quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis methods
• Significant experience in conducting and/or managing similar or comparable assignments in both methodology and scale within the Rwanda context.
• Experience in applying for, and securing approval IRB approvals in Rwanda
• Demonstrated ability to bring together inputs into clear and concise summaries or recommendations
• Expert knowledge of the Social Cohesion, Livelihoods, Civic Engagement and Social Accountability, and Climate Change fields within international development
• A strong academic background in the effects of government centralization and decentralization programs.

Interested parties should submit a technical and financial proposal to Spark MicroGrants including:

• A cover letter demonstrating how you meet the criteria above
• A draft work plan and associated budget to include the daily rates of all individuals involved and a description of the roles they each play within the team.
• CVs for all individuals listed
• Maximum two examples of previous work that demonstrates the skills or experience relevant to this assignment.

Please send completed proposals to enock@sparkmicrogrants.org by end of 31/03/2024

Please note that we will be unable to give feedback to unsuccessful applicants.