Consultant for quality assurance of SIDA application
About the Palme Center
The Palme Center is a Swedish non-profit organisation, founded in 1992, by the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO), and the Swedish Cooperative Union (KF) and the Social Democratic party. The organisation works in the spirit of Olof Palme for human rights, democracy and peace. Today, the Palme Center together with its 26 member organisations from the Swedish labour movement support civil society organisations, trade unions and progressive political parties around the world.
The Palme Center´s operations are implemented in 30 countries in Middle East and North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America, Western Balkans and Eastern Europe. In 2023, over 170 civil society organisations, including trade unions, women´s organisations, grass-root movements, think-tanks and informal education organisations were supported by the Palme Center. The support enabled these change actors to mobilise people, advance the rights of their constituents and thereby improve their societies into becoming more peaceful, democratic and inclusive.
Purpose and description of the assignment
The purpose of the assignment is to provide Palme Center with relevant knowledge, advice and quality assurance on our Application to Sida, within the CSO Strategy. The end goal is to submit a high-quality application which clearly shows Palme Center and its partners relevance to the CSO Strategy.
Scope
The assignment will include the reading of a couple of drafts, providing feedback, recommendations and quality assurance during February 2025. The expected time for this assignment is 2-3 full working days.
Qualification requirements
The consultants shall have:
5 or more years of documented experience in proposal writing and programme development and specifically experience with Sida CSO.
5 or more years of experience providing PMEL support to civil society organisations, including capacity-building support.
Strong attention to detail.
Excellent communication skills, strong proficiency in English.
Deadline
If you are interested in the assignment, please submit your tender, including your CV and hourly rate in SEK, USD or EUR, including VAT as applicable, valid for 2025, as well as examples if available or summaries of three relevant deliverables you have successfully prepared in the past which corresponds to the above-mentioned qualification requirements by January 13th, 2025.
Palme Center is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin or disability.
The tender will be assessed based on the following criteria:
How well the tender and consultant meets the requirements in the ToR
Assessment of the tender’s linguistic quality, clarity and presentation.
Assessment of the consultant’s overall capacity and competence in relation to the assignment’s specific needs (e.g. in terms of knowledge, experience, logistics, assignment management, resources, etc.)
Whether or not the evaluator is assessed to be neutral in relation to the Palme Center
General assessment of the tender as a whole.
Price assessment.
Contact
If you have any questions, please contact Frida Perjus, CSO Grant Coordinator at frida.perjus@palmecenter.se.
Experienced civil society evaluator for assignment in the DRC
The purpose of the mid-term evaluation is:
Assess if interventions are sufficient to reach desired outcomes. Identify barriers to achievement of objectives to provide recommended actions to guide the programme staff and partner organisation through the last year of the programme and a potential new programme period.
To assess how well the Palme Center has designed and adapted the programme to the needs of the partner organisations.
Collect most significant change stories.
To come up with possible recommendations for developing the programme in a potential second period based on the findings of the evaluation.
The purpose of the end-programme evaluation is:
Assess if the programme met the stated goals and objectives; (b) the effectiveness of the technical approach of the Palme Center; (c) development of the overarching lessons learned from the programme, and (d) a strategy for use or communication of these lessons both within the organisation and to partners.
To collect evidence of behavioural change among the actor groups and how these changes have contributed to the outcome areas.
The outcomes of the evaluation are intended to be used as:
Supplementary documentation for reporting the programme.
Input for future planning and efficiency work.
Input to capacity assessment of the Palme Center, by Sida.
Supplementary documentation of the current situation, in relation to the outcome areas (see below), to be used in the baselines of new programmes.
Background
The Olof Palmes Internationella Center, hereinafter the Palme Center, with its 26 member organisations, constitute an active hub of the Swedish labour movement’s international work articulated through trade unions, political party, and civil society organisations. These organisations represent more than one hundred years’ experience of promoting political and civic engagement, democratisation, and poverty reduction. Through our development partnerships, we seek to empower people to change their own lives. The Palme Center has its main office in Stockholm and several local offices.
The programme that will be evaluated is in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and includes nine civil society actors such as unions, women’s- and environmental organisations and citizens movements.
The overall objective of the programme is: Sustainable civil society organisations engage in broad alliances that contribute to the advancement of good governance, labour rights, citizen’s engagement, and women’s equal political participation.
Five outcome areas, reflecting the five political priorities in Palme Center’s International Strategy, give further content to our theory of change and how we view and define progressive development, aimed at contributing to several of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) in the 2030 Agenda.
The five priorities are:
Countering the threats to democracy and human rights
Advancing equality and worker’s rights – building new alliances and pushing progressive politics
Sustainability through a just transition – countering climate change
Promoting peace and dialogue – mitigating armed conflict and social tensions
Opposing the backlash – increasing gender equality
The programmes take an innovative actor-focused approach. Four categories of actors have been identified from the Palme Center’s strategy: decision makers, rights-holders, actors working in cooperation (e.g., networks and alliances) and the partner organisations. The programmes focus on change in behaviours and relations among and between these actors, that contribute to the outcome areas.
The assignment
For evaluating the programme, the evaluator will have access to inhouse documentation (including assessments and partners’ reporting) but the main method is meeting with partner organisations and rights holders in Kinshasa.
Relevant evaluation questions are, but not limited to:
Are interventions sufficient to reach desired outcomes?
Which barriers to achievement of objectives are there?
Was adaptation timely and responsive to partners’ needs? What drove the adaptation process? (agility and responsiveness)
What are the programme’s main achievements?
The documentation will be provided in French and English. All interactions with partners and rights holders will be in French. The report shall be submitted in two versions, English and French.
The assignment shall be finalised, and the final evaluation reports submitted by:
Mid-term evaluation: 18 December 2024
End-programme evaluation: 1 March 2026
Participants
The evaluation will cover the regional programme in the DRC. Documentation for the desk study will be forwarded to the evaluator digitally. The consultant is expected to interview staff at the Palme Center, representatives from all nine partner organisations, the Swedish member organisations rights holders and other relevant stakeholders.
Methodology
The evaluation will be held in two steps, the mid-term evaluation and the end-evaluation. The process below will be repeated for each step.
The evaluation will begin with a dialogue between the Palme Center and the consultant, where the concrete methods of evaluation, number of interviewees and timeframe will be defined and agreed more in detail.
The evaluation will take place in Kinshasa.
Approximately 15-20 interviews.
The assignment includes the following methodologies:
Document review/desk study (log frames, application and reporting documents, monitoring documents, etc.)
Interviews with partner organisations, rights holders and the Swedish member organisations.
Most significant change stories.
The evaluator winning the assignment shall present an inception report where the methodology and work plan is developed in more detail no later than 10 October.
Timeframe and duration
Mid-term evaluation
The mid-term evaluation should be held in October – November 2024.
The mid-term evaluation should end by 18 December 2024.
Estimated time for the evaluation is 15-20 working days (in total 30-40 working days for both mid-term/end-term evaluations).
The draft report for the mid-term evaluation should be submitted by to the Palme Center 6 December 2024.
The Palme Center will have five working days to comment on drafts.
The final reports (English and French) for the mid-term evaluation should be submitted to the Palme Center 18 December 2024.
The evaluator should hold two seminars to the present the results in January 2025 (one in English and one in French).
End-evaluation
Detailed time plan will be set later.
Reporting
The below instructions regard both the mid-term evaluation and the end evaluation.
The findings and conclusion shall be presented in a report not exceeding 15 pages. The report should be addressed to the responsible Programme Manager at the Palme Center.
The report should follow the Palme Center’s graphic design and include visual aid.
The report shall describe facts, draw conclusions and make recommendations. The evaluation report shall at least contain;
Index
Summery
Background
The purpose of the evaluation
The scope of the evaluation, work carried out within the assignment, methodology and limitations
Observations, analysis, assessment and conclusions
Recommendations
Attachments (ToR, reference list, list of people interviewed and in which location, interview questions, etc.)
The reports shall also be presented in two oral presentations. Slides should be provided for these presentations.
The Palme Center will be the sole owner of the results of the assignment.
Requirements on the evaluator
The evaluator is expected to have the following qualifications:
Experience of evaluating civil society support in development cooperation.
Experience in monitoring and evaluation.
Knowledge about the context in the DRC.
Documented theoretical and practical experiences with evaluations of international development cooperation, including in-depth analyses based on interviews and reports, as well as a good capacity of reporting results and conclusions.
Fluent knowledge in English and French.
Meriting qualifications:
Documented in-depth knowledge and previous experiences of collecting change stories.
Documented experience of well-written and designed reports and briefs.
Experience of using participatory and intersectional methods.
Compensation
The budget and remuneration for the assignment will be according to the winning bid but cannot exceed SEK 300,000, excluding VAT.
The payment will be made as follows:
Mid-term evaluation, up to SEK 150,000:
First payment: 25% percent when the inception report has been approved and upon receiving an invoice from the consultant. The second payment: 75% of the budget after approval of the evaluation report, oral presentation and upon receiving an invoice from the consultant.
End-term evaluation, up to SEK 150,000:
First payment: 25% percent when the inception report has been approved and upon receiving an invoice from the consultant. The second payment: 75% of the budget after approval of the evaluation report, oral presentation and upon receiving an invoice from the consultant.
Tenders
Tenders shall be submitted via email to elin.zaulich@palmecenter.se no later than 9 September 2024.
The bid must include: curriculum vitae for members of the evaluation team and their respective roles in the assignment, details of previous experience in the field, references (names and contact information) suggested methodology, procedures for quality assurance, suggested timeframe and work plan, budget excluding VAT).
The budget should include all costs related to the evaluation, excluding VAT.
We reserve the right not to accept any of the bids received.
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