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| AJIRALEO |
Consultancy for Documentation of School WASH interventions by UNICEF, Dar es Salaam (2 Months) | Deadline: 9th September, 2018
Job Number: 515967Locations: Africa: Tanzania,Uni.Re
Work Type : Consultancy
If you are a committed, creative professional and are passionate about making a lasting difference for children, the world's leading children's rights organization would like to hear from you.
For 70 years, UNICEF has been working on the ground in 190 countries and territories to promote children's survival, protection and development. The world's largest provider of vaccines for developing countries, UNICEF supports child health and nutrition, good water and sanitation, quality basic education for all boys and girls, and the protection of children from violence, exploitation, and AIDS. UNICEF is funded entirely by the voluntary contributions of individuals, businesses, foundations and governments.
Background:
1.1 General overview:
Water, Sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) is important in its own right, and is also necessary for health, nutrition, education and other outcomes for children. Providing WASH services in schools has an enormous contribution in fulfilling children̢۪s rights to health, education as well as promoting gender equality, privacy and dignity.
Improved WASH services in schools contributes largely to the promotion of appropriate hygiene practices, increases access to quality education along with supporting national and local interventions to establish equitable, sustainable access, to safe water and basic sanitation services in schools.
Children who are busy collecting water or are exhausted by the drudgery involved often miss school or its full benefits. Some children, especially adolescent girls who have attained the age of menarche, may be put off from attending school (or their parents might refuse to let them attend) if facilities are filthy, too few, shared with boys, or non-existent. Children who do go to such schools may face health risks because of the unsanitary conditions.
In Tanzania inadequate water supply and sanitation facilities in schools has been a persistent problem over decades contributing to poor learning environments, absenteeism, underperformance, and higher dropout rates mostly for adolescent girls who lack adequate facilities and information on menstrual hygiene management at school. A healthy and dignified school environment is one of the important attributes for keeping children in school especially girls. Statistics released in 2017 indicate that in 2016, Tanzania had more than 17,570 primary schools with 9,915,250[1] children enrolled in them. Behind these impressive numbers achieved due to government efforts in ensuring that children attain their right to education, lies a mismatch with the infrastructure available to adequately accommodate these children. A school WASH mapping on WASH services conducted in 2010 by UNICEF, WaterAid and SNV established an appalling situation whereby 38% of government public primary schools were found to have no water supply in school premises and only 46% had access to improved toilets. It further found that existing facilities seldom benefited children with mobility disabilities as only 4% of schools had sanitation facilities suitable for them.
The results from the mapping prompted UNICEF in collaboration with the government and other development partners to start working on interventions to establish the magnitude of the school WASH problem in Tanzania. Among the initiatives that were taken up by UNICEF was advocating for the development, adoption and rolling out of National school WASH guidleines as part of efforts in supporting the rights of children to education, health and general well-being by addressing barriers and bottlenecks that impede equitable access to improved WASH services.
1.2 Background of the Interventions:
Over the years, UNICEF in partnership with the government in Tanzania have worked to address major challenges that limits fulfilling every child̢۪s right to better education and improved health through adequate access to water, sanitation and appropriate hygiene practice. UNICEF̢۪s school WASH interventions cover both national and sub-national levels. At national level, UNICEF provides strategic long-term support for strengthening national capacity to deliver quality, equitable and sustainable school services at scale. As part of this support UNICEF works with the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MoEST); Ministry of Health, Community Development, Gender, Elderly and Children (MoHCDGEC); Ministry of Water and Irrigation (MoWI); and President̢۪s Office, Regional Administration, and Local Government (PO-RALG) in Tanzania Mainland. The MoEST is the lead ministry. In Zanzibar, UNICEF works with the Ministry of Education which is responsible for WASH in schools.
At national level UNICEF has supported:
- Development and rolling out of national school WASH guidelines and tool kits in the mainland and Zanzibar as well as raising awareness and commitment of decision makers and the public on the importance and key elements of the guidelines;
- Development of the National school WASH Strategic Plan 2013-2017; and
- Training of a national school WASH resource team.
At the sub-national level, UNICEF has worked with districts to support building implementation capacity of relevant government staff and undertaken physical improvements to WASH facilities in more than 370 schools in a number of districts both in the mainland and Zanzibar. Every school that has received UNICEF support has been equipped with the full WASH package as below:
- Construction of separate toilet blocks with girls̢۪ block having menstrual hygiene management (MHM) facilities;
- Construction or improvement of safe and clean water sources;
- Construction of hand-washing facilities in toilet blocks;
- Governance discussions with schools and communities, establishing ownership and operation and maintenance routines; and
- Hygiene promotion interventions that include training of teachers and support for the formation and training of school WASH clubs
The school WASH package has been provided to selected pilot schools so that other schools in the same area can also follow the example and introduce similar school WASH activities with the support from the local government. UNICEF has also trained regional and district WASH teams, so that they may train personnel at the ward level and schools to follow the national guideline.
Besides interventions under normal development programming, UNICEF also accords a high priority to humanitarian and emergency preparedness and response. In this context UNICEF has supported some schools with a full WASH package in refugee camps in Kigoma region and  some schools affected by earth quake in Kagera region.
To achieve the results outlined above for the period 2011-2017 UNICEF has invested over US$ 8,000,000 for both National and sub-national interventions in mainland and Zanzibar; of which over 85% has been spent at sub-national level for supporting construction of WASH facilities along with building capacity of respective institutions in schools and at district level.
Reporting line:
The consultant will be supervised directly by the WASH Specialist responsible for WASH in institutions, with overall guidance provided by the Chief of WASH Programme.
Location and duration
- The expected starting date of the assignment is 1st September 2018
- The expected duration of the assignment is 2 months.
- Timelines and milestones for individual activities should be finalized between UNICEF and the selected consultant before the consultant undertake the field work.
- The Consultant will be based in Dar es Salaam with fields visits to verifiy activities at selected schools in UNICEF supported programme districts. At least one field visit to Mbeya, Iringa, Njombe regions, one visit to Zanzibar and one visit to Temeke in Dar es Salaam.
Purpose of the Assignment
To provide a synthesis of success, good practices, innovations, and challenges from implementation of School WASH interventions conducted by implementing partners (government and NGOs) through UNICEF support for the period between 2012 to 2017 so that the impact of the activities and the voices of the beneficiaries are recorded and reflected through knowledge products to inform future programming of WASH in schools.
The overall purpose of the assignment is to take stock of achievements, lessons learned, good practices and innovations from the implementation of UNICEF supported WASH in schools interventions over the specified period 2011 - 2017. The documentation is intended to generate evidence, prompt learning and inform programming and advocacy for scale up of school WASH interventions. The consultant is expected to document success and good practices realized, innovations and relevant approaches that have potential to be taken to scale. In the course of this, the consultant should undertake an assessment of the programme achievement weighted against the expenditure and apply some value for money analysis geared towards establishing return on investment. The documentation should also capture challenges encountered. These will be backed up by stories and testimonies of change where necessary. Captured experiences and best practices will facilitate building a collective knowledge network and inform learning from the experiences.
The documentation should focus on the following:
- Conduct a systematic assessment of programme achievement set against the expenditures incurred in the context of value for money analysis to determine a return on investment. This should take into account existing operation and maintenance arrangements and future use of the facilities
- Identify from existing documents, implementing partners, and field exercises the good practices, innovations, and lessons  Learned from implementing the WASH in Schools programme.
- Undertake further in-depth analysis and documentation of at least three case studies of good practices, innovations and lessons learned in the context of planning, implementation, monitoring, and operation and maintenance activities for water, sanitation, and hygiene facilities in schools.
- Capture the voices of children who benefited from UNICEF̢۪s work on school WASH (anecdotal evidence of impact);
- Assess if peer to peer promotion of hygiene behavior among students exists, and if so, how is it  implemented including determining whether children are sharing information learned at the school about sanitation and hygiene with family members at home; and
- Highlight practical implications of the learnings identified and provide recommendations on actions to replicate and those to discard in the interest of future programming and scale up.
- Present the above in a structured format using appropriate narrative, tables, and charts to illustrate the findings.
Duties and Responsibilities:
This is a short-term consultancy that will require the consultant to design mechanisms for gathering achievements, lessons learned, good practices and innovations by compiling and systematizing them into knowledge products. To achieve this the consultant will engage with implementing partners (government and NGOs), school teachers, school management committees, school WASH clubs and children at large.
The assignment will require travel to the field to collect information and make observations. Â Field visits are expected to involve some Key Informant Interviews (KIIs), Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) and observation of facilities including its functionality.
At least one field visit will be made to Mbeya, Iringa, and Njombe regions, one visit to Zanzibar and one visit to Temeke covering at least five schools from each district. Additional visits can be proposed if the applicant deems this necessary. UNICEF will provide the contact details of the relevant personnel at the field level so that the consultant may plan the field visit schedule.
Expected deliverables
- An inception report with a clear methodology, schedule of the detailed activities and time frame and final checklist and the content of themes and topics to be documented as best practices/lessons innovations.
- Case studies/stories and other knowledge products as agreed by UNICEF WASH team. These write ups should not be more than 2 to 5 pages.
- Final full-length report (with a separate summary), explaining what was accomplished by UNICEF̢۪s school WASH interventions incorporating narratives on achievements, best practices, innovations, limitations, concerns and issues that were observed detailing the consultant̢۪s conclusions about the return on investment.
- High quality photos both in high and low resolutions for programme use (The consultant should budget this in the financial proposal)
Background and Experience:
MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS AND COMPETENCIES
- Minimum Master̢۪s degree in Social Sciences, public policy or other relevant field with insight of WASH and/ or Education issues.
- Minimum of 5 years of experience in preparation of technical reports and studies, or other knowledge products, related to projects and their management.
- Â Proven ability to produce effective feature stories and demonstrable experience and satisfactory completion of similar and or related work. Applicants should provide evidence of previous work that highlights their ability to produce a range of deliverables from short documents to full-length reports that are evidence-based, analytic, presented in an easy-to-understand and attractive way, and that have incisive and prioritized recommendations. Â Â
- Proficient in English language, spoken and written. Knowledge of Kiswahili will be an asset.
- Familiarity in applied qualitative research techniques, particularly interviews, focus group discussions and observational assessments.
- Proficient in the required computer skills.
- Experience with and knowledge of WASH sector
- Proven experience with national-level studies, including learning assessments, with a preference for experience in Tanzania and/or the region.
- Legal status recognized by Tanzania, enabling the organization to perform the above mentioned tasks.
Administrative
- Provide an all-inclusive cost in the financial proposal including travel cost to undertake field activities.
- The level of payment will be determined by the profile of the proposed consultant(s) and financial proposals. Payments will be made upon submission and acceptance of specified deliverables and submission of invoices.
- The selected consultant will discuss with the UNICEF technical and financial staff to plan the final scope of work and develop and negotiate the final contract.
- UNICEF reserves the right to withhold all or a portion of payment if performance is unsatisfactory, if work/outputs is incomplete, not delivered or for failure to meet deadlines.
Project Management
This assignment is managed by UNICEF WASH section.
Prior to the start of the assignment the consultant will be required to undergo a briefing with Chief of the WASH programme and WASH Specialist responsible for WASH in institutions, to discuss and provide orientation on the focus of the assignment and expected deliverables. Upon completion of the draft report, the consultant will be required to debrief them the major findings and recommendations for future improvements.
Payment Schedule
- 20% on submission and approval of Inception report
- 40% on submission of all field visit reports
- 40% on submission and approval of final report
Opening Date Sun Sep 02 2018 09:00:00 GMT+0300 (E. Africa Standard Time) E. Africa Standard Time
Closing Date Sun Sep 16 2018 23:55:00 GMT+0300 (E. Africa Standard Time)
