Challenging Heights Organisational Impact Assessment
Consultancy Terms of Reference
Location: Winneba (Central Region, Ghana), with travel to Senya (central
Region, Ghana) and Yegi (Brong-Ahafo, Ghana).
Position: Evaluation and Monitoring Consultancy.
Contract type: individual.
Languages Required: English; Fante, Twi or Efuttu and advantage.
Competencies: Cultural sensitivity; understanding of development needs in
Ghana; awareness of drivers of human trafficking; commitment to participatory
approaches; excellent interpersonal, communication and interview skills;
excellent report writing and presentation skills; excellent quantitative and
qualitative analysis skills.
Experience: proven track record in monitoring and evaluation in an international
development context; substantial portfolio of evaluations, including process,
outcome and impact, preferably in West Africa; demonstrable research
experience in data collection, statistical analysis, presentation and writing;
Application Deadline: 31st March 2015.
Starting Date: May 2015 or as soon as possible thereafter.
Contract period: 6 months.
Fee: $7,000 inclusive of all expenses (including data collection related travel and
subsistence).
Context
An estimated 193,1000 Ghanaians live in conditions of modern slavery, as
calculated in the 2014 Global Slavery Index.
The International Labour
Organisation/International Programme on Elimination of Child Labour (ILO/IPEC)
Analytical Study on Child Labour In Lake Volta Fishing in Ghana (August 2013)
estimates that there 49,000 Children working on in the fishing industry on Lake
Volta, with 21,000 forced to undertake hazardous child labour.
According to the 2010 Ghana Population and Housing Census, there are over
2.4million “economically active” children (between the ages of 5 and 17) in
Ghana. The International Labour Organisation/Ghana Government 2003 Child
Labour Survey estimated that over a million children in Ghana are denied
education because of the need to work instead of attending school, and that an
estimated 240,0000 were victims of hazardous child labour.
Background
Challenging Heights promotes youth and family empowerment and children’s
rights to education and freedom from forced labour in Ghana. We provide holistic
care of trafficked children in forced labour through their rescue, rehabilitation
and reintegration. To ensure the security and future of former child slaves we
undertake long-term monitoring with educational support, which is made
sustainable through livelihoods empowerment and sensitization of their families
and communities. We advocate at a national level to bring about systemic
change to end modern slavery in and improve children’s rights and lives in
Ghana.
Challenging Heights was founded by James Kofi Annan, himself a former child
slave on Lake Volta for seven years, to ensure no other child would have to
endure what he went through. It is a grass roots organization that has grown up
working in the source communities (where children are most vulnerable to
trafficking) with many of the staff former beneficiaries of programmes. For his
work with Challenging Heights James has won a number of international awards
including the 2013 World’s Children’s Prize.
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We collaborate with a number of local and international education and antitrafficking organisations, including Family for Every Child, Walk Free, Free the
Slaves, Made in a Free World (Slavery Footprint), Freedom for All, Hand in Hand
for Literacy, Empower, Learn4Work and Reach for Change, the Mercy Project
and International Justice Mission, amongst others, to implement various
empowerment and livelihoods programmes that are critical in ensuring the long
term security of rescued children. A key part of our strategy is developing
community capacity to combat trafficking through the establishment of
Community Child Protection Committees (CCPCs) and Child Rights Clubs (CRCs).
We also engage with state actors and have close working relationships with
Social Welfare and the Police (both locally and at the national level, especially
the Anti-Human Trafficking Unit), who support and authorise our rescue and care
of children. We have collaborated on prosecutions and raids and in resolving
child welfare and related community issues.
Purpose
In February 2015 Challenging Heights will have been operating as an NGO in
Ghana for ten years. During that time we have directly rescued hundreds from
slavery and supported thousands more children and young people in achieving
their rights and accessing education. As an organisation we seek to make all our
services and programmes more effective and efficient, and continuously revise
our activities to better meet the needs of our beneficiaries, our strategic goals
and changing circumstances.
As the organisation has grown, however, a more rigorous analysis and
monitoring of our work is required, both to provide evidence based programme
revisions and to show our impact to existing and potential future funding
partners. We are currently developing better monitoring systems that would
support a comprehensive impact assessment of the organisation’s work. To do
so we are drawing on knowledge gained through participation in a Family for
Every Child International Effective Program Standard Workshop as well as
current staff expertise in monitoring, evaluation and research methodology.
Scope
We seek delivery of an organisation wide assessment to measure the impact of
current and past (but potentially future) programmes on the lives of our
intended beneficiaries, both directly (e.g. improved circumstances) and indirectly
(e.g. societal changes), with particular focus on synergies of interrelated
activities.
Aim

To gain a comprehensive and verifiable understanding of Challenging
Heights’s impact effectiveness and sustainability.
Objectives
The evaluation should address the following questions:
1. What impacts has Challenging Heights has had on the lives of children and
young people in Ghana, their families and communities, through its work to
date?
1.1.
What factors have contributed to achieving these impacts?
1.2.
What is the reach of each of these impacts (how many beneficiaries
and level of benefit)?
2. How do the impacts achieved relate to the objectives of each
programme/activity?
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2.1.
To what extend have the objectives of individual projects been
achieved?
2.2.
What factors have contributed to any disparity and how can they be
mitigated in future?
3. To what extent have beneficiaries been empowered by the work of
Challenging Heights?
3.1.
What number and proportion of beneficiaries have achieved
independence?
3.2.
What ongoing support is required by different beneficiary groups?
4. How could future programmes be improved?
4.1.
What changes should be made to existing programmes to achieve
greater and more sustainable impact?
4.2.
What developments should be made to operations to better capture
impact?
4.3.
What resources are likely to be required to implement these?
Key Deliverables



Work plan with clear timelines, participatory methodology and data
collection protocols;
Draft report summarising key findings;
Final report, which should address the above questions.
Expected outcomes
With regard to children and young people in Ghana, especially those from
underserved communities, and their families, Challenging Heights
 better understands their needs and circumstances, and is thus better
positioned to engage with and support them, and help them develop and
become empowered;
 is in a stronger position to provide evidence-based advocacy for effective
support and interventions on their behalf;
 campaigns more effectively for support and funding for its work in serving
their needs.
Approach and methodology
We are keen to undertake a participatory approach, which we believe is
achievable given the long term and deep engagement that we have with
beneficiary communities. Although we expect a core component of our
evaluation to be a traditional questionnaire/beneficiary survey to capture raw
data from our programmes, we believe it is necessary to involve stakeholders at
different levels in order to properly assess the impact of different interventions.
Workshops with our key beneficiary groups: former victims of slavery;
vulnerable children; disadvantaged youth; economically disempowered women
and; carers for the above; will be run for them to define our monitoring process
and evaluation criteria. This process will help identify problems and generate
recommendations for selecting information-gathering tools.
Full requirements are set out in the implementation schedule below.
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Implementation schedule
Stage
Output
Function
1.1. efficient
reporting to (funding)
partners;
1.2. analysis of
programmes outputs;
1.3. deeper
understanding of
beneficiary
constituency being
served;
1.4. Investigation of
key actors and
partners in
programmes (e.g.
identify prominent
child traffickers or
consistently
successful
employment routes);
2.1. Execute Impact
Assessment
A. Database of current
beneficiaries
B. Collated historic
programme reports and data
3.1. efficient
development, revision
or termination of
projects as
appropriate;
3.2. reporting
D. Desk review and analysis
of existing data and field staff
consultation
E. Work plan with clear
timelines, participatory
methodology and data
I.
Data and
document
Preparatio
n
1.
Queriable
database of
beneficiaries for
each programme
II.
Recruitme
nt
2.
M&E
consultant engaged
III.
Participat
ory
research
and
evaluation
3.
Performance
assessment of past
and current
programmes
Deliverable
C.
Contract signed
Responsibil
ity
Challenging
Heights
Deadline
Challenging
Heights
(supported
by EMpower)
Consultant
C. April 2015
A. Februar
y 2015
B. March
2015
D. June 2015
E. June 2015
F. August
2015
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4.
Identification
of existing and
potential links
between current
and planned
programmes
5.
Gap-analysis
of current service
provision in
meeting needs of
target communities
to:
impact to partners
and stakeholders;
3.3. strategic
planning of future
operations and
programmes.
4.1. more efficient
resource
management (e.g.
shared facilities,
training modules and
staff);
4.2. exploiting
synergies through
appropriate selection
of beneficiary families
and individuals within
distinct programmes;
4.3. achieving
complementarity in
approaches and
outcomes at a
community level;
5.1. develop
existing programmes
5.2. instigate new
programmes
5.3. identify scope
for partnerships with
other civil
society/third sector,
state and commercial
organisations;
collection protocols
F. Field engagement including
subgroup workshops,
stakeholder interviews and
quantitative data surveys.
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6.
Develop an
M&E framework for
ongoing use
IV.
Reporting
7.
Publish and
disseminate results
6.1. Continuous
monitoring of
programmes that
assists development;
6.2. Periodic
evaluation of
programmes that
assist reporting
impact;
6.3. Transparency
of operations
underpinning
organisational
integrity.
7.1. Share findings
with partners and
stakeholders
G. Feedback workshop
presenting draft report with
stakeholders reviewing key
findings
H. Final report
The report should include an
executive summary of key
findings and address the critical
questions through the following
sections:
a) Comprehensive account
of programmes to date;
b) verifiable and estimated
reach broken down by
beneficiary type,
programme and
community;
c) verifiable and estimated
impact on lives broken
Consultant
G. September
2014
H. October
2015
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d)
e)
f)
g)
h)
down by beneficiary type,
programme and
community;
factors affecting
effectiveness and
sustainability of impacts;
Existing and potential
synergy between
activities and
programmes;
Recommended crossorganisational Monitoring
and Evaluation
framework;
Recommendations for
strategic direction of
organization;
Appendix detailing
methodology and results,
with evaluation of
approach highlighting
limitations
Applications Process: please send proposal letter with comprehensive Curriculum Vitae, including two named referees, to
[email protected] marked F.A.O. Vice-President
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