Endline Assessment of the “Improvement of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Services to Refugees from DRC and Host Communities in Zambia” project

UNICEF has now issued a Request for Proposals in order to select a supplier for the provision of Endline Assessment of the “Improvement of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Services to Refugees from DRC and Host Communities in Zambia” project. BRIEF BACKGROUND PURPOSE In terms of the scale and scope, the KfW-funded refugee WASH Project is a first for the UNICEF-supported WASH programme in Zambia. It is therefore important to generate and disseminate useful learnings drawn from implementation, monitoring and endline assessment of this project. As the refugee WASH project draws to a close, undertaking an endline assessment of the project will focus on establishing whether the project met its objectives and assess among other things, gender, equity, and sustainability aspects of the project. The endline assessment will also compare the progress of the project with the baseline findings to establish what changes have occurred as a result of the project. The purpose of the endline assessment is both learning and accountability. The findings and lessons learnt from this assessment are intended to guide and inform all stakeholders – including KfW, UNICEF, implementing partners, the Government, and beneficiaries (including the most marginalized communities) – on what worked well, what were the shortcomings and what needs to be done to improve the design and implementation of future WASH programmes. This endline assessment will cover the three key outputs of the project. To ensure expertise in all aspects of the project is covered, an institutional consultant also herein referred to as firm, national or international, with a diverse pool of expertise will be hired to undertake this endline assessment. OBJECTIVES / TARGET The objective of this endline assessment is to provide an external, independent assessment as to whether this project has met its objectives and to establish the change compared with the baseline assessment findings. It will specifically investigate the relevance, coherence, effectiveness, efficiency, impact, sustainability, equity, timeliness, and adequacy of the refugee WASH project. The assessment will extract lessons learnt, good practices, and provide recommendations that will guide KfW, UNICEF, the Government, implementing partners, and beneficiary communities to improve future WASH programme designs and implementation strategies. In the context of this assessment, special consideration will be made to include child rights, equity-focused questions. and to involve representatives of the various groups in the targeted settlements, communities, and districts during the data collection process. The assessment will specifically: (i) Analyze the extent to which the project has realized its planned results (overall objective, outcome, and output levels) as identified in the log frame. (ii) Assess the relevance/pertinence of the project interventions to the government’s priorities and the actual needs of the target population. (iii) Assess the extent to which the project is pertinent, aligned with government policy and technical standard and guidelines. (iv) Investigate the extent to which the project is sustainable, including structures in place for operation and maintenance. (v) Assess the extent to which the project is equity sensible: has targeted women and girls, the poor, including marginalized groups. (vi) Identify best practices and key lessons learned from the project. (vii) Provide recommendations for improving project/programme implementation approaches This tender will be run through the UNICEF e-submissions system. By clicking on the blue ‘Express Interest’ button in the UNGM tender notice, the full UNICEF e-submission system instructions to bidders document (including instructions on how to access the tender documents and submit an Offer) will be automatically emailed to the ‘contact persons’ included in your UNGM registration. Alternatively, the full UNICEF e-submission system instructions to bidders document is publicly available on the UNICEF supply internet pages here: https://www.unicef.org/supply/index_procurement_policies.html . In the tender management site, if you navigate to the documents tab and opt in to confirm your intention to submit a Bid – you will then see the mandatory placeholders for documents that must be attached prior to submitting your Offer (you will also see if there are any mandatory questionnaires to complete). As such, you are recommended to `opt in` well before the submission deadline so you are clear exactly what documents are required to be uploaded prior to completing your submission. Please note that in order to access the tender documentation through UNICEF’s e-submissions system, vendors must: (i) be registered with UNICEF in UNGM as a company/NGO; (ii) have successfully completed all mandatory information currently required by UNGM when registering. Please ensure that any files submitted as part of your Bid are not corrupt or damaged in any way. Please exercise particular caution when using compressed files. Any corrupt or damaged files may lead to your Bid being invalidated. All vendors are strongly recommended to regularly log in to the UNICEF e-submissions system to check for any deadline extensions, new clarifications, new correspondence or updated tender documents relating to this tender.