Terms of Reference : Zimbabwe ICSP Baseline Strengthening Community Resilience and Women Empowerment? :

Job Summary

Trócaire has applied for funding from Irish Aid under the five-year Ireland’s Civil Society Partnership (2023-2027) funding scheme. Trócaire’s proposed programme will contribute to a Better World by implementing interlinked Long-Term Development, Chronic Humanitarian Crises and Acute Humanitarian Crises programmes in 15 poor, climate-affected and fragile countries across the world. Trócaire's Strategic Plan – Local Power Global Justice (2021-2025) forms the core framework that underpins the programme proposal. Trócaire’s overseas work is delivered in partnership with local organisations in developing countries to tackle the root causes of poverty, injustice, and violence, supporting people to use their power to create positive and lasting change, focusing on four goals:

• Goal 1: Defend human rights. Trócaire supports the protection and empowerment of individuals and communities who have suffered or are at risk of human rights violations.
• Goal 2: Achieve climate and environmental justice. Trócaire supports poor and marginalised rural communities to sustain their livelihoods and to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change and environmental degradation.
• Goal 3: Ensure women and girls' protection, voice and leadership. Trócaire helps women and girls increase their safety, psychosocial wellbeing, meaningful participation, and leadership.
• Goal 4: Save lives and protect human dignity. Trócaire supports a locally led response to save lives, reduce suffering and ensure human dignity is protected.

The ICSP Zimbabwe baseline will focus on three of the ICSP fundings streams: These are indicated below

• Long Term Outcome 2.1 Poor and marginalised people, especially women and youth, have sustainable lives including diverse food sources and economic well-being
• Long Term Outcome 3.1 Women and older adolescent girls experience increased safety, psychosocial wellbeing, and meaningful participation and leadership
• Long Term Outcome 4.2 Women and men in communities affected by crisis transition from reliance on relief assistance towards meeting and/or protecting their food and livelihoods needs independently.

The new Irish Aid grant will start on 01 January 2023

The expected scope, approach and process for the baseline are outlined in this document. They are based on (a) Irish Aid baseline requirements1 and (b) Trócaire PIL guidance on baselines2.

Brief overview of the Zimbabwe Programme

Zimbabwe is characterized by intersecting social, political and economic crises, underpinned by poor governance, all of which impact on women and men’s livelihoods, their ability to bounce back from shocks and to live free from poverty. Given Zimbabwe’s heavy reliance on rain-fed agriculture and livestock, drought has serious implications for food security, particularly with increasing weather and climate variability. Women are particularly impacted as Zimbabwe is a deeply patriarchal society.

The context, Bikita and Gutu Districts in Masvingo Province and Insiza and Matobo Districts in Matabeleland South Province of Zimbabwe lie in regions 4 and 5 of the country. These regions are prone to natural disasters including extreme weather events (droughts, prolonged dry spells, and floods), animal diseases, and crop pests. Drought is the most common natural disaster that affects the regions, resulting in widespread food insecurity and loss of livelihoods assets leading to multiple negative social impacts. These districts, as well as Mutasa District in Manicaland Province. are also characterised by persistent gender inequalities underpinned by cultural, socio-economic and political factors, patriarchal traditions and harmful cultural and religious beliefs and practices that continue to fuel sexual and other forms of gender-based violence (SGBV). The country’s economic challenges have also negatively affected both urban and rural women and this has been compounded by the effects of COVID-19 that have seen a 60% increase in reports of SGBV incidences. The impacts of all these challenges disproportionately affect rural women who bear the brunt of walking long distances in search of water, food and firewood. There is an intimate relationship between women and nature and when nature is in trouble it means women are also in trouble. In urban communities, women and girls are victims of SGBV in public spaces like markets and water points, where they are vulnerable to sexual harassment and extortion for them to access food and water. The amount of time spent at water points in both urban and rural Matabeleland, Manicaland, and Masvingo leads to time poverty for women, leaving no time to do other domestic chores as well as participating in decision-making spaces. The 2021 Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee survey (ZIMVAC) reported high rates of spousal emotional and physical abuse, with Matabeleland and Manicaland amongst the provinces with the highest prevalence.1

It is against this background that the programme seeks to utilize Irish Aid funding to amplify agro-ecology as a sustainable crop production approach, as well as resourcing women’s empowerment initiatives as a means to support women and girls’ protection, voice and leadership.

Duties and Responsibilities

3. Objectives of the Baseline
The objectives of the Irish Aid ICSP baseline process is:

• To measure the ICSP grant indicators at the start of the grant.
• To provide consistent clear and credible information on grant indicators that will enable Trócaire to set realistic targets to work towards achieving during the ICSP (2023-2027).
• To identify any required changes that need to be made to our indicators and measurement approaches to inform ongoing MEAL on the grant
• To identify the information needs of individuals and communities as well as their preferred channels for receiving information and providing feedback/complaints (optional addition to baseline data collection)

Key questions for the baseline
In line with the set objectives of the baseline study, the baseline study will seek to answer the following questions.
a. What is the status of the programme participants regarding all the Goal 2 and Goal 3 indicators at the start of the current programme cycle?
Additionally, we would like to establish the following data gaps under Goal 2
• Household food storage
• Household Access to energy for cooking ??
• Household Women's and Men's Information sources, access to communications media and communications equipment.
• Weather and water monitoring systems and capacities.
• The condition and use of the local landscape/environment/ vegetation/soils/natural resources.
4. Methodology

In the ICSP grant, indicators for the long-term and intermediate outcomes have been decided at global grant level and countries must use the relevant indicators and the data collection methods and tools that are associated with the outcomes they have selected. This information is detailed in the ICSP Grant Outcomes, Indicators and Data Collection Methods which is provided in Annex A. Guidance to measure the long-term and intermediate indicators for the ICSP grant which have been decided at global grant level, can be accessed here.


Information on the data collection methods and tools that will be used to measure the long-term, intermediate (decided at global level) and immediate (decided at country level) outcome indicators are detailed in the Data Collection and Analysis Plan Here
3

Detailed Zimbabwe Specific Methodology

The baseline will use the convergence parallel mixed methods approach in this assignment. This methodology allows the data collectors to concurrently conduct the quantitative and qualitative elements for the baseline evaluation. This approach weighs the qualitative and quantitative methods equally, and analyses the two components independently, but interprets the results together (Creswell & Pablo-Clark, 2011). This approach also allows for triangulation and ensures complementarity of qualitative and quantitative approaches. Thus, the limitations of qualitative data will be addressed by the quantitative aspect. This gives the researchers a comprehensive picture of the situation on the ground in terms of both numbers and magnitude of the issues and their depth or detailed description. This cannot be obtained by using a single research approach method. However, the methodology will be finalized also in consultation with the consultants

Qualifications and Experience

CLICK VIEW MORE INFORMATION BUTTON BELOW FOR THE FULL DOCUMENT

How to Apply

The overall purpose of the Irish Aid ICSP baseline process is to establish the pre-grant conditions of ICSP funded country grants against which future changes can be measured.To this, if you are interested in carrying out the work, we would like you to send us a bid for consideration to [email protected] . Please find attached herein the Terms of Reference. All bids are expected to be in by the 13th of February 2023 COB.

CLICK VIEW MORE INFORMATION BUTTON BELOW FOR THE FULL DOCUMENT