Description

Over the last three years, Save the Children has mobilised around the objective of protecting children in conflict (PCiC). This initiative has been conceptualised around three pillars:

1. Consistently uphold international laws and standards to protect children in conflict;
2. Perpetrators of violations of children’s rights in conflict must be systematically held to account;
3. Programmes and interventions to protect children in conflict and to rebuild shattered lives much be properly funded and effectively implemented.

This has required collaboration between advocacy, programming and operations and between country, regional and global offices. Country offices working in the context of armed conflict integrated a focus on PCiC in their country strategic planning process and developed PCiC-specific plans for the strategy period 2019-21. Members mobilised to align strategic funding partnerships with PCiC and to contribute to a pooled funding mechanism which has been used to build capacity and leverage further investment and expansion of work to protect children in conflict.

Save the Children is looking for a consultant to undertake a light touch evaluation of achievements made and constraints faced through the implementation of the Protecting Children in Conflict initiative, focused on outcomes at the country level. This is an opportunity to document good practice and achievements, identify obstacles and constraints, define future opportunities and make recommendations on how to take the PCiC initiative into the next strategy period of 2022-4.

The consultancy will take place between February and May 2021 and will involve approximately 25 days of work (subject to costs). The consultant will undertake a desk review, survey and stakeholder interviews in order to define achievements and constraints and will present these to key stakeholders in a round-table. This will be used to define recommendations for taking PCiC into the next strategy period. The consultant will produce a written report detailing key achievements, constraints, opportunities and recommendations.

Methodology

The PCiC initiative involves multiple stakeholders at country, regional and global level and across functional areas of programmes, policy, advocacy, campaigns and operations.

The consultant should start with a review of key strategy, guidance and M&E documents for PCiC as well as stakeholder interviews with core PCiC team. In order to structure the review process it will be necessary to compile PCiC objectives for country office work across functional areas and use these to develop an evaluation framework.

Based on the evaluation framework, the consultant should develop an online survey tool for staff engaged with PCiC at the country, regional and global level across functional areas, with questions designed to measure progress against objectives, identify key achievements made and challenges faced, and facilitate respondents to recommend what more needs to happen to overcome challenges and take PCiC forward in the next strategy period. The survey should also invite participants to submit documentation of evidence and learning related to PCiC.

In order to triangulate and develop a fuller narrative of survey findings, the consultant should then conduct key stakeholder interviews with a representative sample of staff at country, regional and global levels across functional areas, as well as select external stakeholders. The review should be drafted based on the findings of the survey, key informant interviews and review of documents provided.

The consultant should facilitate a round table to present the findings of the review and build consensus on recommendations in order to ensure that they are as relevant and applied as possible. Feedback on the draft review and discussions at the roundtable should inform the finalisation of the review report.

Timeframe

The review should be conducted during Q1 and Q2 2021 with completion by the end of May. This will enable time for the recommendations to be disseminated and socialised for consideration in the design of priorities and strategies for the 2022-4 strategy period.

Review Steps

• Desk Review – global documentation: 3 days
• Key stakeholder interviews: 2 days
• Survey design, implementation and analysis: 4 days - by the end of March
• Key stakeholder interviews: 4 days
• Desk review - Country Office documentation: 4 days
• Draft of Review: 4 days - by the end of April
• Roundtable on findings and recommendations: 2 days
• Finalisation of review: 2 days - by the end of May

Total number of days: 25

Output

The review will result in a report which should cover the following (lengths are approximate):

• Introduction (1 page)
• PCiC objectives and review framework / methodology (1 page)
• Analysis of findings from the survey, key informant interviews and review of documentation (12 pages):
• • Key achievements
• • Key constraints
• • Key opportunities
• Recommendations (2 pages)

The review process should also be used to expand a portfolio of documentation the evidences the impact of protecting children in conflict.

Governance

The review will be overseen by an advisory group of key global and regional staff working on PCiC from the PCiC Technical Working Group within the Child Protection Breakthrough and the PCiC Humanitarian Policy and Advocacy Group (HPAC).

Key Global Documents

• Stop the War on Children strategy
• PCiC Annual Advocacy Strategy
• PCiC guide for country offices
• Evaluation of work on grave violations
• Pooled funding guidelines
• Bi-annual reports on PCiC pooled funds
• PCiC Learning Event Reports
• Global Dashboard (2019 only)
• PCiC global workplans
• PCiC Plan 2021 (not available for 2020)

Person Specification

We are looking for internal capacity or an external consultant to conduct this review. The reviewer should meet the following requirements:

• Experience of humanitarian protection and child protection in the context of armed conflict;
• Experience of programming and advocacy related to protection;
• Significant experience with mixed method review processes;
• Demonstration of a structured approach to reviews and evaluations;
• Proven analytical capacity;
• Strong written capacity and ability to present findings and recommendations in clear and accessible format;
• Strong facilitation skills;
• Experience of working for Save the Children is a significant benefit.