Consultor – Linha de Base do Projecto Linking Agriculture and Nutrition Tempo Inteiro

Endereço: Rua de Tchamba 398 – Maputo

Email: scimoz@savethechildren.org e marla.smith@savethechildren.org

Validade: 04/01/2018

Local: Manica e Tete

Anúncio de Concurso para Avaliação da Linha de Base (Baseline) do Projecto LAN – Manica

REF: CT/MPT/2017 – 009

Por mais de 90 anos, a Save the Children vem fazendo a diferença na vida das crianças em mais de 120 países. A Save the Children é a maior organização de direitos da criança independente do mundo, sustentada por uma visão de um mundo no qual cada criança atinge o direito à sobrevivência, protecção, desenvolvimento e participação. A nossa missão é de inspirar avanços na forma como o mundo trata as crianças, e para conseguir uma mudança imediata e duradoura em suas vidas.

A Save the Children International, Escritório de Maputo, convida a todos interessados para submeterem suas propostas para a realização da avaliação da Linha de Base (Baseline) do Projecto Linking Agriculture and Nutrition (LAN), implementado nas províncias de Manica e Tete, em Moçambique.

Background

The project Linking Agriculture and Nutrition, financed by DFID, will be implemented in five districts in Manica (Tambara, Guro, Barue, Machaze, Macossa) by Save the Children (SC) and five districts in Tete Province (Tsangano, Changara, Mutarara, Moatize, Cahora Bassa) by Helen Keller International (HKI) over the period of 1 November 2017 and 31 March 2021.

The programme will adopt a comprehensive approach to improve the nutritional status of women of reproductive age including adolescent girls and children 0-59 months. The project will support marginalised households with a package of nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive interventions in a total of 10 districts in Tete and Manica provinces, and reach the remainder of the districts in the Beira corridor with nutrition Social Behaviour Change Communication (SBCC) messaging through building on to existing nutrition-related mass media platforms. As gender inequity is a barrier to achieving optimal nutrition and health outcomes, gender transformation is integrated into all activities. The programme will reach a minimum of 703,377 beneficiaries through direct implementation of select target groups, and indirectly through the mass media platform.

The project will conduct the following activities:

• Train Model Mothers to carry out nutrition and WASH SBCC with women and children in the 1000 day window (conception to a child’s 24^th month) using the MoH-approved IYCF materials. Topics will include exclusive breastfeeding, appropriate complementary feeding practices (including diet quality and diversity), household dietary diversity, handwashing with soap at critical occasions, and the use of latrines, among other key behaviours. Model mothers will hold weekly or bi-weekly group meetings with 10-15 caregivers to discuss IYCF practices, conduct cooking demonstrations, and discuss difficulties in adopting the practices and relevant solutions. They will also conduct household visits for one-to-one counselling.
• Conduct nutrition-related events in communities for adolescents. HKI and SC will support communities (through youth associations, where they exist) to help coordinate events to mobilize adolescents. Events will use a mix of participatory theatre, role plays, exhibits (cooking demonstrations, nutrition/agriculture booths), and facilitated debates.
• Organise quarterly community nutrition, WASH and agricultural fairs to build broader awareness of nutrition and nutrition-sensitive agricultural topics, using community theatre, role plays, song, dance, debates, nutrition booths and cooking demonstrations. Fairs will include demonstrations on how to store seeds and preserve foods.
• Reinforce nutrition and agriculture messages via established mass media platforms. During the initiation phase, the partners will map the various platforms that currently exist to see how the information generated from the LAN activities could be integrated into the existing programs targeted at the Beira corridor to maximize efficiency and effectiveness.
• Support families of children under five with homestead food production of nutritious crops including the establishment of Farmer Field Schools and demonstration plots in communities, linking these with nutrition beneficiary households. The main purpose will be to introduce the practice of cultivating a variety of micronutrient-rich crops for diet diversification and use of climate-smart agricultural techniques. Crop preservation and storage will also be targeted to better guarantee year-round food and nutrition security.
• Enhance small livestock production methods through studying existing small animal production methods (especially chickens) currently employed by households and introduce changes to increase production and consumption. Capacity-building will be given to improve husbandry practices, e.g. appropriate housing facilities to protect against predation and weather, improved feeding practices, links to veterinary services (particularly to prevent Newcastle disease and other diseases), and decision-making issues such as sale of chickens and eggs.
• Develop seasonal food and nutrition security calendars, which will be used as a basis for developing community and household plans for ensuring the year-round availability of nutritious foods. The seasonal calendars will be used to plan how households – between food production, wild food gathering, food and seed storage, food preservation, small animal production, VSLAs, and income generating activities – they can cultivate, locate, store, sell and purchase the foods they need to ensure healthy year-round diets.
• Establish Village Savings & Loans Associations to help beneficiaries to help reduce financial shocks in their households while increasing options to improve their food and nutritional security. The loans can be used for any purpose, but are particularly useful in case of a shock (e.g. disaster, a death, securing emergency transportation in the case of illnesses), for investing in income generating activities including producing agricultural products for local markets, and for bridging the food and nutrition security gap during the hungry season.
• Linking to the private sector through engaging with the GAIN-led SUN Business Network, sharing lessons learned and developing ideas and solutions to best increase the availability of, and demand for healthy and diverse foods.
• Engage beneficiary couples in gender transformative dialogues through the implementation of Dialogue Clubs (Clubes de Diálogo) in the target communities, with an aim to increase gender equity and enhance women’s status and decision-making power. The project will partner with Rede HOPEM to train all levels of project staff in gender transformation, as well as to train district nutrition and agriculture staff as facilitators of the discussion groups.
• Establish Male Champions and Champion Couples, who will be identified as early adaptors to change and willing to volunteer their time. The Champions will be expected to counsel other men and couples on healthy nutrition or more equitable gender practices at least twice a month through participating in nutrition and agriculture group meetings, nutrition and agricultural fairs, or other social gatherings.

Objective of the Baseline

The key objective of the baseline study is to assess current behaviors and practices at household and community level for comparison against endline data in order to measure progress of behavior change and impact of program objectives and interventions. The baseline will collect household-level information on the current state of nutrition in the target communities; year-round food availability, accessibility and storage (food and nutritional security); water and sanitation situation; agricultural production and livestock information in general; the participation in any informal or formal group savings and loans initiatives; the status of adolescents aged 10-19 years (educational status, domestic status, responsibilities, involvement in community-based events), as well as information on their nutrition practices, knowledge, and beliefs. The survey will include a Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices (KAP) module to collect information on topics such as: gender perceptions on the role and status of women and men particularly related to chores and decision-making; taboos and customs around food consumption; food preferences; water and sanitation practices; general knowledge about nutrition and young child development; general knowledge and care-seeking behaviors related to pregnancy, breastfeeding, and young child illnesses.

This study will provide a baseline against which the project outcomes (and potentially impacts) can be monitored over the project life. It will also enable SC and HKI to ensure greater learning within the wider field of nutrition, agriculture, and gender. Finally, it will provide useful information to inform the design of the project. The project implementation processes and the lessons learned from this work will be documented over the course of the project and used to develop recommendations for SC, HKI, government actors, the private sector, and other NGOs and CBOs implementing similar initiatives.

This TOR is for an experienced consultant or research team to conduct all aspects of the baseline, including:

• The development of the protocol and data collection instruments, including developing the study design;
• The submission of the protocol and instruments to the Mozambican Bioethics Committee;[1]
• The implementation of all data collection in the field (using a mobile data platform)
• Data cleaning and analysis;
• Report writing.

All these steps will be implemented in close consultation with SC and HKI’s technical teams, using existing study designs as the basis for the development of the protocol and instruments.

Proposed Research Locations and Methods

Proposed Research Locations

Baseline data will be collected in the program target districts in villages that either have been selected for programme implementation (in some cases, activities may already be underway) or in villages that may be selected in the future to be part of the programme.

Proposed Research Methods

The study evaluation will use a pre-post design, with no control group. It will consist of a household survey, with modules to be responded to by mothers of young children, and shorter modules for their husbands/male partners and adolescents living in the household, covering the topics described above.

Household Survey

The principal methodology will be a survey interviewing a sample of household members in the target districts.

The research team will propose sampling parameters to be approved by SC and HKI.

The sample size should be powered to detect a change from baseline to endline of 10 percentage points or more, at the regional level, in key indicators:

Survey Tool:

The research team will develop a household survey in English and Portuguese including the KAP modules, in close consultation with and final approval by SC and HKI technical experts. The structure and order of the survey will be determined during the tool development and tool design and is not represented by the following list.

The list below represents initially proposed topics but may be prioritized and reduced during the survey design and development. However the research team should have familiarity and experience with all below topics and the appropriate data collection methods for these indicators.

• Household demographic information
• Basic characteristics of respondent and household – gender, age, education level, marital status, household member composition, age of children, etc.
• Income and asset holdings – agriculture and non-agriculture
• Participation in current and past similar projects

1. Nutrition
2. Anthropometric measurements of children under five years in the household
3. Standard World Health Organization recommended Infant Young Child Feeding (IYCF) Indicators including breastfeeding, complementary feeding, Minimal Acceptable Diet and Minimum Dietary Diversity for Women, Including adolescent girls
4. Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) – based on Standard Essential Hygiene Actions (EHA) Indicators
5. Household Food security including Household Hunger Scale and Months of Adequate Household Food Provision (MAHFP)
6. Information on knowledge and beliefs related to young children’s nutrition and that of adolescents

III. Maternal and Child Health

1. Ante-Natal Care (ANC) visits
2. Delivery at Health Facility
3. Iron Folic Acid (IFA) intake
4. Diarrheal disease incidence in two weeks (child)

1. Food Access, Availability, Quality, and Use
2. Water Collection and Storage practices by season, use and related decision making.
3. Crop production and use by season including cash crops, homestead production, and related decision-making.
4. Livestock care, sale and consumption for both large and small livestock.
5. Food purchase habits
6. Food and grain preservation and storage practices, use, sale and consumption
7. Food processing

1. Savings and Lending Practices
2. Savings and lending scheme participation (VSLAs or other schemes)
3. Savings and lending practices
4. Other saving and lending apart from VSLAs

1. Gender and Household Decision-Making
2. Care and nutrition practices and support for pregnant women
3. Women’s and men’s work and time allocation
4. Household decision-making

Responsibilities and Deliverables

The following are the anticipated responsibilities and deliverables that the consultant will perform and submit to Save the Children:

The consultant team will be primarily responsible to:

• Conduct a desk review of relevant project and other context documents;
• Develop baseline study design, sampling strategy, and questionnaire for the survey;
• Share study design including process, methods, sampling and questionnaires with SC and HKI staff, collect and incorporate feedback and finalize the study design and tools;
• Submit study design, protocols, and tools to the Ministry of Health Bioethics Committee for approval;
• Pre-test questionnaires in one of the project districts;
• Procure all hardware and materials necessary for conducting the survey (including mobile phones/tablets, and anthropometry equipment); SC and HKI may have materials on hand to loan to the consultant / consulting firm, if required;
• Update SC and HKI on progress of the study on weekly basis;
• Debrief/discuss with project team about effectiveness of questionnaire, checklists and other tools used in pre-test, collect feedback and finalize them;
• Hire, orient, train a team of survey enumerators, including on procedures for ethical research and standardization for anthropometric measurements;
• Ensure standardized and appropriate translation of questions into local languages;
• Coordinate with SC for introductions to data collection locations;
• Carryout field work with enumerators using a mobile technology platform (i.e., data collected via mobile phone and/or tablet computer);
• Provide HKI and SC with access to data on a real-time basis, via the mobile technology platform;
• Actively supervise enumerators in the field to ensure high-quality and respectful work;
• Ensure the quality of information collected from fields, cross check validity and verify (including field-based data quality assurance procedures);
• Provide debrief to SC and HKI staff following completion of field work;
• Conduct data cleaning;
• Provide SC and HKI with a cleaned, labelled dataset (in advance of the report and within 2 weeks of survey completion);
• Analyse data and prepare first draft report;
• Incorporate feedback from SC and HKI technical staff and finalize report;
• Prepare PowerPoint presentation of report findings and share with SC and HKI for feedback;
• Submit final report and PPT (a compiled version of the report both hard copy and electronic version in PDF format).

The report must at a minimum contain the following:

1. Executive Summary of findings, analysis and recommendations
2. Methodology
3. Detailed description of findings, including graphs and tables as needed
4. Analysis of findings in each topic areas
5. Appendices:
   1. Data tables, as appropriate

Proposed Timeline

The complete study is expected take approximately 19-20 weeks.

Payment schedule

The payments to the consultant(s) or firm will be made in three installments upon meeting key deliverable milestones. The payment details will be agreed upon by Save the Children and the consultant(s) or firm during the contract negotiation period. Completion of deliverables is expected to be of utmost quality, and to be thoughtful and timely.

How to apply:

Qualification and Experience:

Interested candidate or consulting firms have the following qualifications and skills within their team:

• A Public Health Specialist, Nutrition Specialist, Agriculture Specialist, Social Scientist, biostatistician, demographer or other relative disciplines
• Demonstrated skills and experience in conducting Health and Nutrition and agriculture Related research, including carrying out of health and nutrition related studies/surveys that include anthropometric measurements
• Demonstrated experience conducting baselines and other research in health and nutrition, agriculture, food security, and related programmes.
• Strong background in statistics and data analysis.
• Excellent report and presentation writing skills.
• Can speak and understand Portuguese and organize translators (as needed) for local languages for community surveys.

Documents to be submitted with application:

Interested Consultants or consultancy firms are expected to submit a detailed proposal with the following components:

1. Technical proposal to include:

• A one page Consultant’s understanding of the TOR
• Two pages of the proposed methodology, including proposed sample size and sampling method, activities and expected results
• A detailed activities schedule/work plan
• A complete profile of the consultant or consulting firm
• Copy of CVs of the consultant and his/her team who will undertake the base line study
• Two samples of similar Surveys carried out by the consultant or consulting firm
• References that SC can contact for information on consultants’ past performance

1. Financial proposal detailing:

• Itemized consultant’s fees
• Itemized field data collection expenses
• Itemized administration expenses
• Validity period of quotation
• Tax status of the Consultant/Consultancy Firm

Proposals will be assessed with the following valuation of importance:

-Qualifications and brief proposal (60%)

-Cost/fee (40%)

Dead Line for Application:

The deadline for application is 16:00 on 04 January, 2018. Applications must be submitted by hard copy in a sealed envelope to the Procurement Committee at Save the Children at the following address: Save the Children, Rua de Tchamba 398, Maputo, Moçambique

[1] Of note, a second phase of research (qualitative work focusing on adolescents) will be included in the submission to the Mozambican Bioethics Committee; the consultant is not expected to oversee the field research for this study but will be asked to help finalize the protocol and qualitative instruments for the Bioethics Committee.