Humanitarian and Resilience Programme (HARP) Facility – Programming in hard to reach areas /

Terms of reference

Background and context

The HARP-Facility is the principal pillar of the UK’s Humanitarian assistance in Myanmar. Launched in 2016, the Facility acts as both a grant funding mechanism and a knowledge platform for the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and the wider humanitarian community. In its role as a funding mechanism, the HARP Facility is responsible for distributing and managing £61 million in grants to organisations meeting the needs of people affected by conflict and natural disasters in Myanmar. As a knowledge platform, the HARP Facility provides technical and capacity development support to local and international humanitarian organisations, provides research and contextual analyses to support better understanding of the humanitarian context in Myanmar, and promotes learning on effective humanitarian response through generation of evidence from its grant portfolio.

The humanitarian context in Myanmar can be characterised as a complex protracted crises, where humanitarian access is often constrained due to geographical inaccessibility, safety and security issues, restrictions imposed by authorities and, since March, restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic. As such, the HARP Facility is looking strengthen its work in hard to reach areas and promote learning on how its partners continue to effectively provide humanitarian assistance.

Understanding the impact of HARP-F as a protracted crisis instrument is key element of the Knowledge, Impact and Legacy agenda of HARP-F. This review will be the first of many studies undertaken under this heading over the period 2021-22.

The HARP Facility currently manages a portfolio of grants to 20 local and international NGOs providing humanitarian assistance to targeted populations in Rakhine, Kachin, Northern Shan, Chin, South East Myanmar and the Thai border area.

Evaluation objectives and target audience

The aim of this evaluation is to promote learning among the HARP Facility, FCDO and HARP Facility grantees on approaches to delivering humanitarian assistance in hard to reach areas, particularly using remote management modalities. Specifically, the evaluation is expected to:
– Review why remote partnership is adopted by HARP-F and partners, specifically what has triggered a remote partnership approach and successive stages of it. This should be considered both from the perspective of HARP-F itself and of individual partners adopting remote partnership with relation to the grants they implement.
– To consider how HARP-F and partners attempt remote working by mapping the approaches and practices undertaken by HARP Facility partners to delivering humanitarian assistance in hard to reach areas, including a brief qualitative assessment of the value for money arguments supporting different approaches taken.
– Develop two or more case studies to explore different approaches and practices in depth and to highlight key learning.
– Compare the approaches taken by the HARP Facility to delivering humanitarian assistance in hard to reach areas with approaches taken in comparable humanitarian contexts. Consider how HARP-F has supported its grantees to achieve incremental improvements in delivery through remote partnership.
– Compile a set of good practices that can be used to guide further implementation by HARP Facility partners.
– Make recommendations on how the HARP Facility can help support partners to improve humanitarian delivery in hard to reach areas, including but not limited to its grant management processes, capacity development support and coordination.
– Highlight any key ethical and protection issues related to the approaches and practices mapped above and if necessary suggest ways in which the HARP Facility can ensure these are adequately managed. considerations.
The evaluation findings will be used internally by the HARP Facility and FCDO to improve its grant management arrangements and to promote learning on humanitarian programming in hard to reach areas among its partners and the wider humanitarian sector in Myanmar.

Approach and Methodology

Remote partnerships are conducted in different contexts across Myanmar:
1) In non-government-controlled areas, where there is an absence of state authority and where the functions of the state may, to some degree, be filled by an opposition actor, often an armed group or a political authority with connections to an armed group
2) Areas formally under government control but affected by armed conflict between government forces or pro-government militias and ethnic armed opposition, where access is contingent on government approvals and HARP-F partners have difficulty securing access or where access approvals are intermittent
3) Areas where HARP-F partners have access but only through national staff (of INGOs) or national partners (be these direct HARP-F partners or INGO partners/affiliates), thus access is ‘localised.’
The evaluation should use these typologies of remote partnership as a framework for the study, but can also propose others. The evaluator should review if and how approaches differ depending on the variances in remote partnership context.

Remote partnership is also a spectrum of approaches, as opposed to a fixed condition that is switched on and off dependent on certain conditions. The HARP Facility, by its nature, has been set up as a remote partnership facility but the degree to which the Facility has partnered remotely has changed (increased) over the life of the HARP-F project. The evaluator should review how remote partnership has shifted over the life of HARP-F, what triggers shifts in remote partnership and how partners themselves have adapted their remote management arrangements with the support of HARP-F.

Given travel restrictions and access constraints, the evaluation can be conducted remotely using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods proposed by the evaluator. However, evaluators able to propose a national team who are able to access some or all of the operational areas concerned will have an advantage. At a minimum, it is expected that the evaluation team will:
– Review relevant literature from the HARP Facility, FCDO, grantees and peer agencies
– Conduct in-depth interviews with key staff from the HARP Facility, FCDO, HARP Facility partners and peer agencies.
– Survey grantees to map existing approaches and practices
The evaluator(s) may also wish to conduct remote workshops including HARP-F partners and HARP-F staff as appropriate.

Timeline and deliverables

The consultancy is expected to start as soon as possible and last between two and three months. A rough outline of the anticipated timeline is presented below together with the expected deliverables:
Inception phase (2 weeks). Inception report should contain:
– Desk review of programme documentation and existing data
– Break evaluation objectives into specific evaluation questions
– Propose data collection methods and data sources to be used for addressing each evaluation question.
– Detailed work-plan developed by consultant and agreed on with HARP-F

DELIVERABLE 1: Submission of Inception Report.
Data collection and analysis phase (5-6 weeks).
– Implement independent data collection
– At the end of the data collection phase, preliminary findings and conclusions will be presented to HARP-F
DELIVERABLE 2: Compiled raw data in electronic format;
DELIVERABLE 3: Presentation of preliminary findings to relevant staff
Reporting phase (3 weeks). The final report should:
– Provide a comprehensive analysis of compiled data
– Provide findings and recommendations that respond to the evaluation objectives
– Be circulated to HARP-F for review and comment before finalisation
– Incorporate feedback from HARP-F staff as relevant
DELIVERABLE 4: Submission of draft report for review
DELIVERABLE 5: Submission of final report and annexes (with HARP-F signoff). The evaluation lead may be asked to participate in a workshop/event at the end of the assignment, to present and discuss the results.

Evaluation team composition and required competencies

– Proven experience conducting rigorous evaluations and demonstrated expertise in both quantitative and qualitative evaluation methods
– Strong qualitative and quantitative data analysis skills
– In-depth understanding and experience in humanitarian programming and emergency response in hard to reach areas
– Familiarity with the Myanmar humanitarian context and ability to communicate cross-culturally
– Ability to synthesize and present findings in an engaging and accessible manner
– Excellent report writing skills in English

Budget and Payment
Bids shall include budgets that are based on the scope of work and proposed objectives. The agreed sum shall cover all fees and costs incurred in conducting the consultancy tasks.
Payment will be made in two instalments: – 40 per cent upon completion of the inception period, – 60 per cent upon submission and approval of the finalised consultancy outputs
Proposal Submission
Application deadline: Close of business 8 February 2021 (Yangon time).
Bids must include the following:
a) Cover letter: stating candidate/team skills and experience suitable for the consultancy (max 2 page)
b) Outline of evaluation framework and proposed methods, proposed timeframe, basic work plan and budget (max 5 pages- longer submissions may not be read).
c) CVs of proposed individual(s) and sample of similar assessments/research carried out previously (abbreviated work is adequate, though we may ask for additional text if submission is insufficient to assess quality of work performed).

Bids and queries can be sent to: jobs@harpfacility.org