Save the Children  -  We aim to inspire breakthroughs in the way the world treats children, and to achieve immediate and lasting change in their lives by improving their health, education and economic opportunities. 

POSITION : Consultant - Study on Strengthening the Community Volunteer Approach in the CDGP

DESCRIPTION

The Child Development Grant (CDG) Programme is a five-year DFID funded programme, with Save the Children, ACF and the Government of Nigeria being implemented in a total of 5 LGAs in Zamfara and Jigawa States of Northern Nigeria, where high levels of child stunting is a serious problem. The CDG Programme (CDGP) aims to remove the food security and financial barriers to improving nutrition practices and preventing stunting.

These northern states are each characterized as conservative, with a number of cultural dynamics that limit women’s involvement in household and market level decision making and other markers of empowerment. The CDGP works to remove the substantial financial barriers to improving nutrition in the first “1000 days of life” (pregnant and lactating women and children up to the age of 24 months) and is delivering a behaviour change strategy to improve nutrition practices and prevent stunting in children.

The overall anticipated outcome is: A scalable programme showing how cash transfers can bring cost-effective immediate and long-term food security and nutrition benefits in terms of improved nutrition behaviours and stunting prevention to eligible households with young children in poor communities in northern Nigeria.

CDGP aims to demonstrate the impacts of household food security, improved optimal nutrition practices, in the prevention of childhood stunting.  CDGP works closely with government authorities at the State and LGAs level to implement and oversee the program.

In CDGP, community volunteers (CVs) have been identified as the frontline providers to deliver program services around the cash transfer element of the program, such as mobilization of targeted beneficiaries and verification of payments.

Community volunteers engaged by the programme are also delivering a comprehensive set of nutrition social and behaviour change (BCC) activities at community level (e.g. leading peer support IYCF groups, recipe demonstrations, counselling, household visits, health educations sessions at IYCF corners and payment points and nutrition sensitization to targeted groups (such as fathers). CVs are supervised by MOH CHEWS in the nutrition portion of their work.

In its current implementation structure, the success of CDGP relies on a feasible and effective CV approach that will develop capacities of community volunteers, motivate them, ensure adequate supervision, and have impact.  Critical to this is successfully engaging with and working with formal government employed CHEWS. This TOR is emphasizing current implementation and quality.

SC in Nigeria carried out a CV Study in July 2016, the results of the study provided a useful summary of CV approaches across a range of programs in northern Nigeria and a starting point. However, several important gaps in our understanding remain which should be addressed to improve current programming approach for CDGP with CVs and CHEWS and help the programme explore possible successful and sustainable transfer to government systems.

Building off of the findings from the CV study (July 2016), CDGP then initiated a CV Review to learn more about best practices with community volunteers/frontline providers from global experience, to answer a set of short term questions to frame multiple CV issues of interest to CDGP and consider how these findings might be applied to CDGP CV approach to strengthen impact and sustainability. Recommendations from the Jan 2017 CV Review (phase 1) are reflected in this TOR.

The Purpose  
Provide an in-depth analysis on the current CV engagement in the CDGP programme as well as the framework for strengthening the Community Volunteer Approach in CDGP in the following areas of interest:

• Defining role and expectations
• Identification/Recruitment
• Retaining and sustain providers (and how to deal with possible inequalities, such as with targeted CTs)
• Capacity building
• Measuring quality and impact of CV and CHEW efforts and
• Program Design (recommendations for CDGP to put into action plan 2017-2019)

 Deliverables

• Responsible for the Recruitment, orientation, guidance and management of a Nigeria - based Field Coordinator.
• Conduct with team additional analysis and field study composed of qualitative interviews and a time allocation study. The time allocation study will assess the level of effort of CVs in carrying out their cash transfer and the BCC nutrition tasks. Information from the time allocation study and qualitative interviews (key informants and focus groups) will clarify urgent outstanding questions necessary for short term program quality covering the key areas and questions below
• Recommend immediate short-term (by June 2017) and longer- term (until July 2019) modifications to strengthen quality of the CV approach in CDGP and prepare action plan.
• Review the draft SOPs for the CVs and provide suggestions to update generic JD from CV study.
• Highlight recommendations that would be suitable for advocacy.

Expected Outputs

• Final report with specific short and longer team recommendation that address the key areas if interest stated above
• Power point presentation of findings to CDGP and SCUK team in Abuja

Key Competencies:

• Experience working with CV programmes in Africa. (Experience working with CV programmes in Nigeria would be an added advantage.
• 10 years working experience in international development
• Good qualitative research methods and analytical skills
• Evidence of similar work done

In order to be considered, Proposals must include the following:

• Capability Statement - not to exceed three pages, indicating past experience in leading on similar strategy document development
• Samples of consultancy reports from previous work
• References - names, company or organization, contact information - of three recent (within the past 2 years) companies that you have consulted for in this capacity
• Budget - detailed budget for the above scope(s) of work (broken down into labour cost or personnel costs with an explanation of how the unit costs was reached, detailed travel costs, and other direct costs).

Budget must be submitted using the template that is provided. Unit costs, number of units and unit description must be provided. Please also indicate any overhead fees if applicable. Please provide breakdown of costs included in the overhead charges.