External Evaluation of Child Rights Monitoring and Remediation System Pilot in Coffee Growing Areas of Rwenzori, Uganda

1. Presentation of Terre des hommes: 

As the leading Swiss organisation for children’s rights, created in 1960, the Terre des hommes foundation is committed to protecting children’s lives and their rights, and improving their well-being. We aim to do so through innovative programmes, specially designed to have both short- and long-term impacts.

For more than 60 years, we have been working in difficult situations, in countries at war, regions devastated by natural disasters, and places where poverty and malnutrition force millions of children and their families to migrate elsewhere. We provide direct and indirect support to millions of children, their families and communities in around thirty countries every year.

Our Vision: 

We aspire to a world where the rights of children, as defined in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, are always respected. Because we live in a world where children and young people cannot always grow up safe from harm, we support them, hand in hand, in building their resilience, so that they can become actors of positive change in their lives.

Our Mission: 

In order to protect children and their future, we are committed to fostering sustainable change to protect their rights and well-being. To make a difference, we support children in expressing their needs and interests and encourage them to participate actively in their communities to promote their empowerment, we advocate for the rights of children worldwide and ensure their well-being and the effective implementation of their rights as defined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and other human rights instruments, and we focus our efforts on protecting the lives of children in fragile contexts as well as in more stable environments.

Our Values: 

• Participation and Empowerment
• Partnership and Collaboration
• Innovation and Learning
• Diversity and Inclusion
• Leadership and Excellence

Tdh and Child Rights and Business:

Tdh engages with the private sector to improve the lives of children, families, communities, and countries by working across the public and private sector divide to strengthen child protection and promote children’s rights in business operations and global supply chains. Tdh is committed to ensuring that companies not only avoid harming children in their supply chain, but actively contribute to their rights and welfare. Tdh partners with businesses to align their operations with child rights principles. These partnerships aim to ensure that companies’ pursuit of business goals does not come at the expense of child welfare, but instead supports it.

2. Context: 

Human rights abuses are widespread in the production of many of the world’s most commonly traded goods – from coffee, cocoa, and tea to timber products and palm oil. While progress has been made over the past couple of decades, child labour, violence, abuse and harassment in the workplace still exist in many of these supply chains. When we look at the issue of child labour alone, we see the magnitude of the problem. As part of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, world leaders committed to take immediate and effective measures to end child labour in all its forms by 2025. The latest global estimates indicate that globally 160 million children are still in child labour, accounting for almost one in 10 of all children worldwide. COVID-19 has even more so threatened the progress made so far and has put more children at risk of underage work. In the coffee sector, this is especially an issue in developing countries where the supply chain starts and coffee beans are sourced from farmers.

As stricter legislation and standards on corporate due diligence and human rights, consumer awareness, and increasing pressure fuelled by the media is pushing companies to do more to limit the negative impact of their business activities, companies are forced to rebuild their business models to take account of the social good. In these efforts, the private sector has learned that simply prohibiting child rights violations in their standards and banning buyers and suppliers who commit or tolerate child rights violations in their supply chain has proven to be counterproductive. In fact, this often drives abuses underground, making them harder to detect and thereby perpetuating the problem.

A more holistic, multi-sectoral, innovative and sustainable approach is needed which capitalizes and strengthens local child protection systems and is embedded in the communities where these businesses operate. How to do this in contexts of remote and disadvantaged areas of the world with widespread informality, insufficient law enforcement and persistent poverty, however, is far from simple.

As part of a global partnership with one of the leading coffee companies in the world, Terre des hommes has supported the company in developing and implementing a community-based Child Rights Monitoring and Remediation System (CRMRS) to strengthen child protection at the sites where the company sources its coffee beans from. The CRMRS focuses on prevention, continuous monitoring for, identification, risk mitigation and remediation of child rights violations on the coffee farms and in the communities from where coffee is sourced from. It aims at ensuring that children who are at risk of/or exposed to child labour, violence, neglect, abuse and harassment are identified and receive an effective, timely, multi-sectoral and child-friendly response from relevant service providers under the local child protection system in a coordinated and accountable manner. The CRMRS seeks to adopt a holistic, innovative and sustainable approach by capitalizing on and strengthening local and national child protection systems. It does this by supporting and working closely with both the child protection authorities and community-based structures around the farms.

With Tdh’s technical support, this system has now been launched and has currently been active in the Rwenzori region of Uganda for a bit over a year. By working closely with both the child protection authorities, local civil society and communities around the farms, it’s helping to support farmers to mitigate child protection risks and to identify and address the needs of children exposed to any child protection incidents. There are three key strategies which Terre des hommes adopted in the development of the CRMRS:

• A focus on child rights – Terre des hommes ensured the system does not just only focus on addressing child labour in supply chains. It works to protect and promote children’s rights to protection in general in a company’s supply chain and operations – while still being sensitive to the specific issues around child labour.
• A community-based approach – by leveraging on, engaging with and supporting existing community structures to identify and address child rights violations within their own community, the CRMRS adopts a ‘community-based approach’.
• Strengthening the existing formal child protection system – the CRMRS ensures that supply chain efforts are linking up to, aligned with and strengthen the existing government child protection system. The CRMRS thereby invests in the overall system and the connection between supply chain and government efforts, preventing the risk of potentially building duplicate and inefficient systems that run in silo.

As part of this project, Tdh has also for the first time globally tailored the global standard digital inter-agency child protection case management information management system (Primero) to be piloted for child rights monitoring and remediation in the private sector.

3. Objective of the Evaluation: 

The external evaluation has three main objectives:

1. Independent assessment: obtaining an objective and independent assessment of the Child Rights Monitoring and Remediation System – also compared to other similar systems operational in comparable commodities/sectors.
2. Accountability: contributing to Tdh’s accountability toward its partners in the pilot project and the beneficiaries of the Child Rights Monitoring and Remediation System.
3. Learning and recommendations: surfacing learning from the Child Rights Monitoring and Remediation System and how this can inform recommendations for the model at scale and over time.

4. Scope of the Evaluation: 

The final evaluation is being commissioned by the Terre des hommes foundation in order to understand and document the design, functioning, results, main lessons learned, recommendations and potential for impact at scale and over time of the Child Rights Monitoring and Remediation System when it comes to its ability to prevent, monitor for, identify, mitigate risks which could lead to and remediate incidences of child protection violations in and around coffee farms linked to global supply chains.

The evaluation will assess the Child Rights Monitoring and Remediation System currently active in and around the 1369 coffee farms for around one year in two Districts and five sub-counties in the western region/the Rwenzoris of Uganda.

The final evaluation will focus on assessing the Child Rights Monitoring and Remediation System as a whole – it should assess the:

• Formative aspects: assessing the design of the system and the changes made to it over time;
• Process and governance: assessing the implementation process of the system and the governance of it;
• Results: assessing the results achieved through it in its ability to prevent, monitor for, identify, mitigate risks which could lead to, and remediate incidences of child protection violations in and around coffee farms linked to global supply chains;
• Main lessons learned and recommendations: assessing the main lessons learned and recommendations for the system over time and at scale;
• Potential impact: assessing the potential impact of the system over time and at scale
• Costing: assessing the costing of the system – including over time and at scale.

This evaluation is intended to be an independent external assessment of the system, which will complement internal reflection cycles implemented by Terre des hommes. It will reflect on 1 year of implementation, assessing against the OECD DAC criteria of relevance, coherence, effectiveness, impact, efficiency, and sustainability of the system.

The evaluation should thereby take into account specific limitations in that the CRMRS has only been active for a bit over a year (e.g. in cocoa, CLMRSs are deemed to need 3 years to settle), is a system that has been newly introduced to the sector and in the context, and that the geographical context comes with several challenges linked to technical capacities, weak institutions, scarce resources and availability of service providers, and strongly rooted socio-economic drivers leading to issues such as child labour.

5. Intended Users of the Evaluation: 

The main audience of the evaluation will be Terre des hommes and the partners in the project (i.e. private sector companies, government and local civil society).

The evaluation will be used to understand and document the design, functioning, results, main lessons learned, recommendations and potential for impact at scale and over time of the Child Rights Monitoring and Remediation System in the wider coffee sector. To this end, the evaluation may also be shared with future partner private sector companies, certification bodies, UN agencies, civil society actors and governments.

6. Evaluation Criteria and Questions: 

The key areas that the evaluation is intended to answer are, based on OECD DAC criteria, as follows:

• Relevance: is the intervention doing the right things?
  • Is the overall design of the CRMRS relevant to the context (i.e. the coffee sector; the private sector partner; in Uganda; and for the intended beneficiaries of children, families, communities, and local government.
  • What are the main lessons learnt and what recommendations can be made for bringing the CRMRS to scale?
• Coherence: how well does the intervention fit?
  • Is the overall design of the CRMRS in line with the current and upcoming human rights due diligence compliance regulations and best practices?
  • How does the overall design of the CRMRS compare to other similar systems in comparable commodities/sectors? What are the strengths and weaknesses compared to those other systems?
  • What are the main lessons learnt and what recommendations can be made for bringing the CRMRS to scale?
• Effectiveness: is the intervention achieving its objectives?
  • In how far has the CRMRS demonstrated its ability and potential to prevent, monitor for, identify, mitigate risks which could lead to, and remediate incidences of child protection violations in and around coffee farms linked to global supply chains?
  • What were the major factors influencing the CRMRS’ ability and potential to prevent, monitor for, identify, mitigate risks which could lead to, and remediate incidences of child protection violations in and around coffee farms linked to global supply chains?
  • What are the main lessons learnt and what recommendations can be made for bringing the CRMRS to scale?
• Efficiency: how well are resources being used?
  • Was coordination between frontline implementers of the CRMRS (i.e. private sector staff, local civil society, communities, government staff) efficient? Did all actors play their envisaged role in an efficient manner?
  • Was the governance between project partners and M&E systems set-up geared towards efficient results-oriented management?
  • How does the costing of the CRMRS compare to other similar systems – incl. over time and at scale?
  • What are the main lessons learnt and what recommendations can be made for bringing the CRMRS to scale?
• Impact: what difference does the intervention make?
  • What would be the potential impact (i.e. significant positive or negative higher-level effects) of the CRMRS over time and at scale when it comes to preventing and addressing child protection issues in and around the coffee farms linked to global supply chains?
  • What are the main lessons learnt and what recommendations can be made for bringing the CRMRS to scale?
• Sustainability: will the benefits last?
  • Was the CRMRS adopted by the companies in the pilot project area at the end of the pilot?
  • How strong is the sense of ownership at the community-level and to what extent is it likely that the community groups linked to the CRMRS will continue these activities over time?
  • To what extent is it likely that the social workers will be absorbed by the public-state systems over time?
  • What is the economic viability of the community child protection funds established with the CRMRS?
  • What are the main lessons learnt and what recommendations can be made for bringing the CRMRS to scale?
• Overall design: Are there any elements missing in the design of the CRMRS (and the changes made to it over time) that would likely have led or lead to increased relevance, coherence, effectiveness, efficiency, impact and/or sustainability?

7. Methodology: 

The evaluation methodology should be developed by the evaluator(s), presented in the Inception report and discussed with Tdh (and relevant project partners). It should be inclusive and appropriate to the different groups (consultations with all stakeholders, such as gender, age, disability and other vulnerability considerations), sensitive of social norms and practices, and ethical in data collection and analysis practices (safety, informed consent, etc).

Evaluator(s) will be provided with secondary sources (i.e. situation analysis report, project documents, progress reports, annual reports, review meeting results, results from the data collection through the Primero child protection case management information management system and corresponding developed reporting dashboard tool which has already aggregated the data into reports, reports from other similar systems, etc.), At the same time, the evaluator shall consider other external secondary data sources when / if necessary. The primary sources of data will include Terre des hommes staff and partners (i.e. private sector staff, government staff, local civil society staff, community groups and supported children and families). All data collection methods should be age and gender appropriate.

8. Deliverables: 

Evaluators are expected to submit the following deliverables at the end of the evaluation in English:

• An initial (Inception) report including: detailed methodology, objectives and key questions, evaluation matrix, tools and data collection methods, schedule and working plan, initial documentary analysis;
• A preliminary report with initial findings;
• A validation workshop (online) of initial findings to Terre des hommes;
• Final evaluation, lessons learned and recommendations report incorporating:
  • Executive Summary (max. 2-3 pages)
  • Methodology, including limitations (max. 2-3 pages)
  • Main Findings (15-25 pages)
  • Conclusions, Lessons Learned and Recommendations*,* including1 summary table with the main recommendations (separating the short, medium and long term) (5 pages)
  • Annexes: Containing the technical details of the evaluation, as well as the terms of reference, data collection tools used, tables or graphics, secondary review references, persons and institutions contacted, a PowerPoint presentation of the findings and recommendations;
• A power point presentation of the report
• A final presentationof the report to Terre des hommes and key project partners (online).

The contract agreement between Terre des hommes and the evaluator will be based on these deliverables.

9. Chronogram: 

What / Deadline: 

• Evaluation TOR publication / Deadline: 14 Oct
• Selection of evaluator/team / Deadline 25 Oct
• Documentation review, desk research & initial consultations (approx. 5days) / Deadline 01 Nov
• Inception report (approx. 2days). Deadline 05 Nov
• Data collection, incl. field mission to Uganda & data analysis (approx. 14days) / Deadline 19 Nov
• Preliminary report and validation workshop of initial findings (approx. 5days) / Deadline 26 Nov
• First draft of evaluation, lessons learned and recommendations report (approx . 10 days) / Deadline 10dec
• Feedback from Tdh / Deadline 13 Dec
• Final evaluation, lessons learned and recommendations report and presentation (approx 4 days) / Deadline 18 Dec

TOTAL: 40 days approximatewly

10. Evaluation Management, Roles, and Responsibilities: 

The evaluation will be managed by Terre des hommes’ Global Child Rights and Business Advisor with the technical support of the Global Quality & Accountability Advisor and Head of Child Protection. It will be implemented in close cooperation with the private sector company project manager and civil society partner on the ground in Uganda who will facilitate the transport, logistics and arrangements for meetings and engagements in-country.

Terre des hommes will provide the evaluator(s) with key secondary data sources for the desk research and contacts for primary data collection.

Evaluator(s) will have to:

• Fully comply with Tdh’s Global Code of Conduct and systematically report any breach to the Code through the whistleblowing procedure: raises awareness within the Foundation on abuse and violence and the rights deriving therefrom, respecting the rights and dignity of children, members of the communities and our own Staff
• Commit to respecting Risk Management Policies including: Safeguarding Policies (Child Safeguarding Policy, Policy on the Protection against Sexual Exploitation and the Directive on Staff Misconduct at the Workplace), Safety and Security Policy and Anti-Fraud/Corruption and Prevention of the Financing of Criminal Activities Policies and the Data Protection Policy.
• Treat all documents and information acquired through the evaluation as strictly confidential and sign an NDA for this purpose before commencing the evaluation.
• Comply with Tdh’s Directive on Monitoring & Evaluation, including Ethical considerations in evaluation.

11. Profile of the Consultant (Team): 

Qualifications and Experience: 

Terre des hommes encourages companies, NGOs and individual consultants to apply for this consultancy service. The main requirement is the experience in conducting similar evaluations and having expertise in child protection and human rights due diligence. The evaluator(s) is/are expected to work in English. Main requirements include:

• Individual consultant, a company or an NGO with conducting evaluations as their core area of expertise.
• The experts involved must have:
  • Master’s degree in social sciences, economics, public policy, law, evaluation, management or other related field(s) from an accredited university;
  • A minimum of 7 years of experience in evaluation work or social science research in the areas of child protection and/or human rights due diligence with the private sector;
  • Expertise in the areas of child protection and/or human rights due diligence with the private sector;
  • Understanding of the coffee supply chain and social sustainability issues;
  • Familiarity with Uganda and the Rwenzori region in specific is a plus’
  • Excellent report-writing skills and the ability to convey complex information in a logical, clear and concise manner as demonstrated by previous evaluation reports;
  • Professional fluency in the English language;

12 .Budget: 

The budget will be provided by the consultant in the context of the financial proposal/offer. Flight tickets, accommodation, per diem and on-site transport for the field mission to Uganda will be arranged through Tdh and will not need to be accounted for in the financial proposal/offer.

The financial proposal/offer will be provided by the bidder in a form of its choice, clearly indicating the costs in CHF, VAT included, for this evaluation and based on the number of days in the chronogram.

Payments will be made by Terre des hommes, based on the satisfactory receipt of deliverables and invoices submitted by the evaluator(s) as following:

Deliverables: 

• Inception report. Payment Trench 10%
• Preliminary report and validation workshop. Payment Trench40%
• Final evaluation, lessons learned and recommendations report and presentation. Payment Trench 50%

How to Apply: 

Interested candidates should submit their interest in English by email at 5:00 PM Geneva time, on 25th of October the latest (applications will be reviewed on a rolling-basis), through roy.tjan@tdh.org. 

Applications should include:

• Technical Offer (max 4 pages) Comprising:
  • Understanding of the objective of the evaluation and the Terms of Reference;
  • Methodology and tools proposed;
  • A chronogram showing details for the realization of each of the evaluation phases.
• Financial Proposal/Offer: a budget detailed by item (fees, other costs) and clearly indicating the costs in CHF, VAT included, and based on the number of days in the chronogram.
• Organization profile with CVs of lead evaluator and other team members / CV in case of individual consultant, along with a list of previous similar experiences;
• Example of previous reports or publications based on similar evaluations or research conducted.
• Contacts of 3 references.

The proposals will be assessed based on the following criteria:

Contract Awarding Criteria: 

No. of Points: 

Technical Offer = 40

Financial Proposal/Offer = 40

Experience and Expertise = 20

Total Possible = 100

In case of questions, please contact Roy Tjan (roy.tjan@tdh.org), Global Child Rights and Business Advisor, Terre des hommes foundation.