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Consultant - Energy Assessment Tool Development and Implementation - Uganda/Remote

Position Title:Consultant

Duty Station: Remote and Uganda

Organization:Mercy Corps

Employment Type:Full Time Permanent

Tracking Code: 219499-927

Application Deadline: February 6th, 2015

Consultant Scope of Work

    Part A:

 1) Develop, test, and refine an energy-food-water nexus assessment and benchmarking tool (with a focus on ‘productive use’ of energy) for Food for Peace Programs to be shared with the TOPS learning community and relevant energy actors.

 2) Based on tool piloting and results within the FFP Funded, Growth, Health and Governance (GHG) program in Northern Uganda, make recommendations for activities to promote productive use of energy within the program area.

    Part B: Work with technical team to refine energy access assessment tools and develop guidance for Mercy Corps Global Energy Programs

   WORKSITE LOCATION: Remote and Uganda

    PROJECT DESCRIPTION:

    Mercy Corps works in countries in transition, where communities are recovering from disaster, conflict, or economic collapse.  With field programs in more than 40 countries, and an annual budget of more than $200 million, Mercy Corps is one of the largest international development NGOs in the US.

    Mercy Corps exists to alleviate suffering, poverty and oppression by building secure, productive and just communities. We seek to catalyze civil society, public and private sector actors through interventions that are community-led and market-driven.  The Environment, Energy and Climate Change team (EEC) is a small but critical technical team within Mercy Corps’ Technical Support Unit (TSU).  The TSU is responsible for leading and supporting assessments, program design and field studies; providing technical support to field offices; helping the global agency set technical strategies; building strategic partnerships, and representation and coordination with other development, government and private sector actors.

    Energy Access is a sector of growing importance within Mercy Corps, and the EEC team is playing a key role in building a global portfolio of energy programs and guiding the agency’s strategy for integrating energy access into our core programming. The team’s existing energy access priorities include building effective tools for energy access and energy market assessments, refining measurement methodologies, developing training curricula, and building effective partnerships with private sector entities.  The consultancy focus is divided in two parts, Part A and Part B described below:

    Consultancy Part A:

 Energy-Water-Food Nexus Assessment and Benchmarking Tool for Food for Peace Programs

    The Energy-Food-Water Nexus Benchmarking project will complement a 5-year FFP project, the Growth, Health, and Governance Program (GHG), currently being implemented in Northern Karamoja, which aims to improve peace and food security through an integrated, gender-sensitive approach. Activities under GHG strengthen Karamojong livelihoods, support child health and nutrition, and bolster local capacity to improve governance and mitigate conflict. The GHG team has recognized the need to enhance energy access in order to meet the wider goals of the project, and have identified the opportunity to take a ‘nexus’ approach that links energy to water access and ultimately to the food system.

    Energy-Food-Water Nexus Benchmarking aims to test a practical survey instrument to benchmark energy access for productive use that can be used throughout the global food security community for design, baseline, and benchmarking of Nexus activities to achieve food security goals, while also adding practical value to the GHG program.  ESMAP has already developed a robust multi-tier methodology for household lighting and cooking access and is now in the process of developing modules for productive use. This project will test and refine the ESMAP productive use module through the existing Food for Peace, Growth, Health, and Governance Program (GHG), being implemented by Mercy Corps and consortium partners in Northern Karamoja. Following piloting of the tool a final design workshop on findings will be held with GHG consortium partners to incorporate findings into practical piloting of nexus activities via the GHG FFP program.  This entire process will be documented and the findings and methodology report will be shared with Food for Peace Uganda Mission, GHG partners World Vision, Feinstein International Center, Pastoralism and Poverty Fronteirs, and Kaabong Peace and Development Agency, and and key organizations, like ACDI-Voca, who actively implement food security programs in Uganda. The final report and methodology will also be disseminated through the TOPs network and to the SE4All Energy Practitioners network.

    Goal:  Improve impact of food security program through better integration of energy-water-food “Nexus” design into existing and future Food for Peace programs.

Objectives:

 1):  Test energy for productive use baseline and benchmarking tool for use within Food For Peace programs

2) Disseminate methodology and findings to global food security and energy access communities, and

3) Provide concrete and actionable recommendations for GHG program activities based on the project findings.

    The program team will refine the World Bank ESMAP multi-tier methodology, which will allow the GHG program to understand how households and small businesses (disaggregated by livelihood, income groups, and gender of HH head) are using energy for productive uses and identify the opportunities for applying energy activities to accelerate the programs goals.  Results will be used to hone in on areas where energy can be used more effectively to meet the objectives of the GHG program. In addition, the tool will help quantify the tangible health and productive time benefits of fuel-efficient and/or electricity technology access at household land small business levels.

    Based on this methodology the team will also identify what factors are leading households in a particular village to move from one tier to another, or conversely why they are “stuck” at a lesser tier.  This information will provide important and actionable insight for the design of the energy-food-water nexus intervention within the GHG program.

    GHG will use this methodology throughout the remaining 3 years of the program to track both the number of households & enterprises whose tier level has changed as a result of program activities as well as the extent of the change (how many tier levels the household or enterprise has moved), providing valuable lessons for organizations operating similar food security programs within Uganda.

        Desk review of relevant Mercy Corps documents and reports, including internal and external energy access and nexus assessment methodologies and tools.

        Design benchmarking instrument using the ESMAP multi-tier methodology as a base reference.

        Sampling frameworks for quantitative and qualitative that should be of a sufficient size and representativeness to allow for reasonable levels of certainty that the findings are representative for the target population. Determine the sampling frame, sample size for household and business surveys, data collection, analysis interpretation and report writing. Specify the data analysis software to be utilized for this activity.

·                 Travel to Uganda to train enumerators in benchmarking survey tool and methodology.

·                 Test survey instrument and refine as needed.

·                 Supervise data collection process and quality control

·                 Lead data analysis

·                 Write final report outlining the energy access for productive use (nexus) in the focus area including recommendations for programming

·                 Case study on the use of the ESMAP tool itself

·                 Present and submit the draft versions of study reports to Mercy Corps for input and comment. Revise and finalize the document.

·                 Based on lessons work with EEC to develop assessment tool and guidelines for wider use

    Consultancy Part B: Energy Assessment Tool Refinement

    The EEC team has a collection of energy assessment and measurement guidance documents that need review and standardization by a professional with deep M&E skills.  The end deliverable will be an Energy Assessment Guidance Package that is aligned with best practice, contributes to quality control of assessment outputs, covers the range of energy programs Mercy Corps teams engage in, and is easy and practical to use by program teams with varying levels of M&E capacity.  While we expect this guidance to be adapted depending on energy program type and country context, we aim to provide teams with access to these guidance materials as a starting point for sound energy assessments and baselines for programming targeting household, productive, and institutional energy use.  These tools will also be the basis for agency level reporting requirements.

       The consultant(s) will work closely with the Energy Advisor to review, edit/add, and repackage a complete package of Energy Assessment Guidance with an emphasis of USABILITY and accessibility of the guidance package by program teams.  The Energy Assessment Guidance includes:

·                 Energy assessment tools including survey templates and secondary data check-lists

·                 TOR for Assessment lead

·                 HH and Business Assessment modules (these include core modules for energy access and market demand assessments as well as additional modules for productive use, institutional use, clean cooking etc.)

·                 Assessment guidance (i.e. sampling, target group representation, data quality assurance measures)

·                 Rough budget guidance and suggestions for packaging of assessment modules and sample size that could be completed at $20,000 level, $50,000 level and $100,000 level.  

·                 Report guidance including guidance on analysis and sample tables/data outputs

    DELIVERABLES:

       Consultancy Part A: Energy-Water-Food Nexus Assessment and Benchmarking Tool for Food for Peace Programs (estimated 20 - 30 days)

     The consultant will provide the following during their contract:

·                 An nexus benchmarking study plan, including:

·                     Review of existing methodologies for assessing and benchmarking energy for productive use, including ESMAP multi-tier benchmarking tool

·                     Final survey instrument

·                     Survey methodology and sampling frame

·                     Qualitative protocols for data collection and analysis

·                     Suggested improvements to ESMAP tool and specifically the productive use module

·                     Revised data collection timeline

·                 1-day workshop to present the methodology to key staff

·                 2-3 day training of surveyors

·                 2-day preliminary results analysis workshop

·                 1-day presentation of results via webinar to GHG team and partners

·                 Nexus benchmarking report of a maximum of 30 pages excluding title page, executive summary and annexes, written in English, and including the following components:

·                     Executive summary of 2 pages

·                     Case study of use of ESMAP tool

·                     One (1) electronic file of the clean (final) qualitative (and potentially some quantitative) data collected.

·                     Standardized tools and guidance for use/adaptation by other FFP and resilience projects.

·                     Design recommendations

·                     Dissemination recommendations

    Consultancy Part B: Energy Assessment Tool Refinement (estimated 4 - 7 days)

     The consultant will be responsible for completing an Energy Assessment Package, which will include the following sub-deliverables:

·                  Review and revision of energy assessment resource list

·                 Review and revision of generic TOR for energy assessment lead

·                 Review and revision of energy TOC, standard indicators, and alpha indicators

·                 Review and revise household and business level survey tools currently used by MC teams. Package these tools into “modules” that can be mixed and matched, identifying ‘core’ modules that should be used consistently.

·                     Modules should be in a standard format that is organized and numbered for easy transfer into excel or SPSS database.

·                     Core modules should ensure all necessary HH or business level data to track ‘alpha indicators’ as these modules may be used for both assessments and baselines – or alternatively create a ‘baseline for alphas module’

·                 Produce assessment guidance for household and business level assessments. Includes but not limited to:

·                     Budget guidance with 3 tiers of assessment options at $20,000, $50,000, and $100,000 levels

·                     Sampling guidance

·                     Target population representation guidance

·                     Using existing reports and guidance provided by EEC team as reference, produce report guidance with sample tables.

Timeframe

   This consultancy will be conducted from February 2015 to June 2015 with an estimated timeframe of 30-40 days with 1-2 weeks of in-country (Uganda) work, subject to discussion and agreement. Depending on the consultant daily rate (fee), the total number of days may be added or reduced as necessary.

The consultant will be responsible to propose a schedule for his/her work.

    ROLE OF MERCY CORPS AND PARTNERS

    Mercy Corps will:

·                 Provide the necessary documents for review;

·                 Make logistical arrangements for field work including vehicles, accommodation and will pay related travel expenses;

·                 Facilitate mobilization of required persons for interview schedules and discussions in the study areas;

·                 Work closely with its local government, private sector and community partners to avail the necessary information and required persons for the study;

·                 Provide inputs and comments to the work plan and proposal, study tools and report;

·                 Support enumerator training as required;

·                 Organize a workshop for presentation and discussion of preliminary findings of the study.

     PROFILE OF THE CONSULTANT

·         The consultant(s) will be expected to have proven experience in workshop design, strategic planning, and intercultural communication skills, and is expected to have substantial experience working with food security and energy access programming in Sub-Saharan Africa.

·         The consultant(s) should have previous experience evaluating market facilitation programming, and specific familiarity with the ESMAP approach.

·         The consultant will have demonstrated experience in highly participative evaluations, assessments and appraisals approaches in intercultural context.

The successful consultant should have following qualifications.

·                 Demonstrated knowledge of the energy sector

·                 Understanding or market-development approaches

·                 Advanced academic qualification or equivalent work experience in research methods and monitoring, evaluation, and learning. Additional experience in economics, economic development, or business is a plus

·                 Excellent analytical, research, writing and communication skills, presentation skills, and computer skills. Computer graphics proficiency a plus.

·                 Experience with indicator and indicator guideline development.

·                 Experience with developing, designing, and managing/implementing qualitative and quantitative assessments

·                 Proficiency with statistical methods of data analysis and platforms like SPSS, Stata, or R.

·                 Other specific thematic expertise in any of the areas of focus listed above

    

Mode of application:
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