Consulting Opportunity - Review of resilience impact assessments

Background to the engagement

The Global Resilience Partnership (GRP) is looking to commission experts from the majority world as consultants to conduct mapping exercises on impact assessments.

GRP is an inclusive and diverse Partnership of organisations joining forces towards a world where vulnerable people and places are able to thrive in the face of shocks, uncertainty and change. GRP achieves collective impact by adding value to the work of its individual partners through innovation and scaling, shared learning, convening diverse voices, and advancing knowledge.
GRP hosts the Resilience Knowledge Coalition, a “network of networks” co-led by the Climate Development Knowledge Network (CDKN) and the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD). Its purpose is: Getting the best knowledge and practice on resilience used to shape policies, plans and investments to deliver a resilient future. The coalition has three functions - Collaborate, Connect and Apply. It is through the Apply function that the coalition supports GRP’s role as a curator of resilience evidence and lessons from and beyond its own programming and managed investments.

This review will explore the impact of resilience programs and the elements that contributed to their success. It will assess the relative advantages and disadvantages of using different program designs, and attempt to identify key aspects for resilience programming. Where possible, it will aim to distill lessons that may be replicable across contexts, that can provide recommendations for future resilience programming. The study is intended to be useful to those funding, designing, and implementing resilience programs.

This review is specifically focused on robust resilience impact assessment evidence. GRP does not prescribe how resilience should be operationalized and supports grantees and partners in generating evidence through a range of methods. The impact of resilience building interventions can be measured by observing relevant well-being indicators (food security, health, income, poverty, empowerment, etc.) before and after shocks/stresses, and comparing this to a counterfactual. In addition, resilience is an intermediary outcome that can be proxied by resilience abilities, capitals or capacities, e.g., absorptive, adaptive and transformative capacities.

Various impact assessment methodologies may be applied to measure improvements in resilience; however, there are certain mandatory and preferred requirements for robust impact assessments which will be used to select studies for review:

• Mandatory: Evaluation of resilience intervention impacts
• Mandatory: Counterfactual analysis performed (control group)
• Mandatory: Resilience is operationalized (e.g. capacities) and/or well-being variables (e.g. poverty, nutrition, empowerment) are measured in relation to shocks/stresses
• Preferred: Base and endline data collected
• Preferred: Randomized allocation of treatments (RCT)
• Preferred: External/independent (peer-reviewed) evaluation
• Preferred: Mixed-methods identify and explain causal mechanisms
• Preferred: Shocks/stresses are monitored and measured
• Preferred: Environmental/ecological aspects are captured

Roles and responsibilities

This terms of reference (TOR) sets out the expectations for methods of data collection for the review of resilience impact assessments. GRP is looking for a consultant who can design and deliver a useful and reflective review of the resilience impact assessment literature. A key aim of the study is identifying resilience solutions that have an attributable impact in order to connect them with investors to amplify their results. The precise review design and content (scope, purpose, limitations, methodology and deliverables) will be based on an inception report produced by the consultant.

The review will cover the time period 2000-2022 and shall cover both peer-reviewed and grey literature. The data is to be collected following the GRP Resilience Platform (https://resilienceplatform.info/) Evidence and Tools form to facilitate import of the data onto the platform. This review aims to update and add to the following study: Global Resilience Partnership (2019). Case study: Examples of effective resilience programming. GRP: Stockholm (http://grpinsightsreport.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/GRP-Effective-Programs.pdf). The study will review impact assessments already identified and uploaded onto the platform and will complement this with impact assessments that the 2019 study missed (as it was based on self-reporting) through a literature review.

Assessment

Consultant(s) are asked to submit their CV along with a proposal based on this ToR, to include outlines for methodology, process, experience and budget. The accepted proposal will then go through a process of finalisation and agreement of the methodology with the GRP team, resulting in an inception report after month two of contracting. The proposals will be assessed based on:

• University degree in a relevant field.
• Minimum of 5 years working experience in the field of international development.
• Consultant experience within the field of resilience impact assessment.
• Qualifications and experience of the consultants, especially evidencing a strong methodological understanding and experience with impact evaluations.
• A strong track record with substantive experience of similar literature reviews.
• Excellent ability to express themselves in English, both orally and in writing.
• The consultant should be a national of a country eligible for Official Development Assistance as defined by the OECD-DAC (https://www.oecd.org/dac/financing-sustainable-development/development-finance-standards/DAC-List-ODA-Recipients-for-reporting-2021-flows.pdf)
• Consultants will need to have a registered business.
• Cost.

Timing

The last date of submissions is April 15. It is expected that the work will commence in April 2022, with an inception report due by mid-May, data collected in June-August and final deliverables approved by October 2022.

Budget

The maximum proposed budget is USD 10,000. The final budget will be based on a proposal containing a work plan specifying consultancy rates and number of days/hours allocated per activity. No operational and travel costs are foreseen.

Deliverables

Outline for deliverables to be included in proposal and agreed in inception report, however it is expected that this will include a database of impact assessments and standalone summary document.

Lead contact

The lead contact for purposes of this ToR will be the GRP Programme Officer, Shuchi Vora, svora@globalresiliencepartnership.org

Note

In case you want to be considered for future opportunities through the Global South Expert pool of the Resilience Knowledge Coalition, please sign up and fill your profile on the Resilience Platform here: https://resilienceplatform.info/people/create-submission