1. BACKGROUND OF PROJECT
The East Africa Child Eye Health Project commenced in January 2013 with funding from International Agency for Prevention of Blindness (IAPB) through “Seeing is Believing” (SIB), which is an initiative of Standard Chartered Bank. This programme set out to contribute to improved child health and the reduction of avoidable blindness in children in East Africa. The programme intended to indirectly benefit over 45 million children (total estimated population of children in East Africa) through conducive changes in national policies and strengthening of national coordination, promoting child eye health. The provision of quality, child friendly and child centred eye health services in the catchment areas of the programme, anticipated serving over 1 million children directly.
The project was implemented in Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya, by the CBM Consortium comprising of 4 partners namely the Fred Hollows Foundation (FHF), Sightsavers, the College of Ophthalmology in Eastern, Central and Southern Africa (COECSA) and is led by Christoffel Blinden Mission (CBM). The project is implemented in partnership with the Ministries of Health and Education and collaborates with other relevant ministries in the three countries. The total budget of the project is USD 4 million over a period of 4 and a half years (Jan 2013 to June 2017).

1.1 Project Objectives
The overarching objectives of the project are as follows:
• To improve child eye health service delivery and strengthen referral and follow- up systems from primary to tertiary level, in order to enhance access to quality, child centred and child friendly eye-care services for over 1 million children in the target regions through a cluster approach (10 clusters).
• To strengthen human resources for child eye health in line with V2020 targets in technical as well as in managerial aspects, from primary to tertiary, as well as on national and regional coordination level.
• To provide 13 Tertiary and 49Regional/ Secondary centres in the project area with the clinical and non-clinical equipment needed to deliver child eye-care services.
• To set up and implement a regional advocacy agenda, ensure regional sharing and improve the evidence base for child eye health at national and global level.
• To strengthen leadership and governance as well as coordination and multi- sectorial collaboration for child eye health at all levels

1.2 Consortium Commitments
The CBM consortium had a budget of USD 4 million for this intervention, and worked at secondary and tertiary health levels in all the three countries to deliver the following outputs:
1. Service delivery
2. One million children screened
3. 5,600 operations performed on children; out of which 4,800 congenital Cataract, and 800 others e.g. glaucoma, retinoblastoma, lid surgery, squint surgeries etc.
4. 15’000 children with refractive error receiving spectacles at secondary and tertiary level
5. 4500 children with low vision receiving a low vision device at tertiary level and/or specialised refraction at secondary and tertiary level
6. 245 health centres/ hospitals with 700 MCH personnel trained in CEH
7. 100 eye health personnel trained/ re- oriented on tertiary and secondary level in 61 health facilities
8. 61 health facilities equipped and functional
9. 3 optical workshops established and functional
10. EVALUATION OBJECTIVE AND KEY QUESTIONS TO BE ANSWERED
The main purpose of this end-evaluation is to assess the extent to which the project performed against the set project objectives. This will entail an assessment of the extent to which the planned project activities, outputs/ results and outcomes have been achieved over the implementation period between January 2013 and June 2017, in the eyes of an external evaluator. It will also identify any challenges and lessons learned, and make any appropriate recommendations that may inform any future implementation of a project of similar nature.
To achieve these objectives, the evaluation will seek to answer to the following questions:

2. 1 What progress was made towards achieving the project objectives?
• In what ways did the project improve child eye health service delivery?
• How did it strengthen referral and follow- up systems from primary to tertiary level?
• In what ways has the project strengthened human resources for child eye health?
• Has the programme provided 13 Tertiary and 49 Regional/ Secondary centres in the project area with the clinical and non-clinical equipment needed to deliver child eye-care services?
• How has the project contributed to the set up and implementation of a regional advocacy agenda for child eye health?
• At the country level, what were the main challenges that were encountered and how were these overcome?
• In what ways has the project strengthened leadership and governance as well as coordination and multi- sectorial collaboration for child eye health at all levels
• How beneficial were the up-skilling courses conducted for the eye health workers?
• Is there evidence of improved quality of clinical care?
• What evidence is there of improved child friendly services?
• Are the eye units sufficiently resourced to deliver the necessary services?
2. 2 What was the programme’s contribution towards the following broader plans:
• National Eye Health Plans
• Health Systems Strengthening in each of the three countries
• Achievement of Vision 2020
2. 3 Gender
The project set out to ensure gender mainstreaming in the intervention, with planned overall female to male ratio of 55% to 45%. Consequently, all data collected during this evaluation must clearly be disaggregated by gender.
• What was the overall achievement of the gender targets?
• What were some of the challenges encountered in ensuring the achievement of the planned gender targets, and how did the implementation team address these challenges?
• What more could have been done to better ensure equitable gender provision?
2. 4 How effective was the consortium in implementing this programme?
• How effective was the consortium approach to implementing the programme?
• How effective were the governance structures and the implementation arrangements?
• What governance challenges were encountered and what was learnt from this approach?
• Did the collaboration work to the level that had been envisaged at the planning phase?
• What benefits came out of working in the consortium for this project?
• What has worked well and what could have worked better?
• Is there anything else that could have been done to improve this collaboration?
2. 5 What progress was made by implementing partners in delivering its planned outputs?
• How did the cluster partners work together? What went well and what could have been improved?
• What implementation challenges were encountered and were they resolved efficiently and effectively?
• What could each cluster have done differently to reach its targets, if applicable?
• How have practices changed since the start of the project and how has this helped to strengthen child eye health?
2. 6 One of the key issues for the programme was the referral system
• What were the barriers against children reporting to the health facilities?
• How were these barriers addressed, and what positive change was realised as a result?
• How can uptake of referral from one level health facility to the next be improved, even after the project closure?
2. 7 Local ownership:
• To what extent (breadth and depth) was local ownership evident?
• How were stakeholders engaged in decision making, and how was this fed back into project implementation?
• What challenges were encountered, and how were they addressed?
2. 8 Potential challenges and risks:
• From the risk matrix in the log-frame, were there any foreseen risks or challenges that may have affected the success of the project? How effectively were they resolved?
• How could they have been mitigated?
2. 9 Sustainability:
• Assess the sustainability potential of the project with regard to the ability of the relevant service providers (clusters) and ministries to continue offering the services with the same level of quality after the project period
• Assess the potential for replication or scaling up the CEH model by either the Ministries or any other stakeholders
• What areas of the project could be replicated in other settings and why?
• What areas of the project would you not replicate and why?
2. 10 For purposes of future implementation of a project of a similar nature:
• Were there any other stakeholders that were left out who could have made meaningful contribution to the success of this project?
• What more could have been done to co-opt them, and what was missed?
1. EVALUATION SCOPE
The physical scope of this work will be the project’s broad geographic location of the three East African countries of Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya, where the project was implemented. In Kenya, this will cover all the eight geographic regions namely: Central, Nairobi; Coast; Western; Rift Valley; Nyanza; Eastern; and North Eastern regions. In Tanzania it covered six administrative regions namely: Dar el Salaam; Manyara; Mbeya; Mwanza; Rukwa; and Tabora. In Uganda, it covered the following health regions: Kampala, Jinja, Soroti, Lira, Gulu, Arua, Mbale, Mbarara and Fort Portal.
The scope of content will cover the performance of the project against key parameters including the project output and outcome targets, relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, sustainability, timelines of activity implementation, and its strengths and weaknesses, best practices and lessons learnt, and any recommendations made based on the findings of the evaluation.
1. EVALUATION CRITERIA
In order to generate the information needed to achieve the overall goal of this evaluation, the desired evaluation consultant(s) will be guided by the standard evaluation criteria outlined below. The consultant(s) will develop specific questions that answer the following broad questions under each of the criteria:
4.1 Relevance
To what extent was the objectives and design of the project fitting with the current global/ regional/national policies and laws including challenges and concerns, the needs, policies and priorities of intended beneficiary, the specific objectives, role and comparative advantages of the implementing partners?
4.2 Efficiency
To what extent did the project convert its resources and inputs (such as funds, expertise and time) economically into results in order to achieve the maximum possible outputs, outcomes, and impacts with the minimum possible inputs?
4.3 Effectiveness
To what extent did the project achieve its outputs and outcomes? Importantly, to what extent were unplanned outputs and outcomes achieved? And what factors influenced achievement or non‐achievement of the planned and unplanned outputs and outcomes?
4.4 Impact
To what extent did the project have positive or negative, intended or unintended, primary or secondary effects at the macro (sector) or micro (household or individual) level? These may include positive spill‐over’s, e.g. adoption of any good practices, concepts, models, approaches, policies or methods by those outside the immediate SiB partners, institutional changes in partners, both positive and negative, effects on health, effects on livelihoods, effects on gender relations or other social relations. Are any external factors likely to jeopardize the project’s direct impact?
4.5 Sustainability and replication
To what extent is there continuation of some or all benefits from project after completion? These may be political, financial, institutional, economic, social and/or environmental. To what extent is the project or aspects of the project scalable or replicable? Specifically, what would be the probable implications of scaling the action [up or down (if relevant)] in terms of costs, cost‐effectiveness, or efficiency?
4.6 Child Safeguarding
It is very important for the evaluators to adhere to child safeguarding ethics during the entire evaluation process. In line with our organizational policies, the consultant will therefore be expected to sign a child protection agreement with CBM before proceeding to the field. Further, the evaluation will review and report on how child safeguarding was adhered to during its implementation.
1. METHODOLOGY
The evaluation will be carried out in conformity with the ethical principles, standards and practices of any evaluation. The consultant(s) shall identify and propose comprehensive participatory methodologies for undertaking this evaluation, for discussion with the client. Being a child-oriented programme, emphasis must be placed on child friendly participative approaches. Among other things, the methodology must include literature review, interviewing of both beneficiaries as well as implementing partners, and field/project site visits.
The consultant(s) will prepare all the evaluation tools that will operationalize and direct this evaluation and share them with the implementing partners first before taking them to the field. They will define an appropriate sample size in a way that will avoid selection bias, and ensure that the evaluation meets the principles of participation involving both male and female beneficiaries. The evaluators are expected to conduct a participatory evaluation providing for meaningful involvement by project partners, beneficiaries and other interested parties in the data collection and analysis, in the formulation of recommendations, and sharing of feedback. The field visits and contact sessions with beneficiaries must attempt to reach/meet a reasonable representation of the target beneficiaries. This project is in partnership with the several Ministries and other stakeholders therefore stakeholder participation is fundamental to this evaluation.
Among the documents expected to be reviewed include the following
i. Project proposals, log frame and work plans
ii. Bi-annual project reports to the donor
iii. Minutes of all joint consortia meetings
iv. SiB Letter of variations, reflecting the revised target outputs
1. EXPECTED RESULTS AND DELIVERABLES
The following will be the expected results as well as the deliverables for this assignment
6.1 Evaluation Reports
The evaluators will submit a draft evaluation report for review by the implementing partners, as follows:
ITEM
TIMELINES
Inception Report
10 days from signing the contract
Draft Report
7 days after completing the field work
Finalized Report

7 days after receiving feedback on the draft report
6.2 Reporting Format
All the evaluation reports will be presented in the following format:
• Abstract/executive summary
• Background and context
• Evaluation methodology, covering informants/stakeholders of the evaluation, among other things
• Field activities, challenges encountered, and any limitations there-of
• Findings: these should be packaged and presented under each project objective assessed
• Conclusion and recommendations
• Annexes and/or attachments of the evaluation tools
• DURATION AND PHASING
The consultant(s) will be expected to propose for discussion a comprehensive work plan of not more than 30 days for this assignment, based on the breakdown below:
Phase
Activity
Phase I – Desk study: Review of documentation and elaboration of field
Study
Desk/ literature review
Inception Report
Development of data collection tools & pre-testing
Revision of tools based on feedback from the field and from implementing partners
Phase II: Field Data Collection
Field visits & data-collection from Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania
Phase III – Analysis and production of evaluation report
Data analysis and preparation of draft report
Presentation of preliminary findings for inputs from implementing partners Review of draft report based on feedback; collating observations, and submission of final report.

8. ADMINISTRATIVE / LOGISTICAL SUPPORT
8.1 Budget
Interested consultant(s) shall submit to CBM a comprehensive technical and financial proposal detailing how they intend to undertake this assignment, and indicating their daily rates for the assignment. CBM will negotiate with the winning consultant(s) the final fees in line with the budget available for this evaluation. The daily fees proposed should exclude cost of economy class flights (where applicable), in-country accommodation (bed, breakfast, evening meals), and local transport, which will be covered by the implementing partners in each country.
8.2 Logistics
CBM will cover the following support costs:
• Economy class airfares and VISAs. (Where applicable)
• In-country transportation
• Hotel accommodation (bed, breakfast and evening meals)
• Meeting venue hire and associated equipment
• Provide the required project documents
The Consultant(s) is expected to provide or cover all other costs and materials not mentioned above related to this exercise (e.g. laptops)
8.3 Payment Schedule and Mode
The following schedule will guide payments for this assignment:
• Mobilization fee (on signing the contract): 30%
• Submission of draft report: 30%
• On acceptance of final report: 40% Payment shall be made upon the submission of each deliverable as shall be agreed upon, accompanied by a signed invoice from the consultant(s).
9. EVALUATION TEAM AND MANAGEMENT RESPONSIBILITIES This evaluation has been commissioned by CBM on behalf of the CBM Consortium partners. CBM will therefore hold the overall responsibility for this assignment, coordinate the activities, and approve the deliverables of the assignment in consultation with other consortium partners.
10. REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS
Given the expansive geographic coverage, interested consultants or consultancy firms are expected to propose a team leader, and assemble two teams to undertake this work concurrently. They shall have a demonstrated competence in having undertaken similar work before, including experience in program design and management, planning, monitoring and evaluation. The consultant(s) must demonstrate knowledge and skills in the following areas:
Essential qualifications include:
• Proven experience with programming and evaluations in public health, with a preference for eye health
• Strong analytical, writing and presentation skills;
• Experience in working and/or evaluating regional cross-border projects.
• Knowledge of the regional dynamics in the health sector in East Africa.
Desirable qualifications include:
• A Masters/Postgraduate degree in Public Health, Development or other relevant Social Sciences
• At least 5 years of experience working with Ministries of Health in East Africa or elsewhere in Africa;
• Working knowledge of the eye care sector in East Africa;
• Understanding of the health systems approach in health sector development;

HOW TO APPLY:
Interested consultants should submit the technical and financial proposals to Recruit.Nairobi@cbm.org before 28th April 2017. The email applications should clearly mark on the subject- Expression of Interest: End of project Evaluation Child Eye health programs for East Africa
• The financial proposal must include all costs including professional fees and taxes to conduct the assignment;
• The technical proposal must include the profile of the company; the proposed methodology, work plan; Curriculum vitae for the person (s) proposed for the assignment and a list of similar assignments done with details of the contact person;
• Include reference numbers/ copies of support document for company registration and statutory requirements to operate in Kenya.