End Term Evaluation

Project Title: MENA Feminist Power in Action for Women’s Economic Rights (FemPawer)

Country: Regional (Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Tunisia)

Introduction

The FemPawer program is a collaborative initiative designed to empower young women facing multiple forms of economic gender-based violence (E/GBV) discrimination in Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and Tunisia. Its primary aim is to strengthen these young women’s capacities to become leaders for change by holding duty bearers accountable and advocating for improved working conditions. Through targeted activities, FemPawer ensures that marginalized young women become advocates for their own rights, proposing relevant solutions and actionable recommendations.

The FemPawer Theory of Change (ToC) aims to empower young women and Women’s Rights Organizations (WROs) through four interconnected objectives. First, it seeks to establish and maintain safe online and offline spaces where young women and WROs feel secure, enabling them to engage in advocacy and mobilization by strengthening protection mechanisms and leveraging international support. Second, it focuses on fostering inclusive learning and leadership within the program and consortium, promoting innovative, intersectional approaches that amplify diverse voices and experiences. Third, it builds advocacy and leadership capacities for young women and WROs, enabling them to become legitimate actors in advancing social mobilization, alliance-building, and lobbying for gender-responsive change. Finally, it emphasizes designing evidence-based, target-led advocacy interventions that mobilize communities and alliances at local, regional, and international levels to influence decision-makers, address E/GBV, and establish gender-responsive accountability mechanisms. Together, these efforts aim to create sustainable, inclusive, and impactful change for women’s economic rights across the program’s focus areas. See Annex 1 for more details on the ToC.

Focusing on leadership development, challenging prevailing social norms, and promoting women’s economic rights (WER), this five-year program (January 2021 to December 2025) is led by a consortium of four organizations: the Arab Women Organization (AWO), the Collective for Research & Training on Development – Action (CRTDA), The Kvinna till Kvinna Foundation, and the Palestinian Working Women’s Society for Development (PWWSD). The program engages a network of 38 diverse Women’s Rights Organizations[1] (WROs), referred to as Partner Organizations (POs), varying in size, experience, geographical reach, and focus areas. By fostering collaboration and capacity building, FemPawer contributes to a more inclusive and equitable environment for young women in the MENA region.

FemPawer is implemented in strategic partnership with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands (MFA) as part of their Power of Women grant instrument.

The FemPawer consortium is seeking the services of expert feminist consultants to conduct an End-Term Evaluation (ETE) of the program implemented by consortium partners taking into consideration feedback from POs in each country . This final evaluation is a learning and accountability opportunity for us to document shifts we have seen and contributed to during the five years of our programme.

Evaluation objectives

Scope of the evaluation

• The evaluation should comprehensively cover the entire FemPawer program, including its ToC and €10 million budget.
• Equal emphasis must be placed on the experiences of all four consortium partners, addressing activities implemented in Lebanon, Jordan, Tunisia[2], Palestine, and at the regional level. To ensure feasibility, the consultant should develop a sampling strategy and size to represent the activities and geographic scope of each partner. This strategy must be included in the inception plan.
• The evaluation and final report should provide insights that apply across the entire partnership while also presenting country- and partner-specific indicator results, learnings, and recommendations.
• The evaluation will cover the FemPawer program’s duration from its inception in January 2021 through November 2025. Although the program concludes in December 2025, the evaluation is expected to focus on activities up to November 2025 to ensure timely analysis.

Evaluation questions:

Evaluation questions to be discussed and reviewed with the chosen consultant.

1. Efficiency: How efficiently was the program budget utilized across the five years, considering underspending and recurrent reallocation requests? What factors contributed to over- or underestimations of budget items, and how can future programs improve financial planning and minimize delays or cost adjustments?
2. Efficiency: How effectively were resources allocated between staff costs and activity costs, and how did this balance impact program implementation? Additionally, how did the funding received by partner organizations—both in terms of proportion to their total budgets and adequacy—contribute to achieving program outcomes? Based on this experience, what resource structure would be most effective for future programs, considering sub-granting, country-level activity implementation, and regional-level activity coordination?
3. Sustainability: To what extent has the FemPawer program contributed to the sustainability of consortium partner and partner organizations?
4. Partnership: To what extent has FemPawer shared power in its approaches to partnership and the program? And how did the partnership modality achieve the program’s outcomes throughout the five years program.
5. Impact: What impact has FemPawer had on the communities we serve? Reflecting on the ‘before and after,’ how has the program influenced community attitudes toward economic gender-based violence (eGBV), and contributed to addressing eGBV as a catalyst for resolving broader family issues? Additionally, what unintended effects—positive or negative—have emerged from the program’s interventions?
6. Coherence: To what extent has FemPawer contributed to creating a cohesive and enabling environment for change within the feminist movement? How have the program’s advocacy efforts influenced policy implementation and enforcement in the four countries?
7. Effectiveness: How effective was the program in engaging with local stakeholders, including government institutions and private sector, to foster collaboration? Additionally, which advocacy methods or approaches proved to be the most successful in achieving the program’s objectives, and what factors contributed to their effectiveness? What barriers did young women face in applying the advocacy skills gained through the program, and how were these barriers addressed?
8. Relevance: How well did the program adapt to contextual changes during its implementation, particularly in response to the evolving economic situation in the countries where we operate? Given that the priority for many communities was securing jobs for women, rather than focusing on political advocacy, to what extent did the program shift this mindset, and how effective were we in increasing awareness about the importance of advocacy in achieving long-term economic empowerment for women? What key lessons have we learned about the program’s resilience and flexibility?

Methodology

We value evaluators’ input on proposed methodologies and encourage creative and tailored approaches rather than prescriptive ones. However, the evaluation must adhere to key priorities and requirements. It should meet the 17 IOB evaluation criteria (Quality criteria for evaluations Guideline Policy and Operations Evaluation Department (IOB)) and strike a balance between following established guidelines and adopting feminist principles, including participation and power sharing, intersectionality, collective learning, care and well-being, a facilitating role, and celebrating diversity. Additionally, the evaluation must include a detailed mapping of funding, covering the budget received, how it was spent, and specifics on program components and activities. A robust methodology is essential for measuring organizational capacity and effectiveness, with recommended qualitative approaches such as Realistic Evaluation, Contribution Analysis, Process Tracing, and General Elimination Theory. Cross-cutting themes like gender, youth, and climate must be addressed, while sampling strategies should ensure representative results. Findings and conclusions must be substantiated and clearly linked to evidence, avoiding reliance on anecdotal examples and highlighting sources and data.

Each partner leads the ongoing monitoring and evaluation of their activities, with their own customised indicators that contribute to a ‘basket’ of shared indicators that we report to the donor. We expect the evaluation team to verify each partners’ gathered outcome and output data, supplementing this with insights gained through participatory processes to assess contribution to change. The evaluation must include an annex of key output and outcome indicators that have been verified. This must evaluate the MFA basket indicators as a minimum but will likely include other indicators to fully describe the FemPawer programme.

Research ethics

The ETE must adhere to strict research ethics to ensure the integrity of the process and the safety and well-being of all participants. It is imperative to uphold the principle of “do no harm,” prioritizing the protection of respondents and informants throughout the evaluation. Confidentiality is a cornerstone of ethical practice, requiring that the identities and information of partners and other participants be safeguarded when necessary. Informed consent must be obtained from all participants, ensuring they fully understand the purpose of the evaluation, how their information will be used, and their right to withdraw at any time without consequence. Evaluators should also anticipate potential ethical risks, such as power imbalances, unintended disclosures, or cultural sensitivities, and implement robust mitigation strategies to address these risks effectively. By embedding these principles into the evaluation process, the evaluation can maintain credibility, fairness, and respect for all stakeholders involved.

Deliverables & timeline

Deliverables

1. Inception report (maximum 25 pages not including annexes) including the final methodology for the ETE, detailed timeline, evaluation matrix that shows how evaluation questions (as well revise the questions in the TOR) are translated into sub-questions / indicators / result areas, sampling strategy and size, research ethics. The inception report will need the approval of the Reference Group (described in the section on Roles & Responsibilities). The inception report should be based on a desk review of key documents provided and initial discussions with FemPawer team.
2. Timeline plan: a timeline and a plan are expected to be developed and presented taking into considerations the deadlines.
3. Research tools agreed with all FemPawer partners, in advance of evidence gathering. We expect this to include an explanation of the participatory approaches, the process for gathering and recording participants’ informed consent, and safeguarding procedures.
4. In country face-to-face data analysis and validation workshops of key findings in each country excluding Tunisia (3 workshops in total), to invite feedback from all partners (before drafting the final report).
5. A regional workshop to share final report(s) with all partners. (TBD if the workshop will be online or face to face. Either way the venue and accommodation costs of the final workshop will be met by FemPawer, so do not need to be part of the consultancy budget proposal.)
6. Final report: We envisage a full final report (in English) of maximum 50 pages, an executive summary version of up to 5 pages, and relevant data annexes. The final report should include an annex of quantitative and qualitative results against the Results Framework indicators, and an annex which outlines how the evaluation meets the MFA’s IOB evaluation criteria. The format should reflect the MFA’s recommended structure, see Annex 3. We invite alternative methods of sharing the findings, and welcome creative, accessible formats for a final report. Please note, the final report will be published online for transparency. We can agree to an external version of the report if there is sensitive information. All reports must be shared in digital form (in both Word and PDF versions).
7. 5 strong Case Studies/stories of change as evidence of project outcomes/impact.

Timeline

The detailed timeline will be finalized in collaboration with the consultancy team. The consultancy launch is expected to commence on May 01, 2025. Data collection is expected to take place between September and November 2025, followed by the validation workshops in January 2026. The final report, incorporating all reviews and feedback, is expected to be completed by March 31, 2026.

Roles & responsibilities

There will be three groups working on this consultancy:

1. Internal Consortium Working Group: Within the consortium, a dedicated working group will oversee the ETE. This group consists primarily of MEAL focal points from the four partner organizations, along with the consortium coordinator and the program’s grant manager. The working group is led by Kvinna till Kvinna’s MEAL officer.
2. Reference Group (RG): As part of the ETE, strategic Partners are required to establish a reference group consisting of internal and external members of the consortia. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs focal point is required to be among the reference group members. The reference group will need to review, provide written feedback, and approve the following:
   1. Inception report by the evaluator
   2. End evaluation report by the evaluator
3. Consultancy team: the selected feminist MEAL expert who will be implementing the ETE as per the ToR.

In your proposal, please make sure to include 2 meetings to be held with the RG, to discuss and receive feedback on the inception report and the end evaluation report.

See Annex 4 for more details on the Reference Group.

Kvinna till Kvinna MEAL officer will be leading the main focal point for everyone.

Qualifications

The consultants can be a firm and/or a team of specialists. The following are the collective selection criteria for the evaluators:

• Feminist evaluators with experience in and a proven track record of carrying out programme evaluations integrating feminist approaches and methodologies in projects of similar scale (programme reach, geography and challenges).
• Proven experience using participatory or popular education/ adult-education methodologies to facilitate data collection/sense-making sessions, virtual workshops, creating safe spaces and navigating different power dynamics.
• Experience conducting evaluation of advocacy programmes.
• Excellent reporting and communication skills, including Arabic and English writing skills. While the final report is in English, communication with partners (written and spoken) is expected in Arabic.
• Experience in at least one of the FemPawer countries and ability to speak the local language.
• Understanding of feminist movement building, women’s collective action, addressing structural (economic gender based) violence and women’s leadership.
• Strong knowledge and experiences of using approaches and methodologies that meet the Dutch MFA IOB Quality Criteria.

The independent evaluator(s) should not be associated in any capacity with any of the FemPawer consortium partners (AWO, CRTDA, Kvinna till Kvinna, PWWSD). Please declare any potential conflicts of interest including previous engagements with any of the partners.

Assessment criteria for the proposals

If interested, please reach out so we share with you the assessment criteria.

Annexes

If interested, please reach out so we share with you the below annexes.

• Annex 1 Theory of change
• Annex 2 IOB evaluation criteria Quality criteria for evaluations Guideline Policy and Operations Evaluation Department (IOB)
• Annex 3 Non-mandatory proposed format for ETE
• Annex 4 ToR of Reference Group

[1] Of the 38 WROs, 11 in Palestine, 12 in Jordan, 1 in Tunis, 14 in Lebanon.

[2] The focus of the evaluation is Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine and regionally. For Tunisia, we only have one sub-grantee.