Background
American Refugee Committee is among the key actors in Somalia/Somaliland running humanitarian projects in Somalia/Somaliland, currently ARC implements emergency nutrition project supported by Somali Humanitarian Fund in the district of Hudun. The nutrition program aims to address the high malnutrition rates through treatment of moderate and severe Acutely Malnourished cases, referral of complicated malnourished cases to appropriate treatment regime run by other stakeholders.
Hudun district is in Sool region of Somaliland in the North Inland pastoral livelihood zone. Economy in the district is centered primarily on sheep and goat production supported by small herds of camels and very few, if any, cattle. Last surveys conducted by FSNAU (Post Deyr 2019) estimated GAM rates at 13.9% and SAM of 1.6%. The proposed SMART surveys will complement the above surveys adopting integrated approach to cover nutrition sensitive indicators at district level.
ARC has been implementing health and nutrition program in Sool region since 2018 and the approach to survey and surveillance will be of complementary nature to ensure that nutrition information gaps are covered while quality of the survey is of acceptable standard. The Nutrition program runs a range of preventive and curative oriented activities which include Maternal Infant and Young Child Nutrition, Integrated Management of Acute Malnutrition, Nutrition Surveillance & Assessments and Blanket Supplementary Feeding Programme targeting pregnant women, lactating women, children aged 6 to 23 months
Overall Survey Objective:
To estimate Nutrition status of children <5, retrospective Mortality rate (CMR and U5MR) and factors influencing nutrition status of children.
Specific objectives of the survey
Scope of Work
To achieve the survey objectives, ARC is seeking the services of a competent consultant to; lead the survey from the planning phase up to the reporting in order to have an updated information on the nutritional and health status of children and women in the project areas of Huddun District of Sool region.
The consultant will carry out the following tasks:
SURVEY METHODOLOGY
The survey methodology will be designed in alignment with full SMART survey standards. The data collection process will adopt a mix of quantitative and qualitative approaches involving review of records, interviews with project participants and focus group discussions, among others. A more detailed survey methodology will be designed by the Consultant in consultation with ARC Health & Nutrition, and M&E team and Nutrition Cluster for approval of the survey protocol. The detailed design must include among others; survey design, sample size determination using Emergency Nutrition Assessment (ENA) software, quality control, data collection and management process.
The SMART methodology shall be used for the Nutrition survey targeting all the children aged from 6 to 59 months of the same family (defined as a woman and her children), will be sampled and included in the survey. A retrospective morbidity and mortality survey (over the past three months) shall also be assessed. A modified standard questionnaire with closed-ended observational questions and Focused group discussion shall be used in the survey to collect data.
Geographical scope
The SMART survey will cover only Huddun District of Sool region where the project is implemented. This includes 3MCHs that includes; Lafweyne, Huddun and Awrbogeys MCH and 2 outreach teams serving 13 villages but the survey covers entire Hudun district.
Expected deliverables and outputs
Time frame
The SMART survey process is expected to take in a maximum of 45 days including preparation, data collection, and analysis and reporting. The Consultant should be able to undertake some of the tasks concurrently to fit within the planned timeframe, without compromising the survey quality and standards. The assignment is expected to commence on in the last week of July 2020.
General conditions of the consultancy
Mode of the payment to the consultant shall be 30% payment once all the documentations are shared and approved, and just before the main assessment task begins, 70% after submission and approval of final survey report. The Language of the report must be in English and the survey will take a maximum of 45 days including preparation, data collection, analysis, and reporting.
Key qualifications and competencies required
and managerial experience, knowledge of working with conflict-affected populations and experience in managing SMART surveys in fragile contexts will be considered a plus.
Technical competence:
Reporting
The first Drafts of the survey Reports shall be prepared before or on the stipulated time and shared with ARC concerned staff (Health and Nutrition team, M$E personnel and Hargeisa Office team). Thereafter, final surveys Reports shall be prepared and submitted to ARC who shall in turn share it with interested partners and stakeholders. The final Reports shall be presented to the RMO and District Health Management team for discussion and verification. Then, certified copies of the same shall be shared to relevant decision-making offices, including the sponsors, partners and local health committees so the findings may be incorporated into the area Nutrition Plan.
Collaborations
The surveys shall be conducted in close collaboration with all other actors working in concerned sectors. The concerned government specialists and heads of departments such as RMO, DMO as well as partner NGOs shall be consulted and involved in the planning and implementation of the assessment. The objectives and the tools of the survey shall be shared with them for any additional data that they may wish to be gathered in the interest of the District or Region. If any similar / other assessments by partners fall within close range and vicinity to ARC’s, then dialogue on possibility of linking them shall be sought. Such efforts will help reduce community fatigue that may adversely affect results of assessments, hence reducing quality. This is also important for possible synchronization of complementary activities.
Confidentiality
Data and reports collected and developed during the task will exclusively be the property of American Refugee Committee and cannot be used or reproduced for any other purposes without permission from American Refugee Committee.
SMART Survey Report
The assessment report will follow the following format.
Executive summary. This preliminary report will contain analysis of nutrition anthropometric indicators assessed among children 6-59 months. The report will also include analysis of key variables of interest. The final report will be disseminated after it is validated by MoH and nutrition cluster group.
Introduction– Geographic description of the survey area including the country, region, districts and villages among others. Type of setting (e.g rural, urban, camp), season when the survey was conducted. Description of the population. This includes the total number of people living in the survey area. Type of population (resident, IDPs etc). Objectives of SMART survey.
Methodology– Full SMART survey design, Sampling, Survey teams among others and Data quality control and plausibility checks.
Results– This will correspond to the sampling method that has been applied in the field. At minimum, the following chapters should be include; Point GAM and SAM estimates according to WHZ and/or oedema and low MUAC with 95% confidence interval in case of random sampling or as one unique value (considered as the true value), Additional quantitative and qualitative data. Validation of accuracy, representativeness, and precision of data. These have to be supported with the plausibility check to be added in annex. The limitations of the results.
Discussions including the interpretation of the results
Conclusions and recommendations
Annexes: Maps, tools used, plausibility check, row data etc.
Requirements
Qualified and interested parties are asked to submit the following.
Interested candidates, company or firms should send their CV indicating prior experience in conducting similar tasks, inception report and budget to (Smprocurement-har@arcrelief.org) indicating
“ARC_SOOL_SMART SURVEY” as the subject. Deadline for submission is Wednesday 15thJuly 2020.