BACKGROUND TO THE PROJECT
The Bread for the World project grant is a 3-year project funded by the Protestant Agency for Diakonia and Development Bread for the World – Protestant Development Service and runs from January 2016 to December 2018. The project was developed against a background where HRDs in East Africa work in hostile environments by both state and non-state actors, which constrain the effectiveness of their work and threaten the security of individual HRDs, their organizations, and often times their families. This is worsened by abusive arrest and detention, restricted freedom of assembly, association and expression, judicial harassment, killing reprisals are common across Africa.

Project objectives
The Project was developed to ensure that East African HRDs are better protected and have skills to mitigate threats. Specifically, the project aims to ensure that East African HRDs are capable to defend their issues at the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) und participate actively in the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process; and improved security for HRDs.

Project target
The project targeted to directly reach: human rights defenders, with focus on member organisations of the East Africa region i.e. Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, South Sudan, and Burundi especially women HRDs. An estimated 600 HRDs would have improved their capacity to protect themselves and defend the rights of others more efficiently. Similarly, the project targeted to strengthen sharing of knowledge with an estimated 5,000 grassroots NGOs. Indirectly, the project targeted to reach policy and decision-makers in the different countries covered under the project. DefendDefenders estimated to reach at least 100 of these beneficiaries through national workshops and advocacy activities aimed at national authorities and regional and international bodies such as the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR), Uganda National Human Rights Commission. DefendDefenders also targeted cooperation with the already existing national coalitions of HRDs to ensure the relevance and applicability of the activities to local needs.

This constituency aims to contribute to inclusiveness and local ownership providing a better chance to achieve expected results. The activities will further enable DefendDefenders to broaden its membership base and make its services available to a wider group of defenders.

Project activities

• Training on Universal Periodic Review in the East of Africa Region
• Advocacy missions at national and regional level
• Advocacy missions and participation to ACHPR and UN HRC meetings
• Conduct research and publication of Advocacy material
• Provision of emergency protection to HRDs at risk
• Training on security management
• Technical assistance on security management
• Women human rights defenders digital safety trainers network
• Organisational Rebranding

Overall Evaluation Objective
The overall objective of the external end of project evaluation is to assess the level of progress made in attainment of project objectives and impact accruing from the project implementation.

Specific Evaluation Objective
a) To assess the progress made in attainment of project objectives and targets including the indicators.
b) To assess the relevance of our interventions to the HRDs, their needs and aspirations.
c) To assess the project efficiency especially on whether or not the project was implemented in the most efficient way compared to alternatives.
d) To identify enabling factors and obstacles that may have accelerated/inhibited the progress towards attainment of the project objectives, and how these factors have influenced results either positively or negatively.
e) To assess the effectiveness of our project implementation approaches
f) To analyze the potential impact accruing from the project interventions and their prospects of sustainability.
g) To identify and document important lessons and good practices from the current progress and make recommendations for improvement of future programs and enhancement of organisational learning.
h) Examine emerging opportunities and risks to our programming and propose possible responses.

Key Evaluation outputs

• Inception report detailing the Consultants’ understanding of the terms of reference, methodology of how the review will be conducted and the various tools to be used.
• Draft End of project evaluation report responding to all the objectives in Section 3.2.
• Deliver a presentation on draft findings for validation of the preliminary findings.
• Final end of project evaluation Report.

METHODOLOGY AND TEAM COMPOSITION

Team composition, experience and qualifications
The assignment requires diverse competences in program development and management; M&E and Results Management and Human Rights programing. The consultants must possess a minimum of a Master’s Degree in any or a combination of the above mentioned areas. However the team leader should have a minimum of 10 years in program development and evaluation.