ERIM: Call for consultancy: COVID Resilience & Sustainability Midterm internal Evaluation

1. Context of the project

ERIM is a French-registered non-profit, non-governmental organisation providing innovative projects to improve the quality of education, strengthen independent media, foster pluralistic civil society development, and reduce conflict. ERIM’s approach emphasizes partnerships with local development organisations to expand capacity, build sustainable institutions and affect change through training, partnerships, education, research, and grant projects.

2. Objectives of the project

COVID CQ&RS is a 48-month regional project funded by the European Union and implemented by ERIM, the Black Sea Trust, Human Rights House Foundations, Human Rights House Tbilisi and Human Rights House Yerevan. The project aims to support grassroot organisations in six countries in Eastern European countries. The project started in July 2020 in response to the COVID pandemic to support CSOs who were affected by the pandemic. The project provides core support and capacity-building to CSOs, enabling them to mitigate the impact of the pandemic. An important part of the project is to promote civic participation and support CSOs to produce quality information.

• Donor : EU
• Title : “COVID-19: Civil Society resilience and sustainability
• Duration: 4 years
• Location: Six Eastern European countries
• Lead organization: ERIM
• Budget: 4,25 M €

The target groups of this project are: • CSOs, independent media & media professionals • Rural youth & general population, in particular vulnerable groups from rural areas

Project’s overall objective: Foster the resilience and sustainability of civil society in Eastern Partnership countries to mitigate the immediate and longer-term impact of COVID 19

Specific objectives: SO 1: CSOs in Eastern European countries build their sustainability and resilience to the effects SO 2: CSOs in Eastern European countries are better skilled and equipped to continue SO 3: CSOs and media in Eastern European countries counter disinformation and fake news, and promote access to reliable information on the pandemic and its impact on communities

3. Objectives of the evaluation

The midterm evaluation will focus on the first phase of the project (July 2020 – October 2022), however there is possibility of continuation for the consultant to oversee the final external evaluation of the project, which will take place in Autumn 2024.

The midterm evaluation should consider conclusions from the previous external evaluation led by the European Union. The objectives of the midterm evaluation are:

• To review implementation of the project
• To assess the level of achievement of the outputs and the objectives
• To evaluate impact of the grants on CSOs’ sustainability
• To provide recommendations and lessons learned to implementing partners

Please access the following LINK to read the full TERMS of REFERENCE for this Call for Consultancy.

Please send your application documents (as requested in the Terms of Reference) and financial offer before 13th November 2022 to scudalb@erim.ngo and ssjogren@erim.ngo