Deadline for Applications: February 6th, 2015

Please include your CV and a cover letter briefly outlining your approach.

Consultant Scope of Work

Part A:1) Develop, test, and refine an energy-food-water nexus assessment and benchmarking tool (with a focus on ‘productive use’ of energy) for Food for Peace Programs to be shared with the TOPS learning community and relevant energy actors. 2) Based on tool piloting and results within the FFP Funded, Growth, Health and Governance (GHG) program in Northern Uganda, make recommendations for activities to promote productive use of energy within the program area.

Part B: Work with technical team to refine energy access assessment tools and develop guidance for Mercy Corps Global Energy Programs

WORKSITE LOCATION: Remote and Uganda

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:

Mercy Corps works in countries in transition, where communities are recovering from disaster, conflict, or economic collapse. With field programs in more than 40 countries, and an annual budget of more than $200 million, Mercy Corps is one of the largest international development NGOs in the US.

Mercy Corps exists to alleviate suffering, poverty and oppression by building secure, productive and just communities. We seek to catalyze civil society, public and private sector actors through interventions that are community-led and market-driven. The Environment, Energy and Climate Change team (EEC) is a small but critical technical team within Mercy Corps’ Technical Support Unit (TSU). The TSU is responsible for leading and supporting assessments, program design and field studies; providing technical support to field offices; helping the global agency set technical strategies; building strategic partnerships, and representation and coordination with other development, government and private sector actors.

Energy Access is a sector of growing importance within Mercy Corps, and the EEC team is playing a key role in building a global portfolio of energy programs and guiding the agency’s strategy for integrating energy access into our core programming. The team’s existing energy access priorities include building effective tools for energy access and energy market assessments, refining measurement methodologies, developing training curricula, and building effective partnerships with private sector entities. The consultancy focus is divided in two parts, Part A and Part B described below:

Consultancy Part A: Energy-Water-Food Nexus Assessment and Benchmarking Tool for Food for Peace Programs

The Energy-Food-Water Nexus Benchmarking project will complement a 5-year FFP project, the Growth, Health, and Governance Program (GHG), currently being implemented in Northern Karamoja, which aims to improve peace and food security through an integrated, gender-sensitive approach. Activities under GHG strengthen Karamojong livelihoods, support child health and nutrition, and bolster local capacity to improve governance and mitigate conflict. The GHG team has recognized the need to enhance energy access in order to meet the wider goals of the project, and have identified the opportunity to take a ‘nexus’ approach that links energy to water access and ultimately to the food system.

Energy-Food-Water Nexus Benchmarking aims to test a practical survey instrument to benchmark energy access for productive use that can be used throughout the global food security community for design, baseline, and benchmarking of Nexus activities to achieve food security goals, while also adding practical value to the GHG program. ESMAP has already developed a robust multi-tier methodology for household lighting and cooking access and is now in the process of developing modules for productive use. This project will test and refine the ESMAP productive use module through the existing Food for Peace, Growth, Health, and Governance Program (GHG), being implemented by Mercy Corps and consortium partners in Northern Karamoja. Following piloting of the tool a final design workshop on findings will be held with GHG consortium partners to incorporate findings into practical piloting of nexus activities via the GHG FFP program. This entire process will be documented and the findings and methodology report will be shared with Food for Peace Uganda Mission, GHG partners World Vision, Feinstein International Center, Pastoralism and Poverty Fronteirs, and Kaabong Peace and Development Agency, and and key organizations, like ACDI-Voca, who actively implement food security programs in Uganda. The final report and methodology will also be disseminated through the TOPs network and to the SE4All Energy Practitioners network.

Goal:Improve impact of food security program through better integration of energy-water-food “Nexus” design into existing and future Food for Peace programs. Objectives: 1): Test energy for productive use baseline and benchmarking tool for use within Food For Peace programs 2) Disseminate methodology and findings to global food security and energy access communities, and 3) Provide concrete and actionable recommendations for GHG program activities based on the project findings.

The program team will refine the World Bank ESMAP multi-tier methodology, which will allow the GHG program to understand how households and small businesses (disaggregated by livelihood, income groups, and gender of HH head) are using energy for productive uses and identify the opportunities for applying energy activities to accelerate the programs goals. Results will be used to hone in on areas where energy can be used more effectively to meet the objectives of the GHG program. In addition, the tool will help quantify the tangible health and productive time benefits of fuel-efficient and/or electricity technology access at household land small business levels.

Based on this methodology the team will also identify what factors are leading households in a particular village to move from one tier to another, or conversely why they are “stuck” at a lesser tier. This information will provide important and actionable insight for the design of the energy-food-water nexus intervention within the GHG program.

GHG will use this methodology throughout the remaining 3 years of the program to track both the number of households & enterprises whose tier level has changed as a result of program activities as well as the extent of the change (how many tier levels the household or enterprise has moved), providing valuable lessons for organizations operating similar food security programs within Uganda.

Consultancy Part B: Energy Assessment Tool Refinement

The EEC team has a collection of energy assessment and measurement guidance documents that need review and standardization by a professional with deep M&E skills. The end deliverable will be an Energy Assessment Guidance Package that is aligned with best practice, contributes to quality control of assessment outputs, covers the range of energy programs Mercy Corps teams engage in, and is easy and practical to use by program teams with varying levels of M&E capacity. While we expect this guidance to be adapted depending on energy program type and country context, we aim to provide teams with access to these guidance materials as a starting point for sound energy assessments and baselines for programming targeting household, productive, and institutional energy use. These tools will also be the basis for agency level reporting requirements.

The consultant(s) will work closely with the Energy Advisor to review, edit/add, and repackage a complete package of Energy Assessment Guidance with an emphasis of USABILITY and accessibility of the guidance package by program teams. The Energy Assessment Guidance includes:

DELIVERABLES:

Consultancy Part A: Energy-Water-Food Nexus Assessment and Benchmarking Tool for Food for Peace Programs (estimated 20 - 30 days)

The consultant will provide the following during their contract:

Consultancy Part B: Energy Assessment Tool Refinement (estimated 4 - 7 days)

The consultant will be responsible for completing an Energy Assessment Package, which will include the following sub-deliverables:

Timeframe

This consultancy will be conducted from February 2015 to June 2015 with an estimated timeframe of 30-40 days with 1-2 weeks of in-country (Uganda) work, subject to discussion and agreement. Depending on the consultant daily rate (fee), the total number of days may be added or reduced as necessary. The consultant will be responsible to propose a schedule for his/her work.

ROLE OF MERCY CORPS AND PARTNERS

Mercy Corps will:

PROFILE OF THE CONSULTANT

The consultant(s) will be expected to have proven experience in workshop design, strategic planning, and intercultural communication skills, and is expected to have substantial experience working with food security and energy access programming in Sub-Saharan Africa. The consultant(s) should have previous experience evaluating market facilitation programming, and specific familiarity with the ESMAP approach. The consultant will have demonstrated experience in highly participative evaluations, assessments and appraisals approaches in intercultural context.

The successful consultant should have following qualifications.

As a Pre-sales Consultant at FreeBalance you will work closely with the sales, marketing and business development teams to support FreeBalance sales activities. This role will be active in reviewing and responding to Requests for Proposals and preparing and delivering presentations to prospects. The Pre-Sales Consultant will also provide business and technical product expertise, solution features and benefits information and deal-specific competitive analysis.

Main Responsibilities:

Education and Experience:

This is a full-time position located in Africa.

As a Professional Services Consultant at FreeBalance you will have the opportunity to contribute to our on-going success by delivering quality and timely professional services during the roll out of our products and solutions to our customers and partners for all project deployments. Drawing upon your product/solutions expertise and knowledge, you will also provide support to the Support Services, Product Management, and Sales teams, to serve as a subject matter expert for functional analysis, specification development and support for bid submissions.

Main Responsibilities:

Education and Experience:

This is a full-time position based in Uganda.

To apply, please visit our website: http://www.freebalance.com/company/jobs_uganda.asp#profserv

To help humanitarians produce informative and well-designed information products, ReliefWeb and the Visual Information Unit (VIU) of the UN Office of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) have...

Share information through ReliefWeb to better inform humanitarians worldwide.

****Expected Output****

It is important to note that one full day will be dedicated for team building activities only. There will be no discussion of any programmatic or operational issues. The team building activities will focus on the following objectives:

****Recruitment of a consultant****

The selected consultant(s) or an agency will assist in the design, preparation and facilitation of the team building retreat as well as compiling a report outlining the workshop's proceedings, including practical recommendations and operational tools which can be used by the team in the future.

Consultant(s)/agency will complete the following tasks, in close consultation with BAU:

The team building exercise should be creatively organized to include strategic brainstorming sessions aimed at helping the personnel develop and articulate corporate and individual understanding oneself and their collegues in order to achieve the retreat’s goals.

The contractor will be paid a lump sum in one installment at the end of the assignment.

The consultant will be required to submit both a technical and financial proposal to Build Africa Uganda (see address given below). The technical proposal should cover:-

****Note:****

****Expected Output****

It is important to note that one full day will be dedicated for team building activities only. There will be no discussion of any programmatic or operational issues. The team building activities will focus on the following objectives:

****Recruitment of a consultant****

The selected consultant(s) or an agency will assist in the design, preparation and facilitation of the team building retreat as well as compiling a report outlining the workshop's proceedings, including practical recommendations and operational tools which can be used by the team in the future.

Consultant(s)/agency will complete the following tasks, in close consultation with BAU:

The team building exercise should be creatively organized to include strategic brainstorming sessions aimed at helping the personnel develop and articulate corporate and individual understanding oneself and their collegues in order to achieve the retreat’s goals.

The contractor will be paid a lump sum in one installment at the end of the assignment.

The consultant will be required to submit both a technical and financial proposal to Build Africa Uganda (see address given below). The technical proposal should cover:-

****Note:****

As you've probably noticed, we've just made some changes to ReliefWeb’s design and usability. These changes are designed to help you more easily navigate through ReliefWeb and are based on the...

Share information through ReliefWeb to better inform humanitarians worldwide.