Background

The United States Department of Agriculture funds school meals in many developing countries, including Mozambique, where meals and literacy programming are delivered by a number of implementing organizations, including World Vision. In this project, IFPRI is partnering with World Vision to analyze how a school meals program can improve nutrition and literacy outcomes for children in primary school.

More specifically, World Vision will begin implementing a comprehensive school meals program in Menconta, Monapo, and Milange districts in Mozambique. The school meals consist of a porridge with micronutrients added and are provided to all teachers and students at the school, every school day.

In a subset of schools, World Vision will establish savings groups in the community with a particular focus on planning and saving for school meals so that once WV starts phasing out the program, the community and government can take over. In another subset of schools, an advocacy training will be held whereby the community is trained on their rights as citizens and how to advocate for government programs, including school meals.

Consultancy Summary

The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) seeks a qualified survey firm to conduct the baseline survey in 157 schools in Menconta, Monapo, and Milange districts, and will consist of the administration of the Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) to all students in grade 3 in each school, a short interview with a sub-sample of 10 grade 3 students in 50 schools. In all 157 schools, interviews should be conducted with the grade 3 teacher, the deputy school director, the school cook, the commodities manager for the school meals, and the head of the school council. Within the community, the following will be interviewed: 10 randomly selected households within the community where the school is located, the community leader, the farmer group leader, and the savings group leader.

Interviews will be conducted on tablets and will be primarily in Emakhuwa or Portuguese. The enumerator teams must be fluent in these languages.

Statement of Work

• Review questionnaires and provide comments
• Program the questionnaires into a CAPI program
• Test questionnaires on tablet and provide comments
• Recruit enumerators and field coordinators
• Organize and lead training of enumerators on the questionnaire and interview protocol
• Pretest survey instruments
• Organize field work of baseline data collection
• Conduct the baseline survey
• Conduct meetings with parents to acquire consent to interview their children
• Ensure all completed interviews are uploaded to secure data repository on a daily basis
• Track progress of data collection
• Perform quality checks and data cleaning
• Draft field report at end of data collection
• Liaise between IFPRI and partners to maintain effective communication and partnership
• Submit a final financial report within two weeks of the end of data collection

Consultancy duration

The collaborator will perform this work from May – September 2024.

Required qualifications for consultant or lead staff at organization

• Demonstrated experience conducting field work and survey work (particularly school surveys) in Mozambique within the past 5 years
• Demonstrated experience conducting survey-related trainings
• Experience in building trust and good relations with village leaders, interviewees and communities
• Knowledge of program management skills: demonstrated experience in successfully coordinating large field teams and managing deliverables.
• Excellent communication skills in English, Portuguese, and Emakhuwa
  • Enumerators should be able to communicate in Portuguese and Emakhuwa
  • The survey firm team should be able to communicate in Portuguese and English
• Excellent computer skills and experience using statistical software packages, especially SurveyCTO and Stata

Preferred qualifications

• Experience working with international and national researchers

Requirements to Apply

• Proposal submitted in English
• Detailed budget breakdown / financial statements
• Capacity statement/organizational brochure/profile
• CV/résumé(s) of key personnel involved in the project
• All supporting docs should be uploaded as one pdf to the application section indicating “CV or Resume”
• Deadline to apply is May 2, 2024