DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS

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ABOUT WFP

The World Food Programme is the world’s largest humanitarian organization saving lives in emergencies and using food assistance to build a pathway to peace, stability and prosperity, for people recovering from conflict, disasters and the impact of climate change.

At WFP, people are at the heart of everything we do and the vision of the future WFP workforce is one of diverse, committed, skilled, and high performing teams, selected on merit, operating in a healthy and inclusive work environment, living WFP's values (Integrity, Collaboration, Commitment, Humanity, and Inclusion) and working with partners to save and change the lives of those WFP serves.

To learn more about WFP, visit our website: https://www.wfp.org and follow us on social media to keep up with our latest news: YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok.

WHY JOIN WFP? 

• WFP is a 2020 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.

• WFP offers a highly inclusive, diverse, and multicultural working environment.

• WFP invests in the personal & professional development of its employees through a range of training, accreditation, coaching, mentorship, and other programs as well as through internal mobility opportunities.

• A career path in WFP provides an exciting opportunity to work across the various country, regional and global offices around the world, and with passionate colleagues who work tirelessly to ensure that effective humanitarian assistance reaches millions of people across the globe.

• We offer an attractive compensation package (please refer to the Terms and Conditions section of this vacancy announcement).

JOB TITLE:  Senior Academic Advisor

TYPE OF CONTRACT:  Daily Consultancy

UNIT/DIVISION:  Office of Evaluation, World Food Programme

DUTY STATION (City, Country):  Remote based

DURATION:  Between 25-40 days over a period of 11 months

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE OF THE ASSIGNMENT:

The Evaluation Policy 2022 aims to strengthen WFP’s contribution to ending global hunger by embedding evaluation into the heart of WFP’s culture of accountability and learning. The Policy defines impact evaluation as those which “Assess the positive and negative, direct or indirect, intended or unintended changes in the lives of affected populations in receipt of WFP interventions”. Building on this definition, WFP understands impact evaluation as measuring changes in development outcomes of interest for a target population that can be attributed to a specific programme or a policy through a credible counterfactual. 

WFP sees rigorous impact evaluation as a tool to support learning. The WFP Impact Evaluation Strategy has four main objectives, to:

1)      Contribute to the evidence base for achieving global goals;

2)      Deliver operationally relevant and useful Impact Evaluations;

3)      Maximize Impact Evaluation responsiveness to rapidly evolving contexts; and

4)      Harness the best tools and technologies for Impact Evaluation.

Globally, there are major knowledge gaps related to the impact of development and humanitarian interventions.  To address these evidence needs, the Office of Evalution has started building WFP’s capacity to deliver impact evaluations in fragile and humanitarian contexts. Through the Optimizing Humanitarian Interventions workstream, the Office of Evaluation supports the development of tools and WFP capacity in conducting impact evaluations in humanitarian response, including cultivating a community of practice with other researchers and evaluators in the field.

WFP’s Office of Evaluation is engaging in impact evaluations on cash-transfers and gender, climate and resilience, school-based programmes, and nutrition, as well as cross-cutting topics related to emergency responses, such as targeting, transfer modalities, and anticipatory action or forecast-based financing. To deliver these impact evaluations effectively, the Office of Evaluation established a dedicated Impact Evaluation Unit in 2022 that works in partnership with external technical expertise.

Project context:

The assignment is situated within a Gates Foundation funded, multi-country impact evaluation led by the Office of Evaluation to generate rigorous evidence on how (digital) cash transfers, combined with complementary interventions, affect women’s empowerment and women’s and children’s nutrition and health outcomes. The project responds to persistent global evidence gaps on whether, how, and under what conditions cash-based assistance, particularly when targeted to women, translates into improved intra household allocation, health seeking behaviors, and nutrition outcomes in humanitarian and fragile contexts.

While unconditional cash transfers have been widely shown to improve household consumption and livelihoods, most existing studies focus on aggregate household outcomes and economic indicators, with limited attention to women specific health and nutrition impacts or to intra household dynamics. Evidence on cash plus approaches, particularly those combining digital delivery, women’s digital and financial literacy, and social and behavior change interventions, remains fragmented and context specific, and is rarely causal in humanitarian settings. At the same time, WFP has rapidly expanded the use of digital cash transfers and made women the default recipients of assistance, increasing the operational importance of understanding how digitalization and complementary programming influence outcomes beyond food security alone.

To address these gaps, the project will implement a series of harmonized impact evaluations in Kenya, Somalia, and Bangladesh, testing variations of cash delivery to women’s own (digital) accounts, with and without digital and financial literacy training and digitally enabled social and behavior change components. The evaluations are designed to generate policy relevant and generalizable evidence on pathways linking digital inclusion, women’s agency, behavioral change, and nutrition and health outcomes, while informing WFP’s program design and global guidance on nutrition sensitive, gender responsive cash assistance.

These Terms of Reference cover the first phase of a multi-year impact evaluation project, corresponding to the initial 11-month implementation period. Subject to satisfactory performance, operational needs, and availability of funding, the Office of Evaluation may re-appoint the consultant to cover subsequent phases of the project.

ACCOUNTABILITIES/RESPONSIBILITIES:

1.       Provide senior academic and technical advice and quality assurance:

Provide senior academic and technical advice and quality assurance at all stages of the impact evaluation, in close collaboration with the Office of Evaluation Impact Evaluation Unit. This includes reviewing the impact evaluation concept note (comprehensive research proposal that outlines the objectives, research questions, methodology, and expected outcomes of the study), reviewing and editing the impact evaluation surveys, providing methodological guidance and analytical advice, occasional discussions with County Office partners, and potential mission travel.

2.       Review or develop the following deliverables related to the impact evaluation:

-          Application for ethical clearance by an accredited Institutional Review Board (the IRB is a commercial provider contracted by Office of Evaluation)

-          Impact evaluation concept note

-          Impact evaluation surveys

-          Data collection procedures

-          High frequency data quality check scripts

-          Sample Size and Power calculations

-          Quantitative analysis plans, modelling approaches and interpretation of results.

-          Qualitative data collection protocols

-          Draft interim presentations (e.g. midline results)

-          Shorter reports, design/results presentations, and communication materials (e.g. blog posts); and,

-          where applicable in later phases, final impact evaluation reports and academic outputs.

3.       Support the dissemination of impact evaluation work through policy and academic channels:

- Actively promote the collaboration with WFP through policy and academic channels (e.g. through jointly produced communication materials, workshops, conferences, etc.). Audiences can be a variety of stakeholders and the general public, including policy makers, practitioners, and media.

Miscellaneous notes

The Office of Evaluation retains full ownership of the impact evaluation design, implementation and outputs. The Senior Academic Advisor provides independent academic advice and quality assurance.

Data shared under this agreement will be anonymized before access is shared with the Senior Academic Adviser. The Office of Evaluation will work with the consultant to ensure seamless impact evaluation workflows in absence of Personally Identifiable Information data (removing and re-merging data e.g. to re-contact households for follow-up data collection rounds).

Any data collected as part of this impact evaluation cannot be used for any other purpose than the impact evaluation unless the expressed written consent has been obtained from WFP. All academic papers stemming from this work will be co-authored with WFP Office of Evaluation staff and potentially others. The Office of Evaluation reserves the right to use data collected as part of these impact evaluations in any future analyses.

The consultant commits to ensure research compliance with ethical and legal standards and follow ethical principles to protect study participants.

DELIVERABLES AT THE END OF THE CONTRACT:

The details of each deliverable will be agreed within the framework of each specific assignment.

-          Review IRB application (draft provided by Office of Evaluation)

-          Review and edit 3 IE concept notes (draft provided by Office of Evaluation)

-          Review and edit quantitative IE surveys for baselines and midlines (draft provided by Office of Evaluation)

-          Co-Lead on midline results presentations (support provided by Office of Evaluation)

-          Coordinate with the impact evaluation team and collaborate with stakeholders to ensure research is relevant and impactful.

Subject to satisfactory performance, operational requirements, and availability of funding, the contract may be renewed beyond the initial 11-month period to support later phases of the impact evaluation, including endline analysis, final reporting, and dissemination activities.

Indicative deliverables for potential later phases (subject to contract extension):

If the contract is extended, deliverables may include, but are not limited to:

·         Technical oversight and quality assurance of endline data collection and analysis.

·         Co-leading the drafting, review, and finalization of country-level and cross-country impact evaluation reports.

·         Contribution to academic manuscripts and policy-oriented synthesis products.

·         Support to dissemination through policy briefings, workshops, and conferences.

QUALIFICATIONS & EXPERIENCE REQUIRED:

Education:

Strong and proven academic background in applied research and social sciences, with a PhD level degree in a relevant field (economics, international development; public health, public policy; social sciences).

Experience:

At least 12 years of experience in managing and/or conducting research studies and impact evaluations in diverse humanitarian and/or development contexts (with 8 of these years post-PhD). Demonstrated research experience on women’s empowerment, gender dynamics, and/or maternal and child health and nutrition outcomes, including through impact evaluations or applied policy research. Strong track record of published research.

Knowledge & Skills:

Extensive knowledge of and experience conducting evaluations using a range of qualitative and quantitative evaluation approaches and methods.

Proven relevant experience conducting evaluations in development and humanitarian settings and other WFP mandated thematic areas.

Knowledge of the UN system and the foundations for its work as well as the evaluation norms and standards for UN organizations.

Knowledge of gender and human rights sensitive evaluation practice, applied ethical standards in evaluation and applied social science research.

Strong interpersonal skills, ability to work with different stakeholders and skills to promote good communication and a learning culture.

Ability to communicate complex technical language with clarity, and ability to identify and focus on the key messages among competing detail.

Languages:
Fluency in English, Level B in another UN Language (French or Spanish)
 

WFP LEADERSHIP FRAMEWORK

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Click here to access WFP Leadership Framework

REASONABLE ACCOMMODATION

WFP is committed to supporting individuals with disabilities by providing reasonable accommodations throughout the recruitment process. If you require a reasonable accommodation, please contact:  global.inclusion@wfp.org

NO FEE DISCLAIMER

The United Nations does not charge any application, processing, training, interviewing, testing or other fee in connection with the application or recruitment process. Should you receive a solicitation for the payment of a fee, please disregard it. Furthermore, please note that emblems, logos, names and addresses are easily copied and reproduced. Therefore, you are advised to apply particular care when submitting personal information on the web.

REMINDERS BEFORE YOU SUBMIT YOUR APPLICATION

• All applications must be submitted exclusively through our online recruitment system. We do not accept CVs or spontaneous applications by email.

• If you experience challenges while submitting your online application, please contact us at global.hrerecruitment@wfp.org for technical support only.

• Please note that applications sent to this email address cannot be considered.

• We strongly recommend that your profile is accurate, complete, and includes your employment records, academic qualifications, language skills and UN Grade (if applicable).

• Once your profile is completed, please apply, and submit your application.

• Kindly note the only documents you will need to submit at this time are your CV and Cover Letter

• Additional documents such as passport, recommendation letters, academic certificates, etc. may potentially be requested at a future time

• Only shortlisted candidates will be notified

All employment decisions are made on the basis of organizational needs, job requirements, merit, and individual qualifications. WFP is committed to providing an inclusive work environment free of sexual exploitation and abuse, all forms of discrimination, any kind of harassment, sexual harassment, and abuse of authority. Therefore, all selected candidates will undergo rigorous reference and background checks.

No appointment under any kind of contract will be offered to members of the UN Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ), International Civil Service Commission (ICSC), FAO Finance Committee, WFP External Auditor, WFP Audit Committee, Joint Inspection Unit (JIU) and other similar bodies within the United Nations system with oversight responsibilities over WFP, both during their service and within three years of ceasing that service.