MINELRES: MRG Recruitment Call: EC Projects on Roma in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary

[email protected] [email protected]
Fri Jun 17 17:08:48 2005


Original sender: Zoe Gray <[email protected]>


MRG RECRUITMENT CALL: European Commission Projects on Roma in the Czech
Republic, Slovakia and Hungary 
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Dear Minelres subscribers 

Minority Rights Group International is recruiting a consultant with the
combined role of evaluator and author for the evaluation of European
Commission projects on Roma in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary.

Attached is the Call with further details including criteria. 

Closing Date: 11 July 2005, 10.00 am 

If you are interested to apply: Please submit a cover letter and CV
detailing your experience for the post and include daytime telephone
contacts to [email protected] and to
[email protected] or by post to Minority Rights Group
International (MRG) 54 Commercial Street, London E1 6LT, UK.
*******************************************************************

Zoe Gray 
Minority Rights Group International 
Europe and Central Asia Programme Officer 
Roma Programme Assistant 
TEL: +44 (0)20 7422 4218 
FAX: +44 (0)20 7422 4201 

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Minority Rights Group International (MRG) Roma Advocacy Programme
Call for Consultant/Evaluator

European Commission Projects on Roma in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and
Hungary: Lessons Learnt?

Consultancy: 1 person with the combined role of evaluator and author 

Location: home based with some travel within the Czech Republic,
Slovakia and Hungary

Fee:  We plan to commission this on a "fee for job" basis, and we have
estimated that the fee would be in the region of Euros 15,000 for the
complete project.  However we estimate that the work may involve around
75 working days

Closing Date: 11 July 2005, 10.00 am

Concept Note:
The European Commission spent billions seeking to improve the position
of the Roma in the accession countries. Some aspects of this work were
successful as governments changed their rhetoric towards the Roma, some
barriers to education were removed and the media responded to criticism
with more balanced coverage. However funds that were spent in trying to
improve the living standards and access to opportunities of Roma people
seem to have had very varied and as a whole less than expected impact. 
The EU has commissioned some external evaluations but very few of these
have focused on impacts as opposed to outputs and outcomes and very few
have been published.    

Under the present project MRG and partners will evaluate three EC
projects run in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary that were
designed to improve the living conditions and opportunities for Roma
people. The evaluation studies will look into the EC projects set into
their social and political context in order to distinguish between
changes caused by the project's intervention as against changes that
were occurring already or to which a wide range of participants
contributed. The evaluations will be independent, authoritative, and
participative and will seek to demonstrate positive and any negative
impacts of the programmes. The evaluations will also identify lessons
that the EU should apply when designing, commissioning and running
programmes designed to improve the position of the Roma in a new wave of
accession states; 

The evaluations will be linked to and will feed into MRG's Roma
advocacy. MRG and Roma partners will use the results to advocate for
more effective Roma programmes in future.  

The results will also inform MRG's wider advocacy programme with the
EC/EU, OSCE, Council of Europe and will be disseminated to over 1,000
key international and Roma advocacy targets through our established
database.  We envisage that the lessons from the evaluations will also
have relevance to the EC's wider programmes - particularly those
targeting poor and excluded groups in middle income countries. 

Job Description
The consultant/evaluator after a research and consultation process with
MRG and Roma NGOs in the programme countries will identify three
projects. We will try to ensure that each of the three projects is based
in a different country and have a different Roma organisation as the
lead partner with MRG on the study. We will aim to include projects run
by governments as well as by NGOs and ideally, at least two of the
projects will have been targeted on the Roma, although we may include
projects that were either targeted more generally on minorities or on
issues relevant to the Roma to see how well Roma were able to access
them alongside the other beneficiaries; 

It will be important that sufficient information is available about the
project.  Normally this would mean gaining agreement of the funding and
implementing organisations.  If we fear that this will skew us solely
towards projects that were particularly successful we may aim to select
one project where we do not have the cooperation of the funder or
implementing organisation but where extensive information has been made
public in the interests of transparency and this is sufficient to carry
out our evaluation.

The consultant/evaluator will draft an outline participatory evaluation
process for each country project, which will be discussed at the
programme initial set-up meeting in MRG's London or Budapest offices.
The consultant/evaluator will lead on the organisation of the programme
initial set-up meeting where we will discuss and work out with Roma NGOs
from the 3 new EU member-states the framework of the MRG evaluation
project; the Roma NGOs roles and contribution to it; will introduce them
to the EC's projects design and agree basic monitoring and evaluation
methods; will get feedback on projects selected and agree with programme
partners on the major indicators and participatory methods to be
applied. 

The consultant/evaluator will produce three evaluation study reports.
The results of each study will be available in full on MRG's website. In
addition, a summary report of the main lessons to be learnt and
recommendations will be prepared, which will be published and
disseminated by MRG. 


Content of each full evaluation study 
1. An analysis of the political and social context that the project was
run in, consideration of the availability of baseline data and any
comparable data indicating progress after the project has been
completed.

2. A brief description of the project's rationale, activities, methods
and how these developed, any barriers and how these were overcome, any
changes to the plan and reasons for these.

3. An analysis of the success of the project, areas that were less
successful and an analysis for the factors that contributed to these
successes and failures.

4. Lessons that can be extracted from the experience of the project for
future projects and programmes with Roma organisations, including policy
recommendations to improve (in term of relevance and sustainability) the
conception, design, selection, delivery, monitoring and evaluation of
the projects targeting the Roma or other minorities. 

Schedule: 
We expect the consultant/evaluator to start in August 2005 and complete
all work (background research, initial set-up meeting, field trips,
preparation of evaluation studies and summary report) by 15 April 2006
at the latest. 

Person specification: 
- Research and development experience of working in situations where
discrimination and poverty are interlinked 
- Research and development experience of working with the Roma
- Experience of running participatory evaluations, preferably in EC
programmes
- Knowledge of the international human rights framework and regional
standards on human and minority rights 
- Understanding of the diversity of Roma (including on the basis of
gender, age, language, religion).
- Ability to communicate in Rromani will be an advantage 


Please submit a cover letter and CV detailing your experience for the
post and include daytime telephone contacts to
[email protected] and to [email protected] or by post
to Minority Rights Group International (MRG) 54 Commercial Street,
London E1 6LT,
UK.

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