TOR for Independent Evaluation services for ‘Home-Grown School Feeding Program in Somaliland’ (HGSFP) Endline Study
CARE Somalia is seeking to procure the services of an evaluation company / consultants (consultants) to conduct the endline study of Home-Grown School Feeding Project in Somaliland (HGSFP) funded by Finland Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA). HGSF has high demands in terms of the quantity and quality of data to be collected, in order to generate robust evidence to be used by multiple stakeholders.
The evaluation company / consultants will be responsible for the overall design of the endline study including the development of the methodology and tools as required, manage data collection services, carry out qualitative and quantitative data analysis, and prepare a comprehensive endline report for HGSFP. The external consultants will provide an independent and rigorous evaluation to enable the project to assess progress against outcomes at baseline, and to what extent the intervention was effective in contributing to gender transformative processes that contributed strengthened linkages between local agricultural production and school feeding systems to enhance nutrition, education outcomes, and community resilience in Somaliland.
CARE is a humanitarian non-governmental organization committed to working with poor women, men, boys, girls, communities, and institutions to have a significant impact on the underlying causes of poverty. CARE seeks to contribute to economic and social transformation, unleashing the power of the most vulnerable women and girls. CARE has been providing emergency relief and lifesaving assistance to the Somali people since 1981. CARE is implementing three mutually supportive programs and are designed along the humanitarian-development nexus: Education and Gender Equality: Builds the capacity of government institutions to provide gender responsive education services while building adolescents and young people’s life skills. It strengthens the capacity of feminist organizations and Savings Groups Networks and supports their collective advocacy**. Climate Justice, Food, Water, and Nutrition:** Contributes to increased food security and an improved nutritional status of vulnerable populations through promoting gender-responsive, climate-smart and sustainable crop and livestock production, diversifying livelihoods, linking pastoralists and smallholder farmers with financial services and markets, promoting WASH and nutrition, and strengthening early warning systems and family and community contingency planning. Humanitarian Assistance: Provide a wide range of humanitarian services covering food security and economic recovery as well as education, health, nutrition, WASH, and protection in emergencies, ensuring investments into recovery. We will continue to contribute to humanitarian coordination and promote gender-responsive emergency assistance with the help of Rapid Gender Assessments and the promotion of women’s leadership in response.
Project Overview
The Home-Grown School Feeding (HGSF) Project, implemented by CARE International in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and Science (MoES) and the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) with funding from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan (MOFA), was designed to strengthen the nexus between agriculture, nutrition, and education in Somaliland. The project aims to ensure that school children, particularly in drought-prone and food-insecure regions, have access to regular, nutritious meals sourced locally from smallholder farmers. By linking school feeding programs with local food systems, HGSF contributes not only to improved student health, attendance, and learning outcomes but also to enhanced livelihood opportunities and market access for local producers. The project aligns with the Somaliland Education Sector Strategic Plan (ESSP 2022–2026) and the government’s Home-Grown School Feeding Policy, emphasizing community ownership, sustainability, and inclusion.
The HGSF project operates on the premise that improving nutrition and education outcomes requires an integrated, systems-based approach. At its core, the project recognizes that hunger and poor nutrition are among the leading causes of school absenteeism, low concentration, and early dropouts particularly among children from low-income households. Through targeted interventions such as the provision of school meals, capacity building for school management committees (CECs), and the creation of structured market linkages between schools and local farmers, the project stimulates demand for locally produced food. This, in turn, incentivizes smallholder farmers especially women to increase productivity, diversify crops, and adopt climate-smart agricultural practices, creating a sustainable supply chain that strengthens both the education and food systems.
The Theory of Change (ToC) guiding the project posits that if schools are able to consistently provide nutritious, locally sourced meals, then children’s attendance, concentration, and learning outcomes will improve; concurrently, if local farmers and traders are integrated into the supply chain through training, aggregation, and contract farming, their income, resilience, and participation in local markets will increase. These dual outcomes reinforce each other, as improved farmer livelihoods sustain the school feeding system while enhanced education outcomes contribute to long-term human capital development. Furthermore, by embedding accountability, gender inclusion, and policy advocacy mechanisms, the HGSF model contributes to a nationally owned, economically viable, and socially inclusive school feeding system, thereby strengthening community resilience and government capacity to sustain the program beyond donor support.
The primary objective of the HGSF Endline Evaluation is to assess the extent to which the project has achieved its planned outcomes compared to the baseline benchmarks and project logical framework. The endline will measure performance against outcome and output indicators while analyzing the factors that have influenced results. The evaluation will draw lessons on sustainability, policy relevance, and scalability of the home-grown school feeding model within the Somali context.
Specifically, the endline study is:
TOR for Independent Evaluation services for HGSFP Endline Study
Bidders must download the request for proposal (RFP) attached along with the ToR and complete all required information including attachments where necessary
Please send your complete RFP, technical and financial proposals to this email address som.consultant@care.org clearly marking the subject line “Endline Evaluation of HGSF.” no later than 31th October 2025 11:59 PM.
