Terms of Reference: Baseline Study Women’s Economic Empowerment and Climate Change Adaptation in the Pacific Islands

1. Project to be Reviewed

Project location: Oxfam in the Pacific (3 provinces in Fiji & 4 islands in Vanuatu)

Assignment timelines: June 1st – August 31st 2025

Work requested: Conduct baseline study for gender and climate change adaptation project

Consultant baseline budget: Up to 24,000 Canadian dollars

2. Background

Oxfam in the Pacific and Oxfam Canada work together as part of the international Oxfam
Confederation, networked in over 90 countries as part of a global movement for change. Our mission
is to build lasting solutions to poverty and injustice with a focus on improving the lives and promoting
the rights of women and girls. We work directly with communities, partners and women’s rights
organizations to challenge the systems that perpetuate inequality and keep people poor. Together
we seek to influence those in power to ensure that women trapped in poverty have a say in the critical
decisions that affect them, their families and entire communities.

Oxfam, in collaboration with local implementing partners, Pacific Island Climate Action Network
(PICAN), Partners in Community Development Fiji (PCDF), Women in Fisheries Network Fiji (WiFN),
and Farm Support Association Vanuatu (FSA) (section 6.5), will a five-year (2024-2029) gender-
transformative project with the ultimate outcome (1000) to improve community resilience through
gender-transformative Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) for women and girls in Fiji, Vanuatu, Papua
New Guinea (PNG), Kiribati, Tuvalu, and the Solomon Islands.

The project is designed to improve food security, increase household incomes, and enhance
community resilience to climate change. The project is committed to empower women and girls by
providing targeted training, in sustainable agriculture and fisheries, financial literacy, and business
development and drive policy-level changes in the Pacific by integrating gender considerations into
national and regional climate policies, establishing specific funding mechanisms for women’s CCA
initiatives, and adopting gender-responsive budgeting. It will also offer resources such as resilient
seeds, climate-smart technologies, and market access support. These changes aim to address the
unique vulnerabilities of women and girls while leveraging their contributions to community resilience
and sustainability.

Further to this, is the Leadership development initiatives which will strengthen the advocacy capacities
of women and girls, enabling them to influence climate policies and participate in decision-making
processes. By partnering with local organizations, the project will promote inclusive decision-making,
improve access to economic, market, and technological resources, address the disproportionate
burden of unpaid care work on women and ensure long-term sustainability. This, in turn, will lead to
more resilient and sustainable livelihoods, reducing the vulnerability of the most marginalized
communities in the Pacific and ultimately benefit 9503 rights-holders. Women and AGYW represent
70% of the total direct beneficiaries, while 30% represent young and adult men. Women and AGYW
represent 62% of the total indirect reach and adult women account for the largest group of
participants. These individuals will be indirectly reached through multi-media campaigns, and the
cascading of project-provided information and resources by direct beneficiaries with their households,
agroecology group members, and other peers.

Given the vastness of the region the project has prioritized three provinces in Fiji and four islands in
Vanuatu as the primary focus. Fiji and Vanuatu are prioritized for intensive intervention, enabling the
development and refinement of climate-resilient practices. Focusing on Fiji and Vanuatu allows a
targeted approach to ensure comprehensive implementation of all project outputs and achieve
deeper and sustainable results. In contrast, PNG, Kiribati, Tuvalu, and the Solomon Islands are
designated as engagement countries, where targeted outputs will be implemented in collaboration
with key stakeholders, partners, donors, and regional platforms. For example, the research and climate
smart agriculture (CSA) practices developed in the project initiative can support the Partners in the
Blue Pacific (PBP) objective to expand, within the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment
Programme (SPREP). These results will allow for further CSA training and capacity-building support
across the region. The program will leverage existing relationships to enhance advocacy efforts, share
learning, and amplify diverse Pacific voices at all policy levels, ensuring regional benefits from the
focused efforts in Fiji and Vanuatu.

2. a) Programming Vision and Approach

The project’s central vision is to improve community resilience through gender-transformative CCA
for women and girls in Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, Kiribati, Tuvalu, and Solomon Islands. The
main goal is to engage and empower (i) rural women, (ii) women involved in informal economies, (iii)
Indigenous women and girls that face heightened livelihood risks and vulnerabilities that have been
exacerbated by climate change. The project will take an intersectional approach to combat exclusion
and discrimination across identity markers such as gender, age, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation,
disability and income.

The project has two pillars:

Pillar 1: Addresses the immediate needs for opportunity, skills, technology, and market access, ensuring women and girls can sustain their livelihoods.

Pillar 2: Strengthens the ability of women and institutional partners to influence and implement policies supporting gender-transformative CCA, ensuring lasting and systemic change.

These pillars work in parallel to address broad barriers to gender equality, including:

• Unpaid, inequitable. and undervalued care work
• Access to and Control over Resources
• Women’s Participation in Leadership and Decision-Making Roles
• Gender and Food Insecurity due to Climate Change

2. b) Project partners

While Oxfam in the Pacific and Oxfam Canada are accountable for the overall management of the program, partner organizations will implement the project to provide contextual knowledge and on-
the-ground expertise to ensure that the project activities roll out as intended and the project responds
well to local needs.

3. Purpose and Scope

The baseline study will provide an independent assessment to establish baseline values for project
indicators during the inception phase. The baseline study is also intended to provide contextual
information to better understand how to manage the project moving forward. The primary audience
is internal, namely: Oxfam, the donor, and project partners. With this in mind, the baseline study will
employ a mixed-methods approach, leveraging both quantitative and qualitative data.
Oxfam expects the consultant(s) leading the baseline study to use a gender lens. In its work, Oxfam
seeks to apply a Feminist Approach to Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (FMEAL).
In doing so, it prioritizes seven key foundations, including:

1. Understanding feminist MEAL as an approach,
2. Positioning MEAL as an integral part of social transformation,
3. Shifting power to participants in evaluations,
4. Understanding the role of the evaluator as a facilitator,
5. Valuing collective, context-driven knowledge generation,
6. Providing a learning orientation to evaluative exercises, and
7. Rooting feminist MEAL in safe programming, guided by ‘do no harm’.

The successful consultant(s) should reflect these foundations in their proposal and subsequent work. The online Measuring Change with a Feminist Lens profile highlights some examples of MEAL work that Oxfam has previously done using a feminist approach.

4. Objectives

Overall, Oxfam and its partners envision a feminist baseline study that draws on a range of stakeholder
voices and contextual experiences to:

• Conduct a context and gender analysis using Gender-Based Analysis + (GBA+) framework that assesses inequalities and barriers for women and girls, while identifying early risks that may weaken project implementation and results.
• Establish a baseline for measuring progress throughout the life of the project.
• Set baseline figures for the project’s outcome indicators for the log frame
• Examine the relevance and plausibility of the project’s Theory of Change assumptions
• Provide evidence-based recommendations towards program implementation and possible adjustments to the MEAL framework.

The overarching research questions will be developed in consultation with the consultant as part of the inception report.

5. Methodology

The survey is intended to provide initial baseline data on indicators in the project’s Performance
Measurement Framework (PMF) (or log frame). The consultant(s) should be prepared to use Survey
CTO for data collection and quality checks. Oxfam Canada has the license for this software. At Oxfam,
our default position is to use cluster sampling to select the statistically representative sample of direct
reach within a project’s implementation area, using a 95 percent confidence interval, a 5 percent
margin of error, and a 50 percent response distribution. During the inception phase, the consultant
will engage with Oxfam and partner to determine the sample size and locations for the survey data
collection in Fiji and Vanuatu.

Oxfam is open to discussing qualitative methods with the successful consultant(s). These methods
should centre the voices and lived experiences of women and girls and other beneficiaries in the
project locations and use more feminist approaches to deepen understanding of the current context
from a gender and intersectionality lens. The qualitative assessment should include a gender analysis
that at minimum considers: gendered social norms, access to resources and assets, safety, food
security and other climate impacts, participation in leadership and decision making, care work, and
laws, institutions and policies. The gender analysis should include a power analysis to understand
unequal and patriarchal power relations and how they manifest in various aspects of life.

The baseline study should utilize a participatory approach, such as community consultations and
focus group discussions, to ensure that women’s voices are heard and their experiences are
considered throughout the program cycle. Oxfam’s Social Norms Diagnostic Tool may be used to
inform design of qualitative methods.

The baseline study will engage members from all beneficiary groups including: women facing the
greatest vulnerability to climate impacts; women entrepreneurs; women’s groups and agroecology
network members; women’s rights organizations (WROs) and feminist climate justice actors. In
addition, the baseline study will involve male community members, community leaders, agroecology
network members, and climate justice movement actors.

6. Guiding principles and Values

The successful consultant(s) should include and address all potential ethical issues related to this
review in its proposal and subsequent inception report. Additionally, the successful consultant(s) are
expected to undertake the project baseline study with high respect given to transparency, cost-
effectiveness, gender transformative potential, and collaboration with a range of stakeholders.

7. Key activities and deliverables

The project baseline Study will start upon signing of the contract between Oxfam and the successful
consultant(s) or an otherwise agreed upon date. The exact due dates for all deliverables will be finalized with Oxfam prior to submitting the inception report, so long as the dates continue to fall within the broad start and finish dates of the consultancy.

Oxfam envisions the review as a collaborative undertaking between itself, partner staff and the successful consultant(s). We expect that the selected consultant(s) will engage with and provide feedback on a continual basis. On our part, we commit to collaborating with the selected individual/team and to providing sufficient time for a back-and-forth approach.

To learn more, the ToR is attached here.

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How to Apply:

Consultants meeting the above criteria are invited to submit a proposal by email to:

[email protected] with the subject line: Gender and CCA project: Baseline Study Proposal. Proposals should be received no later than May 15th, 2025.

The body of the proposal should be no longer than 5 pages and should include the following:

• A cover letter outlining relevant experience in similar studies.
• An outline of the study approach, highlighting: proposed research questions, feminist
  methodological approach, data analysis plan, potential technical and operational challenges,
  and strategies to ensure timely, high-quality deliverables.
• A list of key activities, linked to the proposed activities, within a scheduled timeframe.
• A staffing and management plan, including details of team composition and specific qualifications of key staff.

The proposal should also include Annexes, which are not included in the page limit, such as:

• An estimated budget, including personnel, not exceeding a maximum of 24,000 Canadian
  dollars.
• List of three (3) references who can attest to the team’s experience and expertise as it relates to this project (including daytime phone numbers and email contacts).
• CVs of the review team, outlining previous evaluation experience and accomplishments demonstrating the skills and knowledge needed to fulfill the Terms of Reference.
• Required: Two (2) examples of reviews recently completed by the consultant(s). If possible, at least one should be relevant, or similar to, the subject of this study.

Oxfam and partners will review all proposals closely against this outline.

Before final selection of a successful candidate, a police clearance and aid diversion will be conducted.