GAMICL Project Final Evaluation Terms of Reference

 

Overview

Application deadline	30 Aug 2026
Evaluation start and end date	Nov 2026 – Jan 2027
Duration	40 working days
Program sector(s)	Climate Change
Project/Programme name	Green Action through Media and Civil Society in Laos (GAMICL) Project
Type of consultancy	External Final Evaluation
Project/Programme location	Vientiane Capital, Champasak and Luangprabang Provinces
Consultant location	In-country
Funded by	European Union

 

Background about CARE

CARE International is a global NGO working to end poverty and achieve social justice. We rebuild and improve the lives of the most vulnerable people, especially women and girls, who are often the most marginalised individuals in their communities and face unequal access to social and economic rights. In Laos, CARE supports the most vulnerable people and communities in remote areas to overcome poverty and marginalisation, to fight poverty and social injustice. To date, CARE has supported over 1 million participants to promote lasting change in their lives, in line with the Sustainable Development Goals.

CARE International in Lao PDR started its operations in 1993 and has worked since then to improve the lives of vulnerable groups in both rural and urban areas, particularly the ethnic minority communities. CARE works in partnership with community members, the government, local civil society organisations, and the private sector. CARE currently implements projects in seven provinces: Vientiane Capital, Phongsaly, Luang Namtha, Luangprabang, Savannakhet, Champasak and Sekong.

CARE’s ‘Marginalised Women and Girls’ program in Laos empowers women and girls through integrated initiatives focusing on women’s health, economic empowerment, and climate resilience, utilising evidence-based practices to address gender-based violence, strengthen sexual and reproductive health systems, combat gender-based violence, improving food access, fostering resilient livelihoods and inclusive value chains, and enhancing climate adaptation through community-driven action plans that promote gender equality and women’s empowerment. CARE is committed to building a more equitable society. CARE Laos commits to women and girl empowerment, locally led and globally scaled through a comprehensive approach to long-term commitment to building local capacity as central to our mission.

 

Term of Reference for GAMICL Project Final Evaluation

 

Project Introduction and Background

The “Green Action through Media and Civil Society in Laos (GAMICL)” project funded by the European Union and is implemented in Vientiane Capital, Champasak and Luangprabang Provinces. The project duration is 48 months from March 2023 to February 2027. Its overall objective is to contribute to public access to information and protect fundamental freedoms, in accordance with national legislation and international agreements (SDG target 16.10). It is planned to be achieved through the following two outcomes:

• Outcome 1: State-owned and private media outlets (including women journalists) have improved professional skills – including use of digital and new technologies – enabling quality information to be provided to the public through responsible and professional reporting on green development issues.
• Outcome 2: Civil society actors (including Lao CSOs and citizen-journalists like bloggers, filmmakers and YouTubers) have enhanced knowledge and capacity enabling them to contribute constructively to policymaking, monitoring, and advocacy on green development issues impacting their communities, including through the use of digital and new technologies.

To achieve the project goal and its specific objectives, the project plans to implement the following activities connected to the respective outputs:

Output 1.1 Lao public and private sector journalists have increased expertise in qualitative, digital and green publishing (content production) through international technical exchange

• 1.1 Assessment of journalists’ capacities and design of the training program.
• 1.2 Development of Green Quality Journalism Standards.
• 1.3 Implementation of annual two-week journalist training.
• 1.4 Completion of online programs by invited regional journalists.
• 1.5 Completion of on-the-job training for Lao journalists in Thailand and Vietnam.
• 1.6 Establishment of the LJA website.

 

Output 1.2 Lao public and private sector journalists produce influential, quality media products on green issues and adhere to the LJA Code of Ethics (CoE)

• 2.1 Organizing study tours to equip journalists with understanding on gendered community perspectives on critical green issues
• 2.2 Organizing annual green media products competition for Lao Journalists

 

Output 2.1 Civil society actors including mass organizations and youth have increased awareness of green issues and have improved digital literacy

• 1.1 Provision of training on green issues, digital literacy and media governance to civil society media actors.
• 1.2 Design and promotion of a digital self-study course on green issues reporting, digital literacy and media governance for youth in target provinces.
• 1.3 Provision of training on green issues, digital literacy and media governance to civil society organizations.

 

Output 2.2 Civil society actors (including citizen journalists, mass organizations, CSOs) and youth produce influential media products on green issues informed by the LJA’s Green Quality Journalism Standards (GQJS) and Code of Ethics (CoE).

• 2.1 Design of green issues media competition targeting civil society actors and youth.
• 2.2 Organization of annual green issues media competition targeting civil society actors and youth.

 

Additionally, the final evaluation will also evaluate the project’s contribution to CARE Vision 2030 indicators as follows:

• Indicator #1.4: # and % of people of all genders who have actively participated in formal (government-led) and informal (civil society, private sector-led) decision-making spaces.
• Indicator #1.5: Proportion of people of all genders satisfied with their last engagement with service providers (SDG Indicator 16.6.2).

 

The project is being implemented through a consortium consisting of CARE Laos and the Lao Journalist Association, with CARE Laos acting as the consortium lead and playing an overall leadership role by implementing field activities as follows:

Stakeholders	Roles
CARE Laos	CARE collaborates with Ministerial level to develop organizational and technical capacity in accordance with donor requirements and policy implementation in Laos. CARE implements Team (PIT) ensures effective Lao Journalist Association (LJA) activities, targeting Lao journalists under Outcome 1. While the Project Implementation Team (PIT) implements all activities, communication on activities between journalists and the PIT will be managed by the LJA senior project officer. This LJA senior project officer is essential given that LJA’s membership comprises a key target group of the intervention and will both increase LJA’s capacities and build upon their existing role.
Confederation of ASEAN Journalists (CAJ), Lao Journalists Association (LJA) and Vietnam Journalists Association (VJA)	Confederation of ASEAN Journalists (CAJ), and VJA are crucial in promoting Lao journalists’ regional connections. CAJ, in partnership with LJA, will organize annual seminars and study tours. The ‘twinning’ activities based on existing relationships and CAJ chairmanship in 2024 and 2025.
Lao Civil Society Organization (LCSO)	LCSO is invited to the media competition selection reference group and promotes training opportunities for its members based on its experience working with civil-society organizations.
The Ministry of Information, Culture and Tourism (MICT)	The MICT is the primary government counterpart ministry responsible for the signing of the memorandum of understanding for project implementation in Laos. MICT holds a governance role and will serve on the Project Steering Committee.

Purpose of the Final Evaluation

The purpose of the Final evaluation is to evaluate the project’s performance, identify change at the systems and population level through the project, and generate learnings for future programming by:

1. Assessing the achievement of project impact, outcomes, and outputs against the project logical framework over the whole project timeline.
2. Identifying the challenges, lessons learned, and recommendations that inform decision-making and design of future programming.
3. Identifying changes through the project at the systems and population level (PIT).

The consultant will measure the change and impact of the intervention by using the OECD DAC criteria to determine the project’s relevance, coherence, effectiveness, efficiency, impact, and sustainability as part of the evaluation. The following are the guiding questions for each DAC criteria:

Relevance
• To what extent do the project objective and design respond to beneficiaries/participants’ needs, consistent with the CARE Laos’ priorities?

Coherence
• To what extent do project stakeholders’ synergies, coordination and operation fit to the project achievements?

Effectiveness
• To what extent did the project achieve its overall objective and how?
• Did the output lead to the intended outcome?
• What factors were crucial to the achievement and failure to achieve the project objectives?
• What were the major barriers in improving the impact and effectiveness of project activities?

Efficiency
• Were the financial resources, expertise, time and other inputs efficiently used to achieve the result chain (outputs, outcome and impact) and to what extent?

Impact
• Were there any significant changes in the lives of the intended beneficiaries as a result of the project intervention?
• Did the project intervention generate change in norms or systems and how?
• Were there any unexpected, negative effects on the communities, as a consequence of the activities implemented?

Sustainability
• To what extent are the benefits of the project likely to be sustained after the completion of this project?
• What are the key factors/areas requiring additional support/attention in order to improve prospects for sustainability of the project outcomes and potential for replication of this approach?
• To what extent has the project been able to hand-over the follow-up of key activities to the government counterparts and target communities?
• What are the recommendations for similar support in the future?

Also, the consultant will measure the CARE system impact at Scale (deep (impacting cultural roots), scale out (impacting greater numbers), and scale up (impact laws and policy)).

 

Target group of the Final Evaluation

The final evaluation will include the project’s participants/beneficiaries and stakeholders/partners such as: government staff at provincial and district level, state-owned or public media journalists, private media journalists, citizen-journalists (bloggers, filmmakers and YouTubers), and the project implementation team including Lao Journalist Association and CARE Laos personnel. Note: The actual sample size and the selection of respondents will be determined later between the consultant and CARE Laos teams and focus group discussions will be determined later between the consultant and CARE Laos teams.

 

Scope

The final evaluation will cover the project implementation timeframe from March 2023 to September 2026. The geographical areas to cover are all three target provinces – Vientiane Capital, Champasak and Luangprabang.

The consultant will lead the process to conduct the final evaluation for the GAMICL project, with logistical support from the project team in Vientiane Capital. The consultant’s tasks are allocated into 3 phases as follows:

 

Phase One:

• Review all documents related to this project, including the logframe, and CARE’s related strategy documents: CARE Vision 2030, Climate Justice Strategy, Marginalised Women and Girls’ Long-term Program Strategy, Climate Change Adaptation Strategy, Gender Equality and Women’s Voice Strategy, Annual narrative and financial reports. Research on climate change, Gender-based Violence Nexus. Other related documents such as Lao national socio-economic development plan.

 

Phase Two:

• Develop study design and sampling methodology.
• Present inception plan along with data collection tools and organize face to face meeting with CARE Laos team in Vientiane Capital for planning and preparation before conducting the data collection training. All tools should be ready in both Lao and English for CARE review before this meeting.
• Provide data collection tool training to enumerators and pilot the tool. Piloting the tool is a must. Lead the data collection process in the field with multiple target groups along with the enumerators to ensure the data is collected effectively. It is strongly recommended that the lead evaluation consultants travel on the field trip with the data collection team.

 

Phase Three:

• Lead the cleaning and validation of quantitative and qualitative data, and data analysis.
• Present the evaluation results through a data validation workshop.
• Prepare draft report and take feedback for finalization of the report and presentation of key findings. Present event with key rounds of feedback for the draft report.
• Provide a one-page summary of the report after the final version is submitted.

Approach and Methodology

The final evaluation will take a mixed-method approach based on the following:
1. A mix of quantitative and qualitative instruments and methods will be used.
2. A participatory approach is adopted to capture the perspectives of key stakeholders and project participants/beneficiaries.
3. The methodology will be gender and target-group (ethnicity) sensitive.

Furthermore, the following documents will be considered for the evaluation:
1. Project documents, including proposal and Logframe.
2. Baseline and mid-term evaluation reports.
3. Project interim report and annual report.
4. CARE Vision 2030 indicators (e.g. environmental indicators for measuring change)
5. CARE Laos’ program strategies e.g. Gender Strategy.

 

Data collection

• Data should be collected using a target population sample by specifically taking into account local diversity (gender, age, ethnicity, location, etc.)
• All project target groups should be included during data collection process.
• The data collection should be disaggregated by age and gender and any other relevant diversity criteria in line with the project’s Theory of Change and comparable with the baseline data. The data sampling will be discussed and decided together with CARE Laos. The assessment will not cover all target participants, but the sampling will be purposeful and represent local diversity.
• All raw data (including data sets, database of interviews) should be submitted to CARE Laos for each visit and shall be made available to CARE Staff and submitted with the final evaluation report.

 

Comparability with baseline

• The final evaluation needs to refer to the baseline survey and mid-term evaluation, taking into consideration potential gaps, to produce comparable data for measuring project progress.
  • All survey tools, sampling frames, data sets, final reports, and other methodology from the baseline and mid-term will be made available to ensure consistency of data across evaluations.

 

Roles and Responsibility

Team Members	Responsible Person	Primary Tasks
Planning	CARE Laos Climate Change and Project Manager	Lead in the facilitation of the evaluation process and managing the external consultant, in collaboration with CARE Germany, CSO Partners, and government partners.
	External Consultant	Lead in designing the necessary methodology and tools for evaluation by collaborating with CARE Laos’ program team and CARE Germany. Lead in providing training to the data collection team on methodology and tools to be used in the evaluation. Ensure the appropriate team composition by collaborating with the CARE team regarding ethnic groups. Write the inception report and prepare the face-to-face meeting.
Data Collection	MIKA Advisor & Project Manager & Project Team	Lead in facilitating the logistics and making an appointment with the selected target groups mentioned above. Provide relevant information and data as requested. Lead in collecting the data following the data collection plan (incl. interviewing CARE team, Government, CSOs partners, the target group).
	External Consultant	Lead in cleaning the data and data processing/analysis. Lead in analyzing the data following the objective and requirement from the final evaluation ToR Cross-check all data to ensure that collected data meets the needs of the final evaluation objectives and requirements.
Reporting	External Consultant	Defining the community representative and government partners at the district level. Defining the program team from CARE Laos, CARE Germany, and relevant Partners. Provide a full evaluation report. Provide a one-page evaluation summary. Provide key findings presentation in PPT format.

Deliverables

Below is a summary of key deliverables:

Deliverable	Description	By when
Inception report	Including the methodology, sampling, tools, and the W1 Nov 2026 guiding principles of the evaluation and data analysis plan.	W1 Nov 2026
Data collection	Conduct field data collection in 3 provinces	W3 Nov – W2 Dec 2026
Draft final evaluation report (max 30 pages, annexes excluded)	I.          Cover Page II.          Table of Contents III.         Acronyms IV.        Executive Summary V.         Project Overview VI.        Methodology VII.       Brief Final Evaluation Design VIII.       Sampling strategy IX.        Data collection and analysis X.         Key findings and discussion (specifically including a time frame showing final Evaluation status for selected indicators). XI.        Conclusions and Recommendations XII.       References with proper citation XIII.       Appendices and Annexes XIV.      Disclosure of Conflict of Interest and will be annexed to the final report together with consent forms. Please refer to CARE Evaluation template.	W3 Jan 2027
Indicator summary table	Update the indicator in the log frame (compare baseline, mid-term and final evaluation).	W3 Jan 2027
PowerPoint presentation (debriefing)	Includes the methodology, sampling, tools, key findings, limitations, and recommendations from the final evaluation.	W3 Jan 2027
Cleaned qualitative and quantitative data sets.	The consultant should deliver, at minimum, all files including quantitative data sets (raw and refined data), qualitative data, transcripts, and database of interviews in an easy-to-read format and maintain naming conventions and labeling for the use of the project/program/initiative and key stakeholders.	W3 Jan 2027
Completion of the approved final report	Following the feedback on the draft report, the consultant will finalize the report along with one page evaluation summary and materials to CARE.	W4 Jan 2027

 

Timeline

The final evaluation timeframe is from November 2026 to January 2027. The following table shows the anticipated work schedule:

Phase	Specific Tasks	Days	Tentative dates
1 Pre-field activities	Project literature review – CARE to support with project documents. Develop data collection and plan data collection. Develop final evaluation study tools. Inception report	1 2 1 4	Nov 2026
2 Field activities	Data collection in Vientiane Capital Data collection in Champasak Data collection in Luangprabang	4 4 4	W3 Nov – W2 Dec 2026
3 Report writing	Data analysis Prepare the draft Report Presentation of the report for CARE senior program team and CARE Germany & relevant Partners. Finalize the report considering comments from CARE and submit the finalized report to CARE.	5 5 1 2	W4 Dec – W4 Jan 2027
	Total	29

NOTE: CARE in Laos will cover the consultant’s transportation and accommodation during data collection, except perdiem and travel insurance.

NOTE: CARE in Laos will cover the consultant’s transportation and accommodation during data collection, except perdiem and travel insurance.

 

Selection Criteria

	Criteria
1. Experience	• At least 5 years experience in the fields of journalism, green issues/climate change, climate resilience, civil society development, gender, and women’s empowerment in Lao PDR and/or Southeast Asia. • Demonstrated strong social research and reporting skills, including experience in conducting quantitative and qualitative research. • Demonstrated successful experience in conducting project baseline, mid-term and/or final evaluation studies, especially for development projects. • Demonstrated good understanding of gender issues and women’s empowerment in Laos. • Relevant technical experience (e.g. journalism, gender mainstreaming, civil society, institutional development, etc.) is preferred.
2. Qualification	• Relevant post-graduate qualifications.
3. Technical skills	• Research, survey (e.g. PRA/PLA), stakeholder interviews ranging from field level to national level stakeholders, report writing and presentation. • Ability to work autonomously and demonstrated skills in leading the evaluation.
4. Language	• Excellent command of English (writing and speaking). • Knowledge of Lao language is an asset.
5. References	• A minimum of two referee contacts who have managed the proposed consultant previously.

 

As a matter of course, all consultants are subject to the following policies:

• CARE Lao Child Protection Policy
• Terrorist Check Safety and Security Management Plan
• CARE Code of Conduct.

 

How to apply

If you are interested in this role, please submit your (1) CV, (2) cover letter, (3) two references, (4) proposed final evaluation study plan, and (5) cost quotation (daily rate) to: lao.recruitment@care.org by 30 August 2026, please include the text: “Application for GAMICL Final Evaluation Consultancy” in the subject of your email.

Note that the cost quotation should include the consultant’s daily rate as well as any materials and travel costs required for the consultant to complete the evaluation outlined above.