Background
Heifer International is a worldwide non-profit organization committed to eradicating hunger and poverty as well as ensuring that the earth is taken care of through sustainable agricultural and livelihood development. Having been established in 1944, Heifer International has worked with smallholder farmers and rural communities all over the world to ensure that their food security is improved, income levels increased, resilience enhanced, and sustainable farming systems are adopted.
In Kenya, Heifer International continues to engage in agricultural development through the adoption of inclusive value chain development, regenerative agriculture, women and youth empowerment, cooperatives development, and market systems development. Through its Practice for Change (P4C) Signature Program, Heifer International in Kenya aims at transforming the livelihoods of smallholder farming families through improved productivity, resilience, access to markets, and inclusive economic engagement.
As the P4C Signature Program scales and evolves, Heifer International in Kenya has realized that apart from a robust system of implementation, a culture of learning, collaboration, reflection, and adaptive management is important to bring about sustainable change. To this end, Heifer International in Kenya views learning as a key function within its organizational strategy aimed at enhancing evidence-based decision-making, quality programs, innovation, and continuous improvement.
The MEL approach by Heifer Kenya is thus designed to make an assertive effort in institutionalizing learning and adaptation as key pillars of program implementation. Learning and adaptation are to become continuous and integrated approaches by which experiences, information, perspectives, and insights gained from the implementation of the program will be systematically gathered, analyzed, recorded, shared, and incorporated into the design and implementation process of the program. This new strategy aims at ensuring that the program remains dynamic in response to realities, needs, challenges, and possibilities of greater success and sustainability.
The main focus in this regard is the creation of CLA processes in the P4C Signature Program. Heifer Kenya looks forward to creating a program environment where the staff, partners, communities, funders, and other stakeholders can engage in reflective and collaborative efforts to enhance the effectiveness and sustainability of the program.
As part of the process of collecting data annually through GIM1, Heifer Kenya plans to institutionalize regular reflective sessions among its implementing partners and other stakeholders to foster learning and adaptive management practices. These sessions shall include SWOT analysis of the program, evaluation of partnership effectiveness, evaluation of progress made and achievements made, and the necessary steps for adaptation that can lead to improved performance, collaboration, and sustainability outcomes.
In pursuit of this vision, Heifer Kenya is seeking to contract an individual consultant to help in formulating a Strategic Learning Agenda and CLA framework for the P4C signature program. The consultancy will entail the formulation of systems, processes, and tools that will enable continuous learning, improved collaboration, improved knowledge management, and adaptive management within the program implementation process.
The Learning Agenda will be used as a strategic tool for identifying and prioritizing important learning questions, evidence generation and use, reflection, and making sure that lessons learned are incorporated in the decision-making process. The CLA Framework will include the institutional tools needed for integrating collaboration, learning, and adaptation in the program management process.
Purpose and Objectives of the Assignment
The objective of this consultancy is to help Heifer Kenya develop and institutionalize a strategic Learning Agenda and CLA Framework for the Practice for Change (P4C) Signature Program to improve its capacity to learn, make decisions based on evidence, engage in adaptive management, and achieve program success. More specifically, the consultancy will help Heifer Kenya enhance its capacity to intentionally produce, document, analyze, share, and apply knowledge arising from the process of implementing the program, engaging partners, consulting stakeholders, and monitoring program performance. In doing so, the organization will move from a situation where learning is an ad-hoc practice to one where learning becomes an intentional, systematic, and sustained organizational activity.
Through this consultancy, the consultant is expected to:
- Assess the current practices in learning, reflection, knowledge management, and adaptive management within the context of the P4C Signature Program. Based on this assessment, the consultant will develop a strategic Learning Agenda, which will articulate the priority learning areas, learning questions, evidence needs, and pathways to learning related to the objectives and priorities of the P4C framework.
- Develop a feasible and functional CLA Framework that incorporates collaboration, learning, reflection, and adaptation into everyday program delivery and management practices. This CLA Framework will help create processes and mechanisms for engagement of stakeholders, information exchange, feedback handling, joint reflection, adaptive planning, and organizational learning.
- Assist Heifer Kenya to establish structured reflection processes in relation to annual GIM data collection and periodic review of programs. These processes will ensure that strategic reflections are made on program performance, partnership effectiveness, implementation problems, emerging opportunities, and sustainability issues to generate recommendations for adaptive management.
- Develop useful tools and systems for continuous learning and adaptive management, such as feedback loops, templates for documenting learning, case study format, learning briefs, facilitation guide, and Adaptive Management Register.
- Build the capacity of Heifer Kenya staff and partners to implement and maintain the Learning Agenda and CLA Framework through capacity development initiatives.
Scope of Work
The consultant will execute this task using an interactive and participatory process, with the aim of capturing Heifer Kenya’s priorities for strategic learning and program management. The task will be executed using an assessment of current practices regarding M&E, learning, knowledge management, and adaptive management within the P4C Signature Program. This will entail engaging program teams, MEL team members, implementing partners, and other stakeholders to understand how learning currently happens, how it is recorded, disseminated, and applied in program implementation. The assessment will cover the reflection processes, stakeholder engagement mechanisms, feedback loops, knowledge products, reporting processes, and adaptive management processes currently used by the organization.
Upon the completion of the assessment, the consultant will prepare a strategic Learning Agenda for the P4C Signature Program. The Learning Agenda will include priority learning areas and critical learning questions based on program goals, implementation challenges, and strategic decision- making needs. The consultant will also design a comprehensive Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting (CLA) Framework that incorporates continuous learning and adaptive management in the program implementation process architecture. The framework will detail practical approaches to collaboration, reflective practices, knowledge sharing, stakeholder engagement, and adaptive actions at various levels of program implementation.
The CLA process will involve creating formal mechanisms for conducting pause-and-reflect activities associated with the annual GIM data collection activities and program review cycles. The activities will facilitate systematic reflection on program accomplishments, challenges faced in implementing the program, partnership issues, emerging threats, and areas of improvement based on SWOT analyses. The consultant will also assist in developing formal mechanisms for adaptive action planning to help turn lessons learned into actionable steps for the program.
The consultant will assist in developing practical mechanisms for managing and disseminating lessons learned through knowledge management practices. This will involve the creation of learning briefs, case studies, success stories, webinars, learning events involving stakeholders, and other knowledge products. Mechanisms will also be established for capturing and managing stakeholder and partner feedback. Consistent with the adaptive management principles of Heifer Kenya, the consultant will establish an Adaptive Management Register that will be used to document lessons learned, implementation adjustments, management decisions, follow-ups, and outcomes.
The CLA approach and learning agenda will further include other strategic learning and collaboration activities such as participation in webinars and learning forums, organizing learning events with stakeholders, conducting joint annual implementation planning workshops with partners, improving feedback mechanisms, and helping produce learning outputs and communication materials based on evidence.
Finally, the consultant will develop the capacity of Heifer Kenya staff and implementing partners to implement the Learning Agenda and CLA framework through capacity building activities like training workshops, mentorship sessions, facilitation services, and preparation of operation manuals and guidance documents.
Deliverables
The consultant shall provide a range of strategic and operational deliverables that will contribute to the process of institutionalizing learning and adaptive management in the P4C Signature Program. Some of the key deliverables will be:
- An inception report providing information on the methodology, work plan, stakeholder engagement strategy, and the structure of the proposed framework; an assessment report documenting the results of the review of the existing systems of learning and adaptive management; and a comprehensive Strategic Learning Agenda for the P4C Signature Program.
- Provide an operational framework for Collaborating, Learning and Adapting (CLA) defining the learning process, stakeholder engagement strategies, reflection processes, adaptive management processes, and knowledge sharing systems.
- Standard tools and templates for holding pause and reflect sessions, SWOT analysis, adaptive action planning, feedback management, learning documentation, case study development, and learning briefs. An Adaptive Management Register will be developed together with guidance for its use.
- Facilitating staff and capacity building meetings for a day, along with producing user manuals, facilitation guidelines, and knowledge management documents to ensure sustainability and ownership.
- A consultancy report to be written will contain all the activities undertaken, methodological approaches, major findings, important lessons learned, strategy recommendations, and sustainability and institutionalization mechanisms that will be developed for the successful implementation of the Learning Agenda and CLA framework.
Duration and Effort Level
It is estimated that the consultancy will take about 20 days on FTE2 within an agreed-upon period with Heifer Kenya. The consultant will conduct the work remotely while also meeting face-to- face at Heifer Kenya offices in Nairobi, and if necessary, in partner or field sites.
