"WorldFish is a leading international research organization working to transform aquatic food systems to reduce hunger, malnutrition, and poverty. It collaborates with international, regional, and national partners to co-develop and deliver scientific innovations evidence for policy and knowledge to enable equitable and inclusive impact for millions who depend on fish for theri livelihoods, as a member of CGIAR, WorldFish contributes to building a food- and nutrition-secure future and restoring natural resources. Headquartered in Penang, Malaysia, with country offices across Africa, Asia, and the Pacific, WorldFish strives to create resilient and inclusive food systems for shared prosperity. For more information, visit: www.worldfishcenter.org"

1. Background:

WorldFish Myanmar is leading the Feed the Future Burma Fish for Livelihoods Project funded by USAID. The project (Activity) aims to provide a means of ensuring the improved availability of diverse, safe, affordable nutrient-rich food, especially for women and young children from poor and vulnerable households. This will be achieved by ensuring that poor households have an increased ability to purchase accessible nutritious food due to improved incomes from entrepreneurial activities including improved small-scale aquaculture in the intervention areas and the strengthening of aquaculture market systems with attention to expanding opportunities for women and youth. In addition, behavioral change work will prioritize nutrition-conscious household decisions by means of both home production and local markets. Specifically, it is expected that the adoption of fish culture technologies will contribute to improved food and nutrition security for poor households in several ways:

i) Generating income from fish culture which would be used to purchase nutritious food,

ii) Creating alternative employment generating activities and increasing labor productivity,

iii) Increasing available food supply and fish consumption.

The geographical areas to be covered include Kachin, Mandalay, Magway, Southern/ Eastern Shan and Sagaing Regions/States.

The Activity has three main outputs:

• Small-scale aquaculture production increased through strategic activities including improved land and water use, increased access to high quality inputs (feed, seed, and equipment), capacity development and research into production, and access to credit.
• Market-based system approaches (MSA) further developed and utilized to increase access to food safe fish and fish products by poor people. Capacity building will ensure that market systems function more effectively, sustainably and to the benefit of the poor.
• Enhanced nutrition and WASH practices delivered via social behavior change communication (SBCC). Capacities developed into the production, processing and consumption of food safe aquaculture and other fish-based products.

2.      Consultancy objective

Implementation of a pre-designed methodology household survey on productivity, income, market value chains and systems, food security and nutrition related to small-scale aquaculture development primarily adoption of Better Management Practices (BMPs) for aquaculture.

The study will target participants (direct beneficiaries in grow-out/ demonstration farmers’ production) who received assistance from the Projectin the first four years (Oct 2019 to Sep 2023) of implementation.

3.      Scope of work:

The population of interest are the Feed the Future Burma Fish for Livelihoods Project participants who received assistance from the projectsince implementation began in October 2019. The Activity delivered a range of services (kind and in-kind) to participants including fish seed, fish feed, micro-credit, extension services, vegetable and fruit seeds, WASH material and hygiene kits among others. Among them, the assessment will focus on the participants only who received the assistance in fish seed and SSA technology.

The contractor (s) will be responsible for translating questionnaires into Burmese, data collection on provided tools, providing training to enumerators, fieldwork and physical data collection, data verification and cleaning and a narrative fieldwork report. Throughout the assessment, the contract will be required to work in close consultation with WorldFish MEL Specialist and Data Management Specialist (DMS) who will help to ensure that the data collection process will be met with the needs of the designed methodology and satisfied USAID requirements.

The present consultancy is scheduled for a two-month period in 2024 and is intended to conduct the BMP adoption study. WorldFish will prioritize those organization/consultant (s) with experience of working with digital data application for data collection from the field, WorldFish recommended applications like CommCare or Kobo. The organization/consultant (s) should have an experienced team of enumerators who are aware of the local context and speak both English and Burmese in addition to local dialects where required.

Table 1: List of 30 townships Activity assisted in four years (2019-2020; 2020-2021; 2021-2022; 2022-2023)

Requirements

The contractor will be required to perform the following duties according to the level of inputs and timing as indicated:

• Translating the questionnaires: WorldFish will set up the methodology and develop the questionnaires and the consultancy team needs to translate them to Burmese with specific reference to the Project context.

• Training of enumerators: the consultancy team needs to select and train the enumerators. It is good if the enumerators have digital literacy skills, aquaculture knowledge and are familiar with local ethnic languages. Pilot testing is strongly recommended to avoid confusion and to ensure common agreement on technical terms.
• Testing and finalization: the consultancy team needs to prepare data collection method preferably CommCare or Kobo and for those areas that cannot allow the use of phones, consultancy teams should discuss with the team. Since the team and implementing partners cannot follow with the consultancy team to the field activities, familiarity or proficiency with local dialects will be an added advantage.
• Supervise the implementation of the assessment: the contractor will oversee the survey implementation by the project team to ensure a high level of accuracy in selecting respondents, data collection, entry, verification, and cleaning.
• Write narrative fieldwork report: the contractor will write a narrative fieldwork report summarizing the activities done in the assessment. No need to report any sort of data analysis and further detail report on findings of data collected.

 1.      Expected Outputs

The expected outputs are:

• Preliminary work plan and schedule detailing how you intend to carry out this work,
• Questionnaire translated according to the local context and work nature,
• Questions set up in a mobile app,
• Final database with the data, with proper documentation of the data collected,
• A narrative report on the entire process followed to collect data from the field.

2.      Time and Location

This assignment (i.e., data collection) should take place between May and June 2024. Questionnaire translation and developing in digital app tool, enumerator training, data collection, and final cleaned dataset is submitted to WorldFish within the agreed upon deadline. The organization/consultant (s) will be based in Myanmar to complete tasks and the allocation of time between Yangon and the project sites will be agreed between the organization/consultant (s), WorldFish project team who will facilitate the field visits. The organization/consultant (s) is expected to travel to each of the project areas.  

3.      Budget

Applicants should quote a consulting fee, taking into account the duration of the contract covering fieldwork, analysis, reporting and associated travel including any board and lodging requirements in Myanmar. This will be paid as an all-inclusive fee for the consulting assignment and will depend on the detailed technical proposal. A technical and financial proposal based on the ToR outlined above must be provided.

4.      Components for the proposal

• The consultant company's planned approach, methodology and timeline (30 points);
• Comments, questions or suggestions about these Terms of Reference (15 points);
• A description of the multi-disciplinary team, including their expertise and experience in conducting similar to the assessment (20 points);
• CV’s of the key staff who will be involved in the assessment (10 points); and,
• Written sample(s), preferably aquaculture or livelihoods related evaluation reports or assessment, from the team or from some of the key researchers (5 points); and, a budget breakdown including unit costs for transportation, lodging, staffing, translation, printing, etc. (20 points).

5.      Application:

Interested persons/organizations should submit their application, consisting of the following:

• A cover letter including an explanation of the understanding of the TOR and a proof of experience with similar assignment,
• A proposed methodology and indicative work plan,
• The CV of the persons who will carry out the work,
• A quotation for services.

6.      Reporting Responsibility

You will report to the Chief of Party (CoP), and where appropriate to the Data Management Specialist (DMS) based in Myanmar. Moreover, you will be required to work in close collaboration with all other staff of WorldFish primarily with the field team members.

The screening will start as soon as possible, and will continue until the position is filled. Only selected consultant candidates will be contacted.

Our Gender, Diversity and Inclusion Commitment

WorldFish has seven offices across Asia, Africa and the Pacific, with more than 400 staff and 27 nationalities who contribute to a dynamic multicultural work environment.

WorldFish is committed to promoting a work environment where diversity and inclusion is valued and we seek to have gender balance in the organization. Our Leadership Team is 50/50 in terms of its gender split and 60% of our management cadre are women.

We continue to seek diversity and gender balance across other dimensions and we support individual performance and potential in achieving our organizational goals and mission.

We are an equal opportunities employer and strongly encourage women and men from developing nations to apply.

Benefits