Deadline: 19-Jan-24
The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) has announced the Impact Catalyst Fund (‘ICF’) to support high-quality impact evaluations in priority thematic areas of the UNICEF Strategic Plan 2022–2025.
The second ICF call for proposals in 2023 focuses on the thematic area of Adaptive Social Protection (ASP). Generating scientifically robust evidence on this topic enables national partners to make scientifically grounded decisions to build and strengthen ASP systems. Furthermore, it allows for the replication of successful interventions and the improvement of child-focused outcomes in fragile contexts. This call is implemented through a broader five-year evaluation partnership between the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and UNICEF.
The ICF aims to achieve the following overarching objectives:
- Fill knowledge gaps by expanding a rigorous evaluative evidence base on outcomes and impacts in a strategic, methodologically coherent way under a priority thematic ‘window’ of UNICEF work.
- Improve programmatic effectiveness and allocative efficiency by incentivizing the use of rigorous scientific methods of test programme theory in a variety of contexts.
- Strengthen institutional and national capacity by integrating evaluative thinking, requirements and credible processes from the onset of the programme planning process.
UNICEF is committed to reducing monetary and multidimensional child poverty (Sustainable Development Goal 1, Target 1.2) and accordingly, the Strategic Plan 2022–2025 posits adaptive or shockresponsive social protection as a critical programme accelerator under Goal Area 5. Between now and 2025, UNICEF will sharpen the focus of its work on ASP, with efforts to include:
- accelerating efforts on strengthening adaptive social protection systems and building nascent systems where they do not exist;
- investing in identifying gaps/bottlenecks in social protection systems so that women, men, boys and girls can access social protection when they need it the most and their resilience is built for future crises;
- increasing emphasis on accountability for results, efficiency of processes and coordination.
Objectives of this ICF call
- The ICF Call on ASP has the following primary objectives:
- Objective 1 Generate rigorous evidence that enables national partners to make scientifically grounded decisions to build and strengthen ASP systems and replicate successful and cost-effective ASP interventions that work and improve child-focused outcomes in fragile contexts.
- Objective 2 Contribute to the institutional practice and global evidence base on the effectiveness of ASP (e.g., cash and cash plus) interventions in fragile contexts.
- Objective 3 Stimulate better alignment of evaluative learning accountability objectives to programmatic learning needs on the most innovative ASP approaches and models.
- Objective 4 Strengthen national capacity in impact evaluations through collaborations with national experts and partnerships with academic institutions, provided that a positive enabling environment exists.
Intervention
- The proposed ASP intervention/intervention package should include one of the adaptive programme elements such as:
- adjusted targeting approaches to integrate covariate shock risk and household/individual vulnerability (e.g. gender, disability) into eligibility criteria and beneficiary selection, fine-tuning benefits and services to enhance resilience-building outcomes among selected households;
- incorporated design elements to support preparedness, such as disseminating risk information within at-risk communities and promoting increased savings and financial inclusion among beneficiary households; and
- incorporated shock-responsive capacity through design tweaks, vertical or horizontal expansions, and supporting the use of piggybacking shock responses on already existing programs.
Geographical Coverage
- Countries with ‘severe’ or ‘high’ environmental fragility status (countries with recurring severe shocks related to climate change in the form of droughts, floods or other extreme weather events).
- Geographic hot spots prone to climate change disasters layered over other elements of fragility with highly vulnerable populations including refugee and displaced populations (e.g., Horn of Africa).
Programmatic Coverage
- Well-defined (as per theory of change) intervention packages that might combine cash with complementary services and information. This can also include interventions that can potentially ‘unbundle’ a specific component of programmes.
- Programme objectives aimed at change in children and adolescents’ well-being outcomes, including mental health and learning/cognitive development.
- Gender-transformative programming as well as focus on disability, migration/displacement and ethnicity.
- Sustainable programming – interventions are embedded in the government structures; their sustainability is secured through local partnerships and cross-sectorial integration.
Eligibility Criteria
- UNICEF COs can apply for an ICF grant with interventions and programmes planned or implemented jointly with other United Nations agencies or national or international non-governmental organizations.
- The current call for proposals invites UNICEF COs to submit an application to conduct a rigorous impact evaluation5 for the planned or ongoing ASP programme/intervention.
- The ICF Call on ASP is open to any UNICEF COs with relevant programmatic priorities.
For more information, visit UNICEF.