National Individual Consultant to Support Evaluation of UNICEF Moldova’s Contributions to Acquisition of Transferable Skills Individual Consultant National Position NEW

National Individual Consultant to Support Evaluation of UNICEF Moldova’s Contributions to Acquisition of Transferable Skills

Job no: 592472

Contract type: Consultant

Duty Station: Chisinau

Level: Consultancy

Location: Republic of Moldova

Categories: Adolescent Development, Education, Research, Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation

UNICEF works in over 190 countries and territories to save children’s lives, defend their rights, and help them fulfill their potential, from early childhood through adolescence.

At UNICEF, we are committed, passionate, and proud of what we do for as long as we are needed. Promoting the rights of every child is not just a job – it is a calling.

UNICEF is a place where careers are built. We offer our staff diverse opportunities for professional and personal development that will help them reinforce a sense of purpose while serving children and communities across the world. We welcome everyone who wants to belong and grow in a diverse and passionate culture., coupled with an attractive compensation and benefits package.

Visit our website to learn more about what we do at UNICEF.

For every child, the right to education 

The UNICEF Strategic Plan, 2022–2025, sets out the organization’s vision for achieving results for children by 2030. This evaluation focuses on Goal Area 2 “Every child, including adolescents, learns and acquires skills for the future”. Within this Goal Area, Result Area 2 (Learning, skills, participation and engagement) emphases transferable skills for children, adolescents, and young people as a vehicle to achieve learning results. The UNICEF work on education is articulated in the Education Strategy Every Child Learns: UNICEF Education Strategy 2019-2030 and describes the organization’s priorities, including the work on transferable skills.

Transferable skills are also known as life skills, 21st century skills, soft skills, or socio-emotional skills allow children, adolescents, and youth to become agile, adaptive learners and citizens equipped to navigate personal, academic, social, economic challenges, and crisis-affected children. Transferable skills include foundational skills of literacy and numeracy, problem solving, negotiation, managing emotions, empathy, and communication, among others, and they work alongside knowledge and values to connect, reinforce, and develop other skills that are required for lifelong learning, such as digital skills and job-specific skills. 

This independent evaluation serves a dual purpose of accountability and learning, aligned with the mid-term implementation of UNICEF’s Global Education Strategy and the end-term of the Strategic Plan. From an accountability perspective, the evaluation will generate evidence on UNICEF’s performance in supporting the decentralized function and it will assess the conceptual foundations of UNICEF-supported transferable skills programming and the achievement of intermediate and final outcomes. From a learning perspective, the evaluation will distill UNICEF’s unique experiences, practices, and lessons across diverse contexts to inform adaptive programming and policy decisions.

How can you make a difference?

The consultant will be recruited as part of the evaluation team of the global evaluation of UNICEF work on Acquisition of Transferable Skills among young people. As a national evaluator this consultancy will support data collection for the Republic of Moldova country evaluation. This country evaluation, a sub-product of the global evaluation, aims to generate systematic evidence to the extent to which UNICEF has supported the acquisition of transferable skills that will enable children, adolescents, and young people to be responsible and productive citizens.

The country evaluation will use the overall conceptual framework and methodology of the global evaluation (adapted to the country context) to assess UNICEF-supported transferable skills programmes and the coherence of commitments made to the country. It will also examine target results, focusing on system strengthening and enabling environments to achieve outcomes, and provide forward-looking recommendations for programme improvements. Given the changes to the organization structure and new strategic priorities drafted in the new Strategic Plan 2026-2029, the objectives, evaluation questions and methodology have been revised from the original Terms of Reference.

Scope of Work

Evaluation objectives:

To assess the relevance of UNICEF strategic and conceptual approach to transferable skills development, including its alignment with evolving national learning and skills agendas;

To assess the contribution of UNICEF’s transferable skills work in meeting the learning and skills development targets set for all adolescents and young people, including marginalized groups;

To examine the internal coherence of UNICEF supported transferable skills programming in different contexts;

To assess UNICEF ability to create enabling environment for transferable skills work, as well as to identify factors that enable or hinder the national ownership, sustainability and scalability of these efforts, to improve results for all adolescents and young people.

Scope: This evaluation has been methodologically designed and aligned as a sub-product of the global Evaluation of UNICEF work on Acquisition of Transferable Skills. Building on the information collected as part of the global evaluation, the scope of this exercise is the Moldova country office’s work on transferable skills between 2019 and 2025, which requires additional data collection and analysis. In addition, this evaluation will include a participatory approach to include the advice of youth groups. This country-level evaluation will benefit from comparative evidence produced through the global evaluation.

Governance arrangements: This sub-product of the global evaluation will be managed and implemented in direct coordination between the Evaluation Office manager and the Moldova Country Office evaluation focal person, as agreed with the CO evaluation focal point and supported by the Eastern Europe and Central Asia multi-country evaluation specialist. Reference Group members from the country office and the regional office have been invited to participate. The identification of a youth group and the engagement with key national stakeholders will be coordinated by the Moldova country office. The youth group will be invited to advise, particularly in the foresight phase.

Team composition requirement: The global evaluation team includes a thematic expert (education, transferable skills), a senior technical evaluator, a qualitative technical expert, and a quantitative specialist, with complementary skills, experience, and country experience considerations.  The national consultant will support the data collection phase for Moldova, including the transcription of documents and data collection tools, the scheduling of interviews with key stakeholders, the interpretation of interviews, and the contextualization of emerging findings.

Deliverables: 

Work Assignments Overview

Deliverables/Outputs

Delivery deadline* (in weeks/months) and input days to complete the deliverable

Desk review of Evaluation materials, documents, etc., in consultation with the Evaluation Team, hired by UNICEF HQ

Detailed Work Plan and agreed timetable to provide quality inputs to the process

10 May 2026

(3 working days)

Data Collection (UNICEF will assist with translation of final data collection tools in local languages – Romanian and Russian)

Review and tailor data collection tools to the country’s needs. Coordination and support for scheduling interviews and field visits. Interpretation and transcription of interviews. Documentation.

30 May 2026

(20 working days)

Data Analysis Phase

Contextualization of evidence and emerging findings

20 June 2026

(10 working days)

  2026 ToR_Nat Indiv Consultant_Global Evaluation of Transferable Skills_VA.pdf

To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have

Master’s degree in a relevant field of social sciences, with an advantage for degrees or major emphases in education, public policy, economics, evaluation, or related evidence fields.

Minimum of three years of professional experience in evaluation exercises, with evidence of thematic experience in education.

Expertise with qualitative data collection and analyses, including semi-structured interviews; focus group discussions; and innovative data collection methods.

Proven experience in or with the Moldovan education system. Understanding UNICEF’s education programmes and priorities would be a strong asset.

Demonstrated ability to collaborate with a team at the talent and experience level required.

Excellent written and oral communication skills in Romanian and Russian. Working knowledge of  English is required.

Ability to travel locally is required during the data collection phase in the country.

For every Child, you demonstrate…

UNICEF’s Core Values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust and Accountability and Sustainability (CRITAS) underpin everything we do and how we do it. Get acquainted with Our Values Charter: UNICEF Values

UNICEF promotes and advocates for the protection of the rights of every child, everywhere, in everything it does and is mandated to support the realization of the rights of every child, including those most disadvantaged, and our global workforce must reflect the diversity of those children.  The UNICEF family is committed to include everyone , irrespective of their race/ethnicity, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, socio-economic background, minority, or any other status.

UNICEF encourages applications from all qualified candidates, regardless of gender, nationality, religious or ethnic backgrounds, and from people with disabilities, including neurodivergence. We offer a wide range of benefits to our staff, including paid parental leave, breastfeeding breaks and reasonable accommodation for persons with disabilities. UNICEF provides reasonable accommodation throughout the recruitment process. If you require any accommodation, please submit your request through the accessibility email button on the results

Advertised: 16 Apr 2026 GTB Daylight Time
Deadline: 26 Apr 2026 GTB Daylight Time

Tagged as: Consultant, Data, Evaluation

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