Learning and Adaptive Management Consultancy for Advancing Adaptation through Resilient mobility And Natural capital (AARAN) Project

**BRCiS Consortium**

**Learning and Adaptive Management Consultancy for Advancing Adaptation through Resilient mobility And Natural capital (AARAN) Project**

**Terms of Reference**

1. **Background**

Building Resilient Communities in Somalia (BRCiS) is a Consortium of national and international organizations – Action Against Hunger (ACF), Concern Worldwide (Concern), GREDO, the International Rescue Committee (IRC), KAALO, Save the Children, and Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) as lead agency. BRCiS’ objective is to work across the humanitarian-development divide, supporting marginalized communities in disaster-prone, rural Somalia to become more resilient to shocks and stressed, including as a result of climate change. BRCiS approach is contextually adaptive, focused on the specific shocks, needs, and priorities of individual communities. BRCiS was established in 2013 and is now implementing projects funded by multiple humanitarian and development donors in more than ten regions of Somalia1.

**2. Program Background**

The **Advancing Adaptation through Resilient mobility And Natural capital (AARAN)** project is a three-year, FCDO-funded initiative under the Somalia Humanitarian and Resilience Building in Somalia (HARBS) Programme. Implemented by a consortium of five Members (NRC, Concern Worldwide, GREDO, KAALO, Lifeline Gedo) in partnership with IOM, AARAN targets approximately half-million Somalis across 15 districts in five federal Member States (Jubaland, Puntland, Galmudug, Hirshabelle and Southwest). The project integrates the complementary strengths of the **BRCiS** and **Danwadaag** into a single operational model centered on climate adaptation across rural-urban corridors.

AARAN’s Theory of Change (ToC) posits that supporting more climate-resilient systems will directly reduce the severity of humanitarian needs and forced displacement in Somalia. This impact is achieved when institutions and marginalised communities, including Displacement-Affected Communities (DACs), drive inclusive, locally-led, climate-adaptive solutions to climate-related shocks and stressors (Outcome). The ToC is operationalized through six interconnected Technical Workstreams (Outputs 1-6), each led by a designated Workstream Lead:

**Table 1**: AARAN Outputs and Workstream

**Workstream, Focus Area, Lead Agency**

Output 1- Housing, land and Property (HLP) Rights & Legal Identity- **NRC**

Output 2 - Ecosystem & Natural Resource Management- **BRCiS Consortium Management Unit (CMU)**

Output 3- Market Systems & Livelihoods- **GREDO (with Concern Worldwide technical support on Self-help groups)**

Output 4- Early Warning & Early Action (EWEA)- **Concern Worldwide**

Output 5- Durable Solutions & Urban Planning- **Danwadaag Consortium Leadership Team (CLT)**

Output 6- Evidence, Learning, and Adaptation- **BRCiS CMU (with support of this learning partner)**

**Output 6** serves as the central coordination and learning platform of the project, responsible for ensuring that learning is not a siloed activity but a continuous, participatory process that drives strategic adaptation.

AARAN recognizes that meaningful learning and adaptive management cannot happen in isolation. The project operates with a prioritized **Learning Ecosystem** comprising diverse actors who should continuously coordinate closely, jointly identify learning priorities, and collectively reflect on evidence to inform adaptations. This ecosystem includes:

1. **Internal Consortium Structures:**
- **Technical Workstream Leads (Outputs 1-6):** Responsible for generating thematic evidence and identifying operational learning needs within their technical domains while Workstream 6 is the overall responsible workstream to oversee and manage the learning agenda by working as the bridge between the learning and adaptive management structure commissioned under this ToR and other Consortium structures.
- **Programme Management Group (PMG):** Comprising senior technical leads from each implementing Partners, the PMG holds strategic oversight and decision-making authority for adaptive management.
- **MEAL Working Group:** Provides technical rigor on monitoring, evaluation, and learning methodologies, supporting carrying out learning exercises in the field, ensuring data credibility and harmonization across the Consortium.
- **Finance Working Group:** Ensures that proposed adaptations including value for money are fiscally viable, aligned with FCDO compliance, and can be implemented within existing budget and forecasting timelines.
- **Project Steering Committee (PSC):** Provides governance-level oversight, including senior representation from Member organizations, and approves major strategic adaptations.
2. **Dedicated Learning & Evidence Partners:**
- **AARAN Resilience & Impact Measurement Consultancy:** Responsible for project resilience and impact measurement through baseline, routine community engagement and endline measurements. Their longitudinal data and routine community engagement is a critical input to the Learning Agenda.
- **FCDO Independent HARBS MEL Provider:** Ensures AARAN’s adaptive management evidence, outcome harvesting, and learning products inform portfolio-wide measurement and coherence.
- **AARAN Learning and Adaptive Management Consultancy**: This serves as the project's dedicated Learning Partner, tasked with operationalizing a dynamic, participatory Learning Agenda that evolves with the project's context and stakeholder priorities. In this capacity, the Learning Partner also functions as the Ecosystem Convenor, responsible for ensuring the learning ecosystem functions efficiently, facilitating coordination among all actors, and support translating evidence into actionable adaptations. Beyond curating this live framework, the partner leads targeted thematic learning exercises, synthesizes multi-source evidence into actionable insights
3. **Government & National Stakeholders:**
- **Federal Government of Somalia (FGS) & Federal Member States (FMS):** Including Ministries of Environment & Climate Change (MoECC), Somali Disaster Management Agency (SoDMA), National Identification & Registration Authority (NIRA), Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation (MOAI), Ministry of Livestock, Forestry and Range (MoLFR), Ministry of Planning, Investment and Economic Development (MoPIED) and Durable Solutions Technical Working Groups (DSTWGs). These actors are both partners in implementation and primary audiences for learning products aimed at influencing national policy and planning (e.g., Somalia’s National Adaptation Plan 2026-2030 and National Transformation Plan (NTP 2025-2029) specially Pillar 4 of this framework on Environment and Climate Resilience
4. **External Resilience & Peer Actors:**
- **Somalia Cash Consortium, NGO Consort research and Working Group, WFP, FAO and similar actors:** As peer resilience implementers, these actors are key for sharing cross-programme learning, avoiding duplication of research, and collectively influencing the broader Somalia resilience and climate adaptation evidence base.
5. **Target Communities & Local Actors:**
- Displacement-Affected Communities (DACs), Community Resilience Committees (CRCs), DAC Fora, Self-Help Groups (SHGs), Community Resilience Extension Workers (CREWs), etc: These are the key project participants and primary sources of experiential knowledge. Their feedback, lived experiences, and observed behavioural changes are essential data points for validating or challenging project assumptions.

It is important to note that BRCiS has already established a comprehensive Collaboration, Learning, and Adaptation (CLA) and Knowledge Management strategy, grounded in the USAID CLA approach. These strategies have been progressively operationalized across the Consortium, providing a solid foundation for this assignment. The AARAN Learning Agenda will build upon and refine this existing CLA framework, contextua