MEAL Advisor at Medecins du Monde

Medecins du Monde (MdM) is an international humanitarian organization whose mission is to provide medical care for the most vulnerable populations, the world over, including France. It seeks to stimulate voluntary commitment from doctors, other health care providers, and from those whose expertise in other fields is needed for its activities, to enlist all competent support required for the achievement of its projects, and to seek at all times to encourage close working relationships with populations in its care. MdM operating in Nigeria, Borno state since October 2016.

We are recruiting to fill the position below:

Job Title: MEAL Advisor

Location: Borno
Type of contract: Fixed term

Main Responsibilities
Under the supervision of the  Program Coordinator in charge of Programs, the MEAL advisor is responsible for:

• Ensuring the MEAL framework of the Mission is updated;
• Designing the action plans herein for the Mission according to MdM institutional MEAL operational framework, and makes sure it is disseminated, understood, and implemented by the mission staff,
• Providing leadership on enhancing quality monitoring and evaluation system of MdM’s harm reduction program in Nigeria.
• He/she will be responsible for all M&E related program activities including data and information collection, analysis and sharing. He/she will provide capacity building and technical M&E leadership for all program areas. The Meal Advisor will also design/update and ensure complaint response mechanism across the Mission.

Working Relationships:

• Hierarchical link: Program Coordinator

Team under his/her direct supervision (national staff):

• None
• Functional link / Technical support to MEAL teams at field level

Other:  

• Works in relation with the HQ Monitoring Advisor

Roles
Technical support and formalization:

• Provides methodological support to all program teams on technical questions linked to MEAL and cross-cutting issues such as develop M&E plan and its implementation, quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis, indicators tracking, complaint response mechanism, “do no harm” analysis, terms of references of internal and external evaluations
• Further strengthen existing MEAL system by review and harmonization of current MEAL tools/checklists, information management/GIS Mapping, and especially data management system at the mission level
• Develop and maintaining monitoring tools for external and internal coordination and communication
• Build on institutional knowledge on MEAL activities and missions’ results (lessons learnt and recommendations) and make sure these are known by technical and field coordinators and derived lessons informed all future programming
• Ensure accountability to beneficiaries by overseeing the feedback and complaints response mechanism (FCRM) through newly rolled-out Sop’s
• Develop standard operational procedures to support monitoring activities, including archives of data collected
• Introduce, pilot and institutionalize electronic data collection mechanism on the Mission
• Makes sure that MEAL department is well integrated with all departments (functional links) as well as coherent with all coordinators and managers
• Ensure that cross-cutting issues (gender, protection, accountability to the affected population, do-no-harm, community participation, disability, etc.) are well integrated into all MEAL tools
• Capacity building of MEAL and Program teams on MEAL approaches/system and day-to -day requirements

Donors Grants-participation:
In collaboration with the grants officer:

• Act as the Technical Referent at Mission level in terms of Donor Compliance and Grant Management
• Contribute to donors reports and proposals – in collaboration with Operations, Finance and Medical Units
• Ensure permanent liaison with the program coordinator coordinator in charge of programs and keep up to date the Grants Tracker
• Design and develop in collaboration with Program coordinator the Grant Plan of the Mission
• Ensure systematic adherence to donor guidelines, compliance, and strategic orientations
• Ensure as much as possible donor indicators are harmonized for all the proposals

Accountability and Learning

• Sensitize operational and technical teams on essential accountability and learning mechanisms including ensuring maintaining sources of verification are available and maintained across all programs / projects
• Propose ways to disseminate M&E learnings internally and externally and use of those during projects development and planning phases
• In collaboration with the program coordinator and the whole program team, analyse data produced and propose reorientation regarding those analysis
• Contribute to ongoing and planned initiatives from coordination and projects teams related to accountability and learning mechanisms, ensuring proper links with M&E systems
• Support project teams to collect and document good practices, lessons learned, and feedback based on established M&E plans

Human Resources and Capacity Building

• Take part in recruitment and evaluation of relevant staff
• In coordination with programme teams and HR Department, evaluate staff M&E capacity building needs and propose a training plan
• Provide orientations and trainings to MdM collaborators based on assessed needs
• Work closely and providing continuous coaching and thorough hand-over to national collaborator counterparts with the aim to nationalize the position by the end of 2022

Reporting and Coordination

• Manage appropriate coordination and communication within the line managed team and with other departments
• Maintain close functional links with the field coordinators and other mission level coordinators, in order to establish clear individual technical objectives and delegation of tasks
• Contributes to internal and external and reporting with regards to M&E aspects
• Liaise with external stakeholders (donors, I/NGOs, UN agencies, etc.) for aspects related to quality and learning systems as per programme needs

Research and Evaluation

• Provide technical support to the coordination team for potential research, assessments, and evaluation at country level

Context
MdM is active in North-East Nigeria since 2016. The program is implemented around the main following components:

• Access to primary health care,
• Nutrition treatment (severe acute malnutrition),
• Gender based violence survivors’ treatment,
• Mental health and psychological support.
• MdM has its coordination office in Maiduguri, a Field Offices in both Maiduguri City, a field office in Damboa a sub office in Damboa and a Liaison Office in Abuja. The team is composed of around 6 expatriates and 250 national staffs.
• For now, MdM is running directly 3 clinics In Maiduguri : Garba Buzu, Kawar Maila et El Meskin in informal IDP camps. In Damboa, a field team has been in place since June 2017 where MdM  is running two fixed clinics in two IDP Camps  (also for host population). In addition, MDM  Damboa medical team is semi-remotely supporting  2 health posts (Ministry of Health) outside Damboa town in Azir and Gumzuri villages.
• Untill recently MdM’s intervention was pretty much emergency oriented, with five MdM runned clinics (3 in Maiduguri, 2 in Damboa) plus an emergency response team (ERT) for rapid response to sudden population displacements and cholera outbreaks. Currently the mission is shifting its logic of intervention towards a Nexus approach: ERT team doesn’t exist anymore, and we are slowly shifting from substitution programming (MdM clinics) to the support to State MoH health facilities in a bid to foster sustainability.
• At the same time, a new crisis has arisen in North-West Nigeria in link with massive banditry acts and farmers/herders conflict dynamics. Two needs assessments have been conducted by MdM teams in Zamfara State in 2021 and even though we are not planning to be operational in this area in the coming months, we keep a close eye to the developments in this region and start to work on our access strategy. This could lead to a scale-up in MDM’s humanitarian operations.

Education and experience

• Degree or equivalent in MEAL, Statistic, Quality Control Or Humanitarian Project Management
• Experience in MEAL management and/or Project coordination (minimum 3 years)
• Experience in the capacity building and training of staff
• Technical experience in mapping (GIS) is an asset

Hard Skills:

• Understand the project cycle
• Understand all the stages of implementing a monitoring system 
• Identify and analyze the indicators for a health/access to health programme
• Draft and format notes, documents and/or reports relating to the specialist area
• Identify training needs, design and lead training sessions 
• Remote management skills
• Strong knowledge in the use of MS Office Package
• Fluent English is mandatory (oral and written)
• Understand the methodologies for evaluating and capitalizing on projects
• Draft, adapt and formalize tools on accountability, monitoring and evaluation
• Master monitoring tools and database management software (Kobo, Power-BI etc.) for data collection, sampling and mobile data collection

Soft Skills:

• Excellent organizational and coordination skills
• Problem solving oriented
• Strong communication skills
• Team player, proactive and flexible
• Ability to manage shifting priorities

Salary Range
N400,000 - N500,000 / month.

How to Apply
Interested and qualified candidates should send their Applications to: [email protected] using the Job Title as the subject of the mail

Application Deadline  2nd April, 2023.