Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Manager at Development Alternatives Incorporated

Development Alternatives Incorporated (DAI) is an international development company. For more than 45 years, we have worked on the frontlines of international development, tackling fundamental social and economic development problems caused by inefficient markets, ineffective governance, and instability. Currently, DAI is delivering results that matter in some 80 countries.

Our development solutions turn ideas into impact by bringing together fresh combinations of expertise and innovation across multiple disciplines. Our clients include international development agencies, international lending institutions, private corporations and philanthropies, and national governments.

We are recruiting to fill the position below:

Job Title: Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Manager within Centre for Disaster Protection

Job Code: 6636
Location: Nigeria

Description

• The Centre for Disaster Protection was launched by the UK Prime Minister in July 2017 to strengthen resilience in developing countries through better preparedness and planning backed by risk-based financing arrangements. The Centre is funded with UK aid from the UK government.
• The Centre for Disaster Protection works to change how the world prepares and pays for disasters. Identifying, planning for and financing disasters before they strike saves lives, reduces suffering and protects livelihoods and economies, especially for the poorest and most vulnerable communities.
• The Centre brings countries together with international development, humanitarian and private sector organisations to find solutions and advocate for change. We find ways to stop disasters devastating lives by supporting countries and the international system to better manage risks. To do this, the Centre provides advisory services, builds knowledge, catalyses innovation and creates partnerships across the development, humanitarian and financial sectors.
• With Covid-19, the world is more aware than ever of the importance of being prepared and working together to address risks. The Centre’s work has never been more crucial.
• With a recent funding uplift from the UK government to mid-2025, the Centre is entering a new period of organisational growth, evolving beyond its start-up phase to tackle the increasingly urgent impact of climate change and frequency of disasters around the world.

The Centre’s technical work is focused on cross-cutting goals as set out in our five-year strategy (2019-2024): 

• Advice -  quality assurance and advisory services and training: We will have a respected and widely used quality assurance function that has increased the quantity and quality of risk financing products and services. Our effective technical assistance and capacity building will have supported high risk, vulnerable countries to make better disaster risk management decisions through knowledge exchange and genuine skills transfer.
• Evidence and Learning: We will be internationally recognised as driving change through evidence, experimentation and learning which will strengthen the global evidence base on disaster risk financing.
• Advocacy and Influencing:  Through advocacy and influencing and being a positive disrupter, we will have improved the quality and quantity of disaster risk financing through the multilateral system.
• Additionally, we are focused on building effective systems and processes on people and operations to support the Centre to rapidly yet strategically scale and grow in a way that promotes diversity, equity and inclusion and ensures the organisation is a great place to work.

The Role

• As part of our organisational growth plan, we are expanding our operations team to recruit a Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) Manager to support the delivery of the Centre’s ambitious workplan – in which building an effective MEL system to enable the Centre to tell a compelling story of development impact is a strategic priority.
• The Centre works directly with countries and organisations to support them to own, plan and finance the risks they face by providing advisory services and building knowledge. Our advisory services provide potential clients and partners with advice, training and quality assurance services to support them to finance disaster risks differently, often through exploring links to other technical areas such as shock-responsive social protection and effective public financial management.
• The MEL Manager will work closely with other operations colleagues to refine the Centre’s logical framework, MEL plan, Theory of Change and Value for Money strategy. The MEL Manager will support teams to generate robust data and lead on analysis and insights to feed into reporting.
• They will be responsible for putting in place a system for data collection that is participatory, empowering for team members - being simple and user-friendly - and facilitates reporting to our donor and Board, and enables communication of impact to our stakeholders and the public.
• The advisory work is complemented by research and evidence generation to contribute to global understanding of what works (and what doesn’t) and filling the evidence gap, for example through commissioning and supporting impact evaluations of anticipatory action, as well as using learning to adapt approaches and inform scaling up.
• Our advocacy and influencing work, in turn, supports the communication and dissemination of evidence to advocate for changes in the international system.
• The MEL Manager will be responsible for developing and implementing effective systems for monitoring the progress and evaluating the impact of the Centre’s work, and for embedding processes for capturing learning to inform adaptation of activities and generate lessons.

In addition, the MEL Manager will be required to:

• Uphold the organisation’s values and contribute to a positive organisational culture. 
• Help to build the Centre’s external reputation through demonstrating the impact of our work.
• Contribute to creative and innovative thinking and working collaboratively across teams.
• The MEL Manager will be required to work effectively as part of a multi-disciplinary team of Centre staff and consultants, working closely with the Senior Leadership Team and Function Leads on MEL, Evidence and Learning, Advice, Training, Communication, and Advocacy and Influencing. The role will be technically supported by a MEL Lead Adviser at DAI HQ and will report into the Associate Director - Operations.

Person Specification
Successful candidates should:

• Demonstrate a passion for building resilience and reducing vulnerability in low and middle-income countries and thinking creatively to evidence harder to measure change at systems level.
• Show a clear understanding of and commitment to the Centre’s values and mission.
• Be willing to occasionally travel to Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and other international locations as needed, including lower income and fragile, conflict-affected contexts (only if restrictions due to COVID-19 allow).

Skills and Experience:
Successful candidates will be able to demonstrate the following skills and experience:

• Designing and delivering effective MEL plans and systems for donor governments, preferably with working experience of FCDO/DFID reporting requirements.
• Working knowledge of theory of change approaches and VfM frameworks.
• Familiarity with project cycle management in an international development context.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills in English with the ability to tailor communications to a range of audiences and to explain complex data in digestible, impactful formats. Other languages, particularly French, would be an advantage.
• Ability to work enthusiastically as a valued team member across multiple teams in parallel.
• Strong commitment to ongoing learning, including technical and non-technical skills and ability/willingness to train others in MEL theory and systems.
• Ability to design systems for both quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis (with working knowledge of software and tools such as Stata, R, Kobo and ODK) and ability to interpret the data. 
• Good data visualisation skills and familiarity with tools such as PowerBI.
• Awareness of the importance of gender and social inclusion and understanding of how to build tools that are GESI sensitive and allow for disaggregation.

The Offer

• A competitive salary in the region of £40 - 50,000 depending on experience.
• After a successful probation period, the contract will be until the end of June 2025, renewable if project funding is extended. The roles will be contracted by DAI Global UK, who are the Centre’s managing agent.
• A generous benefits package including 25 days annual leave (plus public holidays) and a contributory pension scheme.
• We have an office in the City of London, but we are open to considering flexible, part-time and remote working arrangements.

How to Apply
Interested and qualified candidates should:
Click here to apply

Note

• Interested applicants should apply, including a Cover Letter (no more than one page) and CV, via DAI’s recruitment portal.
• Any questions about the role or the recruitment process should be sent to: [email protected] (please do not send applications to this email address).
• We are recruiting for these vacancies on a rolling basis, meaning there is no fixed deadline and applications will be assessed as they are received, and the vacancies will remain open until they are filled. We are posting these vacancies in mid-December 2021 with an aim to make all appointments by the end of March 2022, preferably sooner.
• The Centre is committed to building a diverse workplace and so we particularly encourage applications from diverse backgrounds that are typically under-represented in this sector