Monitoring & Evaluation Learning Manager at Mercy Corps

Mercy Corps is powered by the belief that a better world is possible. To do this, we know our teams do their best work when they are diverse and every team member feels that they belong. We welcome diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and skills so that we can be stronger and have long term impact.

We are recruiting to fill the position below:

Job Title: Monitoring & Evaluation Learning Manager
Reference Number: ABV/PRO/2021/002
Location: Abuja, Nigeria
Position Status: Temporary (3 months)

Program / Department Summary

• Mercy Corps exists to alleviate suffering, poverty and oppression by building secure, productive and just communities. Mercy Corps has been present in Nigeria since 2012, focusing its interventions on adolescent girls’ empowerment, economic development and conflict mitigation.
• With the insurgency spilling over from the north-east of Nigeria and causing displacement of millions of individuals, Mercy Corps has decided to address the rising humanitarian needs among displaced households and vulnerable host communities by starting its humanitarian program in July 2014.
• Mercy Corps Nigeria’s humanitarian program aims to provide assistance to populations affected by the crisis in north-east Nigeria. With funding from humanitarian donors including OFDA, FFP, and ECHO the humanitarian program has been focusing on food assistance, non-food items distribution, protection, livelihoods support, WASH and capacity building of humanitarian response actors.
• Mercy Corps plans to scale up and expand its humanitarian response in north-east Nigeria to reach more beneficiaries with additional and varied assistance in a wider geographic area. In addition to the humanitarian program, Mercy Corps also implements adolescent girls and boys empowerment and youth engagement programs. All Mercy Corps interventions in Nigeria are implemented in a conflict and gender-sensitive manner.

The Position

• The MEL Manager will support the Rural Resilience Activity on a full-time basis for a period of 3 months to provide surge support during a time of program transition and potential expansion (funding dependent).
• The general duties and responsibilities of the MEL Manager are to provide oversight of program-level monitoring and evaluation activities within the program, ensuring the quality of the program’s MEL activities, information management via the programs reporting system (which may be tied with Mercy Corps’ proprietary TolaData systems), and geographic information systems (GIS), where applicable.
• The MEL Manager’s role is to also oversee and ensure coordination of the various technical areas across the MEL team members of the program, and other relevant program team members and components. The MEL Manager is responsible for the capacity building and mentoring strategy for program team members on themes related to monitoring, evaluation, and learning.
• This Temporary position is meant to cover a temporary gap in team members. During the 3 months of the STA/Temporary MEL Manager position, the focus will be on the following outputs:
  • Conduct a review of the AMELP and propose changes to strengthen it, in addition to, ensuring that all aspects of the MEL system are set up, including developing any necessary SOPs (e.g., data collection, data management: protection and data quality assurance, data analysis, etc.)
  • Resolving USAID and internal comments on the final baseline draft report together with the consultant (words). Coordinate responses for expected feedback. Deliver a finalized baseline report that meets USAID expectations in a timely manner. Support the team to finalize indicator targets for FY21.
  • Expand MEL-related indicators, systems, tools, and processes to include potentially monitor technical areas, including cash transfers and small grants (pending funding) in line with USAID expectations.
  • Ensure that Rural Resilience Activity data is updated on both on the TolaData and USAID monitor.
  • Other MEL-related tasks as advised by the Chief of Party and Deputy Chief of Party that can be delivered within the timeframe of the assignment.
  • Develop and finalize the data management plan for Rural Resilience Activity to meet USAID standard.
  • Support and facilitate critical reflection and redesign meeting in late March/early April to support the update of the Theory of Change and AMELP.

Essential Responsibilities
Technical Leadership:

• Provide leadership, training and mentoring in the development of M&E Plans, M&E tools, survey design, methodology, data analysis, and other skills required for assessing the impact of programs, including the data management plan.
• Use baseline assessment findings to update the AMELP and MEL system.
• Ensures that the program is set up to adhere to Mercy Corps’ MEL Policy, in particular the MEL Minimum Standards, as well as feed into the broader country-level M&E system and country strategy including that of USAID Nigeria and other Feed The Future.
• Participates in the facilitation of country and sector-level strategic planning sessions, assisting program managers and senior management in data-driven learning and decision making to inform the development of their annual plans.
• Ensure that potential new cash activities comply with Mercy Corps’ and USAID Minimum Cash Standards (pending funding).
• Support teams in collecting sex and age disaggregated data and any other relevant demographic data using GESI sensitive data collection methods in order to understand and respond to program results with diverse participants.

Information Management:

• Works with the program and M&E teams to adopt a holistic program-level M&E system that harnesses open-source software and flexible cloud solutions to more accurately collect, monitor and verify program activities.
• Provides guidance, recommendations, and leadership to ensure that the M&E systems meet the needs of Programs Managers and Country Leadership, USAID and help address shortfalls in M&E and data management that affect program implementation.
• Contributes to program design to ensure adherence to Mercy Corps’ and USAID M&E best practices, including the use of standardized indicators, form templates, and documentation methodologies.
• Ensure that reports contain accurate, clear, and high-quality data and presented in the proper format.
• Develop indicator reporting templates that facilitate the acquisition, aggregation and flow of information in programs.

Capacity Building and Mentoring:

• Develops and oversees the implementation of the M&E and program team members and partner capacity building strategy that promotes a culture of learning through systematic analysis and reflection of program data.
• Contributes to the knowledge management repository with best practices in M&E and ensure that it is accessible to all team members and partners.
• Create and sustain a work environment of mutual respect where team members strive to achieve excellence.
• Build the capacity of all relevant team members to develop and maintain an excellent M&E system, including regular reflection and analysis of program monitoring data.
• Work closely with Program Managers, Human Resources and Finance to ensure that M&E skills are incorporated into all program position descriptions and positions are budgeted for.

Internal and External Coordination:

• Active contributor and collaborator with regional and global counterparts to promote the use of M&E best practices.
• Strengthen linkages with other internal resources, including the LMS, Digital Library, Hub, and Connect, to enhance organizational learning where relevant to M&E.
• Maintain close working relationships with M&E counterparts in other USAID FtF invests and relevant international NGOs, and local NGOs and associations in Nigeria.
• Supervisory Responsibility: MEL team members
• Reports Directly To: Chief of Party
• Works Directly With: Program Sector Managers, Program Managers, Reporting & Communications Officers, Country Director, Finance, and Operations teams. Coordinates with the HQ Program Performance team and the Technical Support Unit.

Accountability to Participants and Stakeholders:

• Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts toward accountability, specifically to our program participants, community partners, other stakeholders, and to international standards guiding international relief and development work. We are committed to actively engaging communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring and evaluation of our field programs.

Minimum Qualification & Transferable Skills

• BA/B.Sc degree in Development Studies, Research Methods, Statistics, Economics, Social Sciences, Monitoring and Evaluation, Program Management or other relevant field required. Postgraduate degree preferred.
• Familiarity with Feed the Future/USAID MEL systems, and with a background in providing MEL for resilience and/or market systems development programming preferred.
• 3-5 years of active M&E work experience in emergency and development programming required with the proven use of program technology.
• Demonstrated understanding of intermediate statistics and the ability to summarize and make predictions from multiple data sets.
• Experience of working on USAID programs preferred
• Previous experience living and working in challenging or insecure environments.
• Fluency in spoken and written English required.
• Knowledge of Hausa and other local dialects is preferred.
• Experience with a theoretical and practical background in M&E and skilled in participatory qualitative and quantitative M&E methodologies and techniques.
• Excellent quantitative skills and power user with Excel; Experience with Access, and statistical packages including Stata, R or SPSS and GIS tools like QGIS, ArcGIS or Google Earth Pro is preferred.
• Experience with data management including the ability to structure and collate data sets for ease of analysis.

Success Factors:

• A successful candidate will have a demonstrated ability to lead and communicate effectively with team members of varied work styles and cultures, follow procedures, and meet deadlines with flexibility and creativity in planning and problem-solving.
• S/he will have a proven ability to learn quickly, multi-task, prioritize, take initiative, and be accountable for results, understand the larger picture while remaining focused on the details, problem-solving, work within a complex and sensitive setting and to follow laws and security protocols.
• The most successful Mercy Corps team members have a strong commitment to teamwork and accountability, thrive in evolving and changing environments and make effective written and verbal communication a priority in all situations.

Living Conditions / Environmental Conditions

• The position is based in Abuja, Nigeria and it requires up to 40% travel to support country programs, which may include travel to insecure locations where freedom of movement is limited and areas where amenities are limited. Housing for this role is in individual housing and team members will have access to good medical services and the living situation is of a high standard.

Ongoing Learning:

• In support of our belief that learning organizations are more effective, efficient and relevant to the communities we serve, we empower all team members to dedicate 5% of their time to learning activities that further their personal and/or professional growth and development

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion:

• Achieving our mission begins with how we build our team and work together. Through our commitment to enriching our organization with people of different origins, beliefs, backgrounds, and ways of thinking, we are better able to leverage the collective power of our teams and solve the world’s most complex challenges.
• We strive for a culture of trust and respect, where everyone contributes their perspectives and authentic selves, reaches their potential as individuals and teams, and collaborates to do the best work of their lives.
• We recognize that diversity and inclusion is a journey, and we are committed to learning, listening and evolving to become more diverse, equitable and inclusive than we are today.

Equal Employment Opportunity:

• Mercy Corps is an equal opportunity employer that does not tolerate discrimination on any basis. We actively seek out diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and skills so that we can be collectively stronger and have sustained global impact.
• We are committed to providing an environment of respect and psychological safety where equal employment opportunities are available to all. We do not engage in or tolerate discrimination on the basis of race, color, gender identity, gender expression, religion, age, sexual orientation, national or ethnic origin, disability (including HIV/AIDS status), marital status, military veteran status or any other protected group in the locations where we work.

Safeguarding & Ethics

• Mercy Corps is committed to ensuring that all individuals we come into contact with through our work, whether team members, community members, program participants or others, are treated with respect and dignity. We are committed to the core principles regarding the prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse laid out by the UN Secretary-General and IASC. We will not tolerate child abuse, sexual exploitation, abuse, or harassment by or of our team members.
• As part of our commitment to a safe and inclusive work environment, team members are expected to conduct themselves in a professional manner, respect local laws and customs, and to adhere to Mercy Corps Code of Conduct Policies and values at all times. Team members are required to complete mandatory Code of Conduct e-learning courses upon hire and on an annual basis.

How to Apply
Interested and qualified candidates should send their CV and Cover Letter in one document to: [email protected] using the "Job Title" as the subject of the email.

Note

• All applications must include the position title and Reference Number in the subject line.
• Please note that only short-listed candidates will be contacted for an interview.
• We are an equal opportunity organization so women are strongly encouraged to apply for this position

Application Deadline  23rd February, 2021.