Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Manager at Mercy Corps

Position Status Full-time, Regular

Reference Number: ABV/PRO/2019/0032

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.

General Position Summary

Mercy Corps is seeking candidates for a MEL Manager who will manage and lead the MEL component of an expected five-year USAID-supported  Rural Resilience programme for Nigeria The Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) Advisor is an important position in the Mercy Corps Nigeria program responsible for contributing to strategy discussions, providing technical assistance on M&E for each program and developing successful mechanisms for learning. The Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Advisor will be responsible for cross-cutting programmatic information management, monitoring and evaluation, ensuring that information collected is reflected upon, used to improve ongoing programs, and is incorporated into consistently high-quality reports and proposal development. The MEL Manager will incorporate all best practices of M&E in the proposal design stage for most effective program management during implementation. In coordination with program directors and team members, s/he will be responsible for developing, coordinating, maintaining and constantly improving the country-wide M&E system, as well as implementing an internal M&E capacity-building strategy that trains and mentors M&E staff and promotes a culture of learning.

Essential Job 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.
• Lead and/or collaborate with external evaluators on the design and roll-out of the program baseline and evaluations while setting up effective systems for learning.
• Ensures programs use the necessary M&E systems and tools, to inform and improve each program, as well as feed into the broader country-level M&E system and country strategy.
• Take the lead in aligning, collecting and reporting on relevant indicators to the organizational-wide M&E systems, and other external systems as relevant.
• Support teams in collecting sex and age disaggregated data and using gender-sensitive data collection methods to understand and respond to program results with diverse participants.
• Participates in the facilitation of country and sector-level strategic planning sessions, assisting program managers and senior management in the development of their annual plans.

INFORMATION MANAGEMENT

• Works with the program and M&E teams to adopt a holistic country-level M&E system that harnesses open-source software and flexible cloud solutions to more accurately collect, monitor and verify program activities and ensure they are aligned with country strategic and annual plan.
• Provides guidance, recommendations, and leadership to ensure that the M&E systems meet the needs of Programs Managers and Country Leadership and help address shortfalls in M&E and data management that affect program implementation.
• Contributes to program design to ensure adherence to Mercy Corps’ M&E best practices, including the use of standardized indicators, form templates, and documentation methodologies.
• Maintain a comprehensive schedule of private and institutional funding reports for programs and review project/program reports to ensure that reports contain accurate, clear, and high-quality data and presented in the proper format.
• Develop program and operational 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 staff and partner capacity building strategy that promotes a culture of learning through systematic analysis and reflection of program data.
• 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.
• Contributes to the knowledge management repository with best practices in M&E and ensure that it is accessible to all staff and partners.
• Create and sustain a work environment of mutual respect where team members strive to achieve excellence.

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 relevant international NGOs, and local NGOs and associations in Nigeria.

Organizational Learning

As part of our commitment to organizational learning and in support of our understanding that learning organizations are more effective, efficient and relevant to the communities they serve - we expect all team members to commit 5% of their time to learning activities that benefit Mercy Corps as well as themselves.

Accountability to Beneficiaries

Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts toward accountability, specifically
to our beneficiaries and to international standards guiding international relief and development work, while actively engaging beneficiary communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring and evaluation of our field projects.

Supervisory Responsibility: MEL team members

Accountability

Reports Directly To: Deputy Chief of Party

Works Directly With: Program Sector Managers, Program Managers, Reporting & Communications Officers, Country Director, Finance, and Operations teams. Coordinates with HQ Program Performance team and the Technical Support Unit.

Knowledge and Experience

• BA/S degree in development studies, research methods, statistics, economics, social sciences, monitoring and evaluation, project management or other relevant field required. Postgraduate degree preferred.
• 3-5 years of active M&E work experience in emergency and development programming required with the proven use of program technology.
• 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.
• 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.

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 /Environmental Conditions:

The position will be based in Abuja but will require frequent travel (40%) between field locations, including insecure northeast. Security in Abuja is generally good, although there are times when security is an issue.  Housing, health care, water, electricity and consumer goods are all reasonably accessible and there are good international and domestic travel options from Abuja Airport.  Abuja is an accompanied location suitable for spouse/partner or dependents.  Air travel is necessary to get to some field locations. Mobile phones services are widely available.  Internet is available in all Mercy Corps offices, although might be inconsistent. Travel to field sites will be required where living conditions are clean and secure, but basic. There’s reasonable access to most consumer goods, although they can be expensive. There is a good number of school with different education philosophies and curriculum ( British, American, French, German to name a few). Considering the frequent travel from/to different field locations, this position will require flexibility in terms of accommodation and logistics. Housing in the field will be in the guesthouse and hotels/guesthouse as applicable in each location.  Security in the field locations requires additional vigilance and accessibility will be reassessed continuously. Given the nature of the ongoing humanitarian response in North-East Nigeria, working hours may require flexibility and work through weekends/evenings might be necessary.

Mercy Corps Team members represent the agency both during and outside of work hours when deployed in a field posting or on a visit/TDY to a field posting. Team members are expected to conduct themselves professionally and respect local laws, customs and Mercy Corps' policies, procedures, and values at all times and in all in-country venues.