DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS
7 April 2026-23:59-GMT+01:00 Central European Time (Rome)ABOUT THE SCHOOL MEALS ACCELERATOR
School Meals Accelerator (the Accelerator) is the fifth and newest initiative under the School Meals Coalition, designed to support governments to scale and strengthen their national school meal programmes and turn their ambitions into real impact. Acting as a network catalyst and convenor, the Accelerator mobilizes resources and expertise from the right partners to deliver strategic technical assistance where it matters most.
The Accelerator’s mission: unlock the full potential of national school meal programs by improving design, scaling investment, and fostering collaboration across education, health, and food systems. It embraces a systems-thinking approach, adapts to country priorities, and thrives in deep collaboration among global, regional, and local actors. The Accelerator’s ambition: to help low- and lower-middle-income countries reach an additional 100 million children by 2030, making school meals a cornerstone of human capital development and a global standard of care.
The Accelerator operates in conditions of high complexity. Because it operates as a network facilitator rather than a traditional organization, its work spans multiple countries, organisations and institutional logics, and seeks to support system-level change rather than the delivery of predefined solutions.
For this reason, the Accelerator has adopted a systemic leadership approach, which accepts that pathways to change are non-linear, and progress depends on learning, adaptation and collaboration across boundaries. Working in this way places ongoing demands on those involved and requires leaders who are able to work productively with uncertainty, difference and incomplete authority while maintaining accountability for results. Joining the Accelerator team therefore means being part of a first-of-its-kind development enterprise: a systems-focused effort to drive lasting, country-led change that requires a willingness to learn, adapt and be shaped by the work as it evolves.
Purpose of this role:
This role is part of the Engagement Team of the Accelerator, which is responsible for ensuring that the Accelerator’s engagement at the political level continues to enable and facilitate its work, generating more support, tapping into diverse networks, and deepening relationships that can continue to create a favourable authorizing environment for the initiative. The Evidence, Monitoring & Reporting Consultant strengthens SMA’s results, reporting, and adaptive learning functions. The postholder leads day-to-day monitoring and end-to-end reporting workflows—including donor reporting, periodic management reporting, annual and midterm reviews—and ensures information is accurate, timely, and aligned with SMA’s systemic learning-oriented approach rather than a traditional monitoring and evaluation role.
A core part of the role is to lead value capture processes by systematically identifying, documenting, and synthesizing emerging patterns, system shifts, and learning from Accelerator country engagements. By curating evidence and translating it into clear decision-ready system narratives, the consultant supports adaptive decision-making, strengthens collective sensemaking, and ensures that SMA’s work reflects real system change.
The role promotes disciplined monitoring of key performance indicators, systems-oriented measurement, high-quality reporting, and continuous learning across countries and workstreams, contributing to SMA’s mission of delivering credible insights, accountability, and system level influence. The postholder is also expected to coordinate closely with the School Meals Coalition Secretariat and other global initiatives to ensure aligned approaches, shared messaging, and coherent support to countries.
Responsibilities
1) Evidence & Results Management
Operationalize and evolve the measurement framework (indicators, baselines, targets, milestones), including systems‑oriented indicators that capture emergent change (patterns, norms, incentives, relationships) and maintaining reference sheets and data‑collection schedules with the SMC Data & Monitoring Initiative.
Collect, validate, and synthesize quantitative and qualitative data from SMA teams, governments, and partners; integrate stakeholder perspectives to surface weak signals and contextual factors that inform adaptation.
Maintain trackers, dashboards, and evidence files for timely sense‑making; run routine monitoring cycles (monthly/quarterly/biannual), follow up on data calls, and conduct descriptive analyses to identify emerging patterns and anomalies.
Produce short evidence products (summaries, visuals, tables) for reviews and briefings; document limitations, assumptions, and improvement actions to reinforce data quality, responsible evidence use, and alignment with SMA’s systems‑informed narrative.
2) Reporting
Lead the preparation of major reporting products (Annual Report, Annual Plan, mid‑year and end‑of‑year updates), ensuring accuracy, coherence, and alignment with SMA’s measurement framework and systemic narrative.
Manage end‑to‑end reporting workflows, coordinating contributions across units, conducting quality assurance, maintaining version control, and stewarding internal review and clearance processes.
Draft and integrate clear, compelling narrative content linking evidence, country examples, system behaviours, and partner contributions, generating a single coherent story across all reporting products.
Produce and validate data annexes, indicator tables, visuals, and methodological notes, ensuring compliance with donor expectations, internal standards, and SMA’s visual and narrative identity.
3) Value Capture & Systems Learning
Identify and track emerging system shifts—including changes in norms, incentives, collaboration patterns, resource flows, and decision‑making processes—paying attention to weak signals and early indicators of change.
Develop light‑touch analytical and sense‑making products that synthesize what is changing in the system and why, translating insights into actionable guidance for leadership and country teams.
Document emergent learning from country engagement, surfacing positive deviances and leverage points, and supporting adaptive decisions and real‑time adjustments across workstreams.
Curate continuous learning flows into reporting, leadership briefings, and strategy processes, strengthening collective sense‑making and embedding systems‑informed adaptation across SMA.
4) People Leadership, Ways of Working & Culture
Model SMA’s systemic leadership mindsets by practicing inclusive engagement, constructive feedback, transparency, and cross‑team collaboration; reinforce shared standards, disciplined documentation, and coherent communication flows across dispersed teams and workstreams.
Demonstrate strong political and cultural awareness in interactions with governments, partners, and colleagues, while upholding data protection, safeguarding, and “do‑no‑harm” principles across all evidence and reporting activities.
5) Learning, Continuous Improvement & Knowledge
Lead value‑capture and learning cycles by identifying emerging system shifts, patterns, and weak signals; synthesizing insights from monitoring data and qualitative inputs into accessible products (e.g., briefs, snapshots, learning notes) that inform strategic decisions and adaptation.
Facilitate and embed collective sense‑making by supporting after‑action reviews, reflection sessions, and leadership discussions; maintain learning repositories, update tools and guidance, and translate complex system‑level learning into clear narratives and visuals for internal planning, reporting, and strategy processes.
Individual developmental expectations within the SMA Systemic Leadership Framework:
This role operates within the School Meals Accelerator’s systemic leadership approach. All SMA roles are expected to be enacted in line with the SMA Systemic Leadership Framework, which sets out six shared leadership mindsets, core leadership practices and more systemically demanding practices, that guide how we work in complex, fast-changing environments. The Framework also describes “ways of engaging with complexity”, which reflect how individuals make sense of and act in uncertain, interdependence situations.
While developmental maturity and role seniority are independent, the SMA sets minimum developmental expectations by grade to support clarity and fairness in recruitment and early employment.
For this Consultant Level II role, the minimum expectation is:
Reflective engagement with complexity: “Staff members are increasingly able to step back from experience and notice their assumptions and reactions, often after the event. Reflection supports learning and adjustment over time, though it is not yet consistently available in the moment”.
As set out in the Framework, these expectations represent floors, not ceilings. Ways of engaging with complexity are descriptive rather than evaluative, are not tied mechanically to seniority or performance management, and are used to support reflection, learning and development over time, rather than ranking or judgement.
What the Systemic Leadership Framework Means for Your Recruitment and Role:
All roles in the School Meals Accelerator are expected to be enacted in line with the Systemic Leadership Framework. In recruitment and selection, the Framework supports informed conversations about how candidates make sense of complexity, uncertainty and systemic change, alongside assessment of technical expertise and role fit.
In ongoing work, the Framework provides a shared orientation to “how we work here” and supports individual and collective learning over time.
Qualifications:
Education
Advanced University degree in social sciences, statistics, development economics, performance management, monitoring and evaluation or other related fields; or First University degree with additional years of relevant work experience and/or training/courses.
Experience
- At least five years of progressively responsible experience in evidence, learning, monitoring, reporting, analytics, or research in international development, humanitarian, or public‑sector settings.
- Demonstrated international collaboration with diverse partners (governments, IFIs, UN agencies, civil society, private sector, academia) across regions and organizational levels.
- Experience applying systems‑informed evaluation or adaptive‑management approaches, including synthesizing qualitative and quantitative insights (patterns, themes, weak signals) to inform programme learning and adaptation.
- Hands‑on experience with data collection, validation, and basic descriptive analysis, maintaining trackers/dashboards, and producing evidence summaries, visuals, or briefs for decision‑makers and non‑technical audiences.
- Experience managing or coordinating end‑to‑end reporting processes, including planning calendars, consolidating inputs, QA, visualization, drafting narrative sections, and ensuring coherent donor or corporate reporting outputs.
Knowledge & Skills
Strong data‑organization and quality‑management skills, including clean datasets, consistent definitions, clear documentation, and basic descriptive analysis.
Excellent written communication, with the ability to translate data and system insights into concise narratives, tables, visuals, and evidence products for leadership and donors.
Ability to capture system dynamics—including behavioural shifts, collaboration patterns, incentives, weak signals—and synthesize them into decision‑useful insights.
Facilitation and sense‑making skills, including supporting reflection sessions, after‑action reviews, and learning discussions with diverse teams.
Solid planning and coordination abilities, including workflow management, calendars, QA steps, version control, and timely follow‑up across multiple stakeholders.
Familiarity with monitoring frameworks and practical data‑collection methods (indicators, baselines, targets, milestones; surveys, templates, routine reporting), and proficiency with tools such as Excel/Sheets, PowerPoint, and collaboration platforms (e.g., SharePoint); awareness of data protection, safeguarding, and do‑no‑harm principles.
Languages
Fluency in English (Level C) is required. Working knowledge (Level B) of another official UN language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian, Spanish).
Annex: Overview of the SMA Systemic Leadership Framework:
The School Meals Accelerator (SMA) works in conditions of high complexity, spanning multiple countries, organisations and institutional logics, and seeks to support system-level change rather than the delivery of predefined solutions.
To support effective leadership in this context, the SMA has articulated a Systemic Leadership Framework. The Framework provides a shared language and reference point for how leadership is understood and enacted across the organisation and is used across recruitment, onboarding, feedback and learning.
This annex provides a high-level overview of the content of the Framework.
Leadership mindsets:
At the heart of the SMA Systemic Leadership Framework are six leadership mindsets.
These mindsets describe shared orientations that shape how situations are interpreted and what kinds of action feel legitimate or possible in system-level change work.
They are not competencies or values statements, but shared ways of making sense of complex situations that shape leadership practice, particularly under pressure or uncertainty.
The six SMA leadership mindsets are:
We see systems change as starting with us: We notice and work with how our roles, assumptions and responses shape what becomes possible in the system.
We experiment our way forward: We use disciplined experimentation and learning to make progress in conditions of uncertainty.
We put countries’ needs first: We orient our work around the priorities, contexts and capacities of countries, rather than organisational convenience or external agendas.
We value different perspectives – even when they clash: We work productively with difference, tension and disagreement to support learning and systemic change.
We teach and learn from one another: We treat learning as a shared, ongoing responsibility and use everyday work as a source of individual and collective development.
We are intentional about how and when we act – not simply defaulting to urgency: We treat pace and timing as deliberate leadership choices, choosing actions that support learning and lasting change rather than activity for its own sake.
The mindsets are mutually reinforcing rather than sequential. Effective systemic leadership involves working across all of them, rather than privileging one at the expense of others.
Within each mindset, the Framework identifies leadership practices that describe observable ways of working — how leadership shows up in action. The Accelerator has 30 core leadership practices (5 per mindset), which are foundational practices expected of everyone working in the Accelerator, regardless of role or grade. They support effective participation in complex, multi-stakeholder environments.
Ways of engaging with complexity:
The Framework also describes different ways of engaging with complexity, drawing on adult development theory. Ways of engaging with complexity describe how leadership practices are enacted, not which practices are permitted. They are descriptive rather than evaluative, are not tied mechanically to seniority or role, and are context-sensitive.
The Framework describes four broad ways of engaging with complexity:
Habitual engagement
People tend to respond to situations through familiar roles, routines and immediate reactions. What is felt or thought in the moment tends to drive action, with limited separation between observation, interpretation and response, especially under pressure.
Reflective engagement
People are increasingly able to step back from experience and notice their assumptions and reactions, often after the event. Reflection supports learning and adjustment over time, though it is not yet consistently available in the moment.
Intentional engagement
People actively work with their assumptions, emotions and roles as part of ongoing practice. They are better able to pause, make deliberate choices about how to respond, and adapt their actions in real time under conditions of uncertainty.
Systemic engagement
People understand their actions as part of wider system dynamics shaped by relationships, power, history and context. They act with awareness of timing, ripple effects and shared responsibility, and are able to support learning and capacity beyond their own role.
These ways of engaging with complexity do not represent a linear progression or a single “ideal” endpoint. Individuals may operate in different ways in different situations. To support clarity and fairness, the SMA sets minimum developmental expectations by grade, which represent floors, not ceilings.
What the Framework is used for:
The SMA Systemic Leadership Framework is:
a shared developmental reference for leadership practice;
a basis for reflection, feedback and learning;
a way of embedding systemic leadership expectations into everyday work.
It is not:
a competency framework;
a performance rating system;
a leadership pipeline;
a tool for ranking or scoring individuals.
REASONABLE ACCOMMODATION
The School Meals Accelerator is committed to ensuring an inclusive, accessible, and supportive recruitment process for all candidates. If you require a reasonable accommodation at any stage of the recruitment process, please reach out to: global.inclusion@wfp.org. We will be happy to assist you.
NO FEE DISCLAIMER
The School Meals Accelerator does not charge any fee at any stage of the recruitment process (application, processing, training, interviewing, testing, or any other). If you receive a solicitation requesting payment, please disregard it.
Please note that emblems, logos, names, and addresses may be misused for fraudulent purposes. We encourage you to exercise particular caution when submitting personal information online.
REMINDERS BEFORE YOU SUBMIT YOUR APPLICATION
All applications must be submitted exclusively through our online recruiting system. We do not consider CVs or applications sent by email, LinkedIn, or any other channel.
We strongly recommend that your Workday profile is accurate and complete, and that all sections are filled in, including your employment history, academic qualifications, language skills, and UN grade (if applicable). Once your profile is completed, please apply, and submit your application.
If you experience technical issues while submitting your application, you may contact us at global.hrerecruitment@wfp.org. Please note that this email is only for technical issues with an application - unsolicited applications or documents sent to this inbox will not receive a reply.
At the application stage, the only required documents are your CV and Cover Letter. Additional documents (passport, certificates, recommendation letters, etc.) may be requested later in the process.
Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and invited to proceed to the next stage of the recruitment process.
OUR WORK ENVIRONMENT
As the School Meals Accelerator is generously hosted within the World Food Programme’s facilities and administrative systems, we benefit from—and uphold—WFP’s strong commitment to integrity, inclusion, safety, and respect.
All hiring decisions are based on role requirements, merits, and the strengths each candidate brings, including their alignment with the Accelerator’s core mindsets and behaviors as per its Systemic Leadership Framework. In line with WFP—our hosting organization—the Accelerator is committed to fostering an inclusive, respectful, and safe work environment, free from discrimination, harassment, abuse of authority, and any form of sexual exploitation or abuse. As part of this commitment, all selected candidates will undergo rigorous reference and background checks.
Lastly, no appointment under any kind of contract will be offered to members of the UN Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ), International Civil Service Commission (ICSC), FAO Finance Committee, WFP External Auditor, WFP Audit Committee, Joint Inspection Unit (JIU) and other similar bodies within the United Nations system with oversight responsibilities over WFP, both during their service and within three years of ceasing that service.