By continuing to browse this site, you agree to our use of cookies. Read our privacy policy

PME Specialist, P-3, Lilongwe, Malawi

Lilongwe

  • Organization: UNICEF - United Nations Children’s Fund
  • Location: Lilongwe
  • Grade: Mid level - P-3, International Professional - Internationally recruited position
  • Occupational Groups:
    • Monitoring and Evaluation
    • Children's rights (health and protection)
  • Closing Date: Closed

 

The Specialist provides professional technical, operational and administrative assistance throughout the planning, monitoring, evaluation process preparing, executing, managing and implementing a variety of technical and administrative tasks to contribute to planning, implementation, monitoring and reporting of the country programme.

If you are a committed, creative professional and are passionate about making a lasting difference for children, the world's leading children's rights organization would like to hear from you.

Organizational Context

The fundamental mission of UNICEF is to promote the rights of every child, everywhere, in everything the organization does — in programs, in advocacy and in operations. The equity strategy, emphasizing the most disadvantaged and excluded children and families, translates this commitment to children’s rights into action. For UNICEF, equity means that all children have an opportunity to survive, develop and reach their full potential, without discrimination, bias or favouritism. To the degree that any child has an unequal chance in life — in its social, political, economic, civic and cultural dimensions — her or his rights are violated. There is growing evidence that investing in the health, education and protection of a society’s most disadvantaged citizens — addressing inequity — not only will give all children the opportunity to fulfil their potential but also will lead to sustained growth and stability of countries. This is why the focus on equity is so vital. It accelerates progress towards realizing the human rights of all children, which is the universal mandate of UNICEF, as outlined by the Convention on the Rights of the Child, while also supporting the equitable development of nations.

However, despite decades of strong work in these sectoral areas, inequity remains. While progress is being made, something different is required to accelerate progress towards not just long term and sustainable development improvements, but significant impacts for the most vulnerable and excluded children who may still be left behind with traditional development interventions.

Purpose of the position

The Planning, Monitoring & Evaluation Specialist reports to the Chief of PME Specialist for supervision. The Specialist provides professional technical, operational and administrative assistance throughout the planning, monitoring, evaluation process preparing, executing, managing and implementing a variety of technical and administrative tasks to contribute to planning, implementation, monitoring and reporting of the country programme.

To ensure that the UNICEF Country Office has useful, valid and reliable information on

• the situation of children’s and women’s rights;
• the performance of UNICEF-supported programmes including their relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, and sustainability, and in emergency contexts, their coverage, coordination and coherence.

To work within the UN country team to support UNDAF goals for delivering valid and reliable information on the attainment of the SDGs and other goals, and on the performance of UN-supported programmes.

To support the preparation of the standard UNICEF planning documents and assist in strengthening national planning processes including those at decentralised level to ensure that the concerns of children and women are reflected.

To assist in the development of national capacities for planning, monitoring, evaluation and research, with special attention to the interest, concern and participation of government, community, and civil society stakeholders.

Key Expected Results

Makes decisions on programme planning, monitoring and evaluation data collection and analysis. Makes decisions on PME training and capacity building strategies. This will determine the audience, type of training and identification of trainers.

Makes decisions on the design, planning and undertaking of five-year, annual or rolling workplans monitoring initiatives with government and other counterparts.

1. Setting Standards for Programme planning

Documentation for the Country Programme including: Country Programme Document, Country Programme Action Plan, Country Programme Management Plan, Annual Work Plans, Annual Management Plan are prepared in a timely manner as per guidelines.
Nationally led planning processes are strengthened including those as decentralised levels to support the realisation of national development goals and international commitments which contribute to improving the situation of children and women and reduce disparities among the most vulnerable populations and ensure that UNICEF country programme and UNDAF development processes respond effectively to these.

2. Monitoring, Evaluation & Research Planning

The Country Office and national partners have a well-prioritised and realistic plan of research, monitoring and evaluation activities, developed collaboratively that provides all the relevant and strategic information needed to manage the Country Programme.

3. Situation Monitoring and Assessment

A collectively Situation Monitoring and Assessment system owned by all key partners is in place, through which the Country Office and national partners have timely and accurate measurements of change in conditions of children, women, and their families in the country or region; this information is available to facilitate planning and measure program impact.

4. Programme Performance Monitoring

The planning function of the Country Office has quality information collected and disseminated with the participation of all concerned partners to assess progress towards expected annual and multi-year results.

5. PM&E Capacity Building

The planning and monitoring capacities of Country Office staff and national partners – government and civil society – enhanced with the contribution of UNICEF knowledge partners meet the expectations and requirements of their positions and responsibilities

6. Coordination and Networking

The UNICEF office is linked to wider UNICEF and UN-wide M&E developments in way that both contributes to and benefits from organizational learning on effective results based management.

Key Accountabilities and Duties & Tasks

1. Setting Standards for Programme performance planning and monitoring

Duties & Tasks

• Provide technical support as necessary to the process of developing and monitoring Annual Work Plans, including reporting on progress of the equity and gender marker as outlined in the Programme Policy and Procedures Guidance
• Provide technical support as necessary in organising and managing annual/mid-year/mid-term/end term country programme reviews ensuring consistency with objectives and goals set out in the CPD and contribute to the Annual Management Plan.
• Monitor follow-up actions based on management decisions resulting from Country Office performance monitoring and evaluation.
• Support the programme components to effectively monitor and report on the intersectoral programme results, cross sectoral programme component results and field office results to facilitate programme coherence and convergence where appropriate.
• Contribute to development of programme monitoring framework for the learning zones including technical backstopping to the field team for convergent programming.
• Provide technical support to programme sections to effectively monitor and report on the intersectoral programme results.
• Support decentralised planning and monitoring processes to ensure that national priorities respond to local needs and plans are evidence based and are monitored. Support effective participatory feedback, including to community and civil society stakeholders.
• Contribute to UNDAF planning processes to ensure that UNICEF contributions towards UN-wide results are clearly articulated.
• Support the preparation of Country Programme documentation including: Country Programme Document, Country Programme Action Plan, Country Programme Management Plan which respond to the national development priorities and international commitments establishing the key programme priorities taking into consideration regional and UNICEF strategic plan priorities.
• Make professional contributions to and provide technical assistance to sections for the planning of annual targets and which respond to Country Programme results.
• Participate in the review and monitoring of work processes to improve accountability and organizational effectiveness.
• In close consultation with management, programme and operations colleagues, make a professional contribution to formulation of the AMP using a sound results-based programming process and collaborative working relations.

2. Situation Monitoring and Assessment

Ensure that the Country Office and national partners have timely and accurate measurement of change in conditions in the country or region, including monitoring of socio-economic trends and the country’s wider policy, economic or institutional context, to facilitate planning and to draw conclusions about the impact of programmes or policies.

Duties & Tasks

• In coordination with other stakeholders, support the collection of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) and other key social development indicators (through MICS or other surveys, administrative data) to improve national planning.
• Support partners in the establishment and management of national statistical databases (e.g., DevInfo), ensuring that key indicators are readily accessible by key stakeholders. Potential uses include the Situation Analysis, Common Country Assessment, Early Warning Monitoring Systems, and Mid-Term Reviews.
• Develop a collectively Situation Monitoring and Assessment system owned by all key partners which supports the preparation of country level statistical and analytic reports on the status of children’s and women’s rights issues; and which allow, when opportunities emerge to influence developmental and social policies. To include technical support to global reporting obligations including national reports on progress toward the MDGs, and toward CRC and CEDAW fulfilment.
• In humanitarian response situations, provide professional support for one or more rapid assessments (inter-agency or independently if necessary) to be carried out within the first 48-72 hours, working in close collaboration with the humanitarian clusters partners.

3. Programme Performance Monitoring

Ensure that the Country Office has quality information to assess progress towards expected results established in annual work plans.

Duties & Tasks

  • Provide technical support to ensure that a set of programme performance indicators is identified and adjusted as necessary, with inputs of all concerned partners in the context of the multi-year and, the Annual Management Plan and Annual Work Plans, as outlined in the Programme Policy and Procedures Manual).
  • Coordinate with partners to ensure that monitoring systems are properly designed, and that data collection and analysis from field visits are coordinated and standardised across programmes to feed into to programme performance monitoring, with special attention to humanitarian response.
  • Drawing on monitoring and analysis of key program performance and management indicators, provide professional input to management reports, including relevant sections of the annual reports.

4. PM&E Capacity Building

Ensure that the planning and monitoring capacities of Country Office staff and national partners – government and civil society – are strengthened enabling them to increasingly engage in and lead planning and monitoring processes.

Duties & Tasks

• Promote the awareness and understanding of the shared responsibility of M& E function and results based management among all staff members through communication, training, learning and development activities organization-wide.
• In close collaboration with partners, ensure that an M&E capacity building strategy for UNICEF/UN staff national partners and institutions exists in the context of the IMEP, or UNDAF M&E plan. Pay particular attention so the capacity needs of national partners such as professional evaluation associations will be strengthened by involvement in evaluation processes and possibly through specific capacity building initiatives.
• Collaborate to implement capacity building strategies as a joint commitment with other developmental partners. Utilize a range of appropriate skills building strategies including self-learning, seminars and workshops and practical experience in order that UNICEF and UN staff have the basic knowledge and skills in understanding and applying new M&E policies, tools, methods to fulfil their responsibilities. Similarly, design and implement strategies suited to the skills needs of national partners.
• Actively seek partnerships with knowledge institutions for the identification of capacity gaps and development of strategies to address them.

5. Coordination and Networking

Ensure that the UNICEF office is effectively linked to wider UNICEF PM&E developments in a way that both contributes to and benefits from organizational learning on effective PM&E management.

Duties & Tasks

  • Collaborate with Regional M&E Advisers for overall coordination of priority research, monitoring and evaluation activities, especially those of regional scope requiring the coordinated effort of multiple countries.
  • Partner with the Regional Planning Monitoring and Evaluation Adviser to ensure that current and accurate M&E data and results are included in regional reports, multi-country studies, and knowledge sharing networks.
  • Collaborate with the Regional Programme Planning Adviser on country programme development, annual workplanning, quarterly monitoring of key performance indicators and country programme planning and reporting .
  • Undertake lessons-learned reviews on successful and unsuccessful M&E practices and experience at the national level, and ensure they are shared as appropriate. Similarly, pay attention to M&E knowledge networks to identify innovations and lessons learned that may be relevant for the CO and partners to improve their M&E function.

Qualifications of Successful Candidate

Education:

  • Advanced university degree in social sciences, economics statistics, demography business or public administration. First level university degree in social sciences, economics, statistics, demography, business or public administration development management in combination with additional three years of experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree.

Experience:

  • Five years of relevant professional work experience in programme development and implementation including monitoring activities, experience with strategic planning will be an asset
  • Developing country work experience (for IP). Prior experience of working in Malawi will be considered an asset. At least one instance of exposure to emergency programming, including preparedness planning. Active involvement in a humanitarian crisis response programme preferred.

Language Requirements: Fluency in English and another UN language.

Competencies of Successful Candidate

Core Values
Commitment
Diversity and inclusion
Integrity

Core competencies
Communication [ II ]
Working with People[ II ]
Drive for Results [ II ]

Functional Competencies:
Leading and Supervising [ II ]
Formulating Strategies and Concepts [ II ]
Analyzing [ II ]
Applying Technical Expertise [ II ]
Planning and Organizing [ III ]

To view our competency framework, please click here.
UNICEF is committed to diversity and inclusion within its workforce, and encourages qualified female and male candidates from all national, religious and ethnic backgrounds, including persons living with disabilities, to apply to become a part of our organisation.

This vacancy is now closed.
However, we have found similar vacancies for you: