Monitoring Evaluation Accountabilty and Learning(MEAL) Coordinator

IRC Chad is committed in its 2015-2020 Strategic Action Plan, to continue to provide essential humanitarian services in health, nutrition and protection / GBV, while improving the economic well-being and building the resilience of beneficiaries, especially women and girls. IRC Chad will continue to work with and closely support states actors/ Ministries for key areas of intervention so that IRC's actions fit into national policies to ensure better ownership of actions taken towards.

Building on this work over the years, the IRC Chad has committed to ensure access to quality health care, sexual and reproductive health care, more specifically to prevent unintended pregnancy, to protect and treat them for complication of pregnancy and childbirth. IRC Chad has also committed to protect from and treat women and girls for the consequences of Gender Based Violence (GBV). Furthermore, in terms to better respond to needs of our clients, IRC proposes projects integrating different sectors and various approaches. IRC has committed to work in consortium with local and international partners as well as with local authorities, to assure sustainability of our actions.

SCOPE OF WORK

With direct management support from Deputy Director of Programs and technical support from the Senior Programme coordinator and the Regional Measurement Action Coordinator, the Monitoring Evaluation, Accountability and Learning Coordinator will be supervising the country MEAL team to provide technical leadership in all monitoring, evaluation, client responsiveness, documentation and knowledge management for all projects, which are implemented in Chad. She/ He will also ensure that the IRC Chad country program implements the monitoring and evaluation commitments as set out in its Strategic Action Plan –SAP 2020. Core to that the MEAL will be ensuring that suitable monitoring and evaluation systems are in place, implemented as intended, and reporting in a comprehensive and timely manner to facilitate program coordinators and managers deliver programs that achieve the desired outcomes /impacts while learning from evidence.  In general, the purpose of the MEAL Coordinator client responsiveness strategy and IRC’s global Monitoring for Action (MfA) initiative for improving accountability, monitoring practice and use of data for decision making within the organization, but also ensuring the operationalization of   S/he will also responsible for identifying MEAL capacity gaps in the organization, develop strategies to fill the gaps and take part in implement the capacity building plans. Furthermore, with support from the Head of Program, the MEAL Manager will support the coordinators and managers in ensuring timely submission of all reporting requirements internal or external evaluations and will serve as the primary focal point for contributing to the country office of accountability and learning framework. The MEAL Coordinator will coordinate with the initiatives and contribute facilitate cross-learning across sectors and field offices within the country offices.

MAIN RESPONSABILITIES:

Under the supervision of Deputy Director of Programme (DDP) and with technical and administrative support from both the Programme, Operations and Finance team, and Field Coordinators, the MEAL coordinator will be responsible for:

• Ensuring strategic and technical support to meet standards set out in Strategic Action Plan (SAP 2020) for Chad program

• Ensuring the operationalization of Client responsiveness strategy and IRC’s global Monitoring for Action (MfA) initiative for improving accountability, monitoring practice and use of data for decision making within the organization

• Identifying MEAL capacity gaps in the organization, develop strategies to fill the gaps and take part in implement the capacity building plans.

• Support the coordinators and managers in ensuring timely submission of all reporting requirements internal or external evaluations and will serve as the primary focal point for contributing to the country office of accountability and learning framework.

• Contributing to the facilitation of cross-learning across sectors and field offices within the country offices.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

Program/project design and learning

• Responsible for providing technical oversight and support for establishment and maintenance of routine monitoring systems, presentation of findings and building related staff competencies

• Responsible for ensuring that detailed and feasible project monitoring plans are developed that: i) provide an indicator matrix, ii) map M&E roles and responsibilities of project and support staff, iii) consider ethical and safe collection and storage of data, iv) consider data quality audits, v) consider storing, protecting and sharing project documents, and vi) consider the end of project learning review;

• Work with project and support staff to establish project/program databases and/or tracking sheets, and/or set up in the data platforms (COMET and Commcare);

• Define staff roles and responsibilities in relation to the collection, entry, sharing, verification, analysis, and use of data and share with the concerned staff;

• Assist in conducting and documenting end of project learning reviews, and sharing lessons learned and best practices, incorporating these into new project designs;

• Assist in identifying, documenting, storing and sharing lessons learned that have implications for refinement of best programmatic practice.

• Participate in program design and proposal discussions, including support on theory of change development, log frame design, and budgeting for M&E.

• Responsible for the design, quality, development, and completion of all assessments, monitoring efforts and evaluations

• Develop and operationalize a MEAL plan based on project documents and existing MEAL systems

• Ensure that the M&E data (reports, baseline surveys, and evaluations) are easily accessible for all project managers and stakeholders

Monitoring and evaluation

• Work with project staff to develop the TORs for needs assessments and surveys (that needs to be done either internally or by a consultant);

• Take part or lead in appraisal of survey proposals, review and approve the data collection methodologies and tools proposed by survey consultants;

• Work with project and support staff to track progress on action points related to implementation and M&E activities.

• Assist in conducting regular analysis and action planning meetings to (1) compare data against project milestones, targets, and quality expectations across project sites; (2) identify issues requiring further attention; (3) define action needed and assign responsibility and deadlines;

• Work with project and support staff to clean and conduct descriptive analysis of needs assessment and survey data;

• Responsible for conducting advanced analysis (inferential statistics) of needs assessment and survey data

• Provide the M&E inputs for needs assessment and survey report writing.

• Provides inputs from survey and assessment data for tracking of overall progress on projects, programs and strategic priorities

• Conduct regular monitoring visits to all projects to ensure that all projects are on the right track in performing the planned activities and achieved the expected outputs

• Ensure that monitoring data are fed into management decisions and used in program management.

• Identify major challenges for project implementation and report to the senior management team for immediate decision making

• Perform consistently and validation analysis of programmatic reports and facilitating improvements of record keeping and programmatic data reporting

• Coordinate the development of a methodology for monitoring and verification of activities implemented in the field office Prepare and timely submit standard monitoring reports to the senior management team

• Coordinate the development of an effective monitoring and evaluation and data systems management capacity, procedures, tools, associated methodologies and key documents to ensure standardization in evaluation and reporting practices

Evaluation Activities

• Prepare TOR for baseline surveys, end evaluations and need assessment carried out both internally and by external evaluator and facilitate the whole process

• Coordinate on designing, implementing, analysis and dissemination of project evaluation reports

• Organize meetings and produce reports for wider dissemination of project accomplishments; including external evaluation reports that goes along with the donor reports

Client Responsiveness

• Ensure that IRC’s client responsiveness Policies and Procedures are widely available and applied by both staff and partners,

• Ensure all client feedback collected are systematically recorded and responded to within the time agreed.

• Coordinate the development of IEC materials and communication strategy to disseminate  to  clients the key elements of IRC’ Client Responsiveness policy and procedures and the expectations and standards required of IRC’s staff and partner staff,

• Lead the development, and oversee the implementation, of a plan for IRC to deliver on its minimum accountability standards in emergencies

• Establish a sustainable Complaints and feedback Mechanism (CFM) at field office level which ensures all clients can make confidential complaints and feedback and be confident in response processes,

• In coordination with field coordinators, develop training and refresher modules that ensure that all staffs have an in-depth understanding of Client-Responsive programming and are equipped to apply it in their working lives.

• Continually review internal and external requirements to improve and develop the Core Humanitarian Standard

• Publish different IEC materials of different languages that can be used to promote complaints and feedback channels among beneficiaries and partners

• Develop a client feedback collection plan in coordination with the field and technical coordinators to ensure that clients views are routinely collected across all projects through proactive and reactive feedback channels

• Conduct quarterly clients’ consultation meeting to get feedback from the beneficiaries on quality improvement,

• Develop and facilitate training that help all relevant staff to understand IRC’s client responsiveness SOP and CHS standard and are equipped to apply it to their work.

Information management and reporting

• Contribute to the quarterly SAP- IP report and the monthly country report

• Establish and maintain project/program information management system;

• Conduct assessment on the information management gaps and suggest the senior management team on how to fill the identified gaps;

• Ensure key project/program documents are centrally documented and easily accessible by staff;

• Work with project and support staff to share reports written during project implementation with donors and other stakeholders and upload them to project files;

• Prepare and share  quarterly Client Responsiveness report compiling and visualizing trends of clients’ feedback  collected through the different channels

• Prepare standard reporting templates and share with responsible staff for reporting

• Collect lessons learned from different project on a regular bases and share with different coordinators, communication officer and grants for future programing

• Compile annual statistic for the country programme and share with the SMT, RO, and HQ

• Document and promote good practices, knowledge management and organizational learning around monitoring, evaluation and Client Responsiveness approaches and incorporate lessons learned, best practices and technical innovation in plans and project designs

Staff capacity building

• Conduct assessments and identify M&E staff requirements for new and existing projects;

• Identify staff M&E capacity gaps and organize capacity building events to fill the identified gaps;

• Develop training materials to build the capacity of staff to monitor and evaluate programs and projects closely and conduct training accordingly

• Build the capacity of MEAL, program and operation staff on Client Responsiveness programming concepts, standards and tools

• Capacity building and training of program and MEAL support staff on MEAL technical and conceptual areas.

• Provide training for project staff and other stakeholders on various MEAL concepts and practices including MFA and project cycle management (assessments, design, MEAL and data collection 

• Coach projects staff in promoting participatory monitoring and learning activities

• Assist project staff in creating enhanced data base systems both electronic and hard copy formats and coordinate data quality audits of projects and programs to identify and resolve systemic problems affecting data quality, and documenting and storing findings;

• Build team capacity and provide technical guidance to gather and analyze data for program improvement

• Provide technical assistance to program staff for any baseline and end line surveys that are conducted

• Responsible for providing consistent, supportive supervision to strengthen staff performance as necessary to meet monitoring objectives and ensure data quality;

• Organize learning forum for the M&E other interested staff to learn from each other;

• Provide technical oversight and support for surveys, assessments and other discrete learning activities, and building related staff competencies;

• Provide on job training to project staff to conduct descriptive analysis of needs assessment and survey data.

Strengthening Country program M&E:

• Responsible for establishing overall country program core indicator tracking sheets &/or dashboards.

• Responsible for establishing cross-sectorial approaches to monitoring (for example for activities being undertaken by more than one sector, or beneficiary counting).

• Assist in completing quarterly Monitoring for Action project assessments and identifying projects in need of targeted support.

• Responsible for providing technical oversight and leadership for cross-cutting thematic M&E (such as trainings and sensitizations beneficiary accountability mechanisms and establishing coherent approaches to beneficiary counting)

• Develop M&E plans, quality indicators and logical frame works for all proposals/ program documents in accordance with IRC’s MFA strategy

• Development guidance and frameworks for CO procedures, policies and processes that assist in institutionalizing and supporting MEAL in the country mission

• Provide technical guidance in the design and implementation of M&E activities for a Chad country programme Including WASH, Health, Nutrition, ERD and WPE, etc….

• Develop and maintain database on program indicators related to various projects and provide technical inputs/service to Team Leaders, Technical Advisors, Project Managers, and the Head of Program

• Set up and manage a system to deal with large volumes of monitoring and assessment data, using relevant software packages including mobile data collection for projects

• Develop effective performance indicators and result framework that conform to the scope of work of projects

• Support project and area managers and field-based MEAL focal points in developing data collection methodology and tools, and systems for on-going data analysis.

Professional Standards

• Consistently and proactively monitor/assess the safety and security of the team; promptly reporting concerns or incidents to the SMT, and when liaising with community leaders and other external parties as required to maintain/enhance the security environment for IRC programs

• Other duties as assigned by the supervisor to enable and develop IRC programs

• All IRC staff are required to adhere to the IRC Way Standards for Professional Conduct and the IRC country employment policies.

Demonstrated Skills and COMPETENCIES:

• Minimum four (4) years of international experience within the development / humanitarian sector, at least 2 of which are at management level preferably in Africa.

• Proven technical skills in monitoring and evaluation, including experience with multi-sectorial and multi-donor funded programs and experience with qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis;

• Demonstrated knowledge and experience in setting up or maintaining mechanisms to collect feedback from affected populations

• Proven abilities in developing monitoring plans, data collection, information management, use of databases, and analysis and performance monitoring;

• Demonstrated ability to train and build capacity of others;

• Comprehensive knowledge of humanitarian accountability principles and their translation into practice;

• Strong planning, organizational and interpersonal skills;

• Excellent analytical, presentation, and reporting skills;

• Excellent database, data management and data analysis skills, with experience using at least 2 software applications such as Microsoft Excel, Access, SPSS, STATA;

• Previous experience with electronic/mobile data collection (ODK, CommCare, CSPRO) and GIS mapping preferred;

• Ability to listen to others and to facilitate discussions with clients from different groups and origins

• Fluent in English and French

• Strong commitment to IRC’s Vision and mission.

• This position is contingent on funding.

• Female candidate is highly encouraged

• International and national candidates are encouraged.