M&E Associate (NPSA-6), Small Island Project

Bangladesh has a low-lying topography extremely exposed to sea level rise (SLR), cyclones, tidal surges, salinity intrusion, erratic rainfall, drought, and floods, causing it to be one of the world’s most vulnerable countries to climate change. The vulnerable communities who live on chars — small alluvial islands in rivers and the Bay of Bengal are particularly at risk from climate change. These communities have already experienced a number of climate change impacts including frequent tidal surges, increasingly intense cyclones, and saltwater intrusion into fresh water and soil. Furthermore, climate change is projected to adversely impact agriculture and other local livelihoods; fragile houses, access to drinking water, and rural infrastructure, including existing cyclone protection embankments. The impacts of climate change also disproportionately affect the poor and are especially severe for women and children, who are forced to spend a greater portion of their time on livelihood and domestic activities. Current projections indicate, with a 2⁰C increase in global temperatures, 50-year floods in the country’s three main river basins will become 40% more likely by 2025. The impacts of climate change on these islands are exacerbated by several baseline factors, including geographic remoteness, topographic position near sea level, limited public and private infrastructure to withstand climate impacts, poverty of local communities, and livelihood practices that are dependent on the availability of fresh water. On coastal chars (small offshore islands), the houses and livelihoods of communities are damaged by the increasingly frequent and intense cyclones, tidal floods, and saline intrusion from climate change, with inadequate protection from the fragile embankment system. On the inland riverine islands (riverine Charland), communities are experiencing increasingly erratic rainfall because of climate change, leading to changes in both floods and droughts that their current houses and livelihood practices are unable to withstand.

Resources sought from the Adaptation Fund (AF) will be invested in four components. Firstly, it will assist households to enhance the resilience of their houses and livelihoods to climate change-induced flooding, cyclones, saline intrusion, and droughts. Secondly, it will improve community-level infrastructure, including embankments with modern climate-resilient technology and effective local management practices. Thirdly, it will assist the Bangladesh Cyclone Preparedness Programme (CPP) under the Ministry of Disaster Management & Relief (MoDMR), to enhance its activities in the remote coastal char targeted by the project to provide timely early warnings and effective emergency response. This will be done by expanding the programme’s coverage in the area, modernising its equipment, and making it fully gender sensitive. Finally, the technology, approaches, and knowledge generated by the project will be used to build the capacity of the local and national government; and communities to make climate-resilient investments and policies.

Under the overall guidance and supervision of the Project Manager, the Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) Associate will be responsible for the overall support of implementation of the ongoing programme/project, performing a variety of standard monitoring and evaluation services within the programme/project framework ensuring high quality and accuracy of work. The M&E Associate facilitates knowledge building and knowledge sharing on M&E activities as well as collect and analyze projects’ and outside data, and surveys.
 

Key functions of M&E Associate are:

A.   Support in M&E for ongoing project activities
B.   Performance Indicators for evaluation of results
C.   Support communications strategies and publications policy
D.   Support knowledge building and knowledge sharing

A.   Support in M&E for ongoing project activities
•   Developing and setting up the overall framework for project monitoring and evaluation
•   Prepare the monthly, quarterly and annual monitoring plan for project activities;
•   Monitor and evaluate the compliance of actual progress and performance against the planned work plan and expected quality;
•   Analysis of the effect of current actual performance to the project timetable and budgets;
•   Prepare reports for project management including identification of problems, causes of potential bottlenecks (if any) in project implementations;
•   Recommendations on how to reduce the impact of deviations vs. work plans;
•   Prepare the ToRs for mid-term and final evaluation in accordance to UNDP and AF guidelines;
•   Coordinate with the international and national consultants and other stakeholders;
•   Monitor local and international press coverage and monitor effectiveness of the communications strategy. Provide feedback to inform ongoing public relations activities and future programmes;
•   Travel to the field to get to know projects and capture success stories for dissemination through website, outreach folders and to media;
•   Any other related activities as assigned by Project Manager.

B.   Performance Indicators for evaluation of results
•   Prepare M&E plans for the project are fully and timely implemented in accordance with UNDP rules and procedures;
•   Regular reports are developed;
•   Monitoring activities are carried out in accordance with UNDP rules and regulations;
•   Assist the PM in reviewing and updating Project Quarterly Risk, Issue logs;
•   Produce reports highlighting program developments, achievements and success stories under guidance of UNDP Communication;
•   Maintain a picture data-base;

C.   Supports the preparation and implementation of communications strategies and publications policy
•   Monitor local and international press coverage and monitor effectiveness of the communications strategy. Provide feedback to inform ongoing public relations activities;
•   Develop appropriately branded public information documentations and events;
•   Organize and coordinate press events, such as inaugurations, ribbon-cutting, etc. Follow up with media to ensure coverage of public events;
•   Design, develop and disseminate all outreach materials and activities to advertise beneficiaries’ products to target audience and media, including outreach folders and fact sheets, newsletters, blog entries, tweets, brochures, website, photo essays, video and campaigns for broadcast and print media;
•   Travel to the field to get to know projects developed and capture success stories for dissemination through website, outreach folders and to media;
•   Design, develop, market and maintain project social media page like facebook, twitter etc;
•   Produce reports highlighting program developments, achievements and success stories;
•   Deliver tangible items such as but not limited to posters, video documentaries, new letters, Newspaper supplement etc;
•   Maintain a picture data-base;

D.   Support knowledge building and knowledge sharing
•   Design and implement a system to identify, analyze, and disseminate lesson learned;
•   Assist the PM in preparation of various progress report, Annual Report;
•   Facilitate exchange of experiences by supporting and coordinating participation in any existing network of UNDP sharing common characteristics;
•   Identify and participate in additional networks, for example scientific or policy-based networks that may also yield lessons that can benefit project implementation ;
•   Share Project’s progress through social media page like face book, twitter etc. under guidance of UNDP Communication;

Institutional Arrangement
The M&E Associate will work closely with all programme and projects’ personnel and UNDP CO M&E team to ensure M&E requirements are fulfilled and the M&E Framework is reported against in a timely manner with required quality checks, following the highest standards in line with UNDP guidelines and procedures.

Competencies

• Experience of working with international/donor agencyis an asset;
• Understanding of climate change and variability, resilience, adaptation and climate change impacts;
• Experience of using statistical software programme;
• Experience of UN/UNDP fundedproject will be preferable;
• Demonstrated previous working experience in a project team;

•  Analysis the progress of M&E plannedactivities, evaluation, and achievements.

• Excellent knowledgeof English and Bangla, both written and verbal.