MEAL Director at Catholic Relief Services (CRS)

Position Title: MEAL Director

Band:              10

Department:    Programs / Rural Resilience Project

Reports To:     Chief of Party

Location:         Maiduguri, Borno State, Nigeria.

Job Ref Code: MED121118

Full JD Links:  https://goo.gl/4cRbq4

 Project Background:

CRS is preparing for an anticipated multi-million-dollar, multi-year USAID/Nigeria Rural Resilience Program, which will support poverty reduction for vulnerable households in Nigeria.  This effort will contribute to CRS’ agriculture and livelihoods signature program area and ongoing efforts to promote resilience, recovery and development within Nigeria and neighbouring countries around the Lake Chad Basin. 

Job Summary:

The MEAL Director will oversee all MEAL activities across Rural Resilience program including assessments / surveys & routine gathering of project implementation information collection; accountability to beneficiaries, donors and other stakeholders; document retention and archival; capacity development of Rural Resilience staff on MEAL; compliance with USAID MEAL requirements; cross-learning among projects; and, CRS and USAID reporting.

Specific Job Responsibilities:

Strategic guidance and leadership on MEAL

• Lead the development and regular updating of Rural Resilience MEAL tools, approaches, frameworks and databases.
• Ensure application of standardized MEAL tools and approaches across the program.
• Support the CoP to monitor Rural Resilience implementation progress on a regular basis against USAID and CRS quality standards and international humanitarian principles through monitoring visits, data quality audits, spot check against reports and review of implementation reports.
• Build the capacity of Rural Resilience project staff and implementing partners in collection and analysis of data (method, formats, software, etc.), indicator measurement, feedback and complaint mechanisms, negative impact analysis, etc.
• Provide technical support to Rural Resilience program staff for the implementation of monitoring and evaluation activities, data management and integration of cross-functional issues.
• Directly lead on project wide assessments and surveys including baseline, midterm and end line evaluative surveys.  This might entail leading recruitment, orientation, deployment and management of external consultants.
• Support iterative program development ensuring lessons learnt from implementation / assessments are incorporated into implementation.
• Lead learning and knowledge management within the Rural Resilience project and ensures such best practice is communicated across CRS Nigeria. 

Vertical and horizontal accountability

• Work closely with CRS and partners’ Gender and Accountability Specialists to ensure robust and participatory beneficiary accountability and feedback mechanisms are established, used and reported against.
• Support the CoP in compilation of donors, Government Ministries and Agencies (MDAs) and CRS reports as per the agreed upon reporting schedules.
• Build the capacity of Rural Resilience in international and CRS humanitarian accountability frameworks including ‘Do No Harm’ and ‘Core Humanitarian Standard on Quality and Accountability’ (CHS) (HAP, People in Aid and SPHERE).

Cross-cutting

• Directly supervise CRS Rural Resilience MEAL Staff and consultants.
• Coordinate consortium partners’ MEAL staff attached to the Rural Resilience program.
• Builds capacity of CRS and consortium partners’ MEAL Coordinators / Managers / Officers to address their job requirements. 
• Provides technical review and support across all components of Rural Resilience project. 
• Incorporates required and emerging good practices into CRS regional MEAL efforts and ongoing technical support.
• Creates opportunities for reflection and learning among MEAL advisors and practitioners within the Consortium, Country Programme and the Region. 
• Communicates agency approach to MEAL and key findings, to Consortium Partners, Country Programme and Regional colleagues.
• Contributes to regional and agency technical guidance 
• Shares MEAL learning and experiences in broader regional and global agency discussions, and with peer organizations. 
• Determines and addresses regional or sub-regional priorities for advancing MEAL.  

Qualifications and Skills:

• Bachelor’s degree in Information Sciences, Journalism, International Development or other relevant field; Master’s Degree preferred.
• At least 10 years of international experience in monitoring and evaluation.
• At least 5 years’ senior experience in similar position on agriculture-based and rural development resilience program
• At least 5 years of experience at senior level on similar (agriculture, rural development and / or resilience) USAID-funded program/s.
• Prior MEAL experience on USAID-funded projects of a similar size (over US$ 10M) and scope in developing countries; experience in providing MEAL services on multi-sector, multi-year programs. 

• Experience with USAID rules, regulations and requirements is preferred.

• Experience working in similar context (i.e. conflict and harsh environments) in sub-Saharan Africa required.  Prior experience in Nigeria preferred
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills in English.  Knowledge of local languages preferred.

• Strong computer literacy with a full knowledge of office applications.

 Required Travel: To field locations in Nigeria

 Work Environment: Abuja office