Monitoring and Evaluation Officer at Options

Department: Overseas Programmes
Reporting to: Nigeria Country Coordinator and CSO Advisor
Reference: Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health (ASRH) Programme
Liaison with: Team Leader (Kenya based), Grant Manager, Finance & Logistics Officer, M&E Officer in Kenya, consortium partners, external stakeholders
Contract type: Fixed-term until 31st January 2022 (Full Time)

Background

• There are still gaps in our knowledge and understanding of effective adolescent health programming, especially at scale, and there are very few sexual and reproductive health services that have been tailored to adolescents. We need to explore new approaches and to implement promising ones.
• Adolescent girls are twice as likely to have an unmet need for contraception compared to women in their twenties, putting them at increased risk of unintended pregnancy, with unsafe abortion rates remaining high and leading to death and injury.
• Adolescent girls are also more likely to face age-related stigma and barriers to accessing sexual and reproductive health services, as well as lack of information and agency, increasing the risk that they delay seeking services.

Programme: Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health Programme
The Safire Programme aims to reduce adolescent deaths and injury from unsafe abortion in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa. Options Consultancy Services is the consortium lead for the programme, working in partnership with consortium members and local civil society organisations. Taking a Human Centred Design1 (HCD) approach, the programme will:

• Ensure girls are able to access quality comprehensive sexual and reproductive services through Human-centred design is a process that develops solutions to problems by involving the human perspective in all steps of the problem-solving process. referral networks and support to civil society organisations (CSOs).
• Foster and support a community based movement to shift social norms and build girls’ agency, through mobilising both ICT platforms and interpersonal networks.
• Build the capacity of local organisations to reduce unsafe abortion and facilitate south-south learning.
• Under the Human Centred Design, the programme will start with in-depth research and analysis, generating insights into girls’ pathways to unsafe abortion and access to contraceptives.

Main Purpose of Job:

• Working with the programme team and under the supervision of the Country Coordinator, the Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) Officer will be the focal point for M&E of the programme’s activities, results and learning in Nigeria.
• The role will have three main components: support to Human Centred Design (HCD), routine programme M&E and Reporting, and building M&E capacity of the programme’s CSO grantees.

Main Duties
Programme Monitoring & Evaluation:

• Support the development of an online data management system for the programme
• Support the design of data collection tools and processes
• Collect high quality M&E data for KPIs under Options’ scope of work on the programme
• Compile, analyse and quality assure M&E data collected for the programme by other programme partners
• Routinely review data sources, data management and reporting systems across the programme to ensure that robust and accurate processes are in place
• Accurately enter all programme M&E data into the data management system in a timely fashion, ensuring it is quality assured, cleaned, and appropriately backed up and secure
• Regularly (and on request) report programme progress against Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), communicating and summarising results, and escalating any concerns or risks to the Country Coordinator
• Summarise, describe, and present qualitative and quantitative data in a variety of written, visual and graphical formats
• Ensure appropriate processes are in place for the smooth functioning of the M&E system, including routinely reviewing M&E tools and processes

Human Centred Design Support:

• Actively support the Human Centred Design (HCD) process by co-ordinating fieldwork (including qualitative formative research), analysis and design workshops, and pilot testing of programme interventions. This will involve co-ordinating the programme team, consortium partners (including community based organisations), selected specialist Human Centred Design agency, and advisors from Options’ technical department in the UK.
• Participate in and support, under the guidance of the specialist Human Centred Design agency and the Team Leader, participatory, qualitative formative research and evaluation with girls, young women, and other community members, and across communities and with key stakeholders, on sensitive issues.
• Assist the Human Centred Design team in interpreting results from intervention piloting and scale-up to continually test, iterate and strengthen the programme design.
• Provide regular updates to the Country Coordinator on the progress of the Human Centred Design process.

M&E of CSO Grants and Capacity Building:

• Support design of CSOs’ M&E plans as required to monitor their performance against programme grant
• Ensure timely submission of grantees’ M&E data required under the grant and quality assure their submissions
• Lead on assessment of programme grantees’ organisational M&E systems and design tailored capacity building plans to strengthen them
• Lead on building M&E capacity of grantees (e.g. through trainings, mentoring, quality assurance)
• Communicate key findings from CSO reports to Country Coordinator
• Routinely compile and synthesise CSO M&E reports for donor and other programme reports.

Knowledge Management & Reporting:

• Compile data from across the Nigeria programme for donor reports in appropriate formats
• Draft M&E sections of the programme’s routine donor reports
• Collect and document programme case studies and lessons learnt
• Stay abreast of relevant developments in ASRH in Nigeria that can help inform programme learning and implementation

Other:

• Coordinate with the programme’s country offices to share M&E best practice and lessons learnt

Note: this job description reflects the present requirements of the post. As duties and responsibilities change and develop the job description will be reviewed and be subject to amendment in consultation with the job holder.

Qualifications

• First Degree in a related field (Statistics, Health Records, Public Health, Epidemiology, Information Technology Demography)
• Master's degree in a related field

Experience:

• Proven experience in monitoring and evaluation of grants donor-funded projects, or equivalent experience
• Significant experience of quantitative data analysis and management using MS Excel
• Experience of working in sexual and reproductive health and with CSOs
• Knowledge of capacity building of CSOs in monitoring and evaluation
• Carrying out qualitative research (data collection and analysis) including focus group discussions and in-depth interviews
• Qualitative research experience with young people

Skills and Attributes:

• High level IT proficiency and competency in MS Office (especially Excel, including creating graphs and charts) and data management systems
• Excellent verbal and written skills
• Fluency in English (written and spoken)
• High attention to detail
• Capacity building skills of grassroots organisations
• Ability to work with remote teams and with high sensitivity to cultural and social diversity
• Excellent interpersonal skills.

Other requirements:

• Commitment to equal opportunities
• Strong commitment to human rights, equal opportunities and pro-choice
• Fluency in English (spoken, written, reading)
• Fluency in Yoruba (spoken, written, reading)
• Ability to travel within Nigeria as required up to 30% of working time
• The right to live and work in Nigeria.

Salary
Commensurate with experience, NGN 5,000,000 per annum.