M&E Officer - DFiD EiE Foundation at Save The Children

Role Purpose

• The MEAL Officer shall take the overall responsibility of operationalizing the MEAL system and SCI MEAL approach in Foundation for the Future Project: Protective inclusive quality education for conflict-affected children in Borno and Yobe. 
• The post-holder will be expected to lead on MEAL system implementation including monitoring of program quality, rolling out accountability initiatives, supporting program evaluations and leading on area MEAL budgeting.
• S/he will be expected to closely support the Partner and lead MEAL capacity building of programme staff and partners including the Education cluster needs assessments.

Key Areas of Accountability

• Together with the MEAL Team in North East and in collaboration with the Project Manager, Officers and partners, the MEAL officer will be responsible for establishing and promoting the use of MEAL systems to ensure that the DFiD EiE Foundation for the Future project:
• Is informed on the extent to which both the emergency response and development interventions are affecting the lives of the targeted populations.
• Receives regular, timely and context-specific, meaningful feedback from our community members (who are or are not targeted by our interventions) partners, staff and that feedback effectively informs and signals areas where strategic attention is required.
• There is evidence-based knowledge on the positive and negative impact that both the emergency response and development interventions are having over the communities where SCI works

Program Monitoring, Assessments, Evaluations and Reporting:

• Lead the DFiD EiE Foundation for the Future project team in measuring achievement and progress toward project goals and results as well as development of MEAL systems for the project;
• Lead roll out of a robust accountability strategy and MEAL systems and processes to measure achievement and progress towards achieving project objectives/outcomes and results/outputs against indicators (indicator performance tracker tables, quality checklists, etc.).
• Lead monitoring of project quality using quality bench marks and ensure that findings are shared with relevant stakeholders and explicitly fed back into programme decision making, incorporating accountability and learning.
• Contribute to child-focused and child-led programme implementation, by ensuring children’s participation, reporting back to children, and child-led M&E in the project;
• Maintain a tracker of the project improvement actions bringing to the attention of the Project Manager and the project team key program improvement issues that need action and appropriately sharing them with the Head of MEAL [JM1] in the country Office.
• Support internal and external program/project evaluations as necessary and ensure establishment of  project baseline data for all projects;
• Lead the management of information systems and roll out of mobile data collection;
• Lead compilation of data and reporting on, SCI global indicators and total reach reports

Partner Management:

• Contribute to identifying the capacity of present and potential partners in quality programming and ensure that MEAL support is provided;
• Ensure that MEAL aspects of partner implemented components are enforced.

Accountability and Organizational Learning:

• Support the Head of MEAL with learning activities.  For instance, support planning of program Review workshops, prepare lessons learnt reports;
• Ensure participation of beneficiaries and children in monitoring and evaluating the project. This includes roll out of Complaints and Response Mechanism (CRM);
• Ensure accountability systems are established engaging beneficiaries and stakeholders in evaluations, impact assessments and research.

Representation and Advocacy:

• Ensure that Save the Children's work is coordinated with efforts of other agencies and government, and support Interagency Coordination forums, advocating for the specific needs of children.  Participate in Interagency coordinated joint MEAL activities (for instance needs assessment);
• Contribute to communications and media work as required, including verifying and ensuring the relevancy of case studies and programme success stories.

Qualifications and Experience

• A minimum of a Degree in Education, Social Work, Social Administration, Psychology, Social Sciences, Development Studies.
• A Post graduate Diploma in Project Planning, Management and Evaluation would be an added advantage
• At least three (3) years experience of working with an International NGO with budget management and monitoring responsibilities.
• At least two (2) years experience with good understanding of Community Education and training skills (Training of Trainers) particularly Non-Formal Education
• Experience of working with local partners and State and Local Government in Education and Child Protection program delivery.
• Excellent report writing skills and experience in generating Donor compliant reports of high quality.
• Ability to speak local language and directly interact with target group will be an added advantage
• Strong analytical skills and strategic planning abilities.
• Ability to establish and maintain conducive collegial relations and perform effectively as a member of a team.
• Willingness to travel and work in hard-to-reach areas, occasionally under strenuous conditions.
• Computer literacy and excellent documentation skills are a must.
• Highly developed cultural awareness and ability to work well in an international environment with people from diverse backgrounds and cultures
• Ability to intervene with crisis management or troubleshooting as necessary.
• Highly developed interpersonal and communication skills including influencing, negotiation and coaching
• Excellent time management and planning capacity
• Availability and willingness to work extra hours during times of humanitarian responses