Collaboration, Learning and Adaptation (CLA) Officer at Mercy Corps

Program / Department Summary

• The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has launched one of its most comprehensive peacebuilding programs in Nigeria to date with Mercy Corps, a leading global humanitarian aid and development organization, which has been working with communities in Nigeria since 2012.
• The goal of the Community Initiatives to Promote Peace (CIPP) program, which commencesince 2019, is to prevent violent conflict in the most at-risk communities across 6 states and 24 local government areas (LGA) in Nigeria’s Northwest and North Central regions. CIPP builds on the accomplishments and deep contextual knowledge gained by USAID and Mercy Corps through their previous peacebuilding programs in Nigeria.
• Mercy Corps’ strategy has also expanded to address the root causes of the conflict and seek to build the long-term resilience of communities with integrated programs focusing on governance, protection of the vulnerable population, social cohesion, inclusion of women, youth and persons living with disabilities, and local conflict management.
• The CIPP program is implemented in six North Central & North-Western Nigerian states Benue, Plateau, Kogi, Kaduna, Kano and Katsina. Since 2019 is strategically building on the past four years of the Mercy Corps former peacebuilding programs to:
  • Improve local capacity and skills to manage disputes.
  • Strengthen and enable more sustainable Early Warning and Early Response (EWER) mechanisms.
  • Increase collaboration among communities with government agencies, CSOs, and local leaders to address root causes of conflict.
  • Strengthen women’s capacities to prevent and resolve conflict.
  • Improve ability to address violent extremist recruitment tactics.

General Position Summary

• The Collaboration, Learning and Adapting Officer (CLA) will work in close collaboration with the MEL Manager and the Program team to track, analyse and report learning of all CIPP activities.
• S/he will help create tracking tools to ensure team members and community members are reaching their goals.
• S/he will work with teams to document case studies, and success stories by engaging with various program participants across the operational States in Benue, Kogi, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina and Plateau.
• S/he will also support the monitoring and evaluation sector in data management, analysis and dissemination of the learnings of the program.
• The Advisor will use USAID’s CLA principles to effectively integrate real-time monitoring and learning back into the project strategy and program implementation and ensure knowledge is shared with the broader host community, participants and various stakeholders.

Essential Job Functions
Monitoring and Evaluation:

• Coordinate learning and reflection sessions at the community, state-level with different stakeholders.
• Support teams in collecting sex and age disaggregated data and using gender-sensitive data collection methods to understand and respond to program results with diverse participants.
• In collaboration with the MEL Manager, develop tools to simplify data gathering and reporting and ensure teams gather and report necessary data.
• Support program staff in monitoring and evaluating the progress and impact of work including setting and measuring benchmarks along results chains;
• Manage program data; including information that will be relevant in telling the stories of CIPP to various stakeholders.
• Prepare stories to be used in quarterly program strategic reviews, annual reports, and other evaluations.
• Disseminate research learnings and recommendations to team members, beneficiaries and other relevant audiences.
• Perform spot checks on the team’s data collection and reports each month, especially the qualitative data.
• Lead in documenting the programme success stories and case studies.
• Coordinate program/project lessons learned and develop key actions of improvement.
• Participate in all research activities of the project.

Adapting:

• Proposing changes to program approaches based on learnings and research findings.
• Follow up to make sure that action plans for adaptation are implemented.

Information Management:

• Works with the program and M&E teams to adopt a holistic program-level CLA system.
• Provides guidance, and recommendations to ensure that the CLA systems meet the needs of the Programs Manager and Country Leadership and help address shortfalls in CLA that affect program implementation.
• Contributes to program design to ensure adherence to CLA and Mercy Corps’ best practices

Capacity Building:

• Develops and oversees the implementation of the partner capacity-building strategy that promotes a culture of learning through systematic analysis and reflection of program data.
• Build the capacity of all relevant team members to develop and maintain an excellent M&E system, including regular reflection and analysis of program monitoring data.
• Contributes to the knowledge management repository with best practices in M&E and ensures that it is accessible to all staff and partners.
• Create and sustain a work environment of mutual respect where team members strive to achieve excellence.

Communication and Publication:

• Contribute data, analysis and write-ups to regular organizational publications and reports;
• Work with the Communication Officer to develop fact sheets for CIPP

Finance & Compliance Management:

• Ensure compliance with donor and Mercy Corps regulations related to peace and conflict programming.

Security:

• Ensure compliance with security procedures and policies as determined by country leadership.
• Proactively ensure that team members operate in a secure environment and are aware of policies.

Organizational Learning:

• As part of our commitment to organizational learning and in support of our understanding that learning organizations are more effective, efficient and relevant to the communities they serve, we expect all team members to commit 5% of their time to learning activities that benefit Mercy Corps as well as themselves.

Accountability to Beneficiaries:

• Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts toward accountability, specifically to our beneficiaries and to international standards guiding international relief and development work, while actively engaging beneficiary communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring and evaluation of our field projects.

Supervisory Responsibility:

• None.

Accountability:

• Reports Directly to: MEL Manager
• Works Directly with: Partner staff, Program Manager, Program Officers, Gender team, Communications Officer
• Coordinates with the HQ/Country Program Performance team and the Technical Support Unit.

Knowledge and Experience

• BA / BSc. Degree in Development Studies, Research Methods, Statistics, Economics, Social Sciences, Monitoring and Evaluation, Project Management or other relevant field required.
• 3-5 years of active M&E work experience in emergency and development programming required with the proven use of program technology
• Experience with a theoretical and practical background in M&E and skilled in participatory qualitative and quantitative M&E methodologies and techniques.
• Excellent quantitative skills and power users with Excel; Experience with Access, and statistical packages including Stata, R or SPSS and GIS tools like QGIS, ArcGIS or Google Earth.
• Experience with data management including the ability to structure and collate data sets for ease of analysis.
• Previous experience living and working in challenging or insecure environments.
• Fluency in spoken and written English is required.
• Knowledge of Hausa and other local dialects is preferred.
• Demonstrated attention to detail, ability to follow procedures, meet deadlines and work independently and cooperatively with team members.

Success Factors

• The successful Collaboration, Learning and Adapting/Documentation Officer will combine exceptional Communication and information sharing management skills and experience in data management, development of learning tools, learning agenda and case studies and success stories.
• S/he will have an ability to think creatively about operationalizing and improving the M&E and documentation of the program.
• S/he will have proven experience with cross-cultural team and capacity building, individual staff development and strong mentoring skills. Multi-tasking, prioritizing, problem-solving and simultaneous attention to detail as well as strategic vision are essential.
• The most successful Mercy Corps staff members have a strong commitment to teamwork and accountability, thrive in evolving and changing environments and make effective written and verbal communication a priority in all situations. A good sense of humour and the ability to learn from mistakes also goes a long way.

Ethics and Integrity

• All Mercy Corps staff members are expected to behave ethically and demonstrate the highest integrity in their professional and personal life. Mercy Corps has zero-tolerance for any form of fraud, corruption, abuse, harassment or exploitation. Any breach of our policies or misconduct will lead to disciplinary action or may lead to termination.

Living Conditions / Environmental Conditions

• The position is based in Abuja with about 40 – 60% travels to project locations.
• Mercy Corps team members represent the agency both during and outside work hours. Team members are expected to conduct themselves in a professional manner and respect local laws, customs and MC's policies, procedures, and values at all times and in all locations.