Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) Manager at Mercy Corps

Requisition Number: MELMA002011
Location: Owerri, Imo
Job Category: Programming
Position Status: Temporary
Travel Required: Yes

Program / Department Summary

• Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa, and its influence spreads across the continent. Yet, inequality and insecurity have consistently undermined Nigeria's development. Mercy Corps Nigeria was established in 2012 to respond to these challenges.
• With the vision of a Nigeria in which all people are empowered, engaged, resilient and secure, Mercy Corps Nigeria focuses on the root causes of conflict, governance, humanitarian response, and market systems development.
• In 2021, Mercy Corps intends to pursue water and sanitation programming with an anticipated USAID funded project. The program involves designing, rehabilitating, extending, and constructing WASH infrastructure. This position is contingent on funding.

General Position Summary

• The primary function of the Monitoring Manager is to carry out assessment and monitoring activities with a view to determining the benefits of the program and how they influence the lives of targeted communities.
• The Monitoring and Evaluation Manager will help conduct a baseline survey and train staff, conduct survey and monitoring missions. These surveys will be used to assess community needs, design MC program, and monitor the progress of the program and assess the longer-term impacts of MC projects against program objectives.
• The Monitoring and Evaluation Manager must promote the use of participatory methods for assessment and monitoring surveys.

Essential Job Responsibilities
Technical Leadership:

• Provide leadership, training and mentoring in the development of M&E Plans, M&E tools, survey design, methodology, data analysis, and other skills required for assessing the impact of the program.
• Lead and/or collaborate with external evaluators on the design and roll-out of the program baseline, midline and end line and evaluations, while setting up effective systems for learning.
• Ensures program uses the necessary M&E systems and tools, to inform and improve the program, as well as feed into the broader country-level M&E.
• 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.
• Participates in the facilitation of country and sector-level strategic planning sessions, assisting the program in the development of its annual plans.

Information Management:

• Works with the program and M&E teams to adopt a holistic program-level M&E system that harnesses open-source software and flexible cloud solutions to more accurately collect, monitor and verify program activities and ensure they are aligned with the country strategic and annual plans.
• Provides guidance, recommendations, and leadership to ensure that the M&E systems meet the needs of the program.
• Maintain a comprehensive schedule of reports for the program and review the program reports to ensure that reports contain accurate, clear, and high-quality data and are presented in the proper format.
• Develop program and operational reporting templates that facilitate the acquisition, aggregation and flow of information in programs.

Capacity Building And Mentoring:

• Develops and oversees the implementation of the M&E staff and 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 with best practices in M&E and ensure 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.

Internal And External Coordination:

• Active contributor and collaborator with regional and global counterparts to promote the use of M&E best practices.
• Strengthen linkages with other internal resources, including the LMS, Digital Library, Hub, and Connect, to enhance organizational learning where relevant to M&E.
• Maintain close working relationships with M&E counterparts in other relevant actors and counterparts in Nigeria.

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.
• 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 in-country venues.

Accountability

• Reports Directly To: Project Manager
• Works Directly With: Small Town WASH COP, DCOP, Director of Finance and Administration, Country Director, Finance, and Operations teams, M&E Officer, and other Small Town WASH staff. Coordinates with HQ Program Performance team and the Technical Support

Knowledge and Experience

• University Degree in Social Science or Social Studies, or equivalent experience in monitoring and evaluating program activities and outputs, in comparison to program objectives.
• Minimum of five years’ work experience in project monitoring and evaluation, preference for M&E for large WASH infrastructure programs.
• Prior experience in carrying out surveys, conducting interviews, and undertaking assessments are essential.
• Understanding of qualitative and quantitative indicators.
• Creative and out-of-the-box thinking.
• Analytical and report writing skills are necessary.
• Proficiency in written and spoken English required.
• Computers skills – word-processing and spreadsheets experience required.
• Computer database experience preferred.
• Experience in the development of Logical Framework Analyses and in the conducting of Participatory Rural Appraisal is extremely desirable.

Success Factors

• The successful Manager will combine exceptional technical skills and experience in maintaining donor and partner relationships. S/he will have previous experience in working in large-scale emergency programs in insecure and conflict context.
• S/he will have an outstanding ability to design and provide technical oversight of innovative programs within the current and future program structure of Mercy Corps in the area.
• S/he will also have proven experience with cross-cultural team and capacity building, individual staff development and strong mentoring skills. The successful candidate will be able to provide technical oversight to large relief programs in an austere environment.