Monitoring & CLA Expert, USAID/DRC Monitoring, Evaluation, Coordination, Contract 2 (MECC 2), Democratic Republic of Congo

Social Impact is a global development management consulting firm. We provide monitoring, evaluation, strategic planning, and capacity building services to advance development effectiveness. We work across all development sectors including democracy and governance, health and education, the environment, and economic growth. Since 1997 we have worked in over 100 countries for clients such as US government agencies, bilateral donors, multilateral development banks, foundations, and nonprofits.

Proposal Objective:

The purpose of the five-year USAID/DRC Monitoring, Evaluation, Coordination, Contract 2 (MECC 2), based in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), is to provide support MEL services and support to USAID/DRC and the Central African Regional Operating Unit (CAROU), through which MEL services may also be provided in other Central African countries including the Central African Republic (CAR), Republic of Congo, Cameroon, Gabon, and Equatorial Guinea.

Position Description:

The Monitoring & CLA Expert will provide vision and leadership to the Mission’s “learning” agenda; ensure the quality, timeliness and technological sophistication of services related to improving the integrity and usefulness of USAID/DRC monitoring and reporting systems; ensure the quality, relevance, technological sophistication and timeliness of Contractor-provided evaluations, analyses and assessments; deepen USAID/DRC’s existing learning capabilities and introduce improved avenues to learning. This is a full-time position contingent upon donor award.

Responsibilities:

• Deliver learning results and track adaptations for lessons learned.
• Lead contractor contributions to USAID/DRC’s efforts to deliberately draw contextual, programmatic and operational learning from monitoring, evaluation, analytical and assessment efforts, and facilitate learning’s transformation into adapting.
• Promote CLA activities for strategic collaboration in order to identify possible program and context gaps at the strategy level as well as offer periodic opportunities to reflect on progress, such as after-action reviews and partner meetings to inform on possible adaptation changes.
• Conduct and lead meetings, workshops and presentations for USAID/DRC, other staff and outside stakeholders, as appropriate.
• Support a series of workshops and conferences to convene USAID staff, implementing partners, and local stakeholders to discuss challenges, share best practices, and foster collaboration on specific topics related to USAID’s areas of intervention.
• Support Mission staff in aligning policies, practices and processes with lessons learned.
• Collaborate closely with and manage other activity staff from the evaluation, CLA, and GIS teams.
• Ensure that all products and services meet USAID and SI quality expectations.
• Support the Mission in the development of data quality assessments (DQAs). This task will entail field visits to review and analyze the quality of data collection procedures and ensure that the standard definition of indicators is being properly understood and applied.
• Identify, jointly with USAID/DRC, relevant context indicators for the Mission’s programming at the national, departmental and municipal level, and collect and update data for the context indicators identified in available secondary sources and USAID datasets derived from evaluations and assessments.
• Contribute to the construction of tables and dashboards for consulting context indicator data.
• Support the Mission and its implementing partners (IPs) in the data collection of baseline and monitoring data. In particular, support implementing partners to identify and gather data on context and impact indicators.
• Review and analyze context and performance data collected by the contractor or USAID implementing partners, particularly for MEL purposes.
• Contribute to data collection and standardization of cross-cutting issues, such as gender equality and female empowerment.

Qualifications:

• Master’s degree in social sciences, international development, statistics, or related field.
• At least 10 years of progressive experience in designing, implementing, managing, and analyzing monitoring-related tasks for development projects, including the development of context and complementary indicators or similar monitoring approaches at the Mission-level.
• At least three years of experience in the region is strongly preferred.
• Familiarity with all relevant USAID policies, guidelines, and technical and discussion notes is expected.
• Field experience that includes at least some but not necessarily all of the following:
  • Survey research experience, including development of structured and semi-structured interviews.
  • Structured or semi-structured group interviews and/or focus groups, including the creation of written instruments and transcripts; content analysis and other techniques for coding and transforming group/open-ended data into analyzed information.
  • Experience implementing quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis for evaluations and assessments, including experience with sampling methods, database management and statistical analysis.
  • Applied experience with non-experimental theory testing techniques for examining program/project effects (baseline reconstruction, outcome mapping, outcome harvesting, general elimination method (modus operandi), contribution analysis, lagged regressions and/or others.
• Strong understanding of ADS requirements, the Program Cycle, USAID’s Evaluation Policy, the J2SR, Clear Choice, and other significant Agency initiatives.
• At least five years of experience leading evaluation or research teams.
• Excellent team management and interpersonal skills, including some workshop facilitation skills.
• Excellent team management and interpersonal skills.
• Professional proficiency in spoken and written English and fluency in French.