Monitoring Evaluation Accountability Learning (MEAL) Officer

About Mercy Corps

Mercy Corps is powered by the belief that a better world is possible. To do this, we know our teams do their best work when they are diverse and every team member feels that they belong. We welcome diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and skills so that we can be stronger and have long term impact.

Mercy Corps implements a variety of programming throughout the Africa Region in response to the diverse humanitarian and long-term development needs of the region and is committed to delivering high quality, high impact programming that reaches communities or individuals in need, wherever they are.

Mercy Corps began working in Kenya in 2008 and has built a robust and diverse portfolio working to enable Kenyans affected by poverty, resource scarcity and conflict to be healthy, productive and to drive peace and development of their communities. To do this, we deliver integrated programming to strengthen market and governance systems, innovate urban youth employment opportunities, address the root causes of conflict, and build the resilience of vulnerable populations – in particular youth, women, adolescents and marginalized communities.

The Program

Mercy Corps is part of a consortium led by ACDI VOCA that implements a five-year USAID-funded Kenya Feed the Future (FtF) Livestock Market Systems (LMS) Activity for northern Kenya. Under LMS, Mercy Corps fully implements the Strengthening Community Capacities for Resilience and Growth Award. The activity will contribute to USAID’s Feed the Future Initiative and specifically will improve households’ income, productive assets and resilience to drought and other shocks. Specific areas of focus include strengthened and sustained rangeland and water management; strengthened drought risk management; strengthened conflict management; improved and sustained health, nutrition, and hygiene practices; improved literacy, numeracy, and life skills; and collaborative action and learning for community empowerment.

The Position

The MEAL Officer is responsible for cross-cutting programmatic information management, monitoring and evaluation, ensuring that information collected is used to improve on-going programs, and is incorporated into consistently high quality reports and program adaptations. The MEAL Officer will support the program team in planning and execution of monitoring and evaluation activities, ensuring quality in accordance with accepted standards, providing essential feedback for learning, accountability and decision making.

Essential Responsibilities

STRATEGY INPUT AND OVERSIGHT

• Support development and implement monitoring and evaluation tools.
• Play key role in the development of intervention designs, sector strategies and M&E frameworks.
• Support inputs into program review documents.

RESULT BASED MONITORING & EVALUATION

• Validating and verifying core indicators against the different sources of information.
• Review, validation, and analysis of incoming results data from grantees;
• Visit sites and partners to collect supplementary data, stories and conduct qualitative research both independently and in teams.
• Work with Monitoring Evaluation Accountability and Learning Manager and other staff to ensure that activities are implemented on plan and progress towards targets is not compromised.

LEARNING

• Regularly document and share all learnings from program implementation.
• Maintain an up to date database that reflects progress and program indicators.

CAPACITY BUILDING

• Build the capacity of grantees to develop and maintain an excellent M&E system;
• Facilitate grantees in periodic reflection and analysis of project monitoring information that feeds into LMS’s programming and learning.
• Support timely production of weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual donor reports based on agreed performance indicator.

PROGRAM ADVISORY

• Maintain an active advisory role with the program team to help guide them towards robust and relevant data collection.
• Actively participate in all implementation, providing advice and feedback for quality results at any point.
• Establish and maintain strong working relationships with partners and government departments.

OTHER

• Conduct himself/herself both professionally and personally in such a manner as to bring credit to Mercy Corps and to not jeopardize its humanitarian mission.
• Other duties as assigned.

Supervisory Responsibility

None

Accountability

Reports Directly To: Monitoring d Evaluation Accountability and Learning Manager

Works Directly With: County Project Coordinators, GIRL officer, NRM/Conflict officers and partners organizations.

Accountability to Participants and Stakeholders

Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts toward accountability, specifically to our program participants, community partners, other stakeholders, and to international standards guiding international relief and development work. We are committed to actively engaging communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring and evaluation of our field projects.

Minimum Qualification & Transferable Skills

• Must hold at least a bachelor’s degree in social science, Statistics, Business administration or relevant field
• At least 4-5 years of program monitoring and evaluation experience
• Should understand concepts and demonstrate skills in monitoring and evaluation, project cycle, results chain and frameworks, participatory monitoring
• Should be able to design and implement surveys, have knowledge of commonly used probability and purposive sampling techniques
• Must have good writing and analytical skills
• Should have knowledge of quantitative and qualitative data collection, reporting techniques. S/he should understand and be able to apply basic measures of central tendency and spread
• In addition to Microsoft Excel, the incumbent should demonstrate fluency in use of at least one data management software including MS Access, SPSS, and STATA.
• Must be fluent both spoken and written English.

Success Factors

A successful MEAL Officer will have the ability and curiosity to work comfortably and effectively. S/he will be an excellent communicator, multi-tasker, with the ability to work effectively in complex environments. S/he must have the confidence and humility to work effectively with a diverse group of people – as well as be sensitive to political and cultural nuance.

Living Conditions / Environmental Conditions

The position is based in Isiolo and shall be supporting Marsabit county thus require regular travel in this counties.