Monitoring, Evaluation & Learning Lead

Position type: Full time

Hiring Manager: Director, HCDExchange
Location: Anywhere in East Africa, West Africa, Southern Africa, or South Asia (local hire; candidates must be nationals of a country in these regions)
Salary: Commensurate with experience
Date posted: September 14, 2020
Date applications due: 5pm September 20, 2020 (EAT time)
Desired start date: as soon as possible

Background

The HCDExchange is a community of implementers, funders, designers, evaluators and youth committed to advancing learning and practice related to the integration of human-centred design (HCD) and adolescent sexual and reproductive health (ASRH) in low-resource settings, with a particular focus on countries in Sub Saharan Africa and South Asia. The HCDExchange aims to elevate young people’s agency, and systematically transform sexual and reproductive health outcomes for adolescents.

John Snow, Inc. (JSI) and inSupply Health, Ltd. joined forces to host the HCDExchange and engage the ASRH+HCD community in advancing practice and building a robust ecosystem of dedicated actors. JSI is deeply committed to improving the health of individuals and communities, working for over 40 years in partnership with people, their communities, organizations, and governments to advance health outcomes and build responsive health systems. inSupply Health, Ltd. an East African JSI affiliate, cultivates locally grown solutions and builds capacity to strengthen health systems and supply chains and to improve people’s access to quality, affordable health services and products in Africa. inSupply’s team of African professionals co-design solutions with clients and communities, embedding HCD approaches in implementation models and deploying innovative methods for reaching youth, such as gaming platforms. inSupply also empowers young professionals through internships and placements.

In 2018, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation funded a convening in Tanzania bringing together people and organizations working at the intersection of HCD in ASRH. This gathering showcased best practices, generated interest, and resulted in the launch of working groups to advance this field. More importantly, those involved started to see themselves as a community with a shared agenda.

In 2020, this same set of funders is supporting the next phase of this work — the HCDExchange — a community built on a collaborative model and dedicated to (1) establishing a supportive infrastructure, and (2) facilitating commitment amongst key actors. Our vision: a democratized (inclusive of diverse participants), localized (contextually relevant), and mutualized (jointly owned) HCD+ASRH field. During this phase, we are accelerating the development of a robust, efficient, and transparent HCD+ASRH field by increasing access to learning and networks and generating evidence about good practices, models, and effectiveness.

Learn more about the HCDExchange »

Purpose of the Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Lead

The MEL Lead is a senior strategic role in the HCDExchange who will oversee the design and implementation of the MEL framework, tools and systems for an effective, robust and transparent HCD+ASRH community. An effective MEL Lead will need to be passionate about, and have a deep commitment to advancing learning by curating experience and best practices related to the intersection of HCD+ASRH and generating evidence about the influence and effectiveness of HCD in the context of ASRH. This individual will harvest and curate learning, guide the development of learning products and support community-led working groups that focus on a range of learning questions. The aim is to promote better understanding, knowledge and learning about HCD+ASRH to accelerate this emergent field of practice.

Our ideal candidate is a natural leader, self-starter, who has an entrepreneurial and curious mindset. S/he is a flexible, adaptive thinker, and systems thinker who has an ability to triangulate multiple sources of data and information. The candidate should have experience in developing and tracking theories of change and results frameworks, and understand the challenges and opportunities associated with a multi-disciplinary and user-centred approach in development programs.

The MEL Lead will work under the direction and supervision of the HCDExchange Director. This role includes collaborating with the broader HCDExchange team including staff, consultants, Youth Leadership Hub, and the Advisory Committees.

Roles & responsibilities

• Develop and update the HCDExchange Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Plan (MELP) to ensure that relevant, high-quality data is used to monitor performance and effectiveness and inform future iteration and program design.
• Manage HCDExchange’s framework, tools and systems such as monthly performance dashboard, tracker for the knowledge products from the community, progress and learning tracker, etc.
• Support the regular analysis and review of project and program monitoring indicators into a HCDExchange dashboard. This process will also include developing new or improving upon existing analytics to enhance data use for decision making and management for the HCDExchange and community of practice.
• With the support of the Program Analyst, lead documentation and reporting of processes, success stories, experiences and sharing of lessons learned within the HCDExchange and ensure their dissemination is in line with the organizational, donor and HCDExchange community learning requirements
• Develop and facilitate rapid learning cycles, integrating learning from M&E into program management and informing program adaptation as needed.
• Facilitate the HCDExchange learning agenda — working with the community members to lead different parts of the learning agenda, Communicate and coordinate with working groups and members to develop their agendas, document reflections, and connect community members with the right resource
• Develop participatory strategies to translate knowledge and learning into practice
• Work with the Community Manager to build processes and templates for various media (audio clips, blog summaries, Zoom call highlight reels, etc.) that enable working groups to summarize learning and generate outputs at a regular cadence.
• Facilitate the process of deciding how we’ll articulate our practices (for example by creating a shared collection of resources such as, stories, experiences, tools, cases, documents, and problem solving methods)
• Define the practical outputs and develop measures for impacts of the community — (establish parameters for the assets that the community of practice would work together towards such as the HCD+ASRH Evaluation Standards, HCD+ASRH evidence database, developed HCD+ASRH practice, etc.)
• Develop and coordinate routine reporting to donors and stakeholders
• Coordinate development and dissemination of evidence and key learnings within the HCD+ASRH community (through webinars, website and other platforms)
• Draft and/or contribute to developing blog posts, updates, and articles for publication

Qualifications, skills and experience

Qualifications

Masters degree required.

Required skills and experience

• Advanced degree in a relevant field, such as public health, international development, or nonprofit management, with focus on evaluation methodologies.
• Five to eight years of relevant experience in designing and implementing MEL systems, preferably within sexual and reproductive health, or private sector development programs in low resource settings.
• Experience developing and implementing MEL plans for dynamic, multifaceted programs
• Experience in relevant technical areas, such as survey and research tool design, data collection, statistical analysis, qualitative research, and dissemination of results.
• Strong technical skills, including ability to process and analyze data using one or more statistical software packages, including at least one of the following: SPSS, MS Access, STATA, SAS, or others.
• Ability to facilitate regular data use for decision making practices with programmatic/management teams.
• Experience on the use of MEL systems to support a learning agenda and evolve a theory of change to maximize impact.
• Strong understanding of MEL, policy, and compliance requirements.
• Demonstrated strong management, coordination, teamwork, and planning skills as well as an ability to multitask, meet deadlines, and work effectively in a complex environment
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including excellent facilitation skills and demonstrated technical writing skills for publication.
• Ability to work effectively with diverse international teams.

Skills and experience that provide an added advantage

• Experience and comfort levels in the adolescent and sexual and reproductive health field, and especially nuances around rights, gender, safeguarding, and ethics
• Experience in coaching, mentoring and building capacity of networks of people and organizations such as youth, governmental systems, and NGOs.

Language

Preference is for a bilingual candidate. English is the working language for this assignment; excellent oral and written communications and presentation skills in English are required. Working knowledge of French will be an added advantage.