Back MEAL Coordinator

Since the early 1980s Niger has consistently been ranked at the bottom of the UN’s Human Development Index. Over half the population suffers from chronic food insecurity and one in ten are extremely food insecure. Niger is also a disaster prone country, regularly hit by food crises and vulnerable to flooding, cholera and locust swarms. Access to health care and education for women and girls are very limited. In addition to the vulnerability of a significant proportion of Nigeriens, Niger also hosts refugees from neighboring Mali and Nigeria.

IRC’s vision for Niger is that individuals, households and communities are resilient, self-reliant and able to thrive in a changing context. IRC Niger is present in the regions of Tillabéri, Agadez and Diffa with projects in the following areas: Environmental Health (EH) and Non Food Items (NFI) including Emergency – Rapid Response Mechanism (RRM), Protection (SGBV, Child Protection, Monitoring Protection and Protection Integration), Education, Nutrition, Health and Livelihoods.

Scope of work

With direct management support from Deputy Director of Programs and technical support from the Regional Measurement Action Coordinator, the Monitoring Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL) Coordinator will provide technical leadership for design and delivery of all monitoring, evaluation, client responsiveness and learning activities and products in IRC Niger, and ensure strong knowledge and information management. Providing technical leadership to IRC Niger’s MEAL team, the MEAL Coordinator’s work will contribute to ensuring high quality programming for the IRC’s clients and support IRC Niger to realise its Strategy 100 ambitions.

She/ He will ensure that suitable monitoring and evaluation systems, aligned to organisational expectations, are in place and implemented as intended, ensuring that the right people have the right data at the right time and enabling program coordinators and managers to deliver programs that achieve the desired outcomes /impacts, whilst learning from evidence. S/he will identify MEAL capacity gaps in the country program and design and deliver strategies to fill any gaps and create an atmosphere of individual and collective learning that supports professional development and the meeting of organisational expectations.

Furthermore, with support from the Deputy Directly of Programs, the MEAL Coordinator will support the program coordinators and managers in ensuring timely submission of all reporting requirements, including internal and external evaluations. The MEAL Coordinator will engage in regional and global IRC Measurement initiatives and support the wider engagement of IRC Niger staff and facilitate cross-learning at all levels within and beyond the country office.

Main Responsibilities

1. Monitoring

• Responsible for ensuring that detailed and feasible project monitoring plans are developed for each project that: i) provide an indicator matrix, ii) map M&E roles and responsibilities of project and support staff, iii) consider ethical and safe collection and storage of data, iv) consider data quality audits, v) consider storing, protecting and sharing project documents, and vi) consider the end of project learning review;

• Assist program coordinators in conducting regular analysis to (1) compare data against project milestones, targets, and quality expectations across project sites; (2) identify issues requiring further attention; (3) define action needed and assign responsibility and deadlines;

• Support the digitisation and automation of programme data flows at all levels;

• Work with staff at regional and country levels to establish and maintain data collection tools, project/program databases, and indictor tracking sheets and dashboards that promote the standardisation of MEAL processes and products;

• Define staff roles and responsibilities in relation to the collection, entry, sharing, verification, analysis, and use of data and share with the concerned staff;

• Conduct regular monitoring visits to all projects to ensure that all projects are on the right track in performing the planned activities and achieved the expected outputs;

• Ensure that monitoring data are fed into management decisions and used in program management;

• Identify major challenges for project implementation and report to the senior management team for immediate decision making;

• Review and appraise MEAL components of programmatic reports and provide feedback to support improvements of record keeping and reporting of programmatic data;

• Preparation and timely submission of MEAL reports to the senior management team;

2. Evaluation

• Prepare TORs for all surveys, evaluations and need assessments carried out both internally and by external evaluators.

• Responsible for the design, quality, development, and completion of all assessments and evaluations;

• Take part in or lead appraisal of survey proposals, and review and approve data collection methodologies and tools proposed by survey consultants;

• Responsible for conducting advanced analysis (inferential statistics) of needs assessment and survey data;

• Organize meetings and produce reports for wider dissemination of project accomplishments; including external evaluation reports that go along with the donor reports

• Liaise with academic institutions and/or with the Research and Innovation unit at IRC, or relevant Technical Unit Advisors, as necessary for evaluation, assessment and learning activities.

3. Accountability

• Ensure that IRC Niger’s client responsiveness SOP is in place and up to date.

• Establish a sustainable Complaints and feedback Mechanism (CFM) at field office level and program level which ensures all clients can make confidential complaints and feedback through proactive and reactive feedback channels, and be confident in response processes;

• Ensure all client feedback collected are systematically recorded and responded to within the time agreed;

• In coordination with field coordinators, design and deliver training and refresher modules that ensure all staffs have an in-depth understanding of Client-Responsive programming, IRC Niger’s client responsiveness SOP and CHS standards, and are equipped to apply these in their working lives;

• Support the PSEA mechanism, in collaboration with the SMT and the PSEA focal point in country;

• Coordinate the development of IEC materials and client and community communication strategies for dissemination of the IRC’s Client Responsiveness policy and procedures, and the expectations and standards required of IRC’s and partner staff;

• Ensure IRC respects its minimum accountability standards in emergencies;

• Continually review internal and external requirements to improve and develop the Core Humanitarian Standards.

4. Learning

• In collaboration with the SMT, technical coordinators and technical units, outline a country program learning strategy including key learning priorities across all sectors. Priorities can be cross-sectoral.

• Identify resources to carry out strategic learning, both financial and human, and coordinate with the Regional Measurement for Action Coordinator, relevant Technical Units and the IRC Research, Evaluation and Learning unit to identify methodologies and plan the implementation of the learning strategy.

• Participate in program design and proposal discussions, including incorporation of past learning, support on theory of change development, log frame design, and budgeting for M&E.

• Facilitate Project Reflection Meetings under the framework of the IRC’s Project Cycle Meetings and share actionable notes in an accessible format to the relevant staff members, including local partners.

5. Information management and reporting

• Aligned to the IRC’s organizational expectations, establish and maintain a system to efficiently manage and make available large volumes of monitoring and assessment data, using relevant software packages including mobile data collection for projects;

• Establish overall country program core indicator tracking sheets and dashboards;

• Contribute to the quarterly SAP- IP report and the monthly country report;

• Conduct assessments on information management gaps and suggest improvements and remedial action to the senior management team;

• Ensure key project/program documents are centrally stored in Box and easily accessible by staff;

• With the support of the Client Responsiveness Officer, prepare and share the quarterly Client Responsiveness report, compiling and visualizing trends of clients’ feedback data from different channels;

• Compile annual statistic for the Niger country programme and share with the SMT, Regional Office, and HQ;

6. Staff and partner capacity building (30% of time)

• Identify staff and partner MEAL capacity gaps and organize capacity building events and ensure on-the-job mentorship to fill identified gaps;

• Support local partners’ development of capacity building strategies and plans, and deliver capacity building to partner organizations based on their needs and their own learning priorities, in the MEAL sphere;

• Develop training materials to build the capacity of staff and partners.

• Closely coach staff and partners in their everyday jobs including on the use of technology (especially Excel, CommCare and Power Bi);

• Assist staff and partners in creation of enhanced database systems both electronic and hard copy formats, and on how to conduct data quality audits of projects and programs to identify and resolve systemic problems affecting data quality, and documenting and storing findings;

• Provide training to conduct descriptive analysis of needs assessment and survey data.

• Provide consistent, supportive supervision to strengthen staff performance and organise learning forum for the M&E other interested staff including from partner organizations to learn from each other;

• Provide technical oversight and support to staff and partners for surveys, assessments and other discrete learning activities as requested, and building related competencies.

Qualifications

• University degree (statistics, social science, public health, development economics, or a related discipline);

• Minimum five (5) years of international experience within the development / humanitarian sector, at least 2 of which are at management level preferably in Africa;

• Leadership experience in quality M&E system set-up, maintenance and oversight from inception to close-out that leads to evidence base decision making and strategic planning;

• Experience managing MEAL in multi-sectorial and multi-donor funded programs.

• Demonstrated knowledge and experience in setting up or maintaining mechanisms to collect feedback from affected populations;

• Proven abilities in developing monitoring plans, data collection, information management, use of databases, and analysis and performance monitoring;

• Demonstrated ability to train and build capacity of others;

• Knowledge of humanitarian accountability principles and their translation into practice;

• Strong planning, organizational and interpersonal skills;

• Excellent analytical, presentation, and reporting skills;

• Excellent database, data management and data analysis skills, with experience using at least 2 software applications such as Microsoft Excel, Access, SPSS, STATA;

• Previous experience with electronic/mobile data collection (ODK, CommCare, CSPRO) and GIS mapping preferred;

• Ability to listen to others and to facilitate discussions with clients from different groups and origins;

• Fluent in written and spoken English and French;

• Strong commitment to IRC’s Vision and mission.

Language Skills: Excellent written and oral French and English skills.

Specific security situation/housing

The Grants MEAL Coordinator will be based in Niamey with travel throughout the country. The security situation in Niger continues to be volatile. This is a non-accompanied position. He/she will live in shared housing.

The IRC and IRC workers must adhere to the values and principles outlined in IRC Way - Standards for Professional Conduct. These are Integrity, Service, Equality and Accountability. In accordance with these values, the IRC operates and enforces policies on Beneficiary Protection from Exploitation and Abuse, Child Safeguarding, Anti Workplace Harassment, Fiscal Integrity, and Anti-Retaliation.