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Mercy Corps is seeking a Senior Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) Manager for the USAID-funded “Sahel Regional Resilience Activity” (SRRA). Funded and managed out of the USAID Sahel Regional Office, the program seeks to expand resilience in the Sahel by improving the ability of individuals, households, and communities to mitigate, adapt to, and recover from multi-faceted shocks and stresses. Implementation is planned for Burkina Faso, Chad, and Mauritania – with the possibility of additional countries – and is expected to include the management of multiple awards (i.e. “Associate Awards”) under a single mechanism, led by one “Leader Award.”
The Senior MEL Manager will be a part of the SRRA “Leader Award” team, which oversees and supports Associate Awards in the region under this mechanism. The Senior MEL Manager will provide technical expertise, quality oversight, team management and leadership to generate and analyze data through a mixed-methods M&E system and present these data as evidence that stimulates the identification of adaptations that the Sahel RRA Leader Award can make to help it achieve its intended outcomes. The Senior MEL Manager will also lead the MEL team to support the CLA Manager and their team as they provide the technical assistance, guidance, and logistical support to Associate Awards’ use of CLA to adaptively improve and achieve their intended outcomes. The MEL Unit must also provide technical support to external implementation entities so they can measure the extent to which (a) they have achieved intended outcomes and b) CLA has improved their adaptive management. The Senior MEL Manager must lead SRRA to build and use a MEL system that integrates qualitative and quantitative monitoring (for performance measures and contextual variables) with learning-plan focused formative studies.
The Senior MEL Manager applies their successful experience and skills to build or strengthen systems for both performance and work plan monitoring, guiding or conducting quantitative and qualitative analysis, designing survey methodologies, and promoting evidence-based program management. They will apply their demonstrated experience leading MEL for a large, multi-year development or resilience awards to strengthen capacity of M&E and non-M&E staff; applying knowledge about theories of change, logic models, MEL plans, data quality assessments, data utilization for evidence-based reporting and learning purposes, and gender and youth integration into the M&E system; and in developing and operationalizing a comprehensive M&E plan. The Senior MEL Manager must have demonstrated experience networking and engaging with necessary stakeholders (internally and external to SRRA). They will manage staff, resources, consultants (as needed), and coordinate closely with partners to fulfill the MEL requirements of the program as well as promote evidence-based decision-making, adaptive management, and a culture of learning in line with the CLA approach.
M&E Management and Technical Leadership
● Design and revise strategic M&E documents, including the M&E Plan, theory of change, performance indicator reference sheets, logframe, data protection standard operating procedures, and sex and age disaggregation plans.
● Set up and oversee all principal M&E system components, including protocols and data flows for monitoring and evaluations, data and information management, M&E budgets, staffing, competency building and technology systems.
● Establish M&E standard operating procedures, tools, and other mechanisms adapted to remote programming when needed in a country for maintaining MEL during insecurity and political risks.
● Design and oversee the implementation of participant-based surveys, including the scope of work, sampling strategies, questionnaires, analysis plans, statistical processing and analysis.
● Work closely with the Collaboration, Learning, and Adaptation (CLA) Manager to promote CLA through intentional and routine periodic learning initiatives sessions to share, discuss, and use monitoring data, document and disseminate/capitalize lessons learned and evaluation/assessments findings, support program management to conduct program improvements informed by data.
● Set up and cultivate the SRRA M&E working group between M&E staff in countries to integrate best practices, harmonize MEL strategies, and reinforce quality evidence generation and use.
● Serve as a senior leader on the SRRA Learning Council, synthesizing and sharing critical analysis, championing localization through MEL, and promote data-driven adaptive management.
● Co-design and manage the inclusion of qualitative data collection and analysis for both direct and supplemental measurements of program performance.
● Ensure that the Chief of Party and Deputy Chief of Party are alerted to any issues that prevent full implementation of the Activity in line with the Theory of Change.
● Ensure the Activity adheres to the USAID Policy & Guidance and the Mercy Corps M&E Policy and Record Management & Retention Policy.