Country Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) Manager at Mercy Corps October, 2024

General Position Summary

The Country Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) Manager is a key member of the Program Performance and Quality (PAQ) Unit and will manage and coordinate all MEL and program quality performance processes for Mercy Corps Nigeria’s Humanitarian programs. S/he will work across all Mercy Corps programs to support data collection, management, and analysis.

Essential Job Responsibilities

TECHNICAL LEADERSHIP

• Provide leadership, training, and mentoring in developing M&E Plans, M&E tools, survey design, methodology, data analysis, and other skills required for assessing the impact of programs.
• Lead and/or collaborate with external evaluators on the design and rollout of the program assessments, baseline, and evaluations, while setting up effective systems for learning.
• Ensures programs use the necessary M&E systems and tools, to inform and improve each program, as well as feed into the broader country-level M&E system and country strategy.
• In addition, the position holder is responsible for ensuring that the MEL reports generated by each program are timely and of high quality and that the data can be validated. This will be achieved through staff capacity building and necessary training.
• Ensuring learning is institutionalized in the portfolio, with systems in place for analyzing and using M&E data and supporting programs to interpret and use learning for strategic and programmatic decision-making. This includes contributing to the development, learning and adaptation of program strategies.

INFORMATION MANAGEMENT

• Works with the program and M&E teams to adopt a holistic country-level M&E system (including Tola Data) that harnesses open-source software and flexible cloud solutions to more accurately collect, monitor, and verify program activities and ensure they are aligned with the country’s strategic and annual plan.
• Provide guidance, recommendations, and leadership to ensure that the M&E systems meet the needs of program managers and Country Leadership and help address shortfalls in M&E and data management that affect program implementation.
• Contributes to program design to ensure adherence to Mercy Corps’ M&E best practices, including the use of standardized indicators, form templates, and documentation methodologies.

CAPACITY BUILDING AND MENTORING

• Build the capacity of all relevant team members to develop and maintain an excellent M&E system, including regular reflection and analysis of program monitoring data.
• Work closely with Program Managers, Human Resources, and Finance to ensure that M&E skills are incorporated into all program position descriptions and positions are budgeted for.
• Create and sustain a work environment of mutual respect where team members strive to achieve excellence.

INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL COORDINATION

• Active contributor and collaborator with sector clusters (majorly on joint assessments in Borno State) and regional and global counterparts to promote the use of M&E best practices.
• Strengthen linkages with other internal resources, including the LMS, Digital Library, Hub, and Connect, to enhance organizational learning where relevant to M&E.
• Maintain close working relationships with M&E counterparts in other relevant international NGOs and local NGOs and associations in Nigeria.

SAFEGUARDING RESPONSIBILITIES

• Actively learn about safeguarding and integrates it into their work, including safeguarding risks and mitigations related to their area of work.
• Practices the values of Mercy Corps including respecting the dignity and well-being of participants and fellow team members.
• Encourages openness and communication in their team; encourages team members to submit reports if they have any concerns using reporting mechanisms e.g., Integrity Hotline and other options.

ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING

As part of our commitment to organizational learning and in support of our understanding that learning organizations are more effective, efficient, and relevant to the communities they serve – we expect all team members to commit 5% of their time to learning activities that benefit Mercy Corps as well as themselves.

ACCOUNTABILITY TO BENEFICIARIES

Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts toward accountability, specifically to our beneficiaries and to international standards guiding international relief and development work, while actively engaging beneficiary communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring, and evaluation of our field projects.

Supervisory Responsibility: MEL Manager and Senior Data Management Officer

Accountability

Reports Directly To: PaQ Director

Works Directly With: PaQ Manager, Strategic Learning Manager, DoP, HSSD, Program Directors and Program Managers, Reporting & Communications Officers, Finance, and Operations teams. Coordinates with MCN PaQ unit (including CARM team).

Knowledge and Experience

• BA/S degree in development studies, research methods, statistics, economics, social sciences, monitoring and evaluation, project management or other relevant field required. Postgraduate degree preferred.
• 5 years of active M&E work experience in emergency and development programming required with the proven use of program technology.
• At least 5 years of strong, demonstrated management experience and a clear understanding of the NGO sector – including program implementation, time management and scheduling over the period of a project cycle.
• Experience with theoretical and practical background in M&E and skilled in participatory qualitative and quantitative M&E methodologies and techniques.
• Excellent quantitative skills and power user with Excel; Experience with Access, and statistical packages including Stata, R or SPSS and GIS tools like QGIS, ArcGIS or Google Earth Pro is preferred.
• Experience with data management including the ability to structure and collate data sets for ease of analysis.
• Demonstrated understanding of intermediate statistics and ability to summarize and make predictions from multiple data sets.
• Experience of working on USAID programs preferred.
• Previous experience living and working in challenging or insecure environments.
• Fluency in spoken and written English required.