Program Manager I - MEAL at Catholic Relief Services (CRS)

Catholic Relief Services is the official international humanitarian agency of the Catholic community in the United States. CRS works to save, protect, and transform lives in need in more than 100 countries, without regard to race, religion or nationality. CRS’ relief and development work are accomplished through programs of emergency response, HIV, health, agriculture, education, microfinance and peacebuilding.

CRS has been supporting program activities in Nigeria for over 30 years and has long-standing relationships with Church and non-Church partners and communities throughout the country. The Nigeria country program has a diverse funding base with projects in health, nutrition, food security and agricultural livelihoods, microfinance (SILC), emergency response and peacebuilding. CRS/Nigeria currently has over 210 national and 8 international staff. With an FY22 annual budget of over USD $100 million, coupled with strong donor interest in supporting CRS’ work in the country, significant growth opportunities exist for the CP. The CP has been supporting emergency activities in the NE states since 2015 with offices in Damaturu, Maiduguri and Yola.

We are recruiting to fill the position below:

Job Title: Program Manager I - MEAL

Job ID: 22000043
Location: Maiduguri, Borno
Job Type: Full-time
Shift: Standard
Schedule: Regular
Job Level: Day Job
Travel: Yes, 20 % of the Time
Job: Program Management
Employee Status: Individual Contributor

Job Summary

• The MEAL Manager will oversee MEAL activities across a multi-sectorial, multi-million USAID/BHA Program. S/he will manage data collection including assessment surveys and routine gathering of Program implementation monitoring and evaluation; document retention and archival; compliance with USAID MEAL requirements; and support CRS and USAID reporting.
• The MEAL Manager will work under the supervision of the Emergency MEAL Coordinator.

Roles and Key Responsibilities

• Ensure application of standardized MEAL tools and approaches across the program with respect the MEAL Policies and Procedures.
• Support the MEAL Coordinator to monitor program implementation progress on a regular basis against USAID and CRS quality standards and international humanitarian principles through monitoring visits, data quality audits, spot checks against reports and review of implementing reports.
• Provide technical support to program staff for the implementation of monitoring and evaluation activities, data management and integration of cross-functional issues.
• Lead on program assessments and surveys including baseline and end line evaluation surveys.
• Foster a learning environment, lead learning and knowledge management within the Program.
• Ensure that Program data are protected and shared according to CRS and donor principles.
• Encourage the integration of good ICT solution to ease the process of collecting, management, analyzing and protection.
• Collaborate with external service provider (RedRose) to receive, clean and analyze data.
• Directly supervise MEAL Officers.
• Commitment to gender sensitive programming and management.
• Ensure gender disaggregation data analysis to promote gender mainstreaming among the projects.
• Help identify, assess, and strengthen partners’ MEAL capacity
• Support the Protection focal person to monitor, assess and document protection and safeguard issues.
• Review sector reports and highlight opportunities for Protection, safeguarding and Gender mainstreaming in the proposed sector activities; And follow up to ensure, the team integrates the protection principles during activity design and implementation

Supervisory Responsibilities:

• MEAL officers.

Key Working Relationships:

• Internal: Accountability department, Program Managers, Emergency Coordinator, Program Officers, Liaison Officer
• External: INGOs, community representatives.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree in Social Sciences and Humanities with Master’s Degree in Data Science or related field is an advantage.
• 7 to 9 years of experience designing and implementing MEAL system for INGOs or USAID- funded projects related to emergency projects in the Northeast region of Nigeria.
• Demonstrated expertise in qualitative and quantitative data collection, analysis and management methods using technology.
• Knowledge of USAID Evaluation Policy and requirements.
• Capacity to produce Power BI reports.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Project management experience in emergency programming is highly desirable.
• Experience engaging with partner organizations.
• Experience contributing to the development of technical proposals.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:

• Strong critical thinking and creative problem-solving skills with ability to make sound judgment.
• Strong relationship management skills and the ability to work effectively with culturally diverse groups.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills with ability to write reports
• Proactive, results-oriented, and service-oriented

Required Languages:

• English, Hausa.

Travel:

• The candidate must be willing and able to travel up to 20%.

Agency-wide Competencies (for all CRS Staff):
These are rooted in the mission, values, and guiding principles of CRS and used by each staff member to fulfill his or her responsibilities and achieve the desired results.

• Integrity
• Continuous Improvement & Innovation.
• Builds Relationships.
• Develops Talent.
• Strategic Mindset.
• Accountability & Stewardship.

Application Closing Date
1st March, 2022.