Senior Monitoring Evaluation and Communications Officer at Mercy Corps Nigeria

Mercy Corps is a leading global organization powered by the belief that a better world is possible. In disaster, in hardship, in more than 40 countries around the world, we partner to put bold solutions into action — helping people triumph over adversity and build stronger communities from within. Now, and for the future.

We are recruiting to fill the position below:

Job Title: Senior Monitoring Evaluation and Communications Officer

Location: Kaduna
Employment Type: Full-time, Regular

Program / Department Summary

• Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa, and its influence spreads across the continent. Yet, inequality and insecurity have consistently undermined Nigeria's development. Mercy Corps Nigeria was established in 2012 to respond to these challenges. The Nigeria team is headquartered in Abuja, in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), with offices throughout Nigeria. With a strong and growing team, Mercy Corps works to achieve the vision of a Nigeria in which all people are empowered, engaged, resilient and secure.
• The Empowering Resilient Ginger Farmers Program (Ginger Program) is a multi-year program funded by the Tazo tea company. The program aims to support ginger farmers and their families in Kaduna State, with a focus on female farmers, to increase ginger productivity, increase incomes, and build longer-term financial stability and resilience. Over roughly a two-year timeframe, we will connect farmers to resources, training, and inputs to improve ginger yields, foster improved linkages between ginger farmers and financial institutions and markets, and set up and support savings groups to build longer-term financial capacity and resiliency.

General Position Summary

• The Senior Monitoring, Evaluation and Communication Officer will work with the Mercy Corps program team as well as partner organisations to oversee and ensure the collection of quality MEL data for the program.
• S/he will The MEL Officer will be responsible for monitoring and data collection of programs, lead baseline, midterm, and end-line surveys, analyse data to provide insight to program team, and contribute to report writing.
• S/he will ensure that performance monitoring and results reporting tools and processes across the entire program are in place, effectively implemented and well synchronised.
• The Senior Monitoring Evaluation and Communication officer will be the lead for the program team learning and reflection processes, leading discussions, documenting and harmonising learnings and successes.
• The program aims to assess key outcomes that contribute to key economic growth indicators and key determinants showing how participants are transitioning from a vulnerable state to a more stable state that is strong enough to enable beneficiaries to participate inclusively in the ginger market system.
• The Senior Monitoring Evaluation and Communication Officer will lead on regular development of timely, well-written and accurate factsheets, articles, success stories and other resources as needed.
• Working closely with the Communications Advisor, s/he will ensure that knowledge and understanding of the innovations, influence and impact of the ERGF program is captured and effectively shared with internal and external audiences.

Essential Job Responsibilities
Program Management:

• To develop and operationalise the Monitoring and Results Management (MRM) Strategy and roll out the strategy for effective collection and reporting of KPIs related to productivity, impact on environment, access to, control and use of financial capital, income, sales, jobs created in the ginger value chain through the program.
• Develop a system for reporting and validating program data (Excel, Tola, Access, etc.)
• Actively integrating Gender Equality Diversity and Social Inclusion lens into data management processes across intervention areas as a cross-cutting theme and for Women and Youth Economic Empowerment through collection, analysis and use of sex, age and other social identities’ disaggregated data
• Work with PM and partners to ensure effective monitoring, evaluation and reporting of program activities and results and conduct outcome harvesting for the program
• Ensuring KPIs are collected, updated and shared with relevant stakeholders in line with their requirements using unique communication products.
• Support Intervention Officer in implementing initiatives aligned to the results chain.
• Contribute to programme strategies by providing data on intervention performance in a timely and accurate
• Support Intervention Officers in gathering relevant information for their various interventions, identifying knowledge gaps, and developing strategies to fill those
• Perform spot checks on the team’s data collected and reports each month.
• Actively lead in any additional evaluation MEL activities including but not limited to baseline surveys, mid-term, end-line surveys, evaluations, household surveys.

Collaborating and coordinating with partners (private, CSO and government institutions) for monitoring and result measurement:

• Coordinate the activities of the partners by specifically tracking deadlines, ensuring adherence to monitoring formats and requirements, ensuring reporting quality and accuracy, and periodic report writing, editing, and submission
• Engaging with partners to adopt MEL toolkits for data collection and reporting
• Building capacity of partners on relevant KPIs and data quality standards, database management, data privacy on commercially sensitive data and personally identifiable information.
• Building capacity of Enumerators and other Agents on data collection and reporting. This includes profiling of market actors (farmers, MSMEs) as participants of the Activity
• Co-creation with partners using the result chain and workplan to design activities that are result oriented
• Coordinate MSD-specific studies: outcome harvesting, outcome mapping and most significant change (MSC).
• Ensure quality assurance in the collection and reporting of assessments, surveys and evaluations in compliance to MC program Management minimum standards.
• Ensure that the MRM system is in line with the Mercy Corps standards, and Ekaterra standards.

Support report writing and development of communication products:

• Support the team in writing the activity quarterly, semi-annual and annual reports
• Work with Intervention Officers in preparing the annual report
• Support program visibility and communication initiatives, ensuring that program communications activities meet donor communications and visibility guidelines.
• Support field locations to collect images, success stories, and other communications content to highlight programs successes or any other topic as the need arises.
• Plan and conduct effective dissemination of project materials to different stakeholders.
• Development of content and liaise with the country communication team to share content on Mercy Corps’ Nigeria, regional or global internal and external communications platforms, including relevant Workplace pages, The Hub and The Globe.

Learning:

• Support learning-to-action events across the 4 levels of learning (team, organizational, market and actor level) to systematically analyse data for programmatic use and to document and incorporate lessons learned into program design, planning and implementation.
• Leverage lessons learned, best practices, program data, evaluations and provide evidence-based information, proposal annexes, success stories, case studies and other high-quality, results-based.
• Identify and document different case stories and communications points and processes across programs.

Accountability to participants:

• 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.

Additional Tasks:

• Support with other tasks as needed
• Supervisory responsibility: Monitoring Evaluation and Learning focal points of sub-award partners

Accountability:

• Reporting to:Program Manager
• Work with:Agriculture Intervention Officer, Country Comms Advisor and Country MEL Advisor

Requirement and Experience

• Bachelor’s Degree in Economics, Agriculture, Demography, Statistics, Business administration or relevant field (Essential).
• At least 2 years of experience in development, implementation, monitoring and evaluation or other learning efforts is required.
• Should understand concepts and demonstrate skills in monitoring and result measurement for projects using MSD approach, results chain and frameworks, participatory monitoring and or Market facilitation
• Capacity to produce high-quality briefs and reports
• Demonstrated ability to train and build capacity of others, including private small/medium micro- enterprises on the essence of data for decision.
• Should be able to design and implement surveys, have knowledge of commonly used probability and purposive sampling techniques.
• Should have knowledge of quantitative and qualitative data collection, reporting techniques. S/he should understand and be able to apply basic measures of central tendency and spread.
• Experience developing and disseminating regular communication materials and updates.
• Experience representing the organization and its interests to a diverse range of local and international government officials, private sector, local civil society organizations, other international organizations, the media and the public.
• Proficiency with digital platforms for MEL (e.g Commcare, Ona/Kobo) – including familiarity with other technology platforms to support programs and MEL-related activities.
• Ability to demonstrate innovative and adaptive management skills.
• Demonstrated inclusion integration skills into a market systems development program through Monitoring Evaluation and Communication activities.

Success Factors:

• S/he will be capable of multi-tasking, rapid decision-making, have initiative, drive and a lot of energy, as well as high emotional intelligence, constructive communication skills and proven experience with capacity building.
• S/he will be committed to long-term program sustainability and the delivery of high- impact activities at the community level. Successful Mercy Corps team members have a strong commitment to teamwork and accountability, thrive in evolving and challenging environments, and make effective written and verbal communication a priority.

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion:

• Achieving our mission begins with how we build our team and work together. Through our commitment to enriching our organization with people of different origins, beliefs, backgrounds, and ways of thinking, we are better able to leverage the collective power of our teams and solve the world’s most complex challenges.
• We strive for a culture of trust and respect, where everyone contributes their perspectives and authentic selves, reaches their potential as individuals and teams, and collaborates to do the best work of their lives.
• We recognize that diversity and inclusion is a journey, and we are committed to learning, listening and evolving to become more diverse, equitable and inclusive than we are today.

Equal Employment Opportunity:

• Mercy Corps is an equal-opportunity employer that does not tolerate discrimination on any basis. We actively seek out diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and skills so that we can be collectively stronger and have a sustained global impact. We are committed to providing an environment of respect and psychological safety where equal employment opportunities are available to all. We do not engage in or tolerate discrimination on the basis of race, colour, gender identity, gender expression, religion, age, sexual orientation, national or ethnic origin, disability (including HIV/AIDS status), marital status, military veteran status or any other protected group in the locations where we work.

Safeguarding & Ethics:

• Mercy Corps is committed to ensuring that all individuals we come into contact with through our work, whether team members, community members, program participants or others, are treated with respect and dignity. We are committed to the core principles regarding the prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse laid out by the UN Secretary-General and IASC.
• We will not tolerate child abuse, sexual exploitation, abuse, or harassment by or of our team members. As part of our commitment to a safe and inclusive work environment, team members are expected to conduct themselves in a professional manner, respect local laws and customs, and adhere to the Mercy Corps Code of Conduct Policies and values at all times. Team members are required to complete mandatory Code of Conduct eLearning courses upon hire and on an annual basis.

Application Closing Date
18th January, 2023.

Method of Application
Interested and qualified candidates should:
Click here to apply online

Note

• Applicants should have their CVs and Cover Letters in one document addressing the position requirements.
• Female candidates who are qualified are strongly encouraged to apply.