Monitoring, Evaluation & Learning (MEL) Manager 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: Monitoring, Evaluation & Learning (MEL) Manager

Requisition Number: MELMA004143
Location: Maiduguri, Borno
Employment Type: Full-time, Regular.
Job Category: Monitoring & Evaluation

Program / Department Summary

• Mercy Corps exists to alleviate suffering, poverty, and oppression by building secure, productive, and just communities. Mercy Corps has been present in Nigeria since 2012, focusing its interventions on adolescent girls’ empowerment, economic development and conflict mitigation.
• With the insurgency spilling over from the northeast of Nigeria and causing the displacement of millions of individuals, Mercy Corps has decided to address the rising humanitarian needs among displaced households and vulnerable host communities by starting its humanitarian program in July 2014.
• Mercy Corps Nigeria’s humanitarian program aims to provide assistance to populations affected by the crisis in northeast Nigeria. With funding from humanitarian donors including BHA, and ECHO the humanitarian program has been focusing on food assistance, non-food items distribution, protection, livelihood support, WASH and capacity building of humanitarian response actors.
• Mercy Corps plans to scale up and expand its humanitarian response in northeast Nigeria to reach more beneficiaries with additional and varied assistance in a wider geographic area. In addition to humanitarian programs, Mercy Corps also implements adolescent girls’ and boys’ empowerment and youth engagement programs. All Mercy Corps interventions in Nigeria are implemented in a conflict and gender-sensitive manner.

General Position Summary

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

Essential Job Responsibilities
Technical Leadership:

• Provide leadership, training and mentoring in the development of 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 individual program, as well as feed into the broader country-level M&E system and country strategy.
• Take the lead in aligning, collecting and reporting on relevant indicators to the organizational-wide M&E systems, and other external systems as relevant.
• Support teams in collecting sex and age-disaggregated data and using gender-sensitive data collection methods in order to understand and respond to program results with diverse participants.
• Participates in the facilitation of country and sector-level strategic planning sessions, assisting program managers and senior management in the development of their annual plans.
• Identify research opportunities and partnerships that respond to priority topics and questions, and which connect to Mercy Corp’s field emergency response programming and national and regional strategic plans.
• Lead on both internal and external Data Quality Assessment (DQA) in collaboration with BHA Third Party Monitoring partners.

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 strategic and annual plan.
• Provides guidance, recommendations, and leadership to ensure that the M&E systems meet the needs of Programs 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.
• Maintain a comprehensive schedule of private and institutional funding reports for programs and review project/program reports to ensure that reports contain accurate, clear, and high-quality data and are presented in the proper format.
• Develop program and operational reporting templates that facilitate the acquisition, aggregation, and flow of information in programs.

Capacity Building And Mentoring:

• Develops and oversees the implementation of the M&E staff and partner capacity-building strategy that promotes a culture of learning through systematic analysis and reflection of program data.
• 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.
• Contributes to the knowledge management repository with best practices in M&E and ensures that it is accessible to all staff and partners.
• 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.

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:

• Senior MEL Officers and Senior Data Management Officer

Accountability:

• Reports Directly To: Country MEL Manager
• Works Directly With: Strategic Learning Manager, Humanitarian Response Director, Program Sector Managers, 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.
• 3-5 years of active M&E work experience in emergency and development programming required with the proven use of program technology.
• 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 working on USAID programs preferred.
• Previous experience living and working in challenging or insecure environments.
• Fluency in spoken and written English is required.
• Knowledge of Hausa and other local dialects is preferred.

Success Factors

• The successful candidate will have a demonstrated ability to lead and communicate effectively with team members of varied work styles and cultures, follow procedures, and meet deadlines with flexibility and creativity in planning and problem-solving.
• S/he will have a proven ability to learn quickly, multi-task, prioritize, take initiative, be accountable for results, understand the larger picture while remaining focused on the details, problem-solving, work within a complex and sensitive setting and follow laws and security protocols.
• The most successful Mercy Corps team members have a strong commitment to teamwork and accountability, thrive in evolving and changing environments and make effective written and verbal communication a priority in all situations.

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 IASCand have signed on to the Interagency Misconduct Disclosure Scheme. 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 e-learning courses upon hire and on an annual basis.

Application Closing Date
13th October, 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.
• Please note that application review will be on a rolling basis.