Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Manager, Goma, DRC

GENERAL POSITION SUMMARY:
Mercy Corps has been operating in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) since August 2007, with a staff of around 200 people working in North and South Kivu. Mercy Corps' national office is in Goma with sub-field offices in Mweso (North Kivu) and Bukavu (South Kivu). Current Mercy Corps activities focus on the provision of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) services in camps of internally displaced people, but also large-scale WASH infrastructure and service delivery development in urban centers. Mercy Corps also has Food Security, Economic Recovery/Development and Governance programs, with an increasing shift towards transitional and integrated development programming. The DRC team has a strong commitment to providing entrepreneurial and innovative solutions to development challenges, and is actively seeking and facilitating market-based solutions.

The country-level Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) Manager is a key position for Mercy Corps DRC, responsible for providing oversight of country and program level MEL staff, ensuring the quality of the portfolio's monitoring and evaluation, information management, and geographic information systems (GIS). The MEL Manager's role is to oversee and ensure coordination of these technical areas across the M&E staff and programs. The MEL Manager is also responsible for the capacity building and mentoring strategy for Mercy Corps DRC staff on themes related to monitoring, evaluation and learning. He/she will support efforts to manage and sharing information and learnings across programming, ensuring that information collected is reflected upon, used in ongoing programs and incorporated into future program design.

ESSENTIAL JOB FUNCTIONS:

Strategic Leadership

• Provides leadership to offices and programs in all aspects of M&E and information management.
• Ensures programs use the necessary MEL 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.
• As a strategic leader, actively participate in management meetings and country-wide strategy sessions.
• Assist in the recruitment of skilled M&E program staff and organize the program teams to perform M&E activities.
• Active contributor and collaborator with regional/global counterparts to promote the use of M&E and ICT best practices.

Design

• Advise logical framework and M&E plan development for proposal development, and work with proposal writing teams to ensure that new program logic aligns with the country strategy as well as the global Mercy Corps M&E guidelines, including the Design for Impact Guide.
• Oversee the conduct of assessments in support of the design of new projects/programmes.
• Provide leadership in designing individual program-level logical frameworks and M&E systems that inform and improve each program, as well as provide feedback into the country-level log frame and strategy to ensure adherence to Mercy Corps' standards, including the use of standardized indicators and documentation methodologies.

MEL System Development

• Lead the set-up/implementation of a holistic MEL system that uses open source software and flexible cloud solutions to more accurately collect, monitor, verify and document program activities.
• Collaborate closely with Program Directors/Managers and M&E staff in developing and establishing M&E systems that serve the needs of the Mercy Corps DRC portfolio of programming
• Lead on the development and/or roll-out of mobile data collection and data management tools, including TOLA.
• Identify and address shortfalls in monitoring, evaluation and information management that impact quality and affect program implementation.
• Support the development of M&E Plans, M&E tools, survey design, methodology, data analysis, and other services as may be required for program monitoring and evaluation.
• Ensure that monitoring systems meet the requirements of the donor and that performance results can be used for continuous improvement.
• Coordinate with Mercy Corps' HQ-based Technical Support Unit (TSU) to guide process of ex-ante, ex-post and midterm evaluation, from the design, implementation and documentation phases.
• Coordinate internal and external reviews and support/lead the analysis of findings, with a strong emphasis on learning.
• Identify, elaborate plans for, and lead opportunities for research initiatives and impact evaluations.

Management and Technical Oversight

• Manage country and program-level M&E staff to ensure that appropriate and timely technical support in monitoring, evaluation, program design, learning, accountability, quality assurance, and information management is given to the program teams.
• Serve as a resource for program staff, advising them on activity design, gathering of baseline data, evidence-based programming, developing and implementing M&E plans, and impact assessment.
• Develops high-impact data visualization applications to facilitate analysis and organizational learning.
• Coordinates high-level reporting on country-level indicators such as beneficiary numbers, design for impact indicators, cluster data and other information as needed.

Team Capacity Building

• Develops and oversees 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.
• Provides training and mentoring in the development of M&E plans, M&E tools as well as survey design, methodology, data collection and analysis and other skills as required for assessing the impact of programs.
• Work closely with Program Managers and Human Resources to ensure that M&E and ICT skills are incorporated in program position descriptions.
• Contributes to the knowledge management repository with best practices in M&E and ICT and ensure that it is accessible to all staff and partners.

Quality

• Work closely and coordinate with Mercy Corps DRC's community accountability and reporting mechanism.
• Conduct quality checks and field visits to program activities, providing feedback and recommendations to relevant parties.
• Ensure global standards for quality program monitoring and evaluation are followed and adopted by program teams.

Representation

• Represent Mercy Corps DRC in meetings and discussions on M&E and reporting issues with donors and partners.
• Ensure close coordination with the Implementing partners on M&E system development, ongoing monitoring, formative research and planning for midterm and final evaluations.

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 towards 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: Program-level M&E Managers/Officers, Assessment Coordinator, Learning Intern/Officer, or other country-level MEL staff.

ACCOUNTABILITY:

REPORTS DIRECTLY TO: Deputy Country Director of Programs

WORKS DIRECTLY WITH: Program Directors/COPs, Program Managers and their M&E teams within Mercy Corps and consortium partners, Program Advisors and support team

KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE:

• MA/S or equivalent in social science, management, or international development preferred.
• At least 5 years' experience managing M&E operations, with a preference for field experience in rural sub-Saharan Africa.
• Experience with theoretical and practical background in research or MEL and knowledge of qualitative and quantitative methodologies and techniques required.
• Experience with community participation in mapping and other M&E processes.
• Successful experience with the adoption of mobile data collections tools like Open Data Kit and Ona including XLSForm authoring, and GIS systems.
• Knowledge of major aspects of program development, implementation and documentation and excellent verbal and written communication skills required.
• Excellent quantitative skills and experience with Excel, Access, and statistical packages including Stata, R and GIS tools like QGIS, ArcGIS, and Google Earth Engine.
• Experience working with USAID, including Title II (Food for Peace) and DFID preferred.
• Experience with and commitment to capacity building required.
• Demonstrated attention to detail, ability to follow procedures, meet deadlines and work independently and cooperatively with team members is required;
• Fluent written and oral communication in English is required; intermediate to fluent French required. Familiarity with Swahili is a plus.

SUCCESS FACTORS:

A successful candidate will have a demonstrated ability to lead a team and communicate effectively with team members and colleagues 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, and be accountable for results, understand the larger picture while remaining focused on the details, problem solving, work within a complex and sensitive setting and to 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. In DRC, patience, diplomacy, tenacity, compassion, determination and a sense of humor are all success factors.

LIVING /ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS:

This position is an accompanied position for family if residing in Gisenyi, Rwanda. Goma is a provincial capital of over 700,000 inhabitants, with travel to Bunia, Bukavu, and Kinshasa. Outside Goma, travel can be dangerous and unpredictable due to armed forces and rebel activity.

While conditions in the country are improving, and security is quite stable in Goma, there are still pockets of violence and insecurity. Mercy Corps' sub-offices experience variable levels of insecurity, with the situation closely monitored by UN peacekeepers. Air travel is necessary to get from one end of the country to the other. Mobile phones and cellular service are widely available. Internet is available in all Mercy Corps offices. Travel to field sites will be required where living conditions are clean and secure, but basic. There are a number of health services available with evacuation options for serious illnesses. There's reasonable access to most consumer goods, although they can be expensive.

Mercy Corps Team members represent the agency both during and outside of work hours when deployed in a field posting or on a visit/TDY to a field posting. Team members are expected to conduct themselves in a professional manner and respect local laws, customs and MC's policies, procedures, and values at all times and in all in-country venues.

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