MEAL Coordinator at International Rescue Committee (IRC)

International Rescue Committee (IRC)Borno, Nigeria Data and Artificial Intelligence

Full Time

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) is a global humanitarian aid, relief and development nongovernmental organization. Founded in 1933 at the request of Albert Einstein, the IRC offers emergency aid and long-term assistance to refugees and those displaced by war, persecution or natural disaster. The IRC is currently working in over 40 countries and 22 U.S. cities where it resettles refugees and helps them become self-sufficient. Composed of first responders, humanitarian relief workers, international development experts, health care providers, and educators, the IRC has assisted millions of people around the world since its founding in 1933.

About the Role

This an implementation specific strategic role in IRC Nigeria that works closely with the Senior MEAL Coordinator, Program teams, Senior MEAL Managers, and country support program teams to improve program quality, providing technical leadership, coordination and strategic support to program design, planning, monitoring, evaluation, accountability, learning and partnership commitments in line with Strategy 100 impact goal and data ambition. Core responsibilities includes ensuring IRC Nigeria and its partners has a strong MEAL system in place, implemented as intended and reported to support program technical coordinators, managers and implementing partners to deliver desired outcomes and impacts. The position is open to nationals of Nigeria.

Reporting Arrangements: The MEAL Coordinator reports directly to Senior MEAL coordinator The role will also have close working relationship with technical coordinators, Technical Adviser’s, and grants management and partnership team.

Support to Sound MEAL System Design, Development and Promotion

Lead in creating a holistic MEAL system across area offices.
Champion design, access, and use of data by leaders and partners for shared learning and evidence-based decision-making.
Establish and drive common strategies and approaches to the country’s Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability, and Learning processes,
Shape and implement MEAL systems and approaches that meet IRC standards and practices, that meet project and program needs, enable accountability to clients, partners, and donors, and foster program learning.
Support the creation of measurable program quality benchmarks, tracking tools and dashboards.
Work with country leadership and program team to promote a program quality culture and evidence-based decision making in programming within IRC and its partners.
Support and actively participate in program design and development.
Ensure that MEAL resources are included in proposal development and work creatively to secure funding from diverse sources, to ensure that MEAL is integrated in emergency and development programmed in a sustainable way.
Responsible for effectively management and utilization of overall MEAL budgets and plans.
Technically support IRC Nigeria to meet impact goal and data ambition set out in Strategic Action Plan (SAP 2022 - 2024 and IRC’s global Measurement and Client Responsiveness Units’ standards and practices for improving monitoring practice and use of data within the organization.
Technical oversight for development of rigorous MEAL systems and processes and ensure periodic and systematic learning in informing program design and adaptation for IRC and partners.

Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning Technical oversight.

Support technical MEAL leadership to IRCs effort in meeting its internal and external accountability commitments through the implementation of sound accountability, client feedback and response mechanisms.
Support Senior MEAL Managers inn developing and operationalizing logical frameworks, MEAL plans, data collection tools, processes for data management, clients feedback approaches, quality checks and audits, and data visualization.
Produce high-quality data, analysis, reports, presentations, and dashboard of key findings that foster learning and decision-making and share in key meetings such as project cycle meetings and strategic senior management team meetings.
Provide technical oversight and coordination and support for surveys, assessments, and other discrete learning activities, and building related staff and partners competencies through
Provide supports to technical leads and technical coordinators to develop the TORs for needs assessments and surveys.
Provide support to technical leads and support staff to develop detailed work plans and budgets for needs assessment and survey activities.
Lead in conducting context analysis, market monitoring, protection monitoring, health surveillance assessments.
Support the expansion of digital platforms and use of online dashboards to enhance timeless and quality data collection, analysis, and visualization.
Provide information support in program coordination meeting on progress against activities and budget.
Ensure all projects implement standards client responsiveness activities across the country office.
support project teams on project management work occurring in and around these meetings as it relates to MEAL. Specifically, key responsibilities here (largely in line with current MEAL responsibilities) include:
Joining meetings as directed in the Project Cycle Meetings Guidance – participates in every PDM, POM, PIM, and PCM.
Supporting project teams on key MEAL-related tasks – specifically, MEAL staff in Project Cycle Meetings will support MEAL plan development as well as data collection and interpretation.
Providing MEAL inputs into decisions across all areas of project management
Lead and support in development and implementation of country knowledge and learnings agenda.
Acting as an enabler by supporting program coordinators to achieve desired outcomes/impact while learning from evidence.
Assist in conducting and documenting end of project learning reviews, and sharing lessons learned and best practices, incorporating these into new project designs.
Assist in identifying, documenting, storing, and sharing lessons learned that have implications for refinement of best programmatic practice.

Strengthen program designs, outcome harvesting and planning

Provide support, guidance, and work closely with technical leads, grants teams and partners to ensure that project design in proposals is logically sound, beneficiary focused and contextually appropriate, based on learning from previous projects and technical best practice, and includes a Theory of Change and SMART log frame (with IRC core indicators and enabling assessment of project progress, quality, outcomes, and if relevant impact).
Support technicals leads in ensuring that detailed and feasible project specific monitoring plans are developed that: i) provide an indicator matrix, ii) map MEAL roles and responsibilities of project and support staff, iii) consider ethical and safe collection and storage of data, iv) consider data quality audits, v) consider storing, protecting, and sharing project documents, and vi) consider the end of project learning review.
Support and guide technical leads to determine which monitoring activities will take place and which data collection methods will be used to ensure their adequacy and appropriateness.
Work with technical leads and SPCs to ensure that monitoring activities are adequately resourced, with sufficient project and support staff and adequate budget.
Support and guide technical leads and support staff to ensure that the project work plan includes monitoring activities (or that a stand-alone monitoring work plan is in place), is up-to date and progress tracked.
Supports technical leads and support staff to develop, translate, pilot, and finalize data collection tools as needed.
Provide support to technical leads and support staff to establish project/program MEAL data collection tools, databases and dashboards that optimize the use of IRC Measurement Technologies and align fully to IRC Nigeria, regional and global expectations.
Work with technical leads and support staff to ensure that data is collected, entered, and cleaned in databases, and reviewed in tracking sheets and dashboards on a regular basis, alongside routine Data Quality Audits.
Responsible for providing consistent, supportive supervision to strengthen staff performance as necessary to meet monitoring objectives and ensure data quality.
Responsible for conducting and coordinating data quality audits of projects and programs to identify and resolve systemic problems affecting data quality and documenting and storing findings in project files on Box.
Assist in conducting regular analysis and action planning meetings to (1) compare data against project milestones, targets, and quality expectations across project sites; (2) identify issues requiring further attention; (3) define action needed and assign responsibility and deadlines,
Work with technical leads and support staff to provide MEAL inputs for reports written during project implementation.
Work with technical leads and support staff to share reports written during project implementation with donors and other stakeholders and upload them to project files.
Provide accountability for the storage of documents and data in alignment with IRC regional and global protocol.

Internal and External Reporting

Support in ensuring that IRC delivers all MEAL reporting requirements in a timely manner.
Track all external reporting requirements ensuring that MEAL data and information sections are updated on time.
Ensure analysis to illustrate IRCs impact and assessment findings are produced, including evidence of good practice and replicable programmes, and that they are communicated at appropriate events.
Receive and analyze CFM reports ensuring that action plans are included and followed up and that ESMT reviews reports regularly.
Provide response to both internal and external MEAL specific requests ensuring internal policies and communication procedures are adhered to.

Partnership, Internal Staff Management, Mentorship, and Development

Responsible for providing consistent, supportive supervision as necessary to meet monitoring objectives and ensure data quality.
Support the partner and internal MEAL Managers and technical Managers teams to track progress on action points related to implementation and MEAL activities.
Support in recruitment, onboarding, performance management and development of MEAL staffing assigned to the department.
Manage partner and internal MEAL Managers, ensuring that workplans and deliverables are clearly documented.
Manage the MEAL team to ensure that the MEAL system operates effectively with the support and resources required and that there are clear links and reporting lines between field and country MEAL teams.
At the organizational level, devise and manage a partner and internal MEAL training programme with the goal of increasing capacity and awareness on MEAL.
Support in assessing and bridging of critical training needs of partner and internal MEAL team.

Qualifications

Minimum four (7) years of national MEAL technical leadership experience within the development or humanitarian technical, at least 4 of which are at management level. Experience with humanitarian emergency response is a plus
Leadership experience and proven technical skills in setting up quality M&E/MEAL system that leads to evidence-based decision-making for multi-technicalial and multi-donor funded programs.
Demonstrated ability to transfer knowledge to diverse audiences through training, mentoring, and other formal and non-formal methods together with strong presentation and reporting skills?
Strong management and social skills and proven track record to work with diverse groups of people in a multicultural environment.
Self-motivated with excellent organization, planning, and analytical skills - able to work without close supervision, including prioritizing work and multi-tasking.
Proficiency and experience with mobile data collection such as Kobo, CommCare, ODK Collect are crucial as well as proficiency with Microsoft Excel, SPSS, SATA or other similar software.
Knowledge of Tableau, PowerBi or GIS software are additional assets.
A strong understanding of accountability and proven ability to build Client Feedback Systems is a distinct advantage.
Proven technical skills in monitoring and evaluation, including experience with multi-technicalial and multi-donor funded programs and experience with qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis.
Proven abilities in developing monitoring plans, data collection, information management, use of databases, and analysis and performance monitoring, inclusive for implementing partners.
Demonstrated ability to train and build capacity of staff, implementing partners and others.
Comprehensive knowledge of humanitarian accountability principles and their translation into practice.
Strong planning, organizational and interpersonal skills.
Excellent analytical, presentation, and reporting skills?
Proven ability to work creatively, innovatively, and effectively with limited direct supervision and taking initiatives.
Strong commitment to IRC’s mission, purpose, and values

Education: A masters University degree in a relevant subject area is required (statistics, monitoring & data management, social science, public health, economic development, or a related field) – a technical degree together with additional relevant work experience may substitute for education