Job Title: Senior Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) Officer
Hiring Organization: Mercy Corps
Location – Locality: Nairobi
Location – Region: Kenya
Industry: NGO
Job Type: Full Time
Salary: KES
Date Posted: 06/03/2024
About Mercy Corps
Mercy Corps is powered by the belief that a better world is possible. To do this, we know our teams do their best work when they are diverse, and every team member feels that they belong. We welcome diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and skills so that we can be stronger and have long term impact.
About Energy 4 Impact
Energy 4 Impact is a Platform within Mercy Corps that seeks to reduce poverty in Sub Saharan Africa by accelerating access to clean energy, helping businesses and communities make better use of that expanded access, and working with the private sector to support the sustainability of these efforts.
Energy 4 Impact values access to energy not as an end in itself but for the difference it makes to people’s lives every day, in terms of agricultural development, economic growth, humanitarian recovery and climate resilience, and all strategic outcome-level goals of Mercy Corps’ Pathway to Possibility.
Energy 4 Impact supports the development and growth of privately owned SMEs, and micro businesses, which deliver renewable energy products and services to the poor in rural and urban settings. We advise energy access SMEs on commercial, financial and engineering matters and help them secure the resources they need to grow. We run pilots to test new products, business models and expand into new markets.
E4I exists because of our concerns for global inequality and climate change – this is the core of what drives us. We aim to be a caring, compassionate organization respectful of difference, and to treat our staff fairly and to help them develop as professionals and as people.
Position Summary
The Senior MEL Officer will lead on MEL for a number of programs, supporting the MEL Manager to ensure quality, credible, and transparent MEL across their programming, including adherence to the Mercy Corps MEL minimum standards. They will have excellent experience and skills in all aspects of MEL: data collection, analysis, visualisation, and reporting, and will excel at communicating MEL outputs to programme and unit managers for the purposes of data-driven decision-making. They will direct MEL activities of partners, ensuring quality and timely delivery of data and other deliverables.
Essential Responsibilities
MEL roles:
- Lead on the designing, developing, and implementing MEL systems, including development of MEL plans, frameworks, processes, and data collection tools for all the programs and projects in the organization.
- Lead on to the design MEL plans and systems, identify key performance parameters for new programs and projects and ensure the effective use by staff, partners, and stakeholders as necessary.
- Work with program managers to define MEL plans, theories of change, log frames, targets, implement donor’s requirements, create long term plans, contribute to program budgeting process, etc.
- Lead on the development of appropriate monitoring, tracking, and reporting systems, tools and templates that enhance the monitoring of project outputs, generate quality evidence on project impact and promote and ensure use of data for decision-making processes.
- Support field officers and other staff to use standard indicators, tools, and forms (as appropriate) and integrate good MEL practices across projects.
- Undertake regular reviews of programs and the development of necessary recommendations for program delivery.
- Undertake field visits to provide support for proper application of MEL frameworks and tools.
- Support in recruitment, training and capacity building of external enumerators and project implementation partners where required.
- Oversee and provide quality control to local partners, where partners are implementing MEL activities on our behalf. This includes the development of all MEL documents, tools, and deliverables; site visits for the purposes of in person support and quality control; and working with the partner and E4I program team to address challenges that arise during implementation.
- Develop research tools for conducting both qualitative and quantitative surveys and develop training for the use of such tools.
- Support Program Managers in the formulation of baseline measures, targets, and results, during project implementation.
- Work closely with the business development and communication departments in developing and disseminating program results, best practices, and success stories.
- Review the quality of existing social and economic data in the project areas, methods of collecting it and the degree to which it will provide robust data for results-based evaluation.
- Report MEL updates and performance across the programs.
- Keep abreast of the latest industry developments in MEL and network with other organizations for best practices and technical assistance, including representing the Mercy Corps & Energy 4 Impact at MEL-related conferences and events.
Data Analysis And Database Management Roles:
- Support the Data Analyst on the design and maintain databases that improves E4I’s ability to inform program implementation, analyse data, identify trends, and present impact to key stakeholders.
- Ensure all relevant program staff are able to utilise the database to analyse program information and results. Develop the necessary tools for the field team to feed in data to the database in a way that minimizes entry errors.
- Review data being collected in order to locate and fix problems with data entry or integrity and manage regular synchronizations with field level data.
- Support the management of project databases to facilitate timely information updates, data quality assurance, sharing of information, learning, and data use for decision-making.
- Support the preparation of data reports (tables, charts, narratives, visuals) at regular intervals and ad hoc as needed to respond to requests for information, inputs to project work plans and semi-annual reports, and other internal and external data analysis and reporting requirements.
- Conduct continuous data analysis of enterprise/business performance from program data and produce cross-sectional reports reflecting different growth variables including but not limited to sales, employments, profitability etc.
- Provide analytical expertise with regards to identifying and confirming patterns and trends in data, understanding the economics of supporting different types of business, cost per unit of result, etc.
- Provide indicator performance visualizations and support in narrative report writing and dissemination as required.