Director of Monitoring, Evaluation, Adaptation, and Learning (MEAL) 211 views1 applications

About the role

Crown Agents has been working in South Sudan for a decade, providing high quality healthcare to over 10 million people in 55 counties across 8 states. We support work in 804 health facilities, representing 75% of the total health facility infrastructure in South Sudan.

GASWASH (Gender Aware Sustainable Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Activity) is an anticipated five-year USAID-funded contract that aims to expand gender-transformative sustainable access to basic safe drinking water, basic sanitation coverage, and increase uptake of key hygiene behaviors to improve health and household resilience in accordance with USAID/South Sudan’s Strategic Framework.

Contingent upon donor funding and based in Juba, the Director of Monitoring, Evaluation, Adaptation and Learning (MEAL) will collaborate with the senior leadership team to deliver the program’s expected results. The MEAL Director will oversee all aspects of MEAL efforts for the program and will manage a team of MEL-focused staff members that consist ofboth prime and subcontractor personnel. S/he will lead project monitoring, evaluation and operational and action research efforts, which will include spearheading and being accountable for the development of the Monitoring Evaluation and Learning plan and its implementation, a project deliverable. The Director of MEAL will define the program indicators and design the systems and data collection methods required to monitor indicators and the program’s progress toward USAID-approved targets. The Director of MEAL will work with the senior management team and will contribute to and support processes for incorporating learning into the program’s strategic design and adaptive approach to implementation.

S/he will lead data collection and reporting to meet USAID requirements, which will include leading and collaborating on baseline, mid-term and end-line evaluations and rolling assessments. S/he will be responsible for supporting the program to continually improve implementation based on MEAL findings, playing a key role in supporting program knowledge management and documentation and dissemination of lessons learned/best practices. The MEAL Director will organize, convene, and lead rolling assessments. The rolling assessments are expected to bring together USAID and GASWASH personnel, host government (central, state, and county-level) representatives, and representatives of communities and/or facilities benefitting from/targeted by GASWASH interventions.

S/he will be responsible for providing high quality training and capacity building support for staff and partners on data collection, data quality assurance, reporting and evidence-based decision making to drive the adaptive program implementation approach. S/he will be responsible for strategic leadership for the design and operationalization of collaboration, learning and adaption (CLA) practices. S/he will also support the Chief of Party (COP) in developing MEAL sections of the quarterly, annual and ad hoc reports and will contribute substantially to the annual planning process as it relates to MEAL and learning goals, targets and activities.

About you

Qualification and Experience Required:

• Undergraduate university degree in international development, management, or a related field;
• Master’s degree and/or advanced training in research methods for program/project monitoring, evaluation, and learning in fragile contexts highly preferred;
• Minimum 7 years of progressively responsible and relevant experience in monitoring and evaluation of conflict-sensitive activities, preferably on USAID-funded and/or WASH programs with construction, gender and SBCC elements (valued between $20-50MM);
• Minimum 2 years of experience supervising and managing both short- and long-term expatriate and host country national staff in complex, high-speed and challenging programs;
• Deep understanding of MEAL systems design, performance measurement, indicator development, including the writing of program indicator reference sheets, and USAID data quality assurance standards;
• Demonstrated experience with quantitative and qualitative research methods, operations and action research, health and/or water management information systems, reporting, data quality assessments, data analysis and/or presentation;
• Extensive experience in data processing and data management (from data capturing to data analysis for decision making). This should include in-depth knowledge in the use of database management software (e.g. MS Access, SQL-Server and/or other), SQL, MS Excel, and data analysis software (e.g. STATA, SPSS, EPI Info and/or other).
• Experience in the design of mobile device-based and web-based platforms for data collection and systems will be considered an asset;
• Experience using remote management, leveraging mobile technology to collect geocoded data, which feeds into a web-based platform in security-challenged environments;
• Experience designing and employing monitoring, evaluation, and learning approaches in fragile operating contexts which allow for adaptive and flexible program implementation.
• Experience using scenario-planning and quarterly regular rolling assessments to take stock of the national, state, and county program context and operating environment; assess what’s working and what’s not programmatically and/or operationally; and adapt the program implementation and/or operational approach to continually improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the program implementation;

About us

You’ll be working with Crown Agents which is a high impact social enterprise passionate about transforming the future for millions of people. Since our creation in 1833 we have worked across the globe to improve public services and drive economic growth. Our expertise is finding new solutions to difficult problems for clients in the areas of health, governance, economic growth, humanitarian action and supply chain services. We work with and train leaders at local, national and international level to achieve lasting change drawing on our insight and experience.

About what’s on offer

Crown Agents offers a competitive benefits package.