If you are a committed, creative professional and are passionate about making a lasting difference for children, the world’s leading children’s rights organization would like to hear from you.
For 70 years, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has been working on the ground in 190 countries and territories to promote children’s survival, protection and development. The world’s largest provider of vaccines for developing countries, UNICEF supports child health and nutrition, good water and sanitation, quality basic education for all boys and girls, and the protection of children from violence, exploitation, and AIDS. UNICEF is funded entirely by the voluntary contributions of individuals, businesses, foundations and governments.
Purpose of the Position
Within the context of UNICEF Accra, Ghana’s country office (CO), the incumbent of the post will ensure that the CO has useful, valid and reliable information on:
- the situation of children’s and women’s rights;
- the performance of UNICEF-supported programmes including their relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, and sustainability, and in emergency contexts, their coverage, coordination and coherence.
The incumbent of the post will lead UNICEF Ghana’s M&E unit and work with the UN country team to support UNCT goals for delivering valid and reliable information on the attainment of the MDGs and other goals, and on the performance of UN-supported programmes. The incumbent of the post will also assist with the establishment of monitoring and evaluation tools which enhance partnership between the UNCT, government and other key players to collectively track progress on MDGs and other international commitment for children. The incumbent will also assist with the development of national capacities for monitoring, evaluation and research, with special attention to the interest, concern and participation of government, community, and civil society stakeholders.
Key Accountabilities, Duties, & Tasks
- Integrated Monitoring, Evaluation, & Research
Ensure that the Country Office and national partners use a well-prioritised and realistic plan of research, monitoring and evaluation activities that will provide the most relevant and strategic information to manage the Country Programme, including tracking and assessing UNICEF’s distinct contribution.
- Make professional contributions to and provide technical assistance for the planning and establishing the major research, monitoring and evaluation objectives, priorities, and activities in UNICEF’s multi-year and annual IMEPs, in consultation with child-rights and implementing partners.
- Likewise, support the development of UNDAF M&E Plans from a sound results-based programming process.
- Identify the M&E objectives, priorities, and activities required for effective CO and partner Emergency Preparedness and Response Plans.
- In humanitarian response situations, within the first month, draft and recommend a simple one-month data-collection plan to cover key data gaps as required for the initial emergency response, working in close collaboration with the humanitarian clusters partners.
- After the initial humanitarian response, support management of the medium-term response with a revised IMEP
- Situation Monitoring and Assessment
Ensure that the Country Office and national partners have timely and accurate measurement of change in conditions in the country or region, including monitoring of socio-economic trends and the country’s wider policy, economic or institutional context, to facilitate planning and to draw conclusions about the impact of programmes or policies.
- In coordination with other stakeholders, support the collection of Millennium Development Goal (MDG) and other key social development indicators (through MICS or other surveys) to improve national planning.
- Support partners in the establishment and management of national statistical databases (e.g., DevInfo), ensuring that key indicators are readily accessible by key stakeholders. Potential uses include the Situation Analysis, Common Country Assessment, Early Warning Monitoring Systems, and Mid-Term Reviews.
- Develop a collectively Situation Monitoring and Assessment system owned by all key partners which supports the preparation of country level statistical and analytic reports on the status of children’s and women’s rights issues; and which allow, when opportunities emerge to influence developmental and social policies. To include technical support to global reporting obligations including national reports on progress toward the MDGs, and toward CRC and CEDAW fulfilment.
- In humanitarian response situations, provide professional support for one or more rapid assessments (inter-agency or independently if necessary) to be carried out within the first 48-72 hours, working in close collaboration with the humanitarian partners.
- Programme Performance Monitoring
Ensure that the Country Office has quality information to assess progress towards expected results established in annual work plans.
- Provide technical support to ensure that a set of programme performance indicators are identified and adjusted as necessary, with inputs of all concerned partners in the context of the multi-year and annual IMEPs, the Annual Management Plan and Annual Work Plans, as outlined in the Programme Policy and Procedures Manual).
- Coordinate with partners to ensure that monitoring systems are properly designed, and that data collection and analysis from field visits are coordinated and standardised across programmes to feed into to programme performance monitoring, with special attention to humanitarian response.
- Drawing on monitoring and analysis of key program performance and management indicators, provide professional input to management reports, including relevant sections of the annual reports.
- Evaluation
Ensure that UNICEF-supported evaluations are designed and implemented to established UN quality standards, and the results are disseminated in a timely fashion to stakeholders in order to improve programme performance and contribute to wider learning.
- Technically support programme partners to formulate Terms of Reference and evaluation designs of high quality, when relevant drawing on the know-how of knowledge institutions, in compliance with the organization’s programme evaluation policies and guidelines.
- Monitor and ensure the quality of the field work and data management during the implementation phase, and the quality of the analysis and ease of understanding during the report writing phase.
- Disseminate evaluation findings and recommendations to the intended audiences in user-friendly methods. In particular, to ensure that effective participatory feedback is provided to community and civil society stakeholders.
- Monitor and ensure that a management response to the findings and recommendations of the evaluation is completed, recorded, and followed up for implementation.
- Most specifically, ensure that evaluation recommendations are submitted to the Country Management Team and follow-up actions recorded in CMT minutes. Submit electronic copies of all evaluations to NYHQ via the Evaluation Data Base web portal, with full accompanying documentation.
- Monitoring & Evaluation Capacity Building
Ensure that the monitoring and evaluation capacities of Country Office staff and national partners government and civil society – are strengthened enabling them to increasingly engage in and lead monitoring and evaluation processes.
- Promote awareness and understanding of the shared responsibility of M& E function among all staff members through communication, training, learning and development activities organization-wide.
- In close collaboration with partners, ensure that an M&E capacity building strategy for UNICEF/UN staff national partners and institutions exists in the context of the IMEP, or UNDAF M&E plan. Pay particular attention so the capacity needs of national partners such as professional evaluation associations will be strengthened by involvement in evaluation processes and possibly through specific capacity building initiatives.
- Collaborate to implement capacity building strategies as a joint commitment with other developmental partners. Utilize a range of appropriate skills building strategies including self-learning, seminars and workshops and practical experience in order that UNICEF and UN staff have the basic knowledge and skills in understanding and applying new M&E policies, tools, and methods to fulfil their responsibilities. Similarly, design and implement strategies suited to the skills needs of national partners.
- Actively seek partnerships with knowledge institutions for the identification of capacity gaps and development of strategies to address them.
- Coordination and Networking
Ensure that the UNICEF office is effectively linked to wider UNICEF M&E developments in a way that both contributes to and benefits from organizational learning on effective M&E management.
- Collaborate with Regional M&E Advisers and HQ Evaluation Office for overall coordination of priority research, monitoring and evaluation activities, especially those of regional scope requiring the coordinated effort of multiple countries.
- Partner with the Regional Monitoring and Evaluation Adviser to ensure that current and accurate M&E data and results are included in regional reports, multi-country studies, and knowledge sharing networks.
- Undertake lessons-learned reviews on successful and unsuccessful M&E practices and experience at the national level, and ensure they are shared as appropriate. Similarly, pay attention to M&E knowledge networks to identify innovations and lessons learned that may be relevant for the CO and partners to improve their M&E function.
Qualifications of Successful Candidate
- An advanced university degree (Master’s) in Social Sciences, Demography, Development, Planning, Monitoring, Evaluation, Statistics or related field(s) is required.*
- A minimum of five (5) years of relevant experience in designing, managing and leading, programme monitoring and evaluation is required.
- Previous knowledge and experience in data analysis and dissemination, evaluation design and quality assurance, supporting national M&E systems, and use of quantitative/qualitative/mixed methods is highly desirable.
- Familiarity of emerging international good practice in M&E partnerships is desirable.
- Knowledge of UNICEF strategic framework for partnerships and collaborative relationships is desirable.
- Previous work experience in an emergency duty station and/or humanitarian context is considered an asset.
- Fluency in English (written & verbal) is required. Knowledge of an additional UN Language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian, Spanish) is considered an asset.
Competencies of Successful Candidate
Core Values
- Commitment
- Diversity and Inclusion
- Integrity
Core competencies
- Communication (Level 2)
- Working with People (Level 2)
- Drive for Result (Level 2)
Functional Competencies
- Leading and Supervising (Level 2)
- Formulating Strategies and Concepts (Level 2)
- Analyzing (Level 2)
- Applying Technical Expertise (Level 2)
- Planning and Organizing (Level 3)
Advertised: Jan 06 2017 GMT Standard Time
Application close: Jan 30 2017 GMT Standard Time
More Information
- Job City Accra
