Regional MEAL and Impact Senior Manager, Southern Africa 231 views0 applications

*Preferred Location: Joahannesburg, South Africa. Position location to be within South Africa where WVI is registered to operate.

PURPOSE OF POSITION:

The purpose of this position is to provide leadership, management and coordination of the Southern Africa region in measuring and communicating impact at scale. This will be achieved through leadership in the programme design, monitoring, evaluation, accountability, learning (DMEAL) and impact functions. This position will also provide technical advice, guidance, and support in design, monitoring, evaluation, accountability, learning and impact reporting. This will support a wide range of program design and implementation issues in line with World Vision’s program quality principles and standards, donor guidelines, and industry best practices to regional and field office teams to advance the delivery of high-quality programming to the poor and vulnerable communities in Southern Africa.

The incumbent will work with field offices to ensure effective design, monitoring, evaluation accountability and learning excellence in Strategy and Programming. The Regional MEAL and Impact Senior Manager will be responsible for ensuring design, monitoring and evaluation (DME) capability among field offices and strengthen MEAL and impact reporting competencies of staff enabling them to learn and grow in areas such as program design, monitoring, evaluation, accountability, learning and impact reporting.

This position will work with field offices (FOs) to assess program quality gaps, and develop and monitor joint strategic plans to drive improved program quality. This will include developing systems and approaches to enhance the use of program data for adaptive management, decision-making and impact reporting.

In addition to direct field office technical assistance, this position is critical in advancing a regional evidence agenda, including regional-level external-focused publications based on field office data, to drive regional influence, impact, and income goals. The incumbent will provide applied research technical support and oversight of data collection, analysis, and presentation processes to ensure sound publications.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:

MEAL Leadership in Strategy Alignment and Implementation:

• Contribute to regional and field office (FO) strategy alignment and provide expert leadership for MEAL strategic approaches.
• Collate and share with regional senior management team (SMT) strategic, concise and timely results on all NO programme baselines, semi-annual and annual programme outputs and inputs, evaluations, Impact analysis and programme implementation quality review.
• Provide MEAL technical support to national offices during strategy monitoring and evaluation.
• Represent regional World Vision MEAL priorities and knowledge in strategic internal and external knowledge sharing and decision-making forums.

MEAL Technical Leadership:

• Contribute to the development and implementation of organization-wide strategies, standards, tools, and best practices in program quality (especially MEAL) that effectively engage partners, donors and governments. Help ensure a cross-sectoral approach integrating gender, faith and development, advocacy, protection, and social cohesion into programming.
• Provide MEAL-related technical solutions to regional and field office teams, remotely and on-site, for strategic planning and how to best apply program design and implementation standards, best practices, partnership principles, tools, and M&E, ensuring high-quality implementation.
• Contribute to regional and field office efforts to pre-position WV for growth opportunities in grants. Advise project teams on integrating donor MEAL strategies, priorities and technical requirements into WV’s approach and provide technical input into large grant opportunities as requested. Equip proposal teams to ensure sound program logic into design processes.
• Guide field office teams in the development of program MEAL systems that meet donor requirements and adhere to World Vision’s M&E policies, procedures, and practices. Contribute to the customization and design of digital forms for data collection and the design of approaches for data visualization that facilitate use of data and quality reporting. Contribute to or lead the periodic review of MEAL systems, particularly for large and complex programs. Advise field offices on the programming related aspects of Horizon.
• Support field offices with the quality implementation of and compliance to MEAL policies and procedures and other agency-level MEAL initiatives. Ensure required regional MEAL reviews meet WV’s MEAL policy standards and guidelines including reviews of technical programs/Community Engagement and Sponsorship Plan (CESP) designs, baselines/evaluations, and monitoring systems – including field office training and advising as required.
• Orchestrate technical assistance for FO priorities – including orienting Technical Services Organization (TSO) technical specialists to FO context and coordinating TSO services to support specific DME products.

Knowledge Management & Learning:

• Provide leadership in key monitoring and evaluation (M&E) thematic areas for the region particularly in areas that still requires a strong strategic approach.
• Develop and monitor program quality improvement plans with field offices, aligned to priority areas for improvement based on assessment results as aligned to WV program quality standards and practices.
• Promote learning and innovation in MEAL across the region and strengthen and streamline region wide utilization of knowledge assets to achieve our ministry objectives.

Impact Reporting, Research & Innovation:

• Lead applied research approaches in alignment with a regional evidence agenda – including instrument development/adaptation; data collection, data analysis; and presentation across multiple field office datasets for regional thematic reports and regional child well-being report.
• Lead knowledge management and learning through collecting and analyzing program data across field offices in the region; assisting with measuring program impact, capturing and sharing lessons learned and best practices, and research and internal reports.

M&E Leadership & Capacity Building:

• Establish and maintain relationships with donors, peer organizations, research and other institutions.
• Participate in MEAL forums to collect and share best practices and promote WV’s work.
• Lead regional capacity strengthening initiatives in MEAL for staff through helping develop learning and training strategies and agendas/curriculum, conducting trainings and workshops, and mentoring and coaching to field office staff. Lead the MEAL community of practice and foster MEAL sharing and learning amongst the broader program leadership community in the region.

KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS & ABILITIES:

Required:

• The incumbent will bring to this role a combination of MEAL experience, Impact reporting as well as expertise in design and capability development that help build/enhance the required DME and impact competencies.
• Advanced/graduate degree with an additional post-graduate in a relevant field, potentially including public health, development, M&E, statistics, or a related discipline.
• Demonstrated expertise in development of user friendly tools and resources for MEAL and utilization of learning platforms for helping others learn.
• Qualitative and/or quantitative research and evaluation skills, including but not limited to study design, survey instrument design and use, establishing and measuring outcome and process indicators, sampling, data analysis plans, data cleaning, and statistical analysis.
• Experience and competencies data analysis using appropriate software tools (e.g. SPSS, SAS,ABTAB).
• Good technical/ impact report writing skills.
• 10+ years of experience in monitoring and evaluation at a senior level (large program, national or regional level.
• Practical field experience in monitoring and evaluation.
• Proven ability to facilitate working groups, communities of practice or other similar learning mechanisms both face to face and virtually.
• Proven ability to collaborate with all levels of staff and to motivate and mobilize individuals outside their reporting line to achieve agreed strategic plans.
• Knowledge of the monitoring and evaluation requirements of key institutional donors (USAID, DFAT, WFP, etc.)
• Consistently demonstrates high-level influence and strategic engagement skills and tactical savvy in delivery of technical assistance.
• Comfort and confidence working in a diverse and inclusive team environment.
• Demonstrated ability to report, present and communicate results, written and verbal in modern standard, grammatically correct English.

Work Environment:

• The position requires ability and willingness to travel domestically and internationally up to 40% of the time.