Save the Children is seeking a Monitoring, Evaluation & Learning (MEL) Advisor for an anticipated five-year USAID-funded RISE II Health Services Delivery Activity program in the Centre-Nord region of Burkino Faso and the Maradi and Zinder regions of Niger. This transformational program focuses on achieving improved health, family planning and nutrition outcomes for women of reproductive age and children under five years old. Monitoring, evaluation and learning is a critical component of the project and will contribute vital information on development results, strategies and approaches to enhance individual, household, community, and institutional resilience in a dynamic environment. This position will be based in either Ougadougou, Burkino Faso or Niamey, Niger with frequent travel between countries (up to 50%).
The MEL Advisor develops, implements, and continuously improves Monitoring and Evaluation systems for all project activities. S/he incorporates best practices to ensure information collected is accurate, timely and disseminated appropriately in high quality reports. The MEL Advisor will use these findings to improve the program and achieve the objectives. She/he will also be actively involved in promoting learning through documentation of lessons learned and developing approaches for community analysis and using data for making decision.
- Provide leadership, training and mentoring to develop M&E Plans, M&E tools, survey design, methodology, and data analysis to assess program impact.
- Develop system for capturing and documenting data and relevant information on project activities, beneficiaries, outputs, outcomes, and impact. The system should use USAID’s Collaboration, Learning, and Adapting (CLA) principles to integrate real time monitoring and learning back into the project strategy and program implementation and ensure knowledge sharing with the broader RISE community.
- Design methodology and coordinate research activities for project operations and assessments.
- Develop a preliminary learning agenda that identifies a limited number of questions related to the activity theory of change.
- Effectively rollout M&E collection and reporting systems to all staff and partners through training, site visits, manuals, and other technical support as needed.
- Capture appropriate cost and financial information to track money indicators, including benchmarking information to analyze program effectiveness and cost effective inputs.
- Ensure programming alignment to targets and indicators contained in project proposal, and use the information from the M&E systems and tools to improve the program effectiveness.
- Support all project reviews and evaluation activities, including coordinating mid-term and final evaluations, and supporting donor and external reviews.
- Provide on-going support to maintain M&E systems; identify skill gaps and build capacity among project team.
- Prepare high quality, accurate and timely reports for Save the Children, project partners and donors as required.
- Advanced training in quantitative methodologies, including database management; experience in qualitative research techniques a plus;
- Minimum five years’ experience in monitoring and evaluation related to health delivery systems.
- Strong analytical skills and an understanding of monitoring, evaluation and assessment tools to promote evidence-based learning;
- Familiarity with USAID’s Collaboration, Learning & Adapting principles (ADS 201.3.5.19).
- Ability to analyze complex data and summarize it for a range of audiences.
- Ability to gain support from staff across teams and to build the capacity of others.
- Sound strategic thinking and planning skills, including ability to think creatively and innovate and to set priorities, manageable work plans and evaluate progress.
- Ability to travel up to 50%.
- Excellent oral and written communication skills in English and French.
- Familiarity with the political, social, and cultural context of Burkino Faso and Niger is preferred.