Save the Children is seeking a Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) Specialist for an anticipated three to five-year USDA-funded program in Sri Lanka. The McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program (McGovern-Dole) feeds schoolchildren, reduces hunger, enhances food security, and improves literacy (especially for girls) in low-income, food-deficit countries around the world. By providing school meals, teacher training, and related education and nutrition support, McGovern-Dole helps boost school enrollment, attendance, and literacy results. McGovern-Dole also provides support to maternal and child nutrition (MCN).
The Monitoring & Evaluation Specialist 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 M&E Specialist will use these findings to improve the program and achieve the objectives. S/he will also be actively involved in promoting learning through an external evaluation of the program and 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 systems for capturing and documenting data and relevant information on project activities, beneficiaries, outputs, outcomes, and impact;
- Design methodology and coordinate research activities for project operations and assessments;
- Effectively roll out 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 bench marking information to analyze program effectiveness and cost effective inputs;
- Ensure programming is aligned 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 baseline assessment, mid-term and final evaluations, and supporting donor and external reviews;
- Provide on-going support to maintain M&E systems; identify skills 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 education and nutrition
- Experience designing and/or conducting research studies using experimental and/or quasi-experimental methods;
- Strong analytical skills and an understanding of monitoring, evaluation and assessment tools to promote evidence-based learning;
- 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;
- Excellent oral and written communication skills in English. Knowledge of local language preferred;
- Familiarity with the political, social, and cultural context of Sri Lanka is preferred.