Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Advisor - Edinburgh, United Kingdom - Mercy Corps

Mercy Corps

Verified Company

Edinburgh, United Kingdom

1 week ago

Posted by:

Tom O´Connor

beBee Recruiter

Description

Position Description

Location:
UK or NL

Position Status:
Full-time, open terms

Salary:
Edinburgh: circa 32K-37K; London: circa K; NL: circa 38.5K - 45K

About Mercy Corps:

Mercy Corps is a leading global organization powered by the belief that a better world is possible.
In disaster, in hardship, in more than 40 countries around the world, we partner to put bold solutions
into action — helping people triumph over adversity and build stronger communities from within.
Now, and for the future.

Unit/Team:

Mercy Corps works to alleviate poverty, suffering, and oppression by helping people build secure, productive, and just communities. Mercy Corps' is committed to improve program performance and quality through Standards, Service, and Evidence. The agency operates projects in over 40 countries around the world.

The Program Performance and Quality (PaQ) department supports effective, efficient and equitable program performance, through a culture of quality management, to achieve results for those who matter most - our program participants.

PaQ consists of the following teams and functions:
Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL); Strategic Leadership; Program Standards; Infrastructure.

These teams are grouped together under PaQ because they work together to improve project and portfolio performance while reducing risks inherent to implementation.

The HQ MEL Team of Mercy Corps consists of MEL Officers, MEL Advisors, Senior MEL Advisors, Senior MEL Technical Leads and a MEL Senior Director.

The MEL Team of Mercy Corps supports both foundational and cutting-edge adaptive management approaches with design, monitoring, evaluation and learning functions as key processes and benchmarks to ensure evidence-based decision making for quality program implementation.

The MEL Team's work includes, but is not limited to, the provision of technical MEL support to projects, portfolios, countries and regions, the integration of MEL technologies at all stages of the data lifecycle, the establishment of fit-for-need M&E systems, the implementation of learning mechanisms and platforms, the development of global MEL standards and good practices, and support with agency-level reporting.

A major focus area of the MEL team is the implementation of Mercy Corps' MEL and Program Management policies.

The team works across a wide spectrum of stakeholders both internal and external to Mercy Corps, as well as diverse technical program approaches and sectors.

General Position Summary:

The MEL Advisor works with the MEL team to collectively support program's by helping improve Mercy Corps monitoring, evaluation and learning practices across multiple program types and sectors.

MEL Advisors work primarily - though not exclusively - at a project level (vs portfolio/mission level) by providing direct support on program design, field monitoring, evaluation, learning, accountability; data and knowledge management; team capacity building; and resource and tool development.

Thus, the advisor provides direct technical assistance across all phases of the program life cycle to field teams as needed, liaise with internal stakeholder teams, contribute to external representation.

Essential Job Responsibilities:

MONITORING EVALUATION, LEARNING TECHNICAL SUPPORT TO PROJECTS:

TA to projects**: SOW development, sampling, instrument development, logistics/planning, data management and analysis, and report writing for baselines, mid-terms, reviews, evaluation as well as formative studies (quantitative, qualitative and mixed-methods), use of study and routine monitoring data for program adaptation through analysis and visual representations. budgeting for M&E systems, developing M&E plans and work plans, developing data flow charts and data quality assessments (DQA), and providing technical feedback on MEL technical documents.

Mercy Corps has 15 agency-level MEL minimum standards that MEL Advisors support.

Over time, the MEL Advisor supports all Mercy Corps 15 MEL minimum standards but typically starts with:

Standards related to M&E plan and learning plan development
Standards related to Mercy Corps; responsible data policy and correctly storing MEL related documents/files
Standard related to Mercy Corps' proprietary indicator tracking software TolaData.
Standard related to data quality assurance
Standard related to program's conducting Final Internal Performance Reviews (FIPR).

The MEL Advisor usually starts by providing TA where they already have experience when hired but this expands as their technical competency and experience grows.

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Resource improvement, testing and socialization**: Contribute to the review and update of existing Mercy Corps MEL tools, approaches platforms as well as development and testing of new resources. Socializing these resources through communications and demonstration is also inherent to the Advisor's role
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Assessing evaluability of project