Appraisal, Monitoring and Evaluation (AME) Officer- Maralal

Department: AME Unit

Contract duration: Fixed

Location: Maralal, Kenya

Starting Date: August 2022

Background on ACTED

ACTED is a French humanitarian NGO, founded in 1993, which supports vulnerable populations, affected by humanitarian crises worldwide. ACTED provides continued support to vulnerable communities by ensuring the sustainability of post-crisis interventions and engaging long-term challenges facing our target populations, in order to break the poverty cycle, foster development and reduce vulnerability to disasters. Their interventions seek to cover the multiple aspects of humanitarian and development crises through a multidisciplinary approach which is both global and local, and adapted to each context. Their 3,300 staff is committed in to responding to emergencies worldwide, to supporting recovery and rehabilitation, towards sustainable development.

ACTED is looking for professionally confident, self-motivated, experienced and committed team player to fill the Appraisal, Monitoring and Evaluation (AME) Officer position based in Maralal, Samburu county.

Objectives

1. Implement solid AME systems and mechanisms that are in line with global AME procedures and deliver effective research/outputs in a way to inform timely decision making and the adoption of sound corrective measures.
2. Ensure lessons learnt and best practices are discoursed and documented.
3. Contribute to the effective functioning of beneficiary complaints and response mechanism and enhance the trust and confidence of beneficiaries, identify areas of our work which need to be improved and ensure that ACTED learns from the feedback provided through this process.
4. Ensure the operations and delivery of AME functions through effective management of AME team members.

Duties and Responsibilities

1. Appraisal, Monitoring and Evaluation Systems

Technical and Systems Development

• Contribute to the development and updating of the country AME strategy, the consolidated AME work plan and AME frameworks for all ongoing projects;
• Ensure that AME findings are reflected and their recommendations are incorporated in future concept notes, proposals and implementation plans;
• Implement the AME policies and procedures as described in the ACTED AME standard guidelines and make sure that the tools are followed as applicable;
• Contribute to an effective roll-out of M&E collection and reporting systems to all staff and partners through training, site visits, manuals, and other technical support as needed.

2. AME Implementation and Management

• Develop the ToRs and mission plans and carry out assessments, monitoring and evaluations (baselines, mid-terms, endlines) as reflected in the ToR and mission plan;
• Develop and oversee the implementation of appropriate data collection and analysis instruments, methodologies (e.g. survey questionnaires, focus group discussions, key-informant interviews) and data/information dissemination/utilization plans;
• Closely supervise data collection activities and ensure that data collection teams are organized and resourced as needed, and that they deliver as per field mission plans and according to data quality standards;
• Maintain electronic and/or paper-based MIS systems for tracking and reporting all quantitative data and information including reporting on ACTED’s 16 global strategic program indicators;
• Analyze AME data and produce reports, factsheets with useful statistical analysis and presentation (charts, tables, histograms, box plots) as necessary in a timely manner;
• Measure and report on qualitative and quantitative input, process, output, outcome, impact, objective, and goal-level performance indicators for all projects;
• Provide AME related capacity building and awareness to implementing partners and other institutions supported by ACTED as appropriate;
• Represent ACTED in different forums on AME related issues when required.

3. Learning

• Contribute to proactive dissemination and use of knowledge gained through AME activities among ACTED staff and Implementing partners’ staff;
• Contribute to the capture of best practices and lessons learnt when a project closes or as required;
• Document and share the lessons learnt and best practices on time and ensure that the knowledge gained contributes to the improvement of projects;
• Support project implementation and improvement by providing timely information around project successes to be scaled up as well as challenges to allow ‘course correction’ throughout life of the program.

4. Beneficiary Complaints and Response Mechanism

• Contributing to the implementation of the beneficiary Complaints and Response Mechanism (CRM) in line with ACTED standard beneficiary CRM procedures;
• Support proper management of the project CRM central database;
• Support building capacity and understanding among ACTED staff, partners and contractors on beneficiary accountability and CRM.

5. AME Team Management

• Ensure that staff under the direct responsibility understand and are able to perform their roles and responsibilities;
• Manage AME Monitors and Enumerators delineating their responsibilities and follow-up the work plans and day-to-day activities;
• Ensure a positive working environment and good team dynamics;
• Manage interpersonal conflicts among team members;
• Undertake regular appraisals of relevant staff;
• Identify the AME training needs of team members and discuss plans with the immediate supervisor for both internal and external trainings;
• Coach, train, and mentor AME Assistants, Monitors and Enumerators with the aim of strengthening their technical capacity, exchanging knowledge within the AME team;

6. Others

• Provide regular and timely updates on progress and challenges to supervisors and other team members;
• Perform any other related activities as assigned by immediate supervisor.
• Protection mainstreaming– Promoting of and adhering to Prevention of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse policy and guidelines (for site residents, ACTED staff, partner agencies, casual labours etc)

Key Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree in statistics, social sciences or closely related to field
• Proficient understanding of MEAL, including the ability to work effectively with tight timelines, high quality standards, and demanding, potentially overlapping priorities.
• Experience of social research methods to conduct monitoring and evaluation for humanitarian and development initiatives/interventions.
• Excellent analytical skills in order to interpret qualitative and quantitative data and discern useful recommendations for programme implementation and development.
• Proficiency in mobile data collection (design, deployment and monitoring) is highly desired.
• Statistical analysis and IT skills, including use of SPSS/R/Stata and Excel for data analysis.
• At least 3 years of work experience in a similar field; former experience with humanitarian organizations is an asset.
• Good English communications skills (both oral and written).
• Strong team player of high integrity, pleasant personality, ability to work under least supervision and meet strict deadlines.
• High level of integrity, transparency and honesty.
• Knowledge of the location context and language is preferred.