Mercy Corps
Location: Edinburgh, London, UK, or NL
**Position Status: Full-Time
Duration: 14 months duration with intention to extend beyond pending budget
Salary range: London: circa 25K; Edinburgh : circa 21K, NL: circa 27K
Apply with CV and Cover Letter by October 9th
The applicant must have the independent right to live and work at the location of assignment (ie., not require visa sponsorship)**
About Mercy Corps
Mercy Corps is powered by the belief that a better world is possible. To do this, we know our teams do their best work when they are diverse and every team member feels that they belong. We welcome diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and skills so that we can be stronger and have long term impact.
Program / Country Office Summary
Mercy Corps works to alleviate poverty, suffering, and oppression by helping people build secure, productive, and just communities. The agency operates programs in over 40 countries around the world. The Program Performance and Quality Unit (PaQ), which sits in the Programs 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. 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 ranges from provision of technical MEL support to programs, integration of MEL technologies, implementation of learning mechanisms and platforms, implementation and support with data quality assessments, support with agency-level reporting and others.
General Position Summary
The Assistant Program Officer will cover two functions: firstly, it will support an 18-month project focused on creating a toolkit intended to outline how teams can integrate reduced access analytical methods (RAAM) into their MEL systems, such as rumor tracking, conflict mapping, and geolocating photos as well as quantitative approaches which include developing predictive models that identify contextualized indicators of market health. Secondly, the position will support the Strategy Results Measurement (SRM) workstream as part of the new 10-year agency strategy Pathway to Possibility.
The RAAM toolkit will be targeted to serve the needs of implementing organizations who are looking to increase their analytical capacities to identify their monitoring gaps, potential methods they can utilize to supplement existing systems, and provide them the tools to hire staff and conduct analysis in a safe, ethical manner. Upon completion of the draft toolkit, it will be piloted, evaluated, and iteratively developed, then disseminated across the humanitarian sector.
The Assistant Program Officer will provide general administrative and logistical support to the RAAM and SRM projects. The support includes but is not limited to grant administration, coordination of meetings and documentation for pilots, webinars, and RAAM toolkit dissemination activities. They will additionally monitor feedback mechanisms for the projects, and provide clerical support to reporting and pilot evaluation activities.
Essential Job Responsibilities
RAAM GRANT ACTIVITY COORDINATION
● Coordinate internal and external meetings of the RAAM project according to the direction of the Senior Remote MEL Advisor, conduct agenda coordination and note-taking for the meetings.
● Support regular communication with project stakeholders including program teams, Mercy Corps technical experts, advisory board members, and peer organization experts.
● Support internal and external communications about the RAAM project, including efforts to disseminate the toolkit across the humanitarian sector and inform potential users about it.
● Ensure proper filing of grant activity records according to Mercy Corps Program Filing standards.
● Coordinate webinars demonstrating toolkit contents and training potential users to utilize them. Ensure webinar recordings are accessible and stored appropriately.
● Support the writing, editing, and packaging of grant deliverables and compliance with grant requirements.
RAAM PROJECT EVALUATION
● Monitor project accountability and feedback channels for complaints or issues, and elevate issues appropriately to accountable managers while respecting anonymity/privacy where needed.
● Support project researcher with pilot evaluations, including conducting key informant interviews, note-taking, transcription, and interview coding.
STRATEGY RESULTS MEASUREMENT
● Liaise with program, country and regional teams to collect key programmatic documents, including evaluations, research studies and final performance reviews;
● Support with the organization of documents and cleaning of qualitative and quantitative data.
Accountability to Participants and Stakeholders
Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts toward accountability, specifically to our program participants, community partners, other stakeholders, and to international standards guiding international relief and development work. We are committed to actively engaging communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring and evaluation of our field projects.
Accountability
Reports Directly To: Senior Remote MEL Advisor
Works Directly With: RAAM Analytics Officer, RAAM Senior Researcher, RAAM MEL Technical Lead, Results Measurement Lead, personnel from different departments (operations, program, MEL) from Mercy Corps country teams operating remote programming and/or implementing RAAM pilots.
Minimum Qualification & Transferable Skills
Any skills you have gained through education, volunteer, work, or life experience that are relevant for the position will be considered. Be sure to fully explain transferable skills and success factors and how they apply to this position in your cover letter.
● Required
● Proficiency in Microsoft Office suite.
● Practical understanding of virtual meeting coordination and administration.
● Demonstrated attention to detail and consistency in written communication and record-keeping.
● Excellent oral and written English skills.
● Strong motivation to grow professionally in the field of MEL.
● Preferred
● Experience with humanitarian grant compliance.
● Interest or experience in humanitarian or international development programming
● Experience with Microsoft Sharepoint.
● Experience with qualitative interview analysis, including text coding.
● Experience with use of MaxQDA for qualitative analysis.
● Proficiency in Spanish or French is preferred.
Success Factors
The successful candidate will display a strong understanding of the RAAM project goals and a commitment to supporting the project objectives. They will be able to show past examples of work (paid or volunteer) that required them to keep detailed records, facilitate meetings and note-taking, conduct informational interviews, and be professional in their communications with all stakeholders. They will be able to flexibly and patiently coordinate meetings and virtual activities across multiple time zones. They will further display interest in and talent for communications, including drafting of articles or posts relating to the project, selection of graphics, etc.
Living Conditions / Environmental Conditions
The position is based in one of the locations where Mercy Corps has an office – Edinburgh, London, UK, Netherlands. The candidate must have a suitable environment for working remotely including physical space and a reliable internet connection. Mercy Corps will not provide resources for relocation to/from or within a country nor will it provide any benefits other than those specified in this position description.
Women, minority groups, people with different abilities are highly encouraged to apply. Captioning, assistive, and inclusive workspace accommodations are available at Mercy Corps offices.
Physical Requirements
This is largely a sedentary position that requires the ability to speak, hear/read (captioning available), see, and lift small objects up to 5 lbs.
Travel
International travel for 1-2 weeks with at least one-month prior notice may be required and may include travel to support programs in fragile and/or conflict-prone zone.
Mercy Corps team members represent the agency both during and outside work hours when deployed in a field posting or on a visit/TDY to a field posting. Team members are expected to conduct themselves in a professional manner and respect local laws, customs and Mercy Corps’ policies, procedures, and values at all times and in all in-country venues.
Ongoing Learning
In support of our belief that learning organizations are more effective, efficient and relevant to the communities we serve, we empower all team members to dedicate 5% of their time to learning activities that further their personal and/or professional growth and development
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
Achieving our mission begins with how we build our team and work together. Through our commitment to enriching our organization with people of different origins, beliefs, backgrounds, and ways of thinking, we are better able to leverage the collective power of our teams and solve the world’s most complex challenges. We strive for a culture of trust and respect, where everyone contributes their perspectives and authentic selves, reaches their potential as individuals and teams, and collaborates to do the best work of their lives.
We recognize that diversity and inclusion is a journey, and we are committed to learning, listening and evolving to become more diverse, equitable and inclusive than we are today.
Equal Employment Opportunity
Mercy Corps is an equal opportunity employer that does not tolerate discrimination on any basis. We actively seek out diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and skills so that we can be collectively stronger and have sustained global impact.
We are committed to providing an environment of respect and psychological safety where equal employment opportunities are available to all. We do not engage in or tolerate discrimination on the basis of race, color, gender identity, gender expression, religion, age, sexual orientation, national or ethnic origin, disability (including HIV/AIDS status), marital status, military veteran status or any other protected group in the locations where we work.
Safeguarding & Ethics
Mercy Corps is committed to ensuring that all individuals we come into contact with through our work, whether team members, community members, program participants or others, are treated with respect and dignity. We are committed to the core principles regarding prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse laid out by the UN Secretary General and IASC and have signed on to theInteragency Misconduct Disclosure Scheme. We will not tolerate child abuse, sexual exploitation, abuse, or harassment by or of our team members. As part of our commitment to a safe and inclusive work environment, team members are expected to conduct themselves in a professional manner, respect local laws and customs, and to adhere toMercy Corps Code of Conduct Policies and values at all times. Team members are required to complete mandatory Code of Conduct elearning courses upon hire and on an annual basis.
How to apply
learn more and join us here: https://jobs.jobvite.com/mercycorps/job/oI63kfwV