Consortium MEAL Coordinator

About the role:

This is a new two year, with possibility of extension, unaccompanied role based in Freetown, Sierra Leone with frequent visits to consortium members’ offices and programme areas, with a salary of Grade 4 (from € 44,133 to 49,038).

The Saving Lives in Sierra Leone Phase 3 Consortium (SLiSL 3)

The FCDO funded five-year SLiSL 3 Consortium brings together five core partners and two technical specialist partners to support health systems strengthening (HSS) in Sierra Leone to increase health service quality, access, and inclusivity. The programme has been designed to reflect the best buy aspects of Consortium partner interventions, integrating key learnings from Saving Lives in Sierra Leone Phases 1 and 2 (SLiSL1&2) and the Ending Preventable Deaths Bottleneck Analysis (HEART 2023).

The Consortium’s whole-of-system approach aligns closely with Ministry of Health (MoH) guidelines, policies, and strategic objectives, reflecting the Consortium’s demonstrated and long history of partnerships and positive relationships with the MoH. The programme will be implemented across four broad programme areas, that is, district support, community level interventions, health workforce development and accountability, and clinical services. The Consortium partners play an important role in providing specific expertise as well as integrated collaboration across the programme areas. The programme will use a combination of innovative pathways to sustainable and government-owned quality improvement. These include the introduction and scaling of life-saving and cost-effective technologies; a combination of evidence-based interventions for the development of participatory and accountable services; and a suite of safeguarding and inclusivity approaches to fundamentally enhance the planning and delivery of health services in Sierra Leone. The Consortium’s rich understanding of the complexities of the health system has resulted in a context-sensitive design that will ultimately deliver high impact and sustained changes.

Reports to: The Consortium Director and will work closely with the Programme Development & Quality Coordinator (PDQC), MEAL managers of the consortium partners and liaise with the Consortium Leadership Board (CLB), System Director and Programme Director.

We would like you to start as soon as possible.

Job Purpose:

The purpose of the role of the Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability & Learning (MEAL) Coordinator is to provide technical support to the FCDO SLiSL consortium, ensure effective monitoring & evaluation systems are in place to ensure effective programme implementation tracking and reporting.

Key Responsibilities:

Monitoring and Evaluation

• Develop detailed M&E plan for the 5-year programme.
• Contribute to the planning and facilitation of start-up workshop with consortium to include completion of detailed activity planning and M&E planning.
• Manage field-level data collection activities in line with M&E plan for the consortium.
• Manage the implementation of M&E activity plans in coordination with consortium staff across all partners.
• Support consortium partner collection of activity- and output-level monitoring data during activity implementation in line with project and programme M&E plans.
• Keep the consortium dashboard up to date, including populating the Output and Outcome Monitoring Tabs on a regular basis.
• Develop and implement training for partner staff including; ethics and safety, sampling and respondent selection, device use, as well as survey contents.
• Actively manage relationship between CCU and consortium partner M&E team to ensure the relationship is supportive, coordinated, and that the M&E system is meeting the needs in terms of enabling them to apply adaptive results-based management practices.
• Field manage Concern and partner consortium staff in conducting routine data collection, baseline, midterm, and endline surveys
• Lead on the analysis and use of consortium M&E data, including for donor reporting.

Accountability and Learning

• Analyse M&E data and summarising it into accessible, understandable, useful information for programme teams to use for decision-making and applying adaptive and results-based project and programme management.
• Identify and manage effective and efficient information sharing mechanisms that are useful and supportive for the consortium.
• Complete Review Snapshots to summarize discussions and application of adaptive and results -based management after every Progress Review and Results-Based Review for the consortium.
• Support Consortium Director to promote documentation and sharing of programme impact and learning.
• Actively promote sharing of learnings from baselines, end -lines, reviews and evaluations internally and externally.
• Ensure accountability and learning through planning and facilitating periodic progress reviews (at the activity and output levels) and results-based reviews (at the outcome level) for the consortium.
• Lead on implementation of Digital Data Gathering in the consortium, including liaison with Dublin DDG team
• Lead on Data Visualization to support adaptive and results-based management, including through development of dashboards in collaboration with Dublin DDG colleagues.
• Complete all new survey and tool requests for the consortium.
• Liaise with the PDQ coordinator and Dublin head office Digital Data Gathering (DDG) team on all issues related to survey requests, and administration of the in -country iForm DDG platform.
• Liaise with PDQ coordinator, Country IT and the Dublin IT Support Officer on all issues related to device management.

In line with Concern’s commitments under the Core Humanitarian Standard (CHS):

• Actively promote meaningful community participation and consultation at all stages of the project cycle (planning, implementation, M&E);
• Work with relevant colleagues to ensure that the Complaints and Response Mechanism (CRM) is functional and accessible, that feedback and complaints are welcomed and addressed;
• Work with relevant colleagues to ensure that information about CRM, safeguarding and expected staff behaviour is disseminated among programme participants and communities.

Capacity Building

• Work with Consortium Director to support field staff and partners to apply lessons learnt, follow up on progress through monitoring and provide on-going support
• Ensure that knowledge of approaches filters down to field staff and partners

Concern Code of Conduct (CoC) & Associated Policies

• Fully adhere to and actively promote Concern’s CoC & Associated Policies.
• Ensure direct line reports and all finance staff understand and adhere to the Concern CoC & Associated Policies.
• Ensure all finance staff understand the Core Humanitarian Standards (CHS) and Concern’s commitments.

Confidentiality

• Ensure the non-disclosure of any information whatsoever acquired in the course of duty, relating to the practices and business of Concern Worldwide, to any other person or organization without authority, except in normal execution of the above duties.
• Ensure strict guardianship and security of financial data and documents at all times, including secure storage, accurate & complete filing, proper archiving and limiting access to the finance office to authorised personnel only.

Skills and Experience Required:

Essential:

• Master’s degree in relevant field (related to M&E, development, social sciences, data analytics, statistics etc.)
• Minimum 3-5 years of experience in M&E/MEAL (positions where M&E/MEAL is the primary area of responsibility)
• Minimum 1-2 years of experience at a management level or an advisory position
• Experience of remote managing and capacity development of staff
• Clear understanding and vision for using data and information to support programme teams in applying adaptive and results-based programme management in line with the concepts of Concern’s approach to Programme Quality
• Clear understanding and experience in managing and directly implementing primary quantitative data collection (surveys, etc.), including proficiency with statistics
• Clear understanding and experience in managing and directly implementing primary qualitative data collection (key informant interviews, focus group discussion, participatory qualitative methods, etc.)
• Demonstrated capacity in quantitative and qualitative data analysis and interpretation (Experience in the use of statistical analysis software such as SPSS, Stata, R, etc.; experience using a CAQDA platform)
• Clear understanding of best practices regarding data/information management and data protection.
• Clear understanding and experience in managing quality assurance in data collection and performing quality checks on data
• Experience in programme roles or grants management is not a suitable substitute for direct M&E/MEAL experience at this level

Desirable:

• MA/Diploma in programme management, programmes planning or related thematic subject (Health, HIV and AIDS, Education, Gender).
• Experience working on a consortium project.
• Experience working on MEAL in context of Health System Strengthening
• Budget management.
• Experience working in West Africa