MEAL Officer (contingent of funding availability)

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) responds to the world’s worst humanitarian crises and helps people to survive and rebuild their lives. Founded in 1933 at the request of Albert Einstein, the IRC offers lifesaving care and life-changing assistance to refugees forced to flee from war or disaster. At work today in over 40 countries and 22 U.S. cities, we restore safety, dignity and hope to millions who are uprooted and struggling to endure. The IRC leads the way from harm to home.

The International Rescue Committee has been working in Somalia since 2006, providing essential services to conflict and disaster affected communities. The IRC has been operational in Central Somalia (Mudug and Galgadud regions) and Mogadishu implementing interventions in the areas of livelihood, WASH, Governance and peacebuilding, GBV, Nutrition, education and health reaching out to more than 200,000 conflict and drought affected people.

Job Description

Reporting to and technically supported by the MEAL Manager, the MEAL Officer works in close collaboration with program teams to optimize monitoring, evaluation, accountability and learning capacities and opportunities of the IRC mission in south west state to ensure high-quality programming for the clients we serve and support the global ambitions of IRC Strategy 100, and the Country Strategic Action Plan. The MEAL Officer oversees, leads and implements MEAL activities of GAVI project in Bay,Bakool and lower Shabelle regions within the project scope.

Responsibilities:

Leadership and Partnership

• Support all technical aspects and actions of MEAL regarding the Gavi project in hard-to-reach areas of southwest state to support reaching out to zero-dose children with immunization to explore integrated and implementation of research and learning to respond to project needs; foster high standards and practices for quality data collection, analysis, and reports. Enable accountability to clients, partners, and donors.
• Implement and support MEAL system and approaches in your areas of expertise and foster learning.
• Represent IRC at technical meetings, forums, and other events & build partnerships within IRC and area of expertise.
• Champion access and use of data for shared learning, sound decision-making, and data-informed programmatic adaptations.

Technical Oversight

• Run the MEAL system and processes for Gavi project in hard-to-reach areas of southwest state to reach zero-dose children with immunization to explore integrated implementation research in harmony with the MEAL Country and Global Strategies throughout the project cycle which include:

• Collaborate with MEAL and Health/nutrition program teams to ensure that data is collected, compiled, checked for its quality and completeness in compliance with IRC and donors’ standards for data quality.

• Document and share learning, evidence, and data from previous projects to inform project proposal design.

• Implement MEAL plans, revise (digital) data collection tools, follow-up on processes for online data management, quality checks, and audits, and updating of data visualization.

• Undertake regular analysis of monitoring data and work closely with program officers and managers to facilitate decision-making for real-time program adaptation.

• Produce quality reports and updating dashboards with key findings that foster learning and decision-making and share in project cycle management meetings and team meetings.

• Coordinate with the immunization implementing partners including health clusters to bridge insights from routine immunization with broader PHC insights

• Assimilate and triangulate information from multiple sources to monitor performance and inform implementation strategies where required

• Coordinate periodic review with partners to facilitate dialogue and intentional learning and reflection from assessments, program progress monitoring etc., to improve project implementation and project quality.

• Support progress monitoring of Immunization indicators, action plans and document implementation progress

• Support conceptualize, design and coordinate desk reviews, assessments and evaluations of project interventions on immunization outcomes as well as broader PHC

• Provide monthly summary of key findings and recommendations for discussion to the MEAL manager/coordinator. Document deviations from the project designs and share the learning’s. Share case studies:

• Ensure effective monitoring through regular field visits, conducting data verification, quality assessments and reporting the findings.

• Ensure a master indicator database is developed for the project and is updated regularly.

• Ensure a master beneficiary database is developed for the project and is updated regularly.

• Ensure that all data related to indicators for all respective health and nutrition program grants is configured appropriately into COMET/DHIS2.

• Ensure that all IRC supported health care facilities have required data collection and reporting tools and that they are being used as required.

• Conduct regular visits to all the IRC supported health facilities to identify gaps in timeliness and quality of data reporting and work with relevant staff to address the gaps.

• Regularly review facility registers across all service units with program staff and provide appropriate feedback on how this correlates with information/data generated

• dentify, document, and share client feedback to improve services and results for our clients.

• Support internal/external evaluators in deployment of surveys such as baseline-line and end line, and the commission of evaluations in coordination with Health/Gavi project leadership and partners.

• Monitor performance-based results framework comprising relevant process, output, and results/impact indicators for monitoring of project implementation.

• Support the use of standard mobile data technology and online dashboard to enhance timeliness and quality of data collection, analysis and visualization.

• Join and contribute to IRC’s effort in meeting its internal and external accountability commitments through the implementation of sound accountability, client feedback, and response mechanisms.

• Undertake any other M&E related duties as per project needs

Human Resources

• Promote the growth and development of others in IRC teams and partners: present high-quality technical training and learning material for partners, colleagues, and junior staff.
• Participate if needed in the recruitment of researchers, field incentive workers and enumerators.

Key Working Relationships:

Position Reports directly to Health/nutrition M&E Manager.

Position directly supervises: Assistants and/or enumerators.

Other Internal and/or external contacts:

Internal: Team leader and Officers, Database Officer, ICT Officer, Partnerships Manager, HR, Field Coordinator.

External: Beneficiaries, program partner organisations, local and national government.

Qualifications

• A technical degree or equivalent – additional relevant work experience may substitute for education.
• A minimum 2 years of working experience in a related field.
• Possess basic technical knowledge of M&E approaches and techniques in some or all of the following areas: Outputs, Outcome monitoring; Theories of Change, Logical frameworks, Data collection, Basic data analysis, Accountability, Client feedback mechanisms.
• Experience in conducting primary quantitative data collection and data entry.
• Basic proficiency and experience with mobile data collection such as Kobo, CommCare, ODK Collect is required, knowledge of Tableau, PowerBI, or GIS software tools are additional assets.
• Good computer skills in MS Office, especially Excel; and Word – with experience in writing reports.
• Self-motivated and pro-active attitude with good organization, planning, and analytic skills, including prioritizing work, multi-tasking, and attention to detail.
• Flexibility and ability to work under pressure and in constantly evolving work environments;
• Demonstrated analytical, systematic-thinking, and problem-solving skills are definite assets;
• A strong understanding of accountability and proven ability to build Client Feedback Systems
• Language [English and May speaking.
• Willingness to travel to various field-level offices 50%.