MEAL Specialist

*CALL FOR EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST – VACANCY ANNOUNCEMENT:* 2201209

MEAL Specialist

Job Posting: 04/May/2022

Closure Date: 24/May/2022, 11:59:00 PM

Organizational Unit: OER

Job Type: Non-staff opportunities

Type of Requisition: Consultant / PSA (Personal Services Agreement)

Grade Level: N/A

Primary Location: Various Locations

Duration: Up to 11 months

Post Number: N/A

IMPORTANT NOTICE:

• FAO is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality, background and culture.
• Qualified female applicants, qualified nationals of non-and under-represented Members and person with disabilities are encouraged to apply;
• Everyone who works for FAO is required to adhere to the highest standards of integrity and professional conduct, and to uphold FAO’s values
• FAO, as a Specialized Agency of the United Nations, has a zero-tolerance policy for conduct that is incompatible with its status, objectives and mandate, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination
• All selected candidates will undergo rigorous reference and background checks
• All applications will be treated with the strictest confidentiality

Organizational Setting

The Office of Emergencies and Resilience is responsible for ensuring FAO’s efforts to support countries and partners in preparing for and effectively responding to food and agricultural threats and crises by i) increasing the numbers of people reached in Integrated Phase Classification (IPC) 3 and above; and ii) increasing the numbers of people supported to move out of IPC 3 and above from a humanitarian caseload onto pathways of resilience and development. FAO has mainstreamed a humanitarian, development, peace nexus approach and a localization agenda throughout its strategic positioning and programmatic design and implementation at country and regional levels. In this organizational setting, OER is responsible for coordinating the development and maintenance of corporate tools and standards to enable Decentralized Offices (DOs) to assist Members to prepare for, and respond to emergencies as well as strengthen capacities of national and subnational institutions and partners for resilience and risk-informed development. OER ensures humanitarian policy coordination and knowledge, liaison with the Inter-Agency Standing Committee as well as with humanitarian resource partners, co-leadership with World Food Programme of the global Food Security Cluster, organizational preparedness, surge capacity and response to large-scale emergencies. OER supports food and nutrition security and sectoral/systems assessments, early warning activities related to emergency and humanitarian analysis and responses. OER plays a major role in the development and leadership of the Organization’s programme to increase the resilience of livelihoods to food and agriculture threats and crises of the Organization’s programme in areas such as risk governance and coordination, anticipatory actions, disaster risk reduction, early warning and response in agriculture and food chain crises.

Reporting Lines

Under the overall supervision of the OER Programme and Results Team Leader in OER, the MEAL Specialist will report to the OER MEAL Team Leader. He/she will work in close collaboration with the other teams within OER, and decentralized offices at all levels.

Technical Focus

The Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist will be part of the MEAL team, set up within OER to improve monitoring and evaluation in emergency and resilience programmes in various countries. The specialist will be responsible for contributing to the development and implementation of tools and processes to systematically collect and analyse data and establish linkages with accountability, learning and knowledge management to inform evidence-based programming decisions.

Tasks and responsibilities

• contribute to the development and implementation of OER’s Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL) strategy and framework for emergency and resilience programmes, to provide timely information on delivery terms of reach ,outputs, outcomes and impacts at OER and decentralized office levels;
• build capacity of decentralized offices and partners for all components of the MEAL framework through the development of training materials; technical webinars/seminars, and through virtual and in-person technical support where required;
• technically support decentralised offices to tailor effective monitoring, evaluation, accountability and learning strategies, tools and practices for emergency and resilience projects/programmes, based on the OER MEAL framework;
• develop tools for quantitative data collection and analyze quantitative data, including data cleaning, curation, and preparation of large volume database from household-level georeferenced survey and other sources, and perform econometric analysis, spatial analysis and other methods;
• develop tools for qualitative data collection and analysis and support the analysis of qualitative data collected by decentralised offices to better understand and explain the outcomes and impacts of emergency and resilience interventions
• technically support linking M&E data with learning by contributing to the development and implementation of learning agendas, reflection workshops and other learning opportunities and products to effectively inform adaptive measures and evidence-based programming;.
• Prepare MEAL reports including compiling information to be included in MEAL reports, updates and any other relevant information products as requested by MEAL Team Leader, Programme and Results Team leader, and/or OER Management;
• performs other duties as required.

CANDIDATES WILL BE ASSESSED AGAINST THE FOLLOWING

Minimum Requirements

• University degree in Statistics, Economics, Agricultural Sciences, Social Sciences, or other relevant field
• 5 years of relevant experience in monitoring, evaluation accountability and learning
• Working knowledge of English, French or Spanish and limited knowledge of one of the other two or Arabic, Chinese, Russian. Working knowledge of only one language might be required for PSA.SBS.

FAO Core Competencies

• Results Focus
• Teamwork
• Communication
• Building Effective Relationships
• Knowledge Sharing and Continuous Improvement

Technical/Functional Skills

• Work experience in more than one location or area of work, experience in humanitarian and complex contexts is an asset
• Excellent command of R,STATA or SPSS, basic knowledge of other statistical software packages
• Knowledge of key food security and agricultural livelihood indicators
• Extent of experience in developing and implementing integrated MEAL frameworks and strategies
• Experience in capacity development for MEAL
• Ability to plan and work with limited supervision to meet objectives

Please note that all candidates should adhere to FAO Values of Commitment to FAO, Respect for All and Integrity and Transparency

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

• FAO does not charge any fee at any stage of the recruitment process (application, interview, processing)
• Please note that FAO will only consider academic credentials or degrees obtained from an educational institution recognized in the IAU/UNESCO list
• Please note that FAO only considers higher educational qualifications obtained from an institution accredited/recognized in the World Higher Education Database (WHED), a list updated by the International Association of Universities (IAU) / United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The list can be accessed at http://www.whed.net/
• For more information, visit the FAO employment website
• Appointment will be subject to certification that the candidate is medically fit for appointment, accreditation, any residency or visa requirements, and security clearances. Subject to certain exemptions, vaccination against COVID-19 will in principle be required. Vaccination status will be verified as part of the medical clearance process.