Mercy Corps
****Position is contingent on funding.
About Mercy Corps
Mercy Corps is a leading global organization powered by the belief that a better world is possible. In disaster, in hardship, in more than 40 countries around the world, we partner to put bold solutions into action — helping people triumph over adversity and build stronger communities from within. Now, and for the future.
Program / Department Summary
Mercy Corps has been operating in Jordan since 2003. In partnership with civil society organizations, the private sector, and the government, Mercy Corps Jordan has reached more than 3.4 million Jordanians and displaced populations in the country. Working throughout Jordan Mercy Corps is driven by the mission to contribute to the emergence of a peaceful, resilient and prosperous Jordan which is inclusive of youth and women. We seek to build a future for Jordan in which all people feel secure, believe in the goodness of communities and institutions around them, and are on a sustainable path toward economic self-reliance. Our strategic directions focus on promoting strong communities and governance, peace and social cohesion and environmentally sustainable and inclusive economic growth. With today’s youth becoming the leaders of tomorrow, we see countless opportunities for transformational change.
Mercy Corps is seeking a Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) Manager to lead the implementation of the expected five-year USAID-funded Youth Grow Activity. This activity will aim to: 1) increase youth access to high-quality career planning information and livelihood opportunities; 2) strengthen youth leadership through targeted support of local youth-led and youth-serving organizations in order to promote youth participation as decision makers and key contributors to individual, household, community, and national well-being; and 3) strengthen Government of Jordan (GOJ) systems, in partnership with youth, to provide more coordinated and effective services, practices, and policies that embody the principles of Positive Youth Development (PYD).
General Position Summary
The MEL Manager will be responsible for ensuring robust performance monitoring and evaluation that supports the achievement of the program objectives. The MEL Manager will provide oversight and ensure the quality of all project-level monitoring, evaluation, research, and learning activities within the Youth Grow program.
The MEL Manager’s role is to also ensure coordination of relevant program team members and partners. The MEL Manager is responsible for the capacity building and mentoring strategy/ToC for program staff on themes related to monitoring, evaluation, accountability, learning, and adaptive management. The MEL Manager will work closely with the Chief of Party (COP) to guide the program in operationalizing an adaptive, iterative management approach with a culture of evidence-based decision-making.
Essential Job Responsibilities
MEL STRATEGY AND AMELP
● Set-up and oversee the timely implementation of the monitoring and evaluation system, including the Activity Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning Plan (AMELP), M&E Technology, Learning and Research Plans.
● Align and integrate collection, analysis and reporting on indicators related to the program’s overall operational context and performance and community accountability and response mechanisms (CARM) within the program’s AMELP.
● Harmonize the MEL system across consortium partner systems, and other external systems as relevant.
● Ensure the quality of implementation of MEL for the Youth Grow program, consistently reviewing and adapting the MEL systems and tools, to the needs of the changing context, use the learning to inform program and country-level systems and strategy.
● Lead the design of high quality qualitative and quantitative M&E indicators,tools, participatory and inclusive processes and protocols for data management, including data collection, analysis, reporting, storing, visualization; identify and set up relevant MEL technology and information management platforms in line with Mercy Corps guidance.
● Ensure systems are established and maintained to collect sex and age disaggregated data and use gender sensitive, socially inclusive, and remote data collection methods to understand and respond to program results with diverse audiences, decision makers, and stakeholders
COLLABORATION, LEARNING AND ADAPTING
● Work closely with Mercy Corps’ Senior MEL Manager and HQ-based MEL, Research and Learning departments to develop and implement the Youth Grow program’s CLA plan and learning agenda.
● Lead and/or collaborate with external researchers and evaluators on the design and roll out of the program assessments, formative research and RCTs, baseline study, and evaluations, while setting up effective systems for continuous learning, reflection, and adaptive management.
● Lead the team to create a plan to operationalize and capacity build CLA practice, including creating a culture of learning and systems thinking to stimulate an adaptive, iterative management approach;
● Design and facilitate regular, strategic planning sessions and learning events, assisting Youth Grow in its learning journey as well as development and implementation of its annual plans.
● Provide guidance, recommendations, and leadership to ensure that the MEL systems meet the data, evidence, and learning needs of the program, including the sharing of information internally and externally, are met, and help address shortfalls in MEL, Research, CLA, and data management that affect program implementation.
● Develop and oversee implementation of appropriate learning products to promote routine sharing and learning within the program, including consortium partners. This will include identification, documentation and sharing of learning from process, output, outcome and context indicators.
● Facilitate inclusive and gender-sensitive MEL and research processes and approaches, engaging local organizations, institutions, and youth, to design and implement national- and community-level data collection tools and contribute to data analysis
INFORMATION MANAGEMENT
● Ensure data management processes (collection, cleaning, analysis, storage, reporting, visualization, etc.) are functioning in all activity locations (including partner activities) to provide quality data within deadlines.
● Ensure data quality through routine internal Data Quality Assessments (DQAs) as required by Mercy Corps MEL Policy, and make adjustments as needed.
● Ensure Youth Grow adheres to Mercy Corps’ MEL and, Program Record Retention and Data Protection Policies.
● Develop program and operational reporting templates that facilitate the acquisition, aggregation and flow of information and learning within the program as well as externally.
TEAM MANAGEMENT
● Oversee the Youth Grow MEL team and sub-contractors, like external evaluators and enumerators.
● Build the capacity of all relevant program and partner team members to develop and maintain an excellent MEL system, including regular reflection, learning and adaptation, by using the analysis of program quantitative and qualitative data, as well as other knowledge gained through the program’s implementation of CLA..
● Promote accountability, communicate expectations and provide constructive feedback informally and formally via regular one on ones and performance reviews.
● Create and sustain a work environment of mutual respect where team members strive to achieve excellence.
COLLABORATION AND REPRESENTATION
● Collaborate with technical leads across the coalition and build processes for regular feedback loops in order to ensure functioning adaptive management
● Actively contribute and collaborate with country, regional and global counterparts to promote the use of MEL best practices and lessons learned.
● Strengthen linkages with other internal resources, through Mercy Corps’ internal knowledge management platforms, to enhance organizational learning relevant to MEL.
● Present program MEL to external MEL and Research stakeholders to influence decision-makers and promote adaptations from learning.
SECURITY
● Work closely with the country team’s security focal point to develop and maintain systems that promote the safety and security of all team members.
● Ensure that activities are designed and implemented with a clear analysis and understanding of security..
ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING
● As part of our commitment to organizational learning and in support of our understanding that learning organizations are more effective, efficient and relevant to the communities they serve – we expect all team members to commit 5% of their time to learning activities that benefit Mercy Corps as well as themselves.
ACCOUNTABILITY TO PROGRAM PARTICIPANTS
● Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts towards accountability, specifically to our beneficiaries and to international standards guiding international relief and development work, while actively engaging beneficiary communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring and evaluation of our field projects.
SUPERVISORY RESPONSIBILITY
Number of direct reports is to be determined.
ACCOUNTABILITY
Reports directly to: Youth Grow Chief of Party
Works directly with: MEL Team, other Mercy Corps Jordan and consortia Directors, technical leads and program managers, finance and operations teams, HQ Regional Program team, HQ Technical Support Unit.
Knowledge and Experience:
● MA/S in development studies, research methods, statistics, economics, social sciences, women’s studies, public policy, monitoring and evaluation, or other relevant fields required.
● Minimum of 7 years of working in MEL work at a program or country level, including supervising staff. Proven use of program technology in an MEL function required.
● Proven success in designing, implementing and operating project MEL systems from project initiation to closeout stages.
● Experience in strategic planning and performance measurement, including indicator selection, target setting, reporting, database management and developing MEL and performance monitoring plans that support learning agendas and contribute to program efficacy.
● Experience with theoretical and practical background in MEL and research and skilled in participatory qualitative and quantitative methodologies and techniques, including experience in planning and managing surveys and developing and refining data collection tools.
● Familiarity with MEL approaches to measuring behavioral and normative change at the individual, interpersonal, community and societal levels.
● Familiarity with competencies-based approaches to agency and empowerment.
● Experience with gender and social inclusion analysis frameworks.
● Experience with data quality assessments and oversight.
● Knowledge of and prior experience of using MEL technologies: Ona/ComCare for data collection, Tableau or PowerBI for data visualization and reporting.
● Strong qualitative and quantitative data analysis skills and knowledge:
● Demonstrated understanding of intermediate statistics and ability to summarize and make predictions from multiple data sets: power user with Excel; experience with statistical packages including STATA, R, or SPSS
● Demonstrated understanding of qualitative methodologies, and prior experience of using a qualitative analysis package: Dedoose, Atlas.ti, any of the QDA packages, or other.
● Experience working on USAID programs is essential.
● Prior experience working in Jordan and/or the Middle East is highly desirable.
● Excellent oral and written English skills; fluency in Arabic is preferred.
● Jordanians and women are strongly encouraged to apply.
Success Factors
The successful candidate will be capable of multitasking, rapid decision-making, and creative problem-solving. S/he has initiative, drive and a lot of energy, as well as high emotional intelligence, constructive mentoring skills and proven experience with capacity strengthening of local partners. S/he will be known for flexibility and creativity in project planning and building responsive systems, and is able to solicit and understand diverse perspectives, build consensus among a variety of stakeholders, and effectively and clearly communicate decisions.
Living Conditions / Environmental Conditions
This position is based in Amman, Jordan which is an accompanied post. Jordan is a middle income country with excellent education, medical, and other facilities in the capital Amman. Jordan is a very safe country with excellent communications, transportation, and housing infrastructure. Although neighboring countries continue to experience political unrest, Jordan has been a stable monarchy for over 30 years and the destination preference for many people from the Middle East to relax or gain access to available services.
Mercy Corps team members represent the agency both during and outside work hours when deployed in a field posting or on a visit/STA 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. 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 to Mercy 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