Senior Monitoring and Evaluation Manager

Founded in 1933, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) responds to the world’s worst humanitarian crises and helps people to survive and rebuild their lives.

The IRC has long-term programs based in Baghdad and Erbil, as well as emergency response programs supporting Syrian refugees and war-affected Syrian internally displaced persons (IDPs). The IRC is seeking dynamic individuals to support it in the delivery of services and support to communities affected by conflict in Syria.

Working in coordination with the humanitarian community, the IRC currently addresses the needs of Syrian IDPs and Iraqi Refugees. Our activities in northern Syria focus primarily on the supply of vital medications and medical equipment, non-food items, food and vouchers and form part of an over-arching humanitarian response in Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, and Syria that seeks to assist those in need to survive conflict and displacement.

As part of its regional effort the IRC is now expanding its operations inside Syria by establishing programs for health, protection, economic and food support to vulnerable families in Al-Hassekah Governorate, Syria.

SCOPE OF WORK:
The purpose of this position is to manage, strengthen, and provide strategic direction to the Iraq Cross Border M&E efforts, ensuring cross-learning in M&E among projects and sectors, and to build capacity of M&E staff and partner organizations. The Senior M&E Manager will be responsible for supervising M&E activities, particularly during times of emergency, and assessments required for proposal development. The Senior M&E Manager will work closely with IRC program team to develop and improve high quality monitoring and feedback systems and tools which address indicators set out in project proposals. He/she will ensure that learning from projects is systematically captured and used throughout the country program. He/she will also take learning needs into account, and develop and conduct capacity building for M&E staff, program staff and partner organizations, with support of the Humanitarian Coordinator, Deputy Humanitarian Coordinator and the M&E Regional Coordinator.
 
The Senior M&E Manager is expected to have a high level of self-initiative and use critical thinking skills to identify and fill gaps. The Senior M&E Manager will work closely with the M&E Regional Coordinator and HC to ensure that the Iraq Cross Border Program complies with regional and global M&E systems and standards. The ability to effectively manage a team, work sensitively and positively with programming teams, and promote a learning environment is essential to the success of the post.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• M&E Strategy and Design
  • Ensure that the Iraq Cross Border Program M&E systems are in compliance with IRC Iraq Country Program and regional objectives, standards and strategic initiatives
  • Provide strategic direction for the utilization of M&E team, the development and maintenance of M&E systems, and the roll-out of new initiatives
  • Support Program Coordinators and M&E team in the design and implementation of assessments, gender analysis, stakeholder analysis and other pre-program data collection and analysis
  • Provide strategic feedback, analysis and interpretation throughout proposal development process
  • Develop and review logframes, results frameworks, M&E plans and analysis plans
  • Ensure the consistency of tools and indicators across all offices, sectors, and programs as appropriate, maintaining a bank of key program indicators
  • Support programming staff to incorporate participatory methods into community level M&E systems and tools
  • Collect and analyze lessons learned and best practices from previous programs and ensure that these are incorporated into the design of new projects
  • Leverage lessons learned, best practices, program data, and other information to generate donor communication pieces, proposal annexes, success stories, and other high-quality documentation
  • Work with senior management to identify and pursue strategic opportunities for impact evaluations
• M&E Implementation
  • Lead project monitoring initiatives including tool design, data collection and analysis
  • Lead emergency real-time evaluations, internal end-of-project evaluations, needs assessments, baselines, impact studies, case studies, and other evaluation efforts
  • Contribute to donor proposals and reports, through quality analysis and interpretation of data
  • Support the M&E team in strategically preparing and reviewing M&E calendars
  • Develop and maintain a resource library of M&E tools and plans needed for good program quality and donor reporting
  • Lead learning-to-action events and reflection sessions to analyze data for programmatic use, and to document and incorporate lessons learned into program design and implementation
  • Ensure that beneficiary feedback is adequately captured, analyzed, and utilized by program teams
• Capacity-Strengthening
  • Lead the IRC Iraq Cross Border Program M&E community to share learning, resources, and support across offices
  • Develop and co-facilitate M&E workshops and modules for staff and partner organizations to share country office, regional, and global M&E tools, processes, and best practices
  • Conduct orientations for new M&E and program staff
  • Provide mentoring/accompaniment to IRC staff to increase capacity and to achieve annual performance and development plans
  • Remain updated with developments among the IRC M&E community and worldwide M&E trends and resources
  • Conduct field monitoring visits events frequently with project teams
  • Provide feedback to senior project and M&E staff to improve the overall M&E system and ensure quality implementation of M&E activities
• Information and Communications Technology for M&E
  • Support M&E and program teams in effectively sharing M&E resources for knowledge management and communication
  • Work with M&E and IT staff to ensure a database system exists for the entry, storage, and analysis of all data. The system should allow for field-based entry and beneficiary tracking to prevent activity duplication and accurately report beneficiary numbers. Additionally, the database should allow for easy aggregation across projects, or disaggregation by demographic characteristics such as gender
  • Support programming teams to develop strong project tracking, record keeping and filing methodologies for all activities
  • Act as the IRC/Iraq-Syria focal point for ActivityInfo, reporting monthly outputs against the Regional Response Plan
  • Work with M&E and IT staff to maximize the value and utility of ICT4D initiatives
  • Document best practices and lessons learned in the use of new and existing technology

PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS
The IRC and IRC workers must adhere to the values and principles outlined in the IRC Way - Standards for Professional Conduct. These are Integrity, Service, and Accountability. In accordance with these values, the IRC operates and enforces policies on Beneficiary Protection from Exploitation and Abuse, Child Safeguarding, Anti Workplace Harassment, Fiscal Integrity, and Anti-Retaliation.

REQUIREMENTS:

• Bachelor of Arts or Science in Economics, Development Studies, Statistics, Social Sciences (e.g. Geography, Sociology) or related field
• Minimum 3 years of relevant experience in the M&E field, preferably in the NGO sector
• Excellent written and verbal English skills – experience or knowledge in writing proposals and reports in English is required
• Strong understanding of the principles, methods, theory, and terminology of M&E
• Strong analytical skills
• Excellent data/information management and analysis skills with experience using databases and software applications such as Microsoft Excel, Access, SPSS, STATA, SQL
• Demonstrated experience and a high level of comfort developing qualitative and quantitative data collection tools
• Demonstrated experience and capacity in conducting field-level data collection and data entry
• Excellent planning and organization skills
• Experience managing staff and team building

PERSONAL/OTHER SKILLS:

• Excellent inter-personal skills; demonstrating diplomacy and tact
• Values differences and recognizes exemplary performance
• Values learning and takes a strong interest in new developments in the field of M&E
• Ability to provide opportunities for continuous learning
• Ability to motivate individual and team performance, and take necessary actions to improve
• Proactive and self-motivated approach to work, with an enthusiasm for learning
• Willingness to spend time traveling between two IRC field office locations
• Arabic or Kurdish language skills desirable