Innovations – Monitoring & Learning Manager

Salary: £36,000 - £40,000 pa

Fixed Term Contract till 31 March 2019

Based in London

We are looking for an experienced and committed individual to join us as the Innovations – Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Manager for our DEPP (Disasters and Emergencies Prepardeness) Innovation Lab Programme and support remote teams to gather evidence and learn to adapt programmes. The Innovations MEL Manager will build and facilitate online communities of practice for intra-programme learning and communication.

Currently hosted by Save the Children, the Start Network is planning to become a fully independent entity. It has a vision that the humanitarian sector can change to become more diverse, decentralised and collaborative, and as such is currently working on four key areas: Start Fund (for financing emergency responses), Start Engage (for strengthening civil society capacity), Start Labs (for experimentation, rapid prototyping and learning) and Start Response (for more adaptive, decentralised and collaborative humanitarian responses). Comprising of thousands of partner agencies and with a staff of a quarter of a million working in 200 countries and territories, the Network’s reach is huge.

The Disasters and Emergencies Preparedness Programme (DEPP) works to develop increased humanitarian preparedness in 10 different disaster affected countries. This programme is funded by UK Aid and managed collaboratively by the Communications with Disaster Affected Communities (CDAC) and Start Networks, leveraging the expertise of more than 50 member organisations. The Innovation window is a two year programme which runs until the end of March 2019 to set up and manage a network of labs in Philippines, Bangladesh, Jordan and Kenya. The labs will work closely with affected communities to identify promising new ideas and approaches to disaster preparedness.

As the Innovations MEL Manager you will  provide design input and thought leadership along with consultative support to each Lab to enhance their practice to develop evidence of the effectiveness of the labs themselves, of the community influence within them and learning mechanisms themselves.

As one of three critical tenets of the Innovation Labs, learning will play a central role in the continuous improvement of the labs as agents for innovation, and the projects within them. In essence, the MEL Manager will be responsible for creating a connected and collaborative culture between the labs that enhances their effectiveness.

In addition you will:

• Facilitate regular feedback loops using data that is gathered, in addition to building a solid evidence base of process and outcomes on how Labs create the environment in which humanitarian innovation occurs
• Explore and test techniques from outside the humanitarian sector, that could be applied to Labs, assessing the value of these innovations in enhancing humanitarian preparedness
• Collate evidence and develop products to communicate the experimentation and learning to network members and external audiences
• Work with the Start Communications and Digital Team to maximise the use of the digital platform to build the community of practice
• Be an internal and external champion of innovation in monitoring, evaluation and learning approaches and tools for experimental work in humanitarian preparedness.

To be successful you will have experience in successfully building and supporting a community of practice to support communication and learning. With an appetite for experimentation and the ability to be innovative and adaptable, you will have strong presentation and writing skills, including project documentation and communications materials. Experience of participatory monitoring, evaluation and learning in a national and international context is also essential. In addition you will be:

• Engaged in contemporary M&E practices, being able to provide thought leadership and advice to varying contexts and challenges
• Interested in generating evidence that enhances innovation and effectiveness
• Able to bring people with them in a consultative and supportive fashion
• Motivated by community driven action and localised decision-making

At Save the Children we are committed to the safeguarding and protection of children in our work. We will do everything possible to ensure that only those who are suitable to work with children are recruited to work for us. This post is subject to a range of vetting checks including a criminal records disclosure.

Our mission is to inspire breakthroughs in the way the world treats children and to achieve immediate and lasting change in their lives. If you share our mission, are passionate about making it happen and strongly believe you can contribute then join us and we'll give you every opportunity to succeed. We look forward to hearing from you.

To apply please visit our website.

Closing date: 6 August 2017