MEL officer

CHADET-ETHIOPIA, a non-profit national development organization registered in Ethiopia that works for the protection and welfare of children and youth found under difficult circumstances. CHADET would like to hire competent MEL officer to execute a project that is being designed to fight youth unemployment in Dessie. The positions and key tasks that are expected of the candidate are outlined as follows:

Job Summary

The MEL officer is responsible for coordinating the development and implementation of Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning systems within Ethiopia Civic Engagement (ECE) project. This role includes ensuring compliance with donor MEL requirements, lead the undertaking of baseline and endline surveys, monitoring and evaluation of project activities and providing capacity building support to partners. The officer also plays a key role in compiling data, reporting progress, communicating lessons learned, and enhancing communication and learningprocesses within the project.

Duties and Responsibilities

• Coordinate and facilitate the development and use of appropriate MEL systems and plans and provide technical guidance to the technical project staffs and partners in implementing them.
• Take responsibility for ensuring donors MEL systems are fully achieved for reporting results. Ensure project teams are familiar with these.
• Work with project manager to ensure that the indicators and targets are SMART, and the methods for collection and analysis of data are clearly understood and will fulfil reporting requirements at all levels.
• Coordinate the development of integrated work plans that help to facilitate the implementation of project with shared responsibilities and joint efforts.
• In consultation with the Project coordinator and CHADET head office team, review and prepare the projects work plan during the annual planning process each year.
• Coordinate and implement baseline surveys, assessments/studies and evaluation exercises.
• Build the capacity of project staff and other partner staff on data collection, management, analysis and results-based monitoring principles and ensure understanding of CHADET-ETHIOPIAs core standards and approaches.
• Work to ensure partners are able to disaggregate data by gender and age, where appropriate, by devising and disseminating simple data collection tools.
• Provide a quality assurance function to ensure that data reported by projects is relevant, accurate and verifiable.
• Undertake regular monitoring and assist the project team at field level that program activities are implemented and outputs achieved as planned.
• Ensure the projects log-frame and data collection plans are regularly reviewed and refreshed, and the project is collecting the breadth of indicators required at a frequency and timing in line with reporting purposes.
• Ensure that the project is regularly (at least quarterly) conducting surveys, collecting basic data as per the data collection plan from relevant sources, developing case studies and collating photos.
• Ensure data reported by projects feeds back and is used for project management and decision making.
• Participate in project quarterly review meetings and biannual Project Performance review (PPR) workshops;
• Identify learning questions, document and disseminate learnings
• Ensure regular and sufficient communication with project staffs on the overall MEL development and coordinate and cascade any learning that will enhance MEL activities at the project Office and Head office level.
• Work with the project coordinator to develop tools and methods for capturing and documenting lessons learned from the project implementation, and ensure that they are shared with partners and across the organization.
• Ensure that the quarterly reports produced by the projects have case studies, success stories and lessons learnt so that there is continuous information that will feed into the overall learning process.
• Prepare monthly, quarterly and annual reports and ensuring required quality, and report to the Project coordinatorwith specified deadlines.
• Prepare progress reports quarterly, outlining progress, issues and actions being taken in the standard format to the Project coordinator.
• Together with the Project coordinatorparticipate in quarterly project progress review sessions: in-depth review of financial spend/burn rate; achievement against activity and output plan, and a forward look on whether the project is achieving against its objectives.
• Support the Project coordinatorin ensuring the timely submission of narrative and financial reports to the donor as per the reporting requirements.
• Ensuring CHADET-ETHIOPIA can maximize the learning potential of all studies and evaluations undertaken within the project.

Number of posts available: One

Terms of Employment: Contact with project life period

Reports to: Project manager

• BA/BSc or MSc/MA in Social Science, Statistics, Development studies, Sociology or related fields,
• 5 years for BA/BSc and 4 years MSc/MA with relevant experience,
• Demonstrable understanding of planning, monitoring, evaluation and learning principles and practices, including the application of the log frame approach,
• A proven experience of conducting quantitative and qualitative field research and analysis for projects,
• Proven experience in training and capacity building in MEL practices,
• Previous NGO work experience.

Competencies, skills & abilities

• Excellent interpersonal skills, ability to lead but understands and believes in community development,
• Strong communication skills (verbal and written),
• Strong interpersonal skills and ability to work effectively as part of a team,
• Ability to ensure quality standards are adhered to and understood,
• Strong management skills, with good understanding of relevant cross-cultural issues,
• Ability to provide challenge and critique others in a constructive and open manner,
• Fluency in written and spoken English and Amharic,
• Firm belief in teamwork and gender equality,
• Very good facilitation and coordination skills,
• Methodological, thorough approach with attention to detail,
• Excellent record keeping and report writing skills,
• Proficiency in MS Office packages.