JOB DETAILS:

Description

Heifer International is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender identify, sexual orientation, age, status as a protected veteran, among other things, or status as a qualified individual with disability.

The Organization     

Since 1944, Heifer International has supported more than 46 million Small Holder Farmer (SHF) families globally lift themselves out of hunger and poverty while caring for the earth in partnership with the communities we serve including Youth & Women. Heifer International is now accelerating its strategic approaches to closing the Sustainable Living Income (SLI) gap for 10 million additional SHF households globally by 2030.

The Signature Program Department provides technical backstopping to country program teams with a focus on quality and evidence-based signature program (SP) design, project execution excellence, adaptive management, impact measurement, and reporting across the Africa Region. By fostering effective collaboration with country program teams, the SP team supports evidence-informed signature program design as the overarching strategy and ensures design and execution of constituent projects that contribute to the achievement of the respective SP goals and objectives, while demonstrating program/project impact. The SP Department also maintains Heifer’s standards of program/project quality, performance management, and compliance with donors’ requirements.

Function

This position will support the development and implementation of a robust Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) system including processes, tools, and strategy that contextualizes signature programs at the Africa Regional level, while adhering to the standards of Heifer’s Global Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning system. The position will contribute to the design and implementation of innovations that seek to improve the functionality of the MEL system at both the Regional and Country levels.

A strong emphasis is placed on Data Quality Assurance (DQA), timeliness of data for Quarterly, Semesterly and Annual reporting, management of an Africa-wide database and interactive dashboard, results aggregation, and periodic Pause & Reflection on the performance data to stimulate Learnings, Improvements, and Adaptive Management.

The role may be located in any of the following countries: Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, Malawi, Senegal, Uganda, Rwanda or Zambia.

This role will be a one-year consultancy position.

Responsibilities & Deliverables

A. Design of Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Systems (20%)

• Support country MEL managers in preparing their MEL plans and using digital tools for data collection and management.
• Support evidence-gathering to inform the design and implementation of Rwanda and Tanzania Signature Programs.
• Support the dvelopment of a MEL strategy for the Africa Region that will guide operations.
• Ensure alignment of country/project M&E plans with organizational standards.
• Collaborate with the SP Technical Director in networking with other organizations to promote Heifer’s development model and initiatives.
• Lead the development of the Africa Region database to serve as a warehouse for all program/project performance data, including historical data.
• Create a Collaborating, Learning and Adapting Plan that will guide the Africa Signature Program portfolio.
• Design a data flowchart illustrating how the SP performance data across the region will be collected, analyzed, and utilized.

B. Implementing Monitoring, Evaluation, Learning, and Systems (MELS) (30%) 

• Provide technical assistance to country MEL teams during the collection and analysis of data to inform project design, the development of logical frameworks and/or results frameworks with defined indicators (Global Indicators, Project-Specific Indicators, Progress Report or Nested Indicators, Business Transformation Model Indicators, Household Transformation Model Indicators), target setting, monitoring, and progress reporting.
• Support country-specific internal data quality assurance exercises.
• Update the aggregated record of Africa Region’s local leverage resources by the end of each quarter.
• Support country MEL managers during project baseline surveys, progress monitoring, and evaluations in line with their MEL plans.
• Conduct periodic field monitoring visits to the country signature projects.
• Support country program teams as they facilitate “Pause and Reflect” sessions, which provide an opportunity to reflect on previous reporting periods’ achievements, challenges, and lessons learned.
• Elevate MEL-related challenges to the Signature Program Technical Director for coordination with the HQ MEL team.

C. Data Management (Collection, Collation, Curation, Analysis, Quality Assurance) and Utilization for Reporting and Learning (20%) 

• Coordinate with MEL managers for timely project data entry into Heifer's Integrated Program Management System (IPMS).Lead in summarizing and aggregating data across the Africa Region for organization-wide use.
• Support Country MEL Managers to collect, collate, clean, and analyze Regional-level data for project management, learning, and reporting needs.
• Develop and implement the Africa Regional-level learning-to-action agenda.
• Support documentation of Africa Regional-level lessons learned, successes, challenges, and best practices via case studies.
• Lead the integration of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) with the existing MEL system to enhance its functionality.
• Collaborate with the IPMS Business System Manager (BSM) to support country and project-specific development of interactive dashboards using Power BI to enhance data visualization in support of management and visualized data-driven decision-making.

D. Capacity Development (15%) 

• Conduct MEL staff capacity gap assessments and collaborate with the SP Technical Director to implement capacity-building initiatives to fill identified gaps.
• Equip MEL staff and implementing/project partner staff with the necessary skills for MEL activities.
• Build the capacity of project partners in record-keeping and data management.
• Support capacity-building of MEL staff to improve efficiency and compliance with Heifer’s and donors’ standards.
• Assist in recruiting, training, and supervising external consultants for surveys and studies.

E. Fundraising Support (10%) 

• Contribute to project design through the development of Theory of Change, Results Framework, and the selection of Heifer and donors’ standard indicators, and formulate appropriate Project-Specific Indicators for review and incorporation by the country program teams.
• Support the development of concept notes and project proposals by contributing to the development of the results framework and theory of change.
• Support in-country research and evaluation initiatives.

F. Other Tasks (5%) 

• Support other MEL-related tasks as assigned by the Signature Program Technical Director.

Key Behavioural Competencies 

• Accountability
• Professional Excellence
• Humility
• Customer Orientation
• Empathy
• Innovation