Job Title:  Program MER Coordinator-Decide Programme

Organisation: Plan International

Duty Station: Arua, Uganda

Reports to: MERL Manager

About the Company:

Plan International is an independent development and humanitarian organization that advances children’s rights and equality for girls. We believe in the power and potential of every child. But this is often suppressed by poverty, violence, exclusion and discrimination. And its girls who are most affected. Working together with children, young people, our supporters and partners, we strive for a just world, tackling the root causes of the challenges facing girls and all vulnerable children. We have been building powerful partnerships for children for more than 80 years, and are now active in more than 75 countries.

Job Summary:   The Program MER Coordinator is part of the Programme Development and Quality function and will ensure comprehensive and effective performance monitoring and evaluation plans are in place. The role will be held accountable for implementing all procedures as intended and ensuring that all reporting is holistic, comprehensive and timely to facilitate consistent program delivery and the achievement of the desired objectives.

The Program MER Coordinator provides technical guidance and support to internal and external stakeholders. The role is critical in ensuring the right program KPIs are being tracked and monitored for accurate reporting and analysis, contributing to sound programmatic decision making.

This position manages the MER program budget of about €50,000 annually.

The critical challenge for this position is to influence internal and external stakeholders to appreciate the MERL purpose, the discipline of collecting and recording data and the appreciation of the analysis of the data for decision making.

Key Duties and Responsibilities:

KRA 1: Strategy & Programming

• Lead the proper management and integration of the MERL results with programme management ensuring the provision of insights on optimising PIU’s impact on the sustainable development in the humanitarian sector.
• Coordinate and facilitate the development of MERL frameworks and plans for PIU’s overall strategy; support DECIDE program teams and partners to develop Detailed Implementation Plans in line with the proposal.
• Provide strategic leadership in the project’s research, program evaluations, organisational learning and documentation initiatives within the project, including reviewing and validating reports and leading reflection and dissemination processes at the field level.
• Work with the MERL Manager to ensure that strategies for monitoring, evaluation and learning are fully integrated into all of our activities and that lessons learned are incorporated into the design of new projects and funding windows.
• Work with Technical Advisors/ Project Managers to develop a structured learning plan (including learning questions and indicators).
• Participate in the development of the Annual Work Plan for the MERL unit, ensuring coverage of all departments; work with MERL Manager to budget MERL costs and appropriate resourcing

KRA 2: Tools & Systems Development

• Proactively participate and coordinate the development and implementation of MERL Systems and Resources, ensuring that they support achieving organisational objectives.
• Ensure that research into MERL best practices is conducted and incorporated into developing new or improved MERL systems/tools.
• Design, Update (review) and Implement Program monitoring tools per the Program M&E plan and ensure the use of appropriate tools in collection, compilation, analysis and utilisation across the Program to ensure consistency.
• Work with the program team and the procurement team to source and continuously develop appropriate technologies that will make data collection, analysis and reporting as time and cost-effective as possible (for both PIU and partner staff).
• Manage the MERL performance tracking system; consistently monitoring and consolidating Program implementation findings against approved work plans and budgets to ensure timely and quality implementation per the contractual obligation.
• Ensure all MERL systems and tools are compliant with Plan International, and donor standards such as safeguarding children and young peoples’ policy, research protocols, knowledge management and MER standards and Guidelines are adhered to in the project.
• Ensure internal Plan International electronic systems, particularly our global programme monitoring and reporting system (PMERL), are routinely updated as required. External reporting systems, such as those of UNHCR, OPM, and donor-specific platforms, should also be updated as necessary.

KRA 3: Capacity Building

• Provide PIU staff and stakeholders with technical advice and support, enabling them to carry out
• Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning according to best practices:
• Conduct routine monitoring field visits of all the Program activities to establish learning and development needs, using data collected to inform the learning and development of MERL interventions contributing to the knowledge and application of MERL best practices.
• Monitor capacity as the Program is ongoing and provide any backstopping or technical support needed to ensure effective results measurement & reporting.
• Review learning gathered from implementing partners and feed this into refining PIU’s MERL system & strategies.
• Design and implement practical learning activities in collaboration with colleagues & stakeholders to facilitate effective knowledge capture and sharing
• Quarterly Consolidate, follow up and document best practices, case studies, lessons learnt, Most Significant Change Stories and reflection of the Program to provide evidence on Program impact, including inclusiveness.

KRA 4: Monitoring & Performance Management

• Ensure the coordination and monitoring of PIU projects/ programs reviews and visits that will enable PIU to manage the performance of projects adaptively
• Together with the MERL Manager and Technical Advisor SRH, review all DECIDE Program write-ups (including concepts) and partners’ quarterly and annual progress report to ensure compliance with the Results Framework and donor reporting requirements.
• Support the development and rollout of the DECIDE Program targets and standards to ensure the delivery of quality outputs.
• Provide technical guidance in developing and maintaining the Programme database, including overseeing and leading the continuous update of Program milestones in the PMERL system.
• Regularly track Program progress and update the Program indicator performance trackers to support the Program reporting obligations to different stakeholders.
• Consolidate, track and share action points agreed upon in routine Program review/reflection meetings and ensure all action points and next steps are comprehensively closed out promptly.

KRA 5: Knowledge Management & Communications

• Work collaboratively with colleagues in the MERL team to maintain a ‘knowledge hub’ for the organisation that will meet the information needs of the identified audiences.
• Build a well-curated database for learnings from evaluations, intervention reports, and other relevant information; ensure that users can navigate and upload or retrieve information quickly.
• Work collaboratively with the Communications team to support content management on the PIUs and other information-sharing platforms; perform regular analytics to monitor utilisation and enhance user.
• Contribute to the country office quarterly and annual reporting requirements by providing timely and quality data to the MERL Manager.
• Ensure that all key documentation such evaluation reports, new implementation methodologies and approaches, lessons, research papers among others are uploaded on common MERL share point as well Plan library.

KRA 6: Safeguarding, Gender Equality & Inclusion

• Ensure that Plan International’s global policies for Safeguarding Children and Young People and Gender Equality and Inclusion are fully embedded in accordance with the principles and requirements of the policy, including relevant Implementation Standards and Guidelines as applicable to their area of responsibility. This includes but is not limited to ensuring staff and associates are aware of and understand their responsibilities under these policies, and Plan International’s Code of Conduct (CoC), their relevance to their area of work, and that concerns are reported and managed in accordance with the appropriate procedures.

Qualifications, Skills and Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree in Statistics, Quantitative Economics, Social  Sciences, Social Work, Development Studies or a related field.
• Additional training at Post Graduate level in Monitoring and Evaluation, Program planning and management or a related field is a must.
• At least 5 years of a combined experience in providing M&E for Child Protection, SRHR in both development and humanitarian contexts is required.
• Skills in Research methodology for both qualitative and quantitative data collection

This requires the job holder to:

• Excellent knowledge and conceptual understanding of MERL and its application to international/ local humanitarian development.
• Organizing skills and capacity to multi-task in rapidly changing & fast-paced environments;
• Good analytical and logical thinking and writing skills.
• Demonstrated experience in capacity building, mentoring and coaching staff
• Proven computer skills and knowledge of Microsoft software, including MS Word processing, PowerPoint presentation, Excel spreadsheets, e-mail and web-based research