Goal Ireland Kenya Monitoring and Evaluation Job Opportunities

Goal Ireland Kenya

Vacancies

General Description of the Country Programme

GOAL’s Kenya’s country programme focuses on three of GOAL’s strategic sectors: Health (including WASH), Livelihoods and Child Empowerment and Protection.

We are progressively mainstreaming issues of HIV, gender, child protection and environment across all our programming.

GOAL works primarily works through partnerships with local organisations to accomplish our our mission.

GOAL Kenya’s (GK) current country programme includes:

• Nairobi Urban Programme for Extremely Vulnerable Children and Youth (EVCY), including health, water and sanitation, child protection and education. With the onset of a new fiver year country strategic plan GK will maintain its work in child protection and water and sanitation, but expand health programmes to include adolescent health activities and initiate a renewed focus on improving livelihoods for EVCYs and there families.
• Northern Kenya Emergency Programmes in Marsabit and Garrisa Districts. These include a shelter and WASH programme in Dadaab Refugee Camp and a WASH and disaster risk reduction programme in Marsabit Central District.
• Nakuru Emergency and Post Conflict Programmes for IDPs displaced during the post election violence. This programme currently focuses on the construction of transitional shelter for IDPs in the Nakuru area, but will soon transition into development programming in Nakuru town.

1. M& E Coordinator

General Description of the Role

Over the lifetime of the current strategic plan GOAL Kenya’s country programme has grown to incorporate both emergency and development programmes focused on health (including WASH), livelihoods, protection and shelter.

The centrally based country M&E team provides support and capacity for all GOAL’s programming in Kenya.

The MEL Coordinator is responsible for all the country programme monitoring, evaluation and learning systems; and will be responsible for the identification and induction of a national counterpart.

Specific Responsibilities

The Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) Coordinator will be responsible for the following objectives:

Coordinate the overall country monitoring systems

• Support and carry out regular monitoring of standard indicators, activities and outputs of projects;
• Maintain the standard indicator databases per sector;
• Sampling of data from the standard indicator database on a monthly basis in each location for quality assurance purposes including sampling of partner monthly reports, MOVs for quality assurance purposes;
• Support project managers to identify and resolve monitoring problems at individual project level;
• Ensuring that mainstreaming issues mentioned above are included in the monitoring system as appropriate;
• Work with the Grants Manager and Project Managers to provide monthly and quarterly graphic feedback to management of standard indicators for all three sectors comparing information over time and between districts.

Coordinate the overall GOAL country evaluation systems

• Lead and support the implementation of GOAL’s global M&E framework, GOAL Kenya’s M&E strategic framework and the M&E Plans for HIV, livelihoods and WASH interventions
• Revise, update and improve GK M&E strategic framework and M&E plan documents according to requirement
• Provide technical support to the identification and management of external resources to carry out or support MEL activities
• Establish and keep up to date the consultants data base
• Directly carry out, supervise and review all GOAL Kenya evaluations, surveys, mid-term reviews
• Design and carry out or supervise surveys (MICS, KAPBS and other surveys)
• Develop links with GOAL’s Survey and M&E Coordinator from the GOAL Technical Team
• Familiarise self and team with implementation of GOAL’s standard surveys (MICS, KAPBs, Causal Assessments etc), if necessary organizing training from the survey advisor or other sources in consultation with the Advisor
• Ensure surveys are carried out in line with the M&E plan and the GOAL Framework

Working with Local Partners on M&E Systems

• Coordinate the design and implementation of partner and other evaluations as required under the strategies, revise tools and M&E strategy regularly
• Support the development of an evaluation system that will provide information for measuring outcomes and impact of GOAL Kenya’s support to partner organizations and directly implemented projects, designing and carrying out or supervising outcome evaluations across all projects and programmes.
• M&E systems development of partners may be accompanied by systems benchmarks to track progress towards strengthened systems.
• Training- Lead the development and roll out of M&E capacity building plans of local partner organisations, including by providing tools and resources to partners.
• Liaise with partners and team members to plan, design and implement and report on annual thematic outcome evaluations and ensure the databases for same are in place up to date and accurate

Coordinate the overall country learning systems

• As part of the learning function, seek to identify learning points across the range of work carried out and identify opportunities to share this learning through meetings, workshops, reports etc
• Evidence/learning from Pilots: Give technical support to programmes in learning from piloting new and alternative approaches
• Where appropriate, share materials with GOAL’s best practice website
• Design and carry out or supervise assessments, research exercises etc as appropriate and possible support to programme development, monitoring, evaluation and learning
• Design and implement case studies across the programme
• Complete one short article for each project each year
• Promote strengthened understanding and capacities within project and programme teams on MEL, and the use and /or analysis of MEL systems at the project and partner levels
• Ensure that annual work plans are developed and monitored by the Senior Management Team

Coordinate the overall country M&E Plan

• Keep the overall country programme M&E plan updated on a monthly basis, based on activities implemented, new project needs etc
• Through regular liaison with and support to the Programme Managers, Assistant/Country Director ensure that the M&E plan is implemented
• Liaise with each Project Manager, Programme Manager and the Coordinator to check progress on the implementation of M&E activities
• Develop an individual detailed M&E plan for each project and monitor for implementation and quality
• Identify needs that each project has to support implementation of M&E activities, provide mentoring training to teams in the field locations

Manage the MEL team and be active member of the Senior Management Team (SMT)

• Manage the MEL team to meet the above objectives, carrying out evaluation, surveys etc as required by the priorities of the plan and available capacities within the team
• Develop and update the monthly and annual work plans for the MEL team to meet the objectives of the M&E plan.
• Prepare with team members monthly work plans and monitor their implementation.
• Provide line manager with a monthly report on the implementation of the work plans and achievement of objectives.
• Develop performance management appraisal objectives with each member of the MEL team, ensure objectives are SMART and reviewed and revised every six months.
• Build the technical and analytical capacity of the M&E officers throughout the year
• Work collaboratively with GOAL’s M&E Advisor & Roving MEL Coordinator

Knowledge Management

• Follow up mechanisms- Focus on insuring appropriate mechanism are in place and maintained for the follow up of evaluation and tech team findings by in country management with a view to maximising knowledge retention and use.
• Databases- Ensure databases of programmes are kept up to date through an efficient process and ensure data bases are accessible so that the information can be used effectively.

Beneficiary & Other Stakeholder Accountability Mechanisms

• Assess beneficiary accountability mechanisms in place and lead strengthening of such mechanisms including through appropriately structure dissemination of M&E findings
• Stakeholder Accountability- Ensure a summary presentation of all evaluations undertaken is prepared and rolled out in all locations and to partners as appropriate and document the process. Ensure processes in place that make feedback to beneficiary stakeholders systematic by partners and GOAL

Requirement

Essential:

• Masters Degree in programme evaluation, business administration or related field
• 5 years + programme related experience in international development
• 3+ years specific M and E Management experience
• Good computer skills (MS Word, Excel, Access and statistical software packages)
• Good demonstratable writing skills in English
• Strong research and analytical skills
• Excellent communication skills (written and spoken)
• Demonstrated ability to facilitate training and capacity building for staff
• Ability to embark on regular travel from Nairobi to other fields sites in Kenya

Desirable

• Relevant postgraduate degree
• Experience working with community based development projects
• Experience in similar positions with an international NGO

2. M & E Officer

A key function of this position is to support the further development and implementation of the monitoring and evaluation system that will provide information at project, programme and country office level for measuring the outcomes and impact of GK’s support to partner organisations and directly implemented projects.

In addition the post-holder will be expected to identify and share lessons learned through GOAL and partner interventions in order to learn from and improve practice, and contribute to a continuous increase improvement of the quality of our work.

Working in collaboration with the MEL Coordinator, the MEO will be partake and be responsible for the following duties :

Key Duties

1. Monitoring

• Support Project Managers to identify and resolve monitoring problems at individual project level or partner level
• Conduct monitoring support visits to each partner or project sites
• Sampling of partners monthly reports and means of verification for quality assurance purposes.
• Ensuring some of the indicators sampled in the partners monthly report are also Standard Indicators & then sample these indicators against the Standard Indicator database for quality assurance purposes.
• Document findings and share with the project teams
• Disseminate lessons learned from monitoring support visits at monthly programme team meetings
• Follow up with PM’s to ensure the recommended actions are documented on the project open action log.
• Ensure that mainstreaming issues mentioned above are included within the monitoring system as appropriate.

2. Evaluations

• Carry out evaluations of partner sub-projects based on the GOAL Kenya Evaluation Framework;
• Participate in KAPBs.
• For those evaluations assigned, ensure evaluation draft report is sent back to the field within a month of the evaluation taking place
• Ensure evaluation feed back meetings happen the month after the evaluation taking place
• Coordinate the evaluation feedback meetings with partners and stakeholders for those evaluation assigned to you
• Ensure final evaluation reports are sent to the partner within 2 months of the evaluation taking place
• Supporting GOAL project staff, partner staff, other stakeholders and beneficiaries in participating in the evaluation process;
• Ensure that mainstreaming issues mentioned above are included within the evaluation report as appropriate.
• Assign a rating for each evaluation undertaken and file on the shared drive
• Dissemination of the main findings of each evaluation at the monthly programme team meetings.
• Ensure all evaluations are filed in both hard and soft
• Ensure the relevant GOAL field office and partner have both hard and soft copies of the evaluation report including the evaluation rating.
• Organise, assist and take responsibility for baseline and follow up data collection pertaining to GOAL outcome level evaluations. This will involve training data collectors, quality controlling in the field and ensuring accurate data capture and storage of data.
• Representative sampling should be done in conjunction with MEL Co. from beneficiary databases

3. Learning

• Collating lessons learned from projects;
• Documenting and disseminating lessons learned to GOAL Kenya and elsewhere
• Ensure that mainstreaming issues mentioned above are included within the monitoring system as appropriate.

4. To support the development of an evaluation system that will provide information for measuring the outcomes and impact of GOAL Kenya’s support to partner organisations in the development programme.

Support the data management process (collection, entry, analysis and presentation) to measure the outcomes of GOAL Kenya’s support to partner organisations in the development programme.

Requirements

Essential:

• Degree in social sciences, development studies or related, relevant subject
• 3 years + work experience
• At least 1 year experience in M&E with an NGO
• Good computer skills (MS Word and Excel, SPSS)
• Good, demonstrable writing skills in English and a local language used in the North

Desirable:

• Strong analytical skills
• Experience with the computer package SPSS and/or STATA
• Good communication skills (written, spoken) – English & a local language used in the North
• Ability to travel up to the filed, if required

To apply for the above positions, please send your CV by email, listing three references including your last direct supervisor and salary expectation to keapplications@ke.goal.ie.

Please put the job title in the subject line of the email.

The closing date for all applications is Friday 23rd March 2012.

Only shortlisted applicants will be contacted.

GOAL is an equal opportunity employer, qualified male and female

Applicants are encouraged to apply.