About CARE

CARE is an organization driven by its mission to overcome poverty and social injustice. Together with its partners, CARE Somalia works with vulnerable communities to address the underlying causes of poverty and promote peace and development, through its strategic goal to reduce poverty by empowering women, enhancing access to resources and services, and improving governance. CARE Somalia is seeking applications from qualified and talented candidates for the position of MEAL Manager who will work closely with the Emergency Program and other program staff. The position is 100% field-based with a workstation being in Hargeisa or Mogadishu and with frequent travel to Puntland, Galmudug, Jubbaland, Southwest, and Hirshabelle while working closely with program and program support.

Job Summary:

Reporting to the Emergency Director, the Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability & Learning Manager is responsible for all monitoring, evaluation, accountability & learning systems for the Emergency Programme. He/she will work in close coordination with Emergency program teams as well as other MEAL teams in the development programs under the new Country Office Strategic Plan (SP) in order to promote cross-learning and synergy. He/she will be responsible for monitoring and evaluating initiatives, programs, and projects, both new and established, providing accountability and ensuring efficiency and success from the beginning to the end of projects. The incumbent will be responsible for establishing; modifying and monitoring key programme performance indicators and record physical progress for specific programmes and projects within the Emergency programme. In addition, he/she will play significant role in program development including log frame and M&E plan development, donor level reporting, data/information management, documentation of success stories and lesson learnt and capacity building of CARE and partner staff in Somalia. Undertake regular FAM utilization and trainings. Also lead the annual Data Quality Assessment (DQA) to ensure CARE meets the required standard to strengthen donor and other partners’ confidence.

Key Responsibilities:

Responsibility 1: Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability & Learning of projects

• Support and facilitate the design of programme-level MEAL frameworks for the Emergency programme that meets or exceeds donor and CARE MEAL and reporting requirements.
• Provide technical guidance and support to CARE and partner staff in monitoring of ongoing projects in line with approved project designs. Also, ensure effective and efficient accountability mechanisms are in place to support Humanitarian responses.
• Lead in the development of appropriate tools for project monitoring or review existing tools to be in line with the needs of each of project.
• Lead in assessments, surveys, and evaluation of all ending projects. This will include the identification of consultants (if required) development /review of tools and technical review of reports.
• Undertake regular field monitoring of all ongoing projects in close coordination with the Emergency team including but not limited to the Emergency Director, Humanitarian Coordinator, Emergency team leaders, Program managers and provide clear recommendations to programme teams.
• Develop, maintain and update as necessary the MEAL plans for Emergency programme projects consistent with the approved project MEAL frameworks.
• Develop and operationalize effective and efficient accountability mechanisms.
• Ensure proper documentation and sharing of program learnings.
• Taking advantage of Modern technology promote innovations to improve MEAL system efficiency.

Responsibility 2: Program Design and Development

• Together with the Emergency program team, lead in conducting multi-sectoral assessments to collect comprehensive and reliable information on the needs and priorities of populations of concern with the objective of writing new grant proposals.
• Contribute to program design to ensure adherence to minimum standards including the use of standardized indicators and documentation methodologies.
• Lead in planning and design of all field assessments to ensure quality data collection using modern technology.
• Prepare and submit high-quality assessment reports to be used for new program development and decision-making.
• Represent CARE and actively participate in inter-agency assessments conducted within the Emergency program geographic areas of intervention.
• Provide significant contributions to the development of Concept Notes and Project proposals.
• Contribute to the Country Office and Emergency program strategy development processes which should feedback into CARE International Vision 2030. Play a critical role in the full implementation of the new CARE Somalia strategic plan

Responsibility 3: Program reporting

• Take the lead in collecting, analysing and reporting on relevant indicators for donor and CARE reports as well organizational-wide MEAL system.
• Review internal program progress reports such as monthly reports and provide feedback to teams.
• Contribute to the development and reviews of donor and CARE reports.
• Analyse reporting gaps within the different projects and identify corrective actions needed.
• Provide support to the local partners to ensure quality reporting while also building their capacity to ensure compliance.

Responsibility 4: Program data management and analysis

• Together with the Emergency program team, harmonize and standardize existing data collection, analysis and reporting tools and systems in line with CARE Somalia’s Management Information System as well as specific project needs of the Emergency program.
• Undertake analysis and reporting of all data collected from the field and identify learning points /trends for improving program quality.
• Closely work with the MIS Coordinator to manage the country office MIS system. This will include updating the MIS systems to ensure Emergency program data is captured on a regular basis.
• Develop a clear mechanism for tracking performance indicators for all projects. This will include the development of MEAL plans for new and/or ongoing projects.
• Monitor the progress of program indicators, maintain program data, and keep up-to-date records of all data/information required for measuring project performance indicators.
• Maintain programme data and facilitate the storage, archiving and easy retrieval of program data organized by projects, locations of action, and temporal distribution, and suggest better methods for improving existing data management systems.
• Support local partners by ensuring their systems are increasingly built to support programs.

Responsibility 5: Staff Capacity Building

• Undertake MEAL knowledge and skills capacity assessment of CARE and partners program staff and provide recommendations for addressing any gaps identified.
• Design and implement tailored in–house MEAL training for CARE and local partner staff to support the fast-changing Humanitarian landscape.

Responsibility 6: Staff supervision

• Directly supervise the day-to-day roles of seven (7) monitoring and evaluation program staff with MEAL functions.
• Undertake performance management of staff supervised.

Responsibility 7: Other cross-cutting roles

• Establish working relationships with the rest of the country office MEAL teams.
• Contribute to overall CARE Somalia MEAL system development /management.
• Share/ exchange MEAL knowledge and experiences with other CARE programs.

Qualifications and Experience

• Minimum University degree in social sciences, information management, Statistics or other closely related disciplines with additional training on MEAL.
• At least 4 years of relevant work experience in program monitoring and evaluation preferably worked in Somalia/Somaliland in an NGO setup.
• Experience working on projects funded by major humanitarian donors, such as the USAID, FCDO, ECHO, and Dutch and Canadian governments an added advantage.
• Excellent written and spoken communication skills.
• Capacity to produce high-quality program reports.
• High-level proficiency in Ms. Excel and quantitative analysis techniques such as SPSS, STATA, etc.
• Demonstrated ability to design MEAL tools
• Ability to meet strict deadlines in high-pressure environments and able to travel extensively to the field locations
• Must have the ability to work independently and have good initiative.
• Prior experience working in Somalia is an added advantage.