The Program/Department Summary

E4I is implementing the Financial Inclusion for Clean Cooking Access in Rwanda and Sierra Leone (FICCARS) programme, which seeks to address the challenge of access to finance and clean cooking among women living in cities, particularly in urban informal settlements and slums in these two countries.

General Position Summary

This is a full-time position to implement Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) activities in the FICCARS programme. The MEL Officer will ensure quality in M&E practices in the programme by developing and maintaining robust MEL frameworks and tools and providing technical support to FICCARS and its partners.

Essential Responsibilities

Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) (60%):

• Oversee the effective use of the programme’s MEL system by staff, partners, and stakeholders.
•  Support the MEL Manager in updating and maintaining programmatic MEL plans, theory of change, and related log frame and targets in alignment with donor requirements.
• Support in development and implementation of appropriate reporting systems and templates that enhance reporting on project outputs, generate quality evidence on programme impact and ensure use of data for decision-making processes.
• Provide technical support and guidance to the programme team on field activities, which includes best practices to track indicators, using appropriate tools and forms, and integrating good MEL practices.
• Lead field visits to track programme progress, carry out verification of reported MEL data and results, and provide MEL related technical support to external evaluators as needed.
•  Support in recruitment, training and capacity building of and project implementation partners where required.
• Provide MEL updates to the FICCARS team on overall programme performance and recommend approaches to programme strengthening and improvement.

DATA ANALYSIS AND DATABASE MANAGEMENT (30%):

• Support in the design and maintenance of databases that the programme’s ability to analyze data to inform implementation,  identify trends, and present impact to team members and key stakeholders.
•  Ensure all relevant programme staff can utilize the databases for analysis and information sharing.
•  Provide technical support to the team in developing tools for data collection, analysis and presentation for embedded action research activities in FICCARS.
• Develop the necessary tools for field teams to feed data into the databases in a way that minimizes entry errors.
• Review data being collected to locate and fix problems related to data entry or integrity and manage regular synchronizations with field level data.
• Support in the preparation of data reports (tables, charts, narratives, visuals) at regular intervals and ad hoc as needed to respond to requests for information for use regular reporting periods, and other internal and external reporting requirements.
• Conduct continuous data analysis of commercial partners’ performance from programme data and produce cross-sectional reports reflecting different growth variables including but not limited to sales, employment, profitability, etc.
•  Provide analytical expertise with regards to identifying and confirming patterns and trends in data, understanding the economics of supporting different types of business, cost per unit of result, etc.

INSITUTIONAL SUPPORT ROLES (10%):

• Work closely with the business development and communication departments in developing and disseminating results, best practices, and success stories in FICCARS and other projects as assigned.
• Support the MEL Manager in assessing the overall performance of E4I projects to inform platform-level decision making.
• Support E4I’s Evidence and Learning team to review the quality of existing social and economic data collected, methods of collecting it and the degree to which this is providing robust data for results-based evaluation. 

SAFEGUARDING

• Actively learns about safeguarding and integrates it into their work, including safeguarding risks and mitigations related to their area of work
• Practices the values of Mercy Corps including respecting the dignity and well-being of participants and fellow team members
• Encourages openness and communication in their team; encourages team members to submit reports if they have any concerns using reporting mechanisms e.g., Integrity Hotline and other options

Supervisory Responsibility

None

Accountability

Reports Directly To: MEL Manager

Works Directly With: MEL, E4I Evidence & Learning, and Programs teams

Accountability to Participants and Stakeholders

Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts toward accountability, specifically to our program participants, community partners, other stakeholders, and to international standards guiding international relief and development work. We are committed to actively engaging communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring, and evaluation of our field projects.

Knowledge and Experience

• Bachelor’s Degree in Monitoring and Evaluation, International Development, Statistics, Economics, Business Management, or another analytical field.
•  Two to three (2-3) years of relevant professional experience doing complex data analysis and reporting.
• Proven experience in producing analysis related to the success of development programs and the economics of supporting different types of businesses.
•  Strong knowledge of data quality assurance techniques.
•  Experience with developing monitoring and evaluation systems and frameworks for international development programs, including developing performance indicators, data collection, analysis systems and tools, and donor reporting.
•  Certified advanced excel skills are required with the ability to create excel based tools using complex formulas, pivot tables, create graphs etc.
• Practical experience with statistical software and data management required.Experience with programming for data analysis and visualisation is favourable (e.g., Python, R, Excel VBA, PowerBI, Tableau).
• Highly adept with data analysis, presentation, statistics and possessability to see patterns in data ad understand the cause and effect.
• Experience with mainstreaming gender indicators into MEL plans/frameworks is an advantage.
• Capacity to produce high-quality briefs and reports, with high quality written and verbal English language and communication.