Description

About Mercy Corps

Mercy Corps is a leading global organization powered by the belief that a better world is possible. In disaster, in hardship, in more than 40 countries around the world, we partner to put bold solutions into action, helping people triumph over adversity and build stronger communities from within. Now, and for the future.

The Program / Department / Team

Mercy Corps has worked in Liberia since 2002, initially responding to the humanitarian impacts of the country’s civil conflicts and subsequently evolving its programming to address the changing needs and priorities of Liberian communities. Over the past two decades, Mercy Corps has implemented a diverse portfolio of programs focused on food security, agricultural livelihoods, nutrition, financial inclusion, youth economic empowerment, renewable energy, water and sanitation, and community resilience, supporting sustainable development and improved opportunities across the country.

General Position Summary

The Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) Lead is a key position responsible for cross-cutting programmatic information management, monitoring, evaluation, and learning across the program. The MEL Lead will direct the development, coordination, and continuous improvement of the program’s MEL system, working in partnership with program staff and consortium partners in collaboration with the Ministry of Education (MOE) at national, county, district, and school levels to ensure that information collected is reflected upon, used to improve ongoing activities, and incorporated into consistently high-quality reports. The MEL Lead is the program’s main MEL contact for USDA, the MOE, and consortium partners, and leads the MEL team (MEL Coordinator and, MEL Tech Coordinator).

The MEL Lead is a member of the senior management team and she or he will play a lead role in strategy discussions and program implementation, providing technical guidance on monitoring, evaluation, and learning across all program components, and overseeing coordination of the various technical areas across the MEL team, including capacity building and mentoring on themes related to monitoring, evaluation, accountability, reporting, and learning.

Essential Responsibilities

TECHNICAL LEADERSHIP

• Provide leadership, training, and mentoring in the development of MEL Plans, MEL tools, survey design, methodology, data analysis, and other skills required for assessing program impact.
• Manage and collaborate with external evaluators on the design and rollout of the program baseline, midterm, and final evaluations, while setting up effective systems for learning.
• Ensure the program uses the necessary MEL systems and tools to inform and improve implementation, as well as feed into the broader country-level MEL system.
• Take the lead in aligning, collecting, and reporting on relevant indicators to USDA (including the Performance Monitoring Plan and Semi-annual reporting) and organizational MEL systems, as applicable.
• Support teams in collecting sex and age disaggregated data (SADD) and using gender-sensitive data collection methods to understand and respond to program results with diverse participants.
• Participate in the facilitation of program-level strategic planning sessions, assisting Program Managers and senior management in the development of annual plans and reports.
• Support community accountability and reporting mechanisms (CARM) at field level, promoting complaint and feedback channels and ensuring activities are carried out in accordance with organizational and humanitarian principles.
• Work with technical sector leads to develop sector-specific log frames and toolkits across program components (e.g., education, nutrition, agriculture and market systems).

INFORMATION MANAGEMENT

• Work with the program and MEL teams to adopt a holistic MEL system that harnesses appropriate data collection, storage, and visualization technologies to accurately collect, monitor, and verify program activities.
• Provide guidance, recommendations, and leadership to ensure MEL systems meet the needs of Program Managers and Country Leadership, addressing shortfalls in MEL and data management that affect implementation.
• Contribute to program design to ensure adherence to MEL best practices, including standardized indicators, form templates, and documentation methodologies.
• Ensure the MEL team maintains a comprehensive schedule of donor and internal reporting requirements, reviewing project reports to ensure accurate, clear, and high-quality data presented in the proper format.
• Development of program and operational reporting templates that facilitate the acquisition, aggregation, and flow of information.
• Oversee, through the MEL Tech Coordinator, TolaData as the program’s indicator management system and CommCare as the digital data collection platform, ensuring indicators, targets, and results are maintained and reviewed.
• Oversee, through the MEL Coordinator, the data quality assessment (DQA) cycle every six months and follow up on corrective actions.
• Lead compliance with the Mercy Corps MEL Policy, tracking completeness of the minimum standards in the Program Management Dashboard.
• Lead the process of transferring the MEL tools, data, and capacity to the Ministry of Education and county structures in line with the transition plan at the end of the Program.

CAPACITY BUILDING AND MENTORING

• Develop and oversee implementation of the MEL staff and partner capacity building strategy that promotes a culture of learning through systematic analysis and reflection of program data.
• Build the capacity of all relevant team members to develop and maintain an excellent MEL system, including regular reflection and analysis of program monitoring data.
• Work closely with Program Managers, Human Resources, and Finance to ensure MEL skills are incorporated into relevant position descriptions and budgeted for accordingly.
• Contribute to the knowledge management repository with best practices in MEL, ensuring accessibility to all staff and partners.
• Lead the recruitment of competent MEL program staff and organize the MEL team to perform MEL activities.

INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL COORDINATION

• Act as an active contributor and collaborator with regional and global counterparts to promote the use of MEL best practices.
• Strengthen linkages with internal knowledge and learning resources to enhance organizational learning where relevant to MEL.
• Maintain close working relationships with MEL counterparts among consortium partners and other organizations operating in Liberia.
• Provide leadership to ensure that MEL systems among all implementing partners are well coordinated, enabling comparison and compilation of data across the consortium.
• Document and disseminate key findings from program studies and evaluations in accessible forms that can inform program design and stakeholder priorities.
• Coordinate MEL activities across the program counties, ensuring county-based MEL staff understand their roles and reporting lines.
• Serve as the primary MEL contact for USDA, the Ministry of Education, and consortium partners (RTI International, LIPACE, and SCIDA), working with the Government Partnerships Director on government engagement.
• Ensure USDA visibility and marking requirements are met in MEL and communication products and guide the communications Coordinator on success stories and knowledge products.

TEAM MANAGEMENT

• Develop the capacity of the team, deepen understanding of roles, and assist with career development, including individual professional development plans for MEL team members.
• Promote accountability, communicate expectations, and provide constructive feedback via regular performance reviews.
• Supervise, hire, and orient new team members as necessary.
• Create and sustain a work environment of mutual respect where team members strive to achieve excellence.

SECURITY

• Ensure compliance with security procedures and policies as determined by country leadership.
• Proactively ensure that team members operate in a secure environment and are aware of policies.

SAFEGUARDING RESPONSIBILITIES

• 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

Accountability

Reports Directly To: Chief of Party

Works Directly With: Technical Director, Government Director, Communications Coordinator, Commodity Operations teams, Program Manager, Finance and Subawards Manager, and consortium partner MEL focal points

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.

Minimum Qualification & Transferable Skills

• Master’s degree in development studies, research methods, statistics, economics, social sciences, engineering, monitoring and evaluation, project management, or other relevant field required; postgraduate degree preferred.
• At least 6 years of active MEL work experience in emergency and development programming required, including at least 3 years leading or supervising MEL teams, with proven use of program technology.
• Experience with theoretical and practical MEL background; skilled in participatory qualitative and quantitative MEL methodologies and techniques.
• Excellent quantitative skills and a power user of Excel; experience with statistical packages such as Stata, R, or SPSS, and GIS tools such as QGIS or ArcGIS is preferred.
• Experience with data management, including the ability to structure and collate datasets for ease of analysis.
• Demonstrated understanding of evaluation design, including sampling and quasi-experimental methods, intermediate statistics and the ability to summarize and make predictions from multiple datasets.
• Familiarity with CommCare, TolaData, and Power BI.
• Previous experience with institutional donors such as USAID or USDA is required; McGovern-Dole experience strongly preferred.
• Experience in school feeding, early grade literacy (EGRA), or child nutrition programming and measurement is an advantage.
• Experience supporting government counterparts on data systems and capacity building is preferred.
• Previous experience living and working in challenging or insecure environments.
• Fluency in spoken and written English required.

Success Factors

A successful candidate will have a demonstrated ability to lead and communicate effectively with team members of varied work styles and cultures, follow procedures, and meet deadlines with flexibility and creativity in planning and problem solving. They will have a proven ability to learn quickly, multi-task, prioritize, take initiative, and be accountable for results; understand the larger picture while remaining focused on the details; problem-solve within a complex and sensitive setting; and follow laws and security protocols. The most successful Mercy Corps team members have a strong commitment to teamwork and accountability, thrive in evolving and changing environments, and make effective written and verbal communication a priority in all situations.

Living Conditions / Environmental Conditions

The position is based in Grand Bassa, Liberia and requires regular travel to other program counties (Grand Bassa, Rivercess, Grand Gedeh, and River Gee), including to areas with limited amenities. Team members represent the agency both during and outside work hours when deployed in a field posting. Team members are expected to conduct themselves in a professional manner and respect local laws, customs, and organizational policies, procedures, and values at all times and in all in-country venues.

Ongoing Learning

In support of our belief that learning organizations are more effective, efficient and relevant to the communities we serve, we empower all team members to dedicate 5% of their time to learning activities that further their personal and/or professional growth and development

Team Engagement and Effectiveness

Equal Employment Opportunity

Mercy Corps is an equal opportunity employer committed to providing equal employment opportunities to all employees and qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, sex, sexual orientation, religion or belief, national origin, age, disability, marital status, veteran status, or any other characteristics protected under applicable law.

Safeguarding & Ethics

Mercy Corps is committed to ensuring that all individuals we come into contact with through our work, whether team members, community members, program participants or others, are treated with respect and dignity. We are committed to the core principles regarding prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse laid out by the UN Secretary General and IASC and have signed on to the Interagency Misconduct Disclosure Scheme. We will not tolerate child abuse, sexual exploitation, abuse, or harassment by or of our team members. As part of our commitment to a safe and inclusive work environment, team members are expected to conduct themselves in a professional manner, respect local laws and customs, and to adhere to Mercy Corps Code of Conduct Policies and values at all times. Team members are required to complete mandatory Code of Conduct elearning courses upon hire and on an annual basis.

As an applicant, if you witness or experience any form of sexual misconduct during the recruitment process, please report this to Mercy Corps Integrity Hotline (integrityhotline@mercycorps.org).

Click here to apply: MONITORING AND EVALUATION LEAD – NATIONAL | Mercy Corps Liberia

Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis. Candidates are therefore encouraged to apply early, as the position may be closed before the final application deadline.