**About Mercy Corps

**Mercy Corps is powered by the belief that a better world is possible. To do this, we know our teams do their best work when they are diverse and every team member feels that they belong. We welcome diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and skills so that we can be stronger and have long term impact. The **Program / Department Summary

** Mercy Corps exists to alleviate suffering, poverty, and oppression by building secure, productive, and just communities. Mercy Corps has been present in Nigeria since 2012, focusing its interventions on adolescent girls’ empowerment, economic development, and conflict mitigation. With the insurgency spilling over from the north-east of Nigeria and causing displacement of millions of individuals, Mercy Corps has decided to address the rising humanitarian needs among displaced households and vulnerable host communities by starting its humanitarian program in July 2014. Mercy Corps Nigeria’s humanitarian program aims to provide assistance to populations affected by the crisis in north-east Nigeria. With funding from humanitarian donors including BHA, FCDO and ECHO the humanitarian program has been focusing on food assistance, non-food items distribution, protection, livelihoods support, WASH, and capacity building of humanitarian response actors. Mercy Corps plans to scale up and expand its humanitarian response in north-east Nigeria to reach more beneficiaries with additional and varied assistance in a wider geographic area. In addition to humanitarian program, Mercy Corps also implements early recovery, economic recovery and resilience interventions targeting the marginalized in communities including youth. All Mercy Corps interventions in Nigeria are implemented in a conflict and gender sensitive manner. **The Position

** The Country MEL Manager oversees MEL unit in Nigeria. The role of the MEL unit is to strengthen the effectiveness and quality of its portfolio programs and projects by providing technical and advisory support to Program/Project teams on all aspects of Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) and Knowledge Management. This includes strengthening portfolio and program/project MEL systems, practices, and processes to enhance capacity for program teams to become more effective around implementing MEL activities to maximize interventions impact; and leverage learning and insights within implementation teams, with partners and communities to ensure accountability. As a key member of the Program Performance and Quality (PaQ) team in Mercy Corps Nigeria, the Country Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) Manager will be responsible for:

Participate in the roll out and monitoring of agency MEL and Tola guidance in Nigeria portfolio.
Cross-cutting programmatic information management, monitoring and evaluation, ensuring that information collected is reflected upon, used to improve programs, and is incorporated into consistently high-quality reports and proposal development.
The Country MEL Manager will be responsible for developing (in partnership with project staff), coordinating, maintaining, and constantly improving the portfolio -wide M&E system, as well as training M&E staff in the portfolio.
In addition, the position holder is responsible for ensuring that the MEL reports generated by each program are timely and of high quality and that the data can be validated. This will be achieved through staff capacity building and necessary training.
Ensuring learnings are institutionalized in the portfolio, with systems in place for analyzing and using M&E data and supporting programs to interpret and use learning for strategic and programmatic decision making. This includes contributing to the development, learning and adaptation of program strategies.

**Essential Job Responsibilities

** TECHNICAL LEADERSHIP – MONITORING, EVALUATION AND LEARNING

Develop country MEL strategy, provide leadership to field offices in developing individual program level M&E systems that inform and improve each program, as well as feed into the broader nation-wide M&E system and country strategy.
Lead and develop an M&E team structure, developing and maintaining a system that improves the country’s ability to analyze and represent impact to donors, government, colleague agencies, and communities themselves.
Lead and/or collaborate with external evaluators on the design and roll out of the program assessments, baseline, and evaluations, while setting up effective systems for learning.
Support teams in collecting disaggregated data (sex/age etc.) and utilizing disaggregated data to adapt our programs to be more inclusive and gender sensitive data.
Support new business development by ensuring lessons learned are carried over and proposals have robust MEL plans and log frames.
Contribute towards analyzing routine M&E data (both qualitative and quantitative) and generate regular output tracking reports for program teams to take informed decisions.
Lead and provide technical contributions to research and evaluation studies across programs and develop the capacity of national team members to conduct qualitative and quantitative research, data analysis and technical report writing.
Develop strong relationships and coordinate closely with regional, and country leadership, technical support teams, program teams, third-party monitoring, and other implementing partners, to ensure nation-wide MEL strategy is aligned with agency and field-based priorities and program opportunities.

TEAM MANAGEMENT & CAPACITY BUILDING

Use existing MC resources, train M&E and program teams in the area of monitoring and evaluation and data utilization for decision-making.
Build the capacity of all relevant team members to develop and maintain an excellent M&E system, including training on Tola (digital tool developed by MC) and the periodic reflection and analysis of program monitoring data to disseminate learning.
Develop plans to mentor and coach staff to build their capacity to enable them to develop excellent reports and other documents.
Lead efforts to establish an M&E unit working out of deep field and remote locations that will facilitate M&E for all programs and collaborate closely with Program Managers in developing and establishing of the M&E system, one that serves the needs of the overall of the country portfolio and its field officers.

MONITORING, EVALUATION AND LEARNING SYSTEM

Manage the development and/or implementation of appropriate data management systems that provide access to timely, accurate and meaningful data.
Ensure that these systems produce data and evidence that can be used to inform programmatic and strategic decision making and demonstrate the impact of Mercy Corps’ activities on the communities and individuals we serve.
Support the design of evaluations and studies, including defining research questions, instruments and analysis plans, identification and recruitment of researchers, implementation to ensure quality and timelines of field work, partners and of the overall evaluation and research projects, outputs, and reports. Strategic Coordination and Collaboration

KNOWLEDGE AND INFORMATION MANAGEMENT

Works with the program and M&E teams to adopt a holistic country-level M&E system (including Tola Data) that harnesses open-source software and flexible cloud solutions to collect, monitor and verify program activities and ensure they are aligned with country strategic and annual plan more accurately.
Develop program and operational reporting templates that facilitate the acquisition, aggregation, and flow of information in programs.
Support the design, quality and uptake of research and evaluations and ensure use of evidence generated by Mercy Corps Nigeria in advocacy and development of robust proposal development.
Develop and maintain strategic learning partnership with key relevant academic and research institutions to enhance learning and advocacy efforts of Mercy Corps Nigeria.

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.

**Supervisory Responsibility
**Program MEL Managers/Advisors/Coordinators (depending on program structure), CLA Advisors
**Accountability

**Reports Directly To: Program Performance and Quality Director.
Works Directly With: Deputy/Chiefs of Party, Program Directors/Managers, Consortium partners MEL, PaQ Unit, Technical Sector Advisors, and other support functions (Operations and Finance), Regional MEL Advisor, and HQ PaQ

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 Qualifications & Transferable Skills

BA/S degree or equivalent in development studies, business administration, statistics, economics, social sciences, monitoring and evaluation, project management or other relevant field required. MA/S in relevant field strongly preferred.
Experience working with quantitative data analysis software like SPSS/STATA/R/Python and qualitative software like ATLAS.ti or NVivo or equivalent preferred
Experience using mobile data collection tools like Survey CTO or ODK preferred.
Minimum 5 years of experience in the areas of program development and monitoring and evaluation in development and/or emergency contexts, including relevant advisory/leadership experience building and managing an M&E system and team, supervising data collection and data validation exercises, and building staff capacity.
Must have extensive training skills and experience working with a variety of donors, such as USAID, EU and FCDO.
Ability to manage and meet deadlines.
Ability to work independently and innovate
Excellent communication and organizational skills.
Internationally recognized qualification in project or program management or a commitment to obtain the qualification in the early months of work.
Knowledge of Sphere standards and other training in humanitarian response preferred.

Success Factors

The ideal candidate will have a strong curiosity for understanding and working effectively within the complex cultural, political, security and social environment of Nigeria. He/she will be an excellent communicator, multi-tasker, and able to work in ambiguous situations. He/she will be a tolerant and flexible individual able to work in difficult and stressful environments and follow procedures. The successful candidate will be focused on team building and capacity-building of national staff; be a strategic thinker, have strong skills in design monitoring and evaluation of development programs and maintain a sense of humor.

Living Conditions / Environmental Conditions

The position will be based in either Maiduguri, Borno State, Nigeria and it requires up to 40% travel to (all field program locations) as well as Abuja. Considering the frequent travel from/to different field locations, this position will require flexibility in terms of accommodation and logistics. Housing in the field will be in hotels or guesthouses where available. Security in the field locations require additional vigilance and accessibility will be reassessed continuously. Access to good medical services in the field is limited. Phone communication, internet, electricity, and water is available but might be erratic. This location is eligible for hardship and R&R benefits. Given the nature of the response, working hours requires flexibility and working through weekends/evenings might be necessary. Mercy Corps team members represent the agency both during and outside work hours when deployed in a field posting or on a visit/TDY to a field posting. Team members are expected to conduct themselves in a professional manner and respect local laws, customs and MC's policies, procedures, and values at all times and in all in-country venues. Fostering a diverse and open workplace is an important part of Mercy Corps’ vision.

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

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

Achieving our mission begins with how we build our team and work together. Through our commitment to enriching our organization with people of different origins, beliefs, backgrounds, and ways of thinking, we are better able to leverage the collective power of our teams and solve the world’s most complex challenges. We strive for a culture of trust and respect, where everyone contributes their perspectives and authentic selves, reaches their potential as individuals and teams, and collaborates to do the best work of their lives.We recognize that diversity and inclusion is a journey, and we are committed to learning, listening and evolving to become more diverse, equitable and inclusive than we are today.

**Equal Employment Opportunity

**Mercy Corps is an equal opportunity employer that does not tolerate discrimination on any basis. We actively seek out diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and skills so that we can be collectively stronger and have sustained global impact.We are committed to providing an environment of respect and psychological safety where equal employment opportunities are available to all. We do not engage in or tolerate discrimination on the basis of race, color, gender identity, gender expression, religion, age, sexual orientation, national or ethnic origin, disability (including HIV/AIDS status), marital status, military veteran status or any other protected group in the locations where we work.

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.