Position Title: MONITORING, EVALUATION AND LEARNING (MEL) SPECIALIST

Duty Station: Jijiga

Open Position:  1

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.

Mercy Corps has been present in Ethiopia since 2004 working to drive bold and transformative ideas, working closely with government, the private sector and civil society actors to build a more resilient country, ensuring that programs are responsive to and influenced by participants and stakeholders. With the launch of Mercy Corps Global Strategy, Pathway to Possibility, the country office is poised to operationalize its three-year strategy with a vision to enhance the resilience of climate- and conflict-affected communities through market systems development for improved livelihoods, access to food, and safe and clean water to thrive in the face of crises. In Ethiopia, our strategy focuses in the four outcome areas: 1) Economically marginalized populations have improved and diversified livelihoods, income, and assets; 2) Pastoralists, farmers, and households have access to sustainably produced, safe, nutritious food; 3) Social cohesion and inclusive governance processes are built in crisis-affected communities; and 4) People have equitable, sustained access to clean water and sanitation for domestic and productive use. Currently, we operate in six regional states – Afar, Gambella, Oromia, Somali, Amhara and South Ethiopia. Working with a diverse base of donors that includes United States Agency for International Development (USAID), European Union, GAC, Hilton Foundation, United Nations (UN), JOA, Sweden, EKN, and other foundations, Mercy Corps Ethiopia empowers people to recover from crisis, build better lives and transform their communities for good.

About Regional Livestock Program (RLP)

The Regional Livestock Programme (RLP) is a collaborative effort led by implementing partners Helvetas, IGAD, and Mercy Corps. Its aim is to address the challenges that render smallholder and medium-scale market actors uncompetitive and highly susceptible to economic and environmental shocks. The program is designed based on the insights gained from the experience of implementing partners and a year-long analysis of regional livestock trade dynamics and livestock market systems in the pastoralist and agro-pastoralist ASAL regions of Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia, conducted by Mercy Corps.

Driven by SDC’s commitment to enhancing food security in ASAL areas in the face of climate change, RLP outlines a 12-year vision for transformative change within pastoral and agro-pastoral areas. The goal is to achieve a more productive, climate-resilient, inclusive, and competitive livestock sector that drives the economic well-being and food security of dryland communities.

The program focuses on four cross-border live animal trade corridors (Moyale, Tog Wajaale, Galkaayo, and Afmadow), as well as one camel milk trade corridor (Wajir-Garissa-Nairobi). Phase I (2022-2026) serves as the foundation for future phases and emphasizes building relationships, establishing an evidence base, and preparing for geographical scaling and expansion in Phase II.

Phase I’s overall objective is to enable pastoral and agro-pastoral communities in target trade corridors to have more climate-resilient, inclusive, and sustainable livelihoods. The emphasis is on increasing production and productivity of poor agro-pastoralist and pastoralist households, with a particular focus on peri-urban and rural women engaged in the livestock sector and youth. The program also aims to enhance domestic markets and trade while leveraging opportunities for regional integration, competitiveness, and cross-border collaboration along the targeted trade corridors.

The fundamental strategies involve strengthening natural resources governance, enhancing linkages between market actors, building business and social networks, and co-investing in financial and technical resources to improve livestock productivity and expand economic opportunities along priority trade corridors. Subsequent phases will build on these investments, with an increasing focus on enhancing the competitiveness of HOA livestock and livestock products in regional and international markets, as well as expanding investments to additional trade corridors.

The three long-term outcomes of RLP are anticipated to result from market system changes brought about through systemic interventions. Special attention is given to interventions that create opportunities for women and promote youth engagement and their associated benefits.

General Position Summary

The Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Specialist plays a critical role within RLP quality assurance, accountability and learning functions. The position supports the programme in planning and execution of monitoring, evaluation and learning activities, ensuring programme quality in accordance with accepted standards, providing essential feedback for learning, accountability, and decision-making. S/he will be responsible for providing internal capacity building for programme staff on monitoring, evaluation and learning activities as well as review and development of necessary tools that feed into the needs of RLP, Mercy Corps, and donor reporting requirements.

Essential Job Responsibilities

MONITORING AND EVALUATION

• Support the design, testing and implementation of all MEL system components for programmes in the RLP portfolio.
• Support the refining of programme logic and approaches, including developing intervention designs, sector strategies and MEL frameworks to adequately incorporate MEL considerations into the
• In conjunction with the MEL Manager and GIS/Data advisor, he/she will plan, coordinate, and supervise all assessments and evaluations for the programmes he/she is responsible for. This will entail development of Scopes of Work, development of survey tools, trainings and management of data collectors, report write and facilitating results discussion (or recruit and supervise evaluation local consultants where necessary)
• Regularly document and share all learnings from programme
• Provide relevant inputs into activity, monthly, quarterly, annual, and other programme
• Validating and verifying core indicators against the different sources of information, including review, validation and analysis of incoming results and data
• Maintain an up-to-date database that reflects programmes’ progress against all indicators (including disaggregated participant counts) and ensure the same is updated and linked as evidence in Tola Data and SDC RDM.
• Visit sites and partners to collect supplementary data, stories and conduct qualitative
• Facilitate regular review, reflection and analysis of programme monitoring information that feeds into programming and learning, for adaptive
• Support consortium partners to coordinate monitoring of progress against implementation and results measurement.
• Participate in on-going MEL advisory and support for all RLP staff and

• Work with RLP Programme Managers and other staff to ensure that activities are implemented on plan, through regular planning and review
• Maintain an active advisory role with the programme teams to help guide them towards robust and relevant data collection and management.
• Actively participate in implementation, providing advice and feedback for monitoring data and quality results at any

COLLABORATION AND LEARNING

• Build a collaborative network of relationships with implementing partners and other stakeholders to encourage learning networks that promote shared learning, aligned approaches, and mutual accountability to quality data collection and
• Contribute to the development and implementation of knowledge management to further stimulate use of evidence for learning, strategic adaptive management, and high-impact
• Work closely with the programme ’s study partners to define and execute a study strategy and ensure that MEL data is available to feed into a greater learning agenda for the programs they are responsible
• Contribute to programme visibility and advocacy work by assisting in dissemination of programme results and learning
• Coordinate closely with implementing partners to ensure our activities and data are shared and synced up together and tell one cohesive global
• Connect best practices and learning from within the programme and across the target corridors to ensure an evolving and effective learning system for improving programme
• Work with RLP programme teams to capture lessons learned during implementation and feed this information into thought leadership and documentation opportunities and into ongoing programme management and programme
• Collect and compile impact stories and evidence from the programs on a regular
• In coordination with programme teams, drive the capacity building of programme staff on design and MEL concepts through training and new hire orientation, including designing and delivering formal

DATA MANAGEMENT AND REPORTING

• Provide support and training to enumerators/staff for routine monitoring and post-distribution data collection, livestock market actors tracking, and capturing lessons learned for data-driven decision making.
• Support the process of testing and adopting relevant technologies for regular livestock actors’ and routine monitoring data collection and improving the efficiency of the programme ’s MEL function. This will include supporting rollout of RLP Mobile Data Collection (Commcare), PowerBI use case, GIS/GPS data collection for Mapping, provide evidence for RDM, Tola Data, SharePoint, and managing MCETH’s internal data management
• Serve as technical support for tools for data management systems and real-time data flow, utilizing appropriate This includes learning and testing data collection forms and tools as well as working with Data/GIS advisor to support real-time information flow.
• Assist program teams in setting up appropriate summary statistics, success stories, best practices, and review and reflection sessions and link them to tracking program Help develop the appropriate MEL workflow.
• Understand, maintain, and support the MEL information and data management system that improves MC’s ability to implement quality programs through better data collection, management, analysis, and presentation of data, and represent impact to donor, government bodies, peer organizations and communities using standard
• Collaborate with the program and finance teams to prepare and submit periodic government reports.

OTHER EXPECTATIONS IN THE ROLE

• Conduct himself/herself both professionally and personally in such a manner as to bring credit to Mercy Corps and to not jeopardize its humanitarian
• Other duties as

Accountability to Participants and Stakeholders

Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts toward accountability, specifically to our programme 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, evaluation and learning of our field projects.

Reports Directly To: RLP Program Manager-Ethiopia

• Works Directly With: MEL Manager, Data/GIS Advisor, Trade Corridor Coordinators & RLP Field Staff, Country PaQ team, Implementing Partner Staff.