MEAL Assistant

Background/IRC Summary:  The International Rescue Committee (IRC) responds to the world’s worst humanitarian crises and helps people to survive and rebuild their lives. Founded in 1933 at the request of Albert Einstein, the IRC offers lifesaving care and life-changing assistance to refugees forced to flee from war and disaster. At work today in over 40 countries and 22 U.S. cities, we restore dignity and hope to millions who are uprooted and struggling to endure. The IRC leads the way from harm to home.

IRC has been working in Pakistan for approximately 40 years, managing and delivering large, complex programs to meet the needs in health, education, safeguarding, environmental health and livelihoods for displaced, poor and disaster affected communities. With the support of the federal and provincial governments, and generous donors like FCDO, ECHO, USAID, GAC and Australian Aid Agencies the IRC is currently implementing projects across the country.

The IRC launched 5-year USAID’s “Women’s Economic Empowerment Activity” (WEEA) to promote women’s economic empowerment through safe and dignified access to livelihood opportunities, information, resources, and services in the target districts of Pakistan. The WEEA target districts include a total of six districts in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh and Punjab. Furthermore, WEEA also facilitates National Identity Card (NIC) registration in 57 districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh, Punjab, and Baluchistan provinces.

Job Overview/Summary: The International Rescue Committee (IRC) is seeking a self-motivated and analytical individual for the position of Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL) Assistant for district Ghotki and Khairpur in Sindh province under direct supervision of the Sr. MEAL Officer. MEAL Assistant will be responsible for the MEAL activities of WEEA in intervention districts of Sindh (Ghotki/Khairpur) with technical support of Sr. MEAL officer. S/he will be responsible to facilitate implementation of MEAL plan and standardized detailed monitoring system in the assigned district. In addition to providing real-time support to facilitate the quality of the project implementation as well as ensuring activities-based means of verification, s/he will assist Sr. MEAL officer during internal Data Quality Audits (DQA). S/he will facilitate Sr. MEAL Officer for implementation of feedback complaint response mechanism (FCRM) in her/his district. S/he will ensure timely, reliable, and valid data uploading on Indigenous web-based Project Management Information System (PMIS) by her/himself and with support of program team. S/he will also be responsible to support Sr. MEAL Officer for smooth implementation of different studies and surveys with facilitation of program team. S/he will assist Sr. MEAL Officer in analysis, interpretation, and dissemination of collected data along with supporting her/him for the preparation of Quarterly/Annual progress reports. S/he will be engaged in joint and independent monitoring visits to different WEEA intervention villages in the assigned district.

Major Responsibilities:

• Responsible for the Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability, and Learning activities of WEEA in his/her district.
• Responsible to facilitate implementation of MEAL plan and standardized detailed monitoring system in his/her district.
• Conduct regular field monitoring visits to the intervention sites and develop monitoring report as per the standard format.
• Support debriefing sessions with program staff to discuss issues reported during the Monitoring report and set action points with clear timeframe.
• Handle and Maintain project level records, activity-based means of verification in soft and hard forms.
• Support Sr. MEAL officer to conduct data audits and analysis to ensure validated data for completeness, correctness, consistency and follow up on any data quality issues.
• Ensure collection of feedback from beneficiaries/clients and maintain the Feedback Registry and other tools developed by WEEA team.
• Ensure timely, reliable, and valid data uploading on Indigenous web-based Project Management Information System (PMIS).
• Assist the Sr. MEAL officer in rolling out studies, bi-annual/ quarterly surveys as per WEEA MEL Plan.
• Carry out other tasks as assigned by the supervisor.

Key Working Relationships:

Position Reports to: Senior MEAL officer

Position directly supervises: None.

• Other Internal and/or external contacts: MEAL Officers, MIS Officer, MIS Manager, MEAL Manager.

Job Requirements:

Education:

• Bachelor’s degree in, Statistics, Social Sciences, Development Studies, Project Management, Computer Science, or in any other relevant field.
• Master and Postgraduate degree will be preferred.

Work Experience:

• 2-3 years of proven experience of monitoring, evaluation, accountability and learning in humanitarian context and working directly with communities.
• Candidates having working experience with USAID funded projects will be preferred.
• Experience of implementing feedback complaint response mechanisms will be an additional asset.

Skills & proficiencies:

• Intermediate analytic skills and understanding of statistical data (e.g., statistical analysis), ability to recognize, interpret and synthesize patterns in data.
• Effective, high-quality communication, writing, and interpersonal skills are required in English and Urdu language.
• Strong oral communications skills in local language (Sindhi).
• Ability to work as good teammate and sound capacities to work in a diversified team.
• Willingness to work under pressure and stressful situations without minimal direction and without compromising on quality.
• Strongly resilient to unfavorable situations.
• Understanding on Humanitarian standards (CHS).
• High proficiency in using Microsoft Excel (data analysis and visualization), MS Word, PowerPoint and mobile data collection using KOBO, etc.

Language Skills:   Sindhi, Urdu, and English

The IRC Core Values and Commitments. 

• The IRC and IRC workers must adhere to the values and principles outlined in IRC Way - Standards for Professional Conduct.
• These are Integrity, Service, Equality and Accountability.
• In accordance with these values, the IRC operates and enforces policies on Adult Safeguarding, Child Safeguarding, Anti Workplace Harassment, Fiscal Integrity Anti-Retaliation and Combating Trafficking in Persons.
•  IRC is committed to ensuring that IRC staff is suitable to work with children and have the knowledge s/he needs to uphold and abide by the IRC’s Child Safeguarding Policy as well as Adult Safeguarding Policy.
• Level of interaction with Adult (Above 18): Frequent direct contact with adult and less frequent direct contact with children.
• IRC ensures that its staff must actively practice the roles and responsibilities related to client responsiveness, accountability to people in affected communities and must have competencies to solicits and listens to feedback and other’s perspectives, responds to feedback with maturity and sensitivity and takes appropriate decisions and makes changes to behavior or actions in response to feedback.
• IRC recognizes that gender equality is fundamental to the achievement of our organizational mission.
• As such, IRC is committed to the promotion of gender equality in all aspects of our operations and programs. Our organizational policies, procedures and actions demonstrate this commitment.

Women candidates, Transgenders and differently abled persons are highly encouraged to apply.