Senior MEAL Officer

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 Senior Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL) Officer for its Sukkur based office in Sindh province under direct supervision of the MEAL Manager. Sr. MEAL Officer will be responsible for the Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability, and Learning activities of WEEA in intervention districts of Sindh (Ghotki, Khairpur) and Punjab (Muzaffarghar, Rahim yar khan) with support of MEAL assistants. S/he will be responsible to implement MEAL plans, execute robust system and monitoring of field level activities in above mentioned districts. In addition to providing real-time support to guide the quality of the project implementation as well as leading activities-based means of verification, s/he will assist MEAL and MIS managers during internal Data Quality Audits (DQA). S/he will closely work with Sr. MEAL Officer (Islamabad) for implementation of feedback complaint response mechanism (FCRM) and ensure timely, reliable, and valid data uploading on indigenous web-based Project Management Information System (PMIS) with support of MEAL and program team. S/he will also be responsible to support National MEAL Team for smooth implementation of different studies and surveys with facilitation of program team. S/he will be contributing to development of data collection & monitoring tools, MEL Plan, Logical framework, Performance Indicator Tracking Table (PITT) and Performance Indicator Reference Sheets (PIRS). S/he will assist National MEAL Team in analysis, interpretation, and dissemination of collected data along with supporting for the preparation of Quarterly/Annual progress reports. S/he will be engaged in joint and independent monitoring visits to different villages of WEEA intervention areas in Sindh and Punjab provinces.

Major Responsibilities:

• Responsible for the Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability, and Learning activities of WEEA.
• Responsible to implement MEAL plans, and standardized detailed monitoring system in the field.
• Responsible for conducting joint and independent monitoring visits to collect data that will support program team for evidence-based planning and decision making.
• Responsible for implementation of FCRM with support of Sr. MEAL Officer (Islamabad) to make WEEA a clients’ responsive project.
• Handling the Feedback Registry and other tools developed by WEEA team to ensure that they are fully functional, secure and being used in WEEA field locations.
• Ensure timely, reliable, and valid data uploading on Indigenous web-based Project Management Information System (PMIS) with support of MEAL and program team.
• Handle and Maintain project level records, activity-based means of verification in soft and hard forms.
• Responsible to conduct internal DQAs on quarterly basis as per mentorship of MEAL manager.
• Responsible to support National MEAL Team for smooth implementation of different studies and surveys.
• Chip in to the development of data collection & monitoring tools, MEL Plan, Logical framework, Performance Indicator Tracking Table (PITT) and Performance Indicator Reference Sheets (PIRS).
• Support National MEAL Team in analysis, interpretation, and dissemination of collected data.
• Support National MEAL Team in the preparation of Quarterly/Annual progress reports.
• Represent MEAL during program review meetings and other events to share M&E updates and/or making presentations if required.
• Extend needful support to program teams to track progress of the project activities in line with the agreed output and outcome level performance indicators and beneficiary numbers using standardized formats.
• Carry out other tasks as assigned by the supervisor.

Key Working Relationships:

Position Reports to: MEAL Manager Position directly supervises:  MEAL assistants.

Other Internal and/or external contacts: Sr. MEAL Officer, MIS Officer, MIS 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:

• 3-5 years 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.
• Expertise of implementing feedback complaint response mechanisms within a reputable international or national NGO is an asset.

Skills & Proficiency:

•  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 languages.
• 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 supervision and without compromising on quality.
• Strongly resilient to unfavorable situations.
• Ability of working remotely using suitable communication tools.
• High proficiency in using Microsoft Excel (data analysis and visualization), MS Word, PowerPoint and mobile data collection tools.   

Language Skills:  Sindhi, Urdu, 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, 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.