ABOUT THE FOUNDATION
The Van Leer Foundation is an independent Dutch organisation working globally to foster inclusive societies where all children and communities can flourish. We bring together people with different perspectives and support them to achieve large-scale impact. Our support involves a unique combination of funding, networks, executive education, technical assistance, and knowledge.
THE POSITION
The MEL expert provides technical assistance across programme portfolios, contributing to building internal and external capacity on impact, costing, and scaling analysis. The MEL Expert will work closely with the Programme Support & Learning Director, the Chief Programme Officer, the Urban95 Expert, and the Early Years Expert.
PRINCIPAL RESPONSIBILITIES AND TASKS
LEARNING across programme portfolios
- Helps build and strengthen a culture of data and MEL (monitoring, evaluation, and learning).
- Contributes on impact analysis related to the Foundation’s investments, providing management with evidence-based information for decision-making.
- Coordinates, analyses and captures learnings from case studies, progress reports, evaluation reports, and other collected data at grant, cluster and programmatic levels.
- Supports the translation of key research/implementation learnings into communication products, in close cooperation with the Communications Team
- Organise and facilitate opportunities to document and incorporate learnings across the portfolios, managing partnerships and projects related to learning.
- Develops processes and supporting data collection for reports, dashboards
and project benchmarking to measure organisational and programmatic performance. - Conducts tasks related to costing data and methodologies as well as ensuring cost-effectiveness, comparability across projects and measuring the Foundation’s investments value for money in partnership with relevant finance team members.
- Supports the (strategic) planning process to integrate robust MEL approaches as needed.
EDUCATION AND TRAINING of leaders across programme portfolios
- Coordinates the MEL of the executive education programmes with our strategic institutional partners to evaluate quality and impact.
- Explores the demand & feasibility of implementing an MEL specific executive education – follow through on implementation if warranted.
Technical QUALITY across programme portfolios
- Coordinates internal monitoring, evaluation, learning and performance processes, building a culture of evidence-based programme design, management, and monitoring and policy design.
- Provides MEL technical assistance to our Programme teams and their partners as needed to ensure uptake and application of rigorous monitoring, evaluation and learning approaches.
- Supports and builds capacity amongst staff and external partners to monitor and report on the progress of our grants with relation to strategic goals.
- Develops in close collaboration with the other Support & Learning roles strategic projects to support portfolio level programming.
- Provides feedback and recommendations for new investments for grants above 100,000 Euros.
OUTREACH beyond programme portfolios
- Supports the development of content for our communications and publishing.
- Develops relationships with relevant global technical networks to keep abreast of the latest monitoring, evaluation, and learning developments and share our relevant learnings.
Supports the Director of the Programme Support & Learning in relevant programme discussions, decisions, and any other areas the Director deems necessary.
QUALIFICATIONS, SKILLS AND COMPETENCIES
- Minimum of Master’s degree in International Development/ International Relations/ Finance/ Mathematics/ Economics/ Business, Social Sciences/ Humanities/ Psychology/ Science or other field requiring significant research, analysis and writing.
- 5-8 years of relevant work experience related to MEL/research and reporting on cross-sectoral programmes including demonstrated experience in developing and implementing MEL plans and/or research protocols
- Interested in, and passionate about, the importance of investing in early childhood development and related cross-cutting topics.
- Good understanding of programme design, theory of change and/or logic frameworks.
- Advanced knowledge of Excel, Word and PowerPoint.
- Effective communication skills: can extract/synthesize and structure information for different audiences and develop materials to share learnings.
- Excellent project management skills: able to manage multiple projects and meet deadlines.
- Outstanding teamwork skills and cross-cultural competency to engage with different stakeholders in diverse cultural settings.
- Intellectually curious and driven to understand how policy, social and behavioural change happens and how data can support programmes to scale-up.
- Fluent in English, strong written and spoken skills.
How to apply
If you are interested in this position, please send your CV and cover letter in English before the 22nd of July 23:59 GMT, to mcmel_vacancy@vanleerfoundation.org
For any questions, please get in touch with Agnes Buis at Agnes.Buis@vanleerfoundation.org