Monitoring, Evaluation, & Learning (MEL) Director – Iraq Civic Engagement Activity (Proposal)

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Overview

Creative Associates International is a fast-growing, social impact company that specializes in the areas of education, economic growth, democratic transitions, and stabilization in post-conflict environments. Based in Chevy Chase, Maryland, this global development organization has a field presence is more than 25 countries and a strong client portfolio of that includes the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department. Since its founding in 1977, Creative has earned a solid reputation among its clients and is well-regarded by competitors and partners alike.

The Civic Engagement Activity (CEA) will foster a more politically engaged citizenry in Iraq, increasing social trust and civic participation in the country’s governance and political processes. It will do so by increasing civic literacy and empowering citizens, especially members of marginalized groups, with knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary to participate more effectively. The program will prioritize localization, elevating local leadership in design and priority setting, and integrating local capacity strengthening in line with USAID’s policy. Sub-grants will identify potential local partners for direct awards so that CEA activities align both with the mission’s and Iraqi citizens’ priorities.

Creative Associate seeks a Monitoring, Evaluation, & Learning (MEL) Director for the anticipated USAID/Iraq-funded CEA. The MEL Director will be the primary subject matter expert for MEL and be responsible for developing systems, instruments, methods and tools to track and aggregate data across all activities, managing performance reporting to USAID and coordinating the sharing and dissemination of information and emerging practices to CEA stakeholders. The MEL Director will report to the Chief of Party.

Responsibilities

Develop and update the Activity MEL Plan (AMELP), including review of its theory of change, results framework, indicators, baseline and periodic data collection strategies and methodologies, as well as propose and monitor the financial and human resources needed to successfully implement the AMELP.
Design and lead Collaboration, Learning and Adaptation (CLA) efforts, strategy and approaches, including pause and reflect sessions, by working closely with the COP and technical team on using evidence to verify CEA design and inform decision making.
Regularly engage CEA stakeholders, especially local academic and research institutions, in gathering and documenting program results and learning.
Work across the program to promote a culture of learning, adaptation and inclusion.
Develop instruments and mixed methods for data collection and associated protocols for performance monitoring and baseline, midterm and endline evaluations.
Ensure data is collected, stored, analyzed and visualized in the Creative web-based platform, MEDAL.
Conduct field monitoring visits with technical teams and partners, building their capacity to eventually assume responsibility for producing periodic progress reports.
Regularly review work plans to ensure their timely achievement of MEL milestones.
Produce MEL sections for annual work plans and budgets relevant activities.
Manage resources allocated to MEL and ensure that performance data are up-to-date, accessible to staff, and widely disseminated.
Other related duties as assigned.

Qualifications

Master’s degree in international development, political science, engineering, mathematics, statistics, social sciences, or other related field required.
Minimum of 7 years’ experience working on monitoring and evaluation with donor-funded international development programs.
Experience in designing qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods and instruments.
Experience in strengthening partners’ MEL capacity.
Experience in designing and facilitating CLA activities, including pause and reflect sessions, learning agendas, and collective learning and knowledge sharing.
Experience in qualitative, quantitative and mixed data analysis, collection, and reporting, including statistical packages (e.g., Epi Info, ACCESS, SPSS, NVivo, STATA, etc.).
Experience with complexity aware monitoring approaches and methodologies.
Experience conducting formative research.
Willingness to travel to target communities.
Experience working in Iraq.
Fluency in English and Arabic.
Excellent interpersonal, teamwork and verbal and written communication skills.