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 collaborate to put bold solutions into action — helping people triumph over adversity and build stronger communities from within. Now, and for the future.
Program
Mercy Corps implements a variety of programming throughout the Middle East, North Africa (MENA) and Europe, and it continues to respond to humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding needs across Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Ukraine, and Yemen by forging meaningful and trusted partnerships and designing impactful programming. Mercy Corps’ focus in MENA/Europe has been in promoting good governance and conflict resolution, enhancing resilience, supporting market systems development, as well as gender and inclusion, and youth employment. Mercy Corps’ investment in thought leadership, continual learning, and adaptive programming allows us to make changes that are essential in a fluid context, with significant ambitions to learning and sharing through building an evidence base, investment in program performance and quality, including monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) and additional specific research, to enhance adaptive and responsive programming in the Middle East.
Position Summary
The Regional MEL Advisor provides strategic MEL support and guidance to the countries in the region, assures the quality of MEL systems, provides oversight and support to the implementation of MEL standards, and fosters use of data for decision making and evidence generation. Enhancing MEL capacity of the country teams is a major focus for this position, linking country MEL teams through an effective community of practice and driving learning across the region, leveraging knowledge from the rest of the organization.
Essential Job Responsibilities
STRATEGY AND VISION
- Work with the regional team to develop and implement an ambitious and compelling regional MEL Plan, in alignment with Mercy Corps’ global Pathway to Possibility (P2P) strategy, with the highest level of quality, reflecting both short term and long-term priorities.
- Lead regional analyses and the development and tracking of indicators and other metrics to inform and assess progress against the regional strategy, coordinating closely with global data sources and models to maximize efficiencies.
- Support country counterparts in determining the need for, and conducting, analyses as needed to inform country strategy development.
- Support country counterparts in determining and developing systems to track indicators and other metrics to assess progress against country strategies.
- Support the roll out of the global Mercy Corps MEL Policy in the region by working closely with the country teams to assess their MEL structure and practices and recommend improvements in alignment with Mercy Corps Global MEL standards.
- Work closely with global counterparts – and in coordination with counterparts from other regions – as well as regional and country teams, contributing actively to the broader evidence-driven commitment initiatives, including the operationalization of the Regional Evidence and Learning Agenda and country-specific evidence and learning priorities when they exist as to what pertains to MEL.
TEAM MANAGEMENT and GUIDANCE
- Advise country and program teams regarding the structure and areas of expertise of evidence and learning functions within country portfolios and programs, in line with global recommended evidence and learning staffing and tailored to the needs and dynamics of each program/ portfolio. Support recruitment and onboarding for the new MEL team members.
- Support country leadership in adhering to Mercy Corps and donor policies and procedures.
- Contribute to efforts to build a culture of adaptive management, and evidence and learning in each country in the region, along with strong MEL capacity and practices.
- Work with global counterparts to make training and professional development opportunities available to MEL team members at the country and program levels.
- Where surge support is needed for strategically important programs, program design efforts, or portfolios, directly step in to fill these needs or mobilize support from the global E&L team to meet these needs, ensuring that lessons learned from these assignments are used to improve regional support.
MEL PRACTICE, PROJECT, AND SYSTEMS SUPPORT
- Implement processes to assess the status of programs and portfolios in the region as compared to MEL requirements, best practices and standards, and work with team members to develop and implement action and improvement plans as a result of these diagnostics.
- Oversee the integration of strong MEL principles and resourcing into program design, based on sound logic models and available internal and external evidence and learning. To this end, work closely with the BD teams. Where needed, Lead the MEL sections of large proposals, by writing MEL narrative, MEL plan, indicator performance tracking, and other sections as required
- Coordinate closely with global counterparts to field, vet, and address support requests from programs and countries within the region, ensuring that support is provided in a timely, accurate, and customer-oriented manner. To this end, work closely with the country leadership and the regional team to identify and elevate challenges, and engage support in a timely manner to address those.
- Ensure that new programs in the region quickly adopt and utilize recommended data, evidence, and program learning systems and tools (for example, MEL plans and data systems).
- Participate in the conceptualization and development of standalone MEL evidence products in the region with support from the global E&L team.
- Oversee or coordinate regional MEL Communities of Practice to share knowledge across the region.
Adaptive management and program learning
- Develop regional dashboards on program performance, and make those visible to country and regional leadership, identifying areas where additional support and oversight might be required.
- Working closely with the country teams, ensure uptake and use of MEL and mobile technologies, and identify training needs on those.
- Encourage documentation and facilitate evidence-based learning across the region on MEL best practices and linking the region to the global learning initiatives.
- Organize and manage a regional MEL Community of Practice (CoP) and regional learning events (virtual and in person). Promote documentation and dissemination of learning and best practices sharing across the countries within the region.
- Support knowledge management efforts and encourage the effective utilization of evidence and learning for adaptive management practices and designing resource mobilization efforts.
- Support country teams as needed in the identification and recruitment of external consultants and/or firms (via the Global Monitoring Evaluation and Research Master Service Agreements or other channels) with relevant experience and expertise in the region. Support technical review and feedback on consultants’ deliverables.
- Conduct and provide technical inputs and oversight on program reviews, evaluations, studies to ensure quality products by reviewing methodologies, tools of evaluations and studies’ products.
INFLUENCE & REPRESENTATION
- Support the presentation of evidence from various sources to contribute to donor and host government-facing representation opportunities, ensuring timely and targeted communication to highlight Mercy Corps’ global and regional impact and learning.
- Represent Mercy Corps, and the region’s evidence and learning functions, in internal and external events.
- Connect teams to regionally based evidence-related partners.
- Develop and maintain strong relationships with the global Evidence & Learning Unit, functioning as an extended member of the Unit.
- Participate actively in the evidence-driven commitment workstreams by contributing to the regional, global, and country-level evidence and learning agendas.
Organizational Learning
As part of our commitment to organizational learning and in support of our understanding that learning organizations are more effective, efficient, and relevant to the communities they serve, we expect all team members to commit 5% of their time to learning activities that benefit Mercy Corps as well as themselves.
Required Knowledge, Skills and Abilities
- Demonstrated ability to think strategically, and to solve complex problems.
- Strong analytical, organizational, and communication skills.
- Proven ability to design and facilitate training, workshops, and learning events.
Required Education and Experience
- BA/BS or equivalent in a field related to MEL, economics, statistics, data science, research methods, political science, or a similarly relevant field.
- At least 7 years’ field experience in MEL-related roles, including in both humanitarian and development contexts.
- At least 5 years’ field experience in management roles.
- Experience in writing MEL sections of the proposals including MEL narrative sections, MEL plans, MEL budgeting and staffing
- Strong knowledge of and prior experience in participating or leading program evaluations, including designing Scopes of Work, commissioning evaluations with partners and consultants, and conducting evaluations with program teams. Knowledge of program evaluation, design, and methodologies (quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods), and data collection and analysis tools and approaches.
- Experience designing practical and effective monitoring systems, including data and database management systems.
- Experience in training and capacity-building (in person and remotely) and fostering a collaborative relationship across multidisciplinary field teams and management
- Experience with data management, analysis and visualization
- Demonstrated proficiency and experience with US, UK, EU, UN and other public and private donors, government grant and financial management requirements.
- Demonstrated understanding of the critical humanitarian and development issues in the MENA-Europe region, and significant experience with the challenges of operating in the region.
- Fluency in written and spoken English and Arabic preferred.
Living Conditions / Environmental Conditions
The position will be based in Amman or remotely in the MENA-E region, with expected periodic visits across the region up to 30% / 40% travel. Mercy Corps team members represent the agency both during and outside work hours when deployed in a field posting. Team members are expected to conduct themselves in a professional manner and respect local laws, customs and Mercy Corps policies, procedures, and values always and in all in-country venues.
Safeguarding & Ethics
Mercy Corps is committed to ensuring that all individuals we come into contact with through our work, whether team members, community members, program participants or others, are treated with respect and dignity. We are committed to the core principles regarding prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse laid out by the UN Secretary General and IASC and have signed on to the Interagency Misconduct Disclosure Scheme. By applying for this role an applicant confirms that they have not previously violated an employer’s sexual misconduct, sexual exploitation and abuse, child safeguarding or trafficking policy. We will not tolerate child abuse, sexual exploitation, abuse, or harassment by or of our team members. As part of our commitment to a safe and inclusive work environment, team members are expected to conduct themselves in a professional manner, respect local laws and customs, and to adhere to Mercy Corps Code of Conduct Policies and values at all times. Team members are required to complete mandatory Code of Conduct e-learning courses upon hire and on an annual basis.