Consultant – Monitoring and Evaluation Closeout Manager – Remote/Nigeria At Mercy Corps

Background:

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 partner to put bold solutions into action — helping people triumph over adversity and build stronger communities from within.

Mercy Corps Nigeria is currently serving over 1,500,000 participants across the country with programming in the South; Kaduna, Benue, and Plateau in the Middle Belt; Gombe, Adamawa, Yobe and Borno in the North. With the vision of a Nigeria in which all people are empowered, engaged, resilient and secure, Mercy Corps Nigeria focuses on the root causes of conflict, governance, humanitarian response, and market systems development. Mercy Corps implements the Rural Resilience Activity is a five-year, $49 million USAID-funded program in Nigeria’s northeast. The purpose of the Rural Resilience Activity (RRA) is to sustainably move people out of chronic vulnerability and poverty. The Rural Resilience Activity enables individuals and communities to engage in strong and sustainable market systems rather than continuing to rely on humanitarian assistance and faltering with each new shock.

Purpose / Project Description:

The M&E Closeout Manager will provide technical expertise and leadership on monitoring and evaluation priorities as part of the close out of the Rural Resilience Activity. Working closely with the Chief of Party and MEL Manager as a senior technical lead and manager, s/he will be responsible for assessing and prioritizing M&E activities, leading coordination for these priority M&E activities of the RRA closeout and managing their implementation in close collaboration with the program’s Monitoring & Results Measurement team. The Consultant will be responsible for providing technical support to key monitoring and result measurement (MRM) components of the Rural Resilience Activity particularly at the close out phase. This includes, but not limited to, market system and household research studies (market system resilience assessment, evaluations, annual survey, retrospective study etc.), developing and consolidating learning products, refining the system change measurement framework to strengthen evidence gathering for the close-out phase and ex-post evaluation and working with the team to support close out events at the state and national level. A workplan will be co-developed with the Consultant setting the expected deliverables and priority tasks with timelines.

Consultant Activities & Deliverables

The Consultant will perform the following activities and any related deliverables.

General Management and Technical Leadership

• Review strategic M&E documents, current M&E workplan and principal M&E system components (e.g. protocols and data flow for M&E and research; information management) to assess needs and prioritize actions for strategic support.
• Lead a process and implement a plan for aligning the learning agenda with the Activity’s M&E resources and research plans, including both existing and planned data collection and analysis. Consult/advise the Activity on the priority learning products.

Supporting implementation of market system and household research studies:

The Activity has supported and is currently implementing several resilience related studies in response to changes in context and to evaluate how the Activity’s interventions are supporting resilience at the market system and household levels. Past studies have included a rapid assessment to measure impacts of COVID-19, as well as flooding and the impact of the cash crunch on livelihoods and markets. In addition, the Activity supported a USAID-hired firm, TANGO, to conduct 4 rounds of Recurrent Monitoring Survey (RMS).

The Activity has three other important research activities ongoing:

1. Five-Year Retrospective Study and Analysis: a statistical approach to modeling RRA survey data that can identify the correlation between RRA participants’ receipt of different programming elements (i.e., within clusters of prearranged configurations or “mixes” of programming) and outcomes related to resilience capacities, household vulnerability, and the occurrence of observed shocks and stresses within the course of RRA programming implementation.
2. Market Systems Resilience (MSR): A consultant is actively conducting quantitative data collection and analysis looking at systemic characteristics of the market, shock impact on individual actors, resilience capacities, and shock responses. The consultant will conduct an initial sense-making workshop, and follow-up qualitative to delve into unexpected results, positive deviance, and market actors’ perspectives.
3. Endline Evaluation: The Activity has developed a SOW for the endline evaluation. The main purpose of the evaluation is hinged on system change evaluation attributed to intervention and business models implemented by the Activity through mix of private sector market actors. The evaluation is focusing on system change evaluation in face of other studies already ongoing assessing relevant aspects including market and household resilience, and Activity’s performance indicators

The Consultant will be responsible for working with the team to:

• Harmonizing the design of the Five-Year Retrospective, MSR study, and the Endline Evaluation, including review and refinement of sampling strategy and analysis plan
• Supporting sense marking workshop for the market system resilience assessment by working with the team to make inputs and technical insights to ensure quality of the final report
• Provide strategic management, quality oversight and technical support for the expanded household resilience study. This includes coordinating with Intervention Leads, the Evidence and Learning Unit, and Technical Resources and Quality colleagues to plan the required analysis and evidence to come from the survey, overseeing the development of data collection tools and recruitment of enumerators, field management for data quality control and assurance, data collection, cleaning, analysis and evidence synthesis.
• Support the process for hiring the end line evaluation consultant and contribute to inception report writing.

Evidence Synthesis

The consultant will contribute to the Activity’s efforts to reflect strategically across evidence being generated through the studies above and help synthesize the evidence being generated into a coherent, compelling set of evidence with associated narrative. Hence the Consultant will be responsible for working with the team to:

• Support the assessment of priority learning questions and advise on the Activity’s decisions regarding development of learning products, working closely with Activity leadership and Communications team members
• Lead or support the Activity to synthesize findings from the above mentioned studies into a summative brief(s).
  • MA/S or equivalent experience in a quantitative field (economics, agricultural/development economics, statistics, biostatistics, nutrition, applied sociology, anthropology, or other relevant field) with significant training in quantitative methods.

Support strengthening knowledge management system to set up for the ex-post evaluation. The Consultant will work with the MRM, CLA and Comms to organize the evidence products in a manner that is accessible for reference purpose in ex-post evaluation

Timeframe / Schedule:

This consultancy is for 3 months from June 24, 2024 until September 24, 2024.

The Consultant will report to:

Chief of Party, Feed the Future Rural Resilience Activity

The Consultant will work closely with:

Sr MEL Manager, M&E and research teams and Deputy Chief of Party

Required Experience & Skills:

• At least seven years (10 years + if only undergraduate degree) of relevant M&E experience in multiyear development awards, including senior responsibility / leadership roles for M&E in market systems development programming. Awards. Previous experience designing and implementing monitoring and evaluation activities for a market systems development program is required, and preferably with Mercy Corps in the Africa region.
• Strong conceptual knowledge about theories of change, logic models, food and nutrition security indicators, M&E plans, data quality assurance, mobile data collection, data utilization, and resilience, gender and youth integration into M&E.
• Demonstrated experience and expertise in developing and operationalizing a comprehensive Activity Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning Plan (AMELP).
• Strong quantitative background and demonstrated expertise in designing annual monitoring surveys including probabilistic sampling strategy and estimating sample size, developing appropriate weights, and analyzing quantitative data.
• Demonstrated expertise in designing qualitative studies, in-depth knowledge about qualitative sampling, and experience in using interview and interactive tools to generate qualitative information and analysis.
• Experienced in developing data quality assurance strategies, data management, and data visualization.
• Demonstrated expertise and experience in data utilization strategies and can creatively think about active data-sharing techniques.
• Strong oral and written English
• Excellent skills in software solutions and platforms for data collection, storage, processing, analysis and visualization, such as MS Office, CommCare, Stata, R, and Power BI.

Requirements to Apply

Candidates should submit their CV and cover letter directly highlighting how past experience meets the qualifications above in “Required Experience & Skills”. Candidates must be able to complete this consultancy in-country.

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
Achieving our mission begins with how we build our team and work together. Through our commitment to enriching our organization with people of different origins, beliefs, backgrounds, and ways of thinking, we are better able to leverage the collective power of our teams and solve the world’s most complex challenges. We strive for a culture of trust and respect, where everyone contributes their perspectives and authentic selves, reaches their potential as individuals and teams, and collaborates to do the best work of their lives.

We recognize that diversity and inclusion is a journey, and we are committed to learning, listening and evolving to become more diverse, equitable and inclusive than we are today.

Equal Employment Opportunity
We are committed to providing an environment of respect and psychological safety where equal employment opportunities are available to all. We do not engage in or tolerate discrimination on the basis of race, color, gender identity, gender expression, religion, age, sexual orientation, national or ethnic origin, disability (including HIV/AIDS status), marital status, military veteran status or any other protected group in the locations where we work.

Safeguarding & Ethics
Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts toward accountability, specifically to our stakeholders and to international standards guiding international relief and development work, while actively engaging communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring and evaluation of our field projects. Team members are expected to conduct themselves in a professional manner and respect local laws, customs and MC’s policies, procedures, and values at all times and in all in-country venues.