Meal – Technical Advisor At CARE USA

JOB SUMMARY:

CARE developed a scale-up strategy for its flagship approach – Village Savings and Loans Association (VSLAs) in 2018 and recently reviewed it based on the lessons learnt from the 4 years of its implementation. The strategy goal is to ensure that 50 million women and girls (62 million people) are economically and socially empowered through savings groups by 2030, reducing poverty and increasing gender equality. Due to their effectiveness and versatility, VSLAs are increasingly being promoted as part of multi-component projects, in combination with other interventions such as health services, food and nutrition security, local value chain development, ecosystem services, agricultural training, advocacy campaigns, gender and social norms dialogues, and access to formal financial services. The use of VSLAs for different purpose or with different impact groups often significantly expands their initially established purpose and outcomes.

The role of Technical Advisor for MEL will provide intensive support to specific VSLA projects, ensuring the high quality and rigor of MEAL systems, and thus contributing to effective measurement, knowledge management and learning as well as donor reporting. This will involve among other things, ensuring appropriate quality measurement and monitoring of indicators – both internal to CARE and externally – keeping track of changes in donor M&E and reporting requirements, procedures, systems, indicators, and methodologies. The position will also advise on the use of M&E data for evidence-based learning to enhance the quality of VSLA programs and help aggregate key program lessons at a global level for use by the Global VSLA team.

The TA for MEL will support the MEL Director to establish protocols for M&E methods and coordination of knowledge management activities with M&E. This TA position will be budgeted to various projects and provide quality control and technical backstopping as assigned. The TA for MEL will also participate in the MEL Communities of Practice and ensure that lessons learned from CARE are shared and that best practices inform VSLA M&E standards.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

Support Global VSLA team MEAL Systems and Processes

• Provide strategic oversight and technical input for VSLA managed programs, with a particular focus on specific projects at the central and CO levels.
• Ensure that the M&E Specialists in Country Offices have access to the latest and most effective M&E guidance, protocols, indicators, and methods required for use in VSLA programs.
• Provide in-depth on-going guidance and support as required to project-based M&E specialists at the country level. Ensure that methods used are rigorous and fully consistent with CARE and donor M&E standards.
• Assess the systems established within VSLA managed programs and COs to determine the degree to which they will deliver data efficiently, effectively, and on a timely basis, to ensure that submission timelines for M&E reports and evaluations are met.
• Actively support the ILKA team on VSLA based research, knowledge, and learning and to identify promising programs across CARE.

Provide Support to CO Programs

• Develop M&E plans for new programs with a special focus on connecting these programs to global program learning and research. Ensure that these plans are well conceived, rigorous and meet donor standards. Support development of indicator matrices or Log Frames ensuring inclusion of donor standard indicators and CARE’s global indicators.
• Support CO M&E staff during different phases of the program’s cycle and ensure that program level M&E plans are in place and support staff to achieve key milestones and targets.
• Ensure that the appropriate level of effort is built in to support ongoing monitoring, reflection, and learning and facilitate the use of standard guidance and tools to assure quality of evaluations and studies, and adherence to global standards.
• Review Scopes of Work for all evaluation studies, including baseline, midterm and final evaluations, significant involvement in implementation of these studies – especially initial, midterm and endline studies.
• During program inception (first year of projects), support finalization of M&E systems and as needed, Theories of Change, Log Frames, program indicators, and other M&E elements. Provide training and support to CO M&E and program staff regarding these systems and elements.
• Consolidate individual CO level results and into global reporting to donors

Support Global VSLA Learning and Knowledge Management

• Actively support VSLA team knowledge, and learning and to identify promising programs across CARE.
• Support development of a VSLA team wide learning agenda, identifying best practices and learning from programs to develop replicable models for scaling.

QUALIFICATIONS:

• MA in development studies/economics/social science/microfinance or related subject, or equivalent expertise and additional enterprise and private sector engagement training
• Deep, practical understanding of villages savings and loan associations or similar savings group modalities
• 5+ years in MEL for VSLA, Technical assistance and program design
• Demonstrated capacity to utilize and support others in utilizing a range of learning tools and approaches, both virtual and in-person, to support MEL across programs and COs
• 3+ years of experience in international programming in economic development or food and nutrition security
• Successful MEL planning, management, and oversight in multi-year programs
• Experience in research design and monitoring and evaluation