MEL Advisor at Life and Peace Institute

Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) Advisor

Collaborative Learning Team

The Life & Peace Institute is seeking an experienced monitoring, evaluation, and learning professional to join our cross-organisational Collaborative Learning team.

Do you have an in-depth knowledge of monitoring and evaluation of peacebuilding and conflict transformation programmes? Do you believe that reflective practice and learning are essential to support local civil society’s work to transform conflict? Do you enjoy collaborating with people from diverse backgrounds and have knowledge of the Horn of Africa and/or Great Lakes Region? Are you an excellent communicator in English and a data nerd? Are you collaborative and excited about enhancing the capacity of others for learning and action?

Come be our go-to person for supporting the learning processes of all our peacebuilding programming.

About Us:

The Life & Peace Institute (LPI) is an international centre that supports and promotes nonviolent approaches to conflict transformation through a combination of research and action that entails the strengthening of existing local capacities and enhancing the preconditions for building peace. LPI envisions a world where peace, justice and non-violent relations prevail through people’s active work and commitment. LPI has been active in making contributions towards achieving this goal for over 35 years. LPI works with a variety of local and regional partners mainly in the Horn of Africa region, including Somalia, Sudan, Kenya, and Ethiopia, as well as in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In 2018 LPI expanded to develop new engagements in Sweden.

Position within the organisation:

Supervisor: Collaborative Learning Team Leader

Staff supervised: Consultants, Interns

Working relations:

• Other Collaborative Learning team members: Advisors Research; Communications; and Programme Development/Resource Mobilisation
• Country Managers & Programme teams (DRC, Ethiopia, Horn of Africa Regional Programme, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan)
• Swedish Engagement team
• Global Policy team
• Finance & Admin team

Team Purpose:

LPI’s Strategic Priority 3 (‘Knowledge and Learning to enhance Conflict Transformation Practice’) Advisors in the Collaborative Learning Team support all LPI programmes to ensure that LPI proactively generates and applies knowledge across its programmes for enhanced quality of its peacebuilding work through ongoing reflective practice and applied learning. The team serves several functions, including enhancing and supporting MEL processes, generating new understanding on selected thematic learning agendas, documenting methods and models from LPI and partners, coordinating cross-organisational research efforts, supporting programme design and development, and bolstering internal and external communication efforts.

Work Location:

To be discussed due to the Covid 19 pandemic, with remote work to start. (Ability to travel to all LPI offices will be required.)

Key responsibilities:

• Supporting programme and project design processes for LPI’s programmes, in close collaboration with the advisor for resource mobilisation.
• Providing methodological and writing support to research undertaken in LPI in close collaboration with LPI programme teams and the advisor for research.
• Supporting utilisation-focused, strategic dissemination of LPI learning products, including research and evaluations.
• Engage with programme leadership, MEL Advisors and other MEL responsible staff in quality assuring key MEL processes and outputs, including development and adaption of LPI theories of change, results frameworks, indicators, baseline and endline studies/assessments.
• Train and support MEL Advisors and Officers and other MEL responsible staff through trainings and regular mentorship.
• Support teams to engage external expertise in evaluations of LPI initiatives, and lead collaborative development and use of evaluation methods suited to the Institute’s work (youth-led, participatory evaluation, outcome harvesting, developmental evaluation, etc.)
• Ensure high quality, evidenced-based learning and result-focused reports to be shared with donors, policy actors, partners, peer organisations, and community stakeholders.
• Lead the development and management of LPI’s global results database, bringing together data from LPI’s various programmes and units.
• Produce data analysis and data visualisations for LPI’s overall results reporting, communications work, resource mobilisation processes, and learning events.
• Support collaboratively identifying and advancing key thematic learning agendas through reflective practice and high quality, participatory research and analysis; and help organise learning events across the LPI programme teams.

Other tasks as requested by the Collaborative Learning Team Leader and/or the Director of Programmes.

Requirements:

• Master’s degree in the field of peace and conflict studies, political science, or other relevant field.
• At least 3, preferably 5 years’ experience of working with peacebuilding/conflict transformation theory and practice.
• Demonstrated skills in MEL and programme and project design, particularly for peacebuilding and conflict transformation initiatives.
• Experience in and knowledge of the Horn of Africa and/or Great Lakes regions are a very strong merit.
• High emotional intelligence and strong interpersonal skills, with an orientation towards supporting others in their work with humility and a collaborative spirit in culturally diverse settings.
• Strong analytical skills (conflict analysis) and solid knowledge of research methods (quantitative and qualitative), including participatory research.
• Excellent computer literacy in Office 365 suite, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and SharePoint, as well as data analysis software (SPSS, NVivo, etc.)
• Proven experience in process facilitation and adult learning.
• Excellent writing skills, including for donor proposals and reports.
• Written and oral fluency in English essential, working knowledge of French, Kiswahili, Amharic or Arabic are considered a strong asset.
• Collaborative, committed, detail-oriented, and able to handle a variety of work tasks under tight deadlines.
• Willingness and ability to travel as required.