Background:
The International Rescue Committee, one of the world’s largest humanitarian international NGOs, provides relief, rehabilitation and development support to vulnerable people and communities over 30 countries. We began work in Ethiopia in 2000 in response to severe drought in Ethiopia’s Somali region and are currently providing assistance to Ethiopians and refugees in six regions in Ethiopia, implementing emergency and development programs in health, water and sanitation, economic recovery, and development (ERD), women’s protection and empowerment, education, child protection, and multi-sectoral emergency response.
Position overview
The PlayMatters (2020-2025) project to which the RMEAL Officer focus on is an education initiative funded by the LEGO Foundation. The program reimagines childhood for 800,000 refugee and host-community children across Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Uganda – children whose education and social development has been affected by displacement and trauma. The PlayMatters consortium has committed to building evidence base through rigorous MEAL and Research across the program cycle.
To support its evidence building endeavor, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) seeks Research and MEAL (RMEAL) Officers for Melkadida and Jigjiga field offices. The RMEAL Officer works in close collaboration with program teams to optimize research, monitoring, evaluation, accountability and learning capacities and opportunities of the IRC mission in Ethiopia, Melkadida and Jigjiga. The RMEAL Officer supports and implements PM RMEAL activities and as well as IRC active Grants/Projects in targeted locations as required with special focus to ensure high-quality programming for the clients we serve and support the global ambitions of IRC Strategy 100, and the Country Strategic Action Plan.
Major key Responsibilities:
Leadership and Partnership
Technical Oversight
Ø Collaborate with MEAL and non-MEAL staff to ensure that research and M&E data is collected, compiled, checked for its quality and completeness in compliance with IRC and donors’ standards for quality;
Ø Conduct regular data quality checks and audits and analysis to ensure high-quality data, compile a report with relevant indicator data per grant, showing targets versus actuals.
Ø Beneficiary counting: a quarterly gender and age disaggregated overview per grant per sector should be provided.
Ø Document and share learning, research/evidence, and data from previous projects to inform project proposal design;
Ø Implement RMEAL plans, revise (digital) data collection tools, follow-up on processes for online data management, quality checks, and audits, and updating of data visualization;
Ø Undertake regular analysis of monitoring data and work closely with program officers and managers to facilitate decision-making for real-time program adaptation;
Ø Produce quality reports and updating dashboards with key findings that foster learning and decision-making and share in project cycle management meetings and team meetings;
Ø Identify, document, and share key findings and client feedback to improve services and results for our clients.
Human Resources
Key Working Relationships:
Position reports directly to and technically supervise by Senior MEAL officer, Education Manger/Senior Education officer in the respective locations. Additionally, this position technically supported by the PlayMatters MEAL Manager and Senior Research Manager based in Addis Ababa.
Position directly supervises: Incentive workers and/or enumerators as required.
Other Internal and/or external contacts:
Internal: PlayMatters project leads, Sector MEAL Managers as required, Program Manager and Officers as required, Database Officer, ICT Officer, Partnerships Manager as required, HR, Field Coordinator.
External: Beneficiaries, program partner organisations, local and national government.