MEAL Officer - Generic Advertisement

CARE established its presence in Lebanon in 2006 and has been responding to the Syrian Crisis since late 2012.  CARE currently carries out activities in Beirut, Mount Lebanon, Akkar, North Lebanon, South Lebanon, and the Beqaa Valley. CARE implements both emergency and development projects contributing to livelihood, food security, protection, gender, shelter, and water, sanitation and hygiene. It targets the most vulnerable people and populations, host communities, refugees and migrants.

CARE Lebanon has scaled up rapidly over the past few years and today it has about 90 staff members, with more than 15 different local/international partner organizations. 90% of the team is composed of national staff, with a symbolic number of international members.

Among CARE’s key imperatives in Lebanon is putting people it serves first through implementing cutting edge programming in areas it operates, with great emphasis on the Accountability to Affected Population.

 The MEAL Officer will support ensuring quality and accountability standards are integrated into CARE International’s programming. The MEAL Officer will have a key role in promoting use of the MEAL systems to ensure that program staff and strategies are facilitating the gathering of evidence-based knowledge on the positive and negative impact that the program is having over the communities we work with. Receiving regular, timely and context-specific, meaningful feedback from the staff, partners, program participants (who are or are not targeted by the interventions), the Officer will effectively inform and signal areas where the strategic attention is required. The MEAL Officer will be focusing on building the capacity of relevant program staff, as well as promoting and fostering a culture of shared learning and accountability, as well as promoting innovation within the country program. This includes supporting in the development and integration of accountability, learning and program quality standards in program assessments, design, monitoring, review and evaluation, as well as consistent documentation of learning and progress in this area.

Responsibility #1: Monitoring & Evaluation of Projects

• Support the development of M&E plans, indicator matrices, and clear data collection plan in discussion with the technical team and lead on all field data collection exercises
• Work with project teams to develop an M&E Plan that outlines the different steps that are required, setting out who will deliver what and by when.
• Planning and implementation of baseline surveys, monitoring and evaluation exercises and impact assessments when needed; (Formulate assessments and M&E tools; Organizing and conducting baseline, PDMs, and producing analytical qualitative and quantitative reports)
• Organize field activities, and support in recruiting, training and managing partners’ staff and volunteers
• Support data analysis, together with the project team and MEAL staff, and share them in the required format. Seek solutions for more complex data management requirements by working with IT colleagues
• Support systems to manage information generated by MEAL activities, such as complaints databases
• Explore and implement M&E tool rationalization through continuous review and consultation with field staff
• Strengthen the capacity of projects and programs staff to implement the M&E plans, including data collection, analysis, reporting and conducting regular quality monitoring.
• Conduct simple data analysis and present and disseminate information to inform program management
• Assist in reviewing data bases and data tracking tools of diverse projects in order to maintain data quality for collating reliable and consistent data which meets minimum reporting requirements of donors and CIL.

Responsibility #2: Accountability

• Assist the project team in strengthening the accountability mechanisms at project level
• Develop tools and database to collect, track, and follow up on beneficiary feedback regarding a project
• Set up simple systems to manage information generated by MEAL activities, such as complaints databases
• Managing complaint and feedback mechanism for the project
• Ensure CIL accountability mechanism and materials are disseminated throughout operation area
• Ensure Core Humanitarian Standards are mainstreamed through program design and implementation via trainings

Responsibility #3: Capacity Building

• Provide support to implementing partners with best practices and the program M&E framework
• Provide support needed for the helpline team in following up on complaints and hand out talking points for each situation occurring
• Support field workers and partners on accountability, humanitarian principles, and MEAL concepts/tools

Responsibility #4: Review, Reflection and Learning

• Assist the project team and partners in documenting lessons learnt and reports
• Conduct reviews, learning events at project locations
• Promote learning culture throughout CIL Sectors, particularly on issues of program quality
• Regularly support Project Managers in producing and reporting on best practices and lessons learnt
• Ensure proper performance, learning and development and retention of the MEAL activities

In case of emergency, the MEAL Officer will support the different teams to create adequate frameworks and tools, and will be able to deploy quickly to the field where and when required

Any other task related to MEAL Officer as assigned by the Line Manager.

 Skills & knowledge:

• Minimum 3-5 years’ experience ideally in NGO
• Good understanding of humanitarian principles and humanitarian processes
• Demonstrated writing skills and ability to do research/collect data
• Demonstrated communication skills and ability to liaise with affected communities
• Demonstrated awareness and sensitivity to gender and diversity; experience and ability to live and work in diverse cultural contexts in a culturally appropriate manner; and capacity to make accurate self-assessment particularly in high stress and high security contexts.
• Extensive experience interacting with and relating to gender professionals and international stakeholders at senior level.
• Team player with strong interpersonal skills, with the ability to build strong internal relationships and networks.
• Motivated self-starter who enjoys working in a collaborative and international environment
• Able to work under pressure and manage variable workload
• Adapt to changing environment
• Demonstrate fairness and impartiality
• Verbal and written communication
• Team player
• Ability to solve problem/work independently
• Ability to strictly adhere to task deadlines

 Experience:

At least   3-5  years of relevant experience, especially at NGOs, academic organizations, standard-setting bodies, public agencies focused on MEAL.

Academic Background:

Bachelor’s degree in one or several of the following areas: Business management, statistics, Social sciences or equivalent