ORGANIZATIONAL PROFILE:    

Himalayan Cataract Project (HCP | Cure Blindness) works to provide critical eye care services, training for health professionals, and enhanced eye care infrastructure throughout Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa where lack of access to eye care results in unnecessary blindness. Working with local partners, HCP serves more than 1 million people annually through screening and treatment and provides over 100,000 surgeries, with an annual budget of $13.1 million. HCP has offices in Vermont, Washington, DC metro area and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Learn more at www.cureblindness.org 

This is an exciting time for the Himalayan Cataract Project. With increased exposure and visibility, we are expanding our team to meet new challenges, scale our work, and broaden our reach. We are seeking individuals with an aptitude for operating in growth environments with interest and/or experience in scaling systems.

Country Program Overview

The Himalayan Cataract Project has worked in Ethiopia since 2008 to strengthen systems of eye care by supporting surgical interventions aimed to reduce the high backlog of cataract blindness, provide specialized training opportunities to ophthalmic personnel, source necessary supplies and advocate for additional human and financial resources to be dedicated to eye health. HCP has invested over $13M USD in improving eye health in Ethiopia, resulting in eye care examinations for 3.1 million people; over 390,000 sight-restoring surgeries; and nearly 500 training opportunities for eye care personnel with more than 24 local partners across five regional states and one city administration.

Roles and Responsibilities

Overview of the position:

Under the direction of program/country director, the Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) Specialist will provide technical leadership and management oversight for monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) activities for the HCP Ethiopia Programmes.

The MEL Specialist will provide technical leadership for systematic collection, analysis, synthesis, use and communication of data and learning to inform the global and national stakeholders in evidence-based indecision-making for improvements. 

S/he is expected to promote coordination, collaboration, continuous learning, and adaptive management across our implementing partners and internally among HCP staff. The MEL specialist will work with the rest of the program, finance and administration staff to produce data-driven analyses and products to inform activity design and implementation; maintain a performance management system; support data calls and reporting requirements that demand rapid assimilation and synthesis of various data points; and design disseminations and learning events to facilitate collaboration, learning, and adaptation. 

The MEL specialist will work closely with HCP US office MEL manager and other program and finance staff, Ministry of Health (MOH) of Ethiopia, Regional Health Bureaus (RHBs), professional associations and other stakeholders to build their capacity to generate evidence and use data for decision making, including providing leadership for establishing and/or strengthening structures that will facilitate systematic collaboration, continuous learning, and adaptive management.

Specific Duties and responsibilities:

• Lead the development and management of systems to efficiently track, analyze, visualize, use and disseminate performance and monitoring data.
• Regularly collect, collate, analyze, and report on program data per the required standard and quality (completeness, consistency, and timeliness) to facilitate learning and timely decision making
• Lead results reporting for the Country Office, US office, Government Authorities (MOH and Agency for Charities and Societies) providing written documentation on MEL activities and indicator results for progress and annual and other regular reports, as appropriate;
• Collaboratively develop, refine, and implement a robust learning agenda/framework for continuous learning, collaborating, and adapting
• Coordinate program learning agendas implementation including with the development of concept note, data collection instruments, analysis and program learning document preparation
• Facilitate quarterly performance review meetings within HCP and biannually with partners to foster data use culture for improved program results
• Provide technical support to implementing partners so that they can able to collect quality data and locally use for evidence-based decision making
• Build capacity of government counterparts, and other stakeholders in data collection methods and tools, knowledge management, actionable learning processes.
• Coordinate case stories and other best experiences capture, sharing, and strategic learning to encourage the speed and scale of our eye care interventions across our programming in Ethiopia
• Support regular assessment of partner institutions to review their data, verify data, assess M&E system, and guide implementation
• Ensure program monitoring system and dashboard in smartsheet is updated regularly and meets program and project management needs/requirements
• Ensure relevant data is entered into Global Patient Data tool, HCP organization-wide performance management system
• Participate in implementation research proposal development and conduct targeted assessments, ensuring compliance with Government of Ethiopia and HCP standards
• Cultivate strategic MEL relationships and alliances with other Eye care NGOs and represent MEL activities in public and professional circles through meetings, conferences, and presentations
• Disseminate HCP program achievements and other program implementation findings to national and sub-national stakeholders
• Train and mentor partner staff in MEL methods, tools, and systems;
• Promote forums to facilitate collaboration, learning and adaptation
• Support the development of quarter and annual program implementation progress reports and work plan development
• Participate with knowledge management tasks in collaboration with program office 
• Promote an organizational learning culture for HCP partner and ensure the sharing of such knowledge across the program and partners 

Reports to: Program Director/Country Director

Job Requirements

Required qualifications and competencies:

• Master’s degree in public health, statistics, social sciences or related field or equivalent experience
• Five years of work experience M&E, monitoring and evaluating on medium and large, multi-year international health sector development projects
• Proven expertise in quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis methodologies, implementation research approaches, health management information systems, reporting, data quality assessments, data analysis and visual data presentation; and possibly publication in peer reviewed journals
• Proven experience managing and operating digital health platforms
• Demonstrated strong capacity building experience, management, coordination, teamwork and planning skills with proven ability to function effectively with multiple partners in both the public and NGO sectors preferably in eye care sector
• Proven capacity to communicate data in accessible and engaging ways – experience in innovative visualization of results an advantage
• Familiarity with Ethiopia’s health management information system and other national M&E systems
• Strong technical skills in processing and analyze data using one or more statistical software packages
• Excellent communication and advocacy skills and a proven ability to establish and maintain interpersonal and professional relationships with partners and other key stakeholders such as NGOs, CSOs, and the private sector
• Demonstrated outstanding leadership, strategic thinking, organizational, team-building, and representational skills
• Expertise in research to practice—identifying and adapting best practices to specific project contexts
• Excellent skills in facilitation, team building, and coordination

How to Apply

We invite qualified candidates to submit a resume and cover letter via CLICK HERE

Deadline for application is 28^th of January 2022 at 5:00 PM. 

Note: Application received after deadline will be rejected. Himalayan Cataract Project considers all applicants based on merit without regard to race, sex, color, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability.