Program / Department Summary

Mercy Corps has been operating in Ethiopia since 2004, working in rural, peri-urban and urban areas in five regional states - Somali, Oromia, Afar, Southern Nations Nationalities and Peoples, Amhara - and the capital city of Addis Ababa. We engage in both development and humanitarian work, and seek to integrate approaches, programs and geographies as much as possible. Our partners include government, academic institutions, development and private sector actors, civil societies and participating public. Mercy Corps has a growing portfolio of programs in Ethiopia that focus on food security; agriculture and livestock market systems development; maternal and child health and nutrition; youth economic productivity; resilience and humanitarian response.

Mercy Corps is implementing the five year (2020 – 2025), $31 million USAID funded Resilience in Pastoral Areas (RiPA-North) program focused on: strengthening disaster management systems (Component 1); improving alternative livelihood opportunities through employment and entrepreneurship for youth transitioning out of pastoralism (Component 2); stimulating increased production, productivity and marketing through more competitive livestock and livestock products markets (Component 3); and improving food security and nutrition (Component 4). The program operates in Afar, Somali and Oromia regions.

Mercy Corps is a global lead in Resilience thinking and implementation, and RIPA is a flagship resilience program for the agency globally.

General Position Summary

Mercy Corps is seeking candidates for a Collaboration, Learning and Adapting (CLA) Team Lead which is a key personnel position of RiPA project to lead the development, refinement and implementation of CLA and M&E approaches for RIPA, with a specific focus on resilience measurement and resilience learning. The Team Lead is responsible for contributing to strategy discussions, providing technical assistance and developing successful mechanisms for learning. The Team Lead will use USAID’s Collaboration, Learning, and Adapting (CLA) principles to effectively integrate real time monitoring and learning back into the project strategy and program implementation and ensure knowledge is shared with the broader host country community.

The Team Lead will work across component teams and with partners to ensure resilience building efforts and their impact are effectively measured as well as lead the resilience learning agenda. In coordination with the Chief of Party and the CLA team, she/he will be responsible for developing, coordinating, maintaining and constantly improving the program-wide CLA and M&E systems using relevant knowledge and evidence to guide program strategy, support adaptive management and continuous improvement, and advance learning as well as implementing an internal CLA capacity building strategy that trains and mentors staff and promotes a culture of learning. Essential Job Responsibilities

TECHNICAL LEADERSHIP

• Provide leadership, training and mentoring in the development of a CLA Strategy, CLA tools, M&E systems, survey design, methodology, data analysis, and other skills required for assessing the impact of the program, and in particular of resilience building efforts within the program.
• Lead the program resilience learning agenda
• Technical contributions to resilience measurement
• Lead external evaluators on the design and roll out of the program baseline and evaluations, while setting up effective systems for learning.
• Ensures programs use the necessary CLA systems and tools, to inform and improve each individual program, as well as feed into the broader country-level CLA system and country strategy.
• Provide leadership and support to the MEL Manager in the set-up the MEL system, including all tools and data collection processes for program activities. Develop and review frequently the Project’s MEL Plan including Data Management Plan.
• Oversee the implementation of the MEL System including rollout of TolaData, Institutional Performance Systems (IPTS) and Concept Note Management System (CNMS) and the periodic reflection and analysis of program monitoring data to disseminate learning. Update and manage RiPA Monitoring, Learning and Evaluation system providing the Chief of Party (CoP), component leads and their teams real time information that can steer program implementation and maximize team’s ability to analyze and represent impact to donor, government, colleague agencies, and communities themselves. 
• Provide leadership and training to ensure RiPA meet Mercy Corps minimum standards, use necessary PM@MC systems and tools to inform and improve RiPA quality and performance.
• Take the lead on aligning, collecting and reporting on relevant resilience measurement and CLA indicators to the organizational-wide M&E systems, and other external systems as relevant.
• Support teams in collecting sex and age disaggregated data and using gender sensitive data collection methods in order to understand and respond to program results with diverse participants.
• Participates in the facilitation of country and sector-level strategic planning sessions.
• Support RiPA programs comply with Gender Equality, Diversity and Social inclusion (GEDSI) and Community Accountability Reporting Mechanism (CARM) policy and standards including training the program staff and facilitating data driven reflection meetings.
• Support teams to capture success stories, learning briefs, lessons learned during program implementation, and feed this information into thought leadership and research opportunities and into ongoing program management and program design.

 INFORMATION MANAGEMENT

• Works with the program and M&E teams to adopt a holistic program-level CLA system.
• Provides guidance, recommendations, and leadership to ensure that the CLA systems meet the needs of Programs Managers and Country Leadership and help address shortfalls in CLA that affect program implementation.
• Contributes to program design to ensure adherence to Mercy Corps’ resilience measurement and CLA best practices
• Develop program and operational reporting templates that facilitate the acquisition, aggregation and flow of information in programs.

TEAM MANAGEMENT, CAPACITY BUILDING AND MENTORING

• Develop and oversees implementation of the CLA (including M&E) staff and partner capacity building strategy that promotes a culture of learning through systematic analysis and reflection of program data.
• Build the capacity of all relevant team members to develop and maintain excellent CLA and M&E systems, including regular reflection and analysis of program monitoring data.
• Work closely with Program Managers, Human Resources and Finance to ensure that CLA skills are incorporated into all program position descriptions and positions are budgeted for.
• Contributes to the knowledge management repository with best practices in CLA and ensure that it is accessible to all staff and partners.
• Create and sustain a work environment of mutual respect where team members strive to achieve excellence.

INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL COORDINATION

• Active contributor and collaborator with regional and global counterparts to promote the use of CLA best practices.
• Strengthen linkages with other internal resources, including the LMS, Digital Library, Hub, and Connect, to enhance organizational learning where relevant to CLA. 
• Maintain close working relationships with CLA counterparts in other relevant international actors and RIPA actors in Ethiopia.
• Leading certain technical discussions at RIPA partner meetings.
• Collaborate closely with the anticipated RIPA CLA mechanism.
• Participation in workshops and learning-related activities and their inclusion in the program workplan.
• Attendance of learning events hosted by other partners as well as implementation of sector-specific learning events with RIPA partners and local stakeholders.
• Organizational Learning 
• As part of our commitment to organizational learning and in support of our understanding that learning organizations are more effective, efficient and relevant to the communities they serve - we expect all team members to commit 5% of their time to learning activities that benefit Mercy Corps as well as themselves.

 Accountability to Beneficiaries

• Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts toward accountability, specifically to our beneficiaries and to international standards guiding international relief and development work, while actively engaging beneficiary communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring and evaluation of our field projects.

Job Requirements

Knowledge and Experience

• Bachelor's degree in development studies, research methods, statistics, economics, social sciences, project management or other relevant field required
• 5 years of active work experience in emergency and development programming required with the proven use of program technology
• Experience with theoretical and practical background in M&E and skilled in participatory qualitative and quantitative M&E methodologies and techniques preferred
• Experience with data management including the ability to structure and collate data sets for ease of analysis preferred
• Proven experience with systems thinking or systems approaches to programming
• Proven experience developing iterative learning systems or ‘feedback loops’ within development programs or organizational learning contexts
• Knowledge of resilience in development programs a plus
• Excellent computer skills (especially Microsoft office applications) and ability to use information technology as a tool and resource
• Demonstrated experience in training and capacity building across diverse teams and partners
• Excellent project management, time management, and organizational skills. Multi-tasking skills and ability to work under pressure
• Strong writing, editing, public speaking skill and good leadership skills
• Ability to summarize and simplify complex information and communicate it to the targeted groups
• Excellent stakeholder management skills
• Experience of working on USAID programs preferred
• Previous experience living and working in challenging or insecure environments;
• Strong command of English verbal and written skills
• Knowledge of local dialects is preferred.

Success Factors:

• A successful candidate should have experience and expertise leading collaboration efforts and translating programmatic learning into adaptive programming. They should also have a demonstrated ability to lead and communicate effectively with team members of varied work styles and cultures, follow procedures, and meet deadlines with flexibility and creativity in planning and problem solving. S/he should have a proven ability to learn quickly, multi-task, prioritize, take initiative, and be accountable for results, understand the larger picture while remaining focused on the details, problem solving, work within a complex and sensitive setting and to follow laws and security protocols. The most successful Mercy Corps team members have a strong commitment to teamwork and accountability, thrive in evolving and changing environments and make effective written and verbal communication a priority in all situations.

Living /Environmental Conditions:

• The position will be based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia with regular travels to the field. This position requires up to 50% of travel by air and road to field offices in relatively secure environments but climatically harsh conditions.
• Mercy Corps team members represent the agency both during and outside work hours when deployed in a field posting or on a visit/TDY to a field posting. Team members are expected to conduct themselves in a professional manner and respect local laws, customs and MC's policies, procedures, and values at all times and in all in-country venues.

How to Apply

Applicants should submit a CV, three references, and all relevant official documents via email: et-recruitment@mercycorps.org or through postal address to Mercy Corps Recruiter Addis Ababa: P.O. Box 14319 Arbaminch: P.O. Box 33, Jijiga: P.O. Box 225 Negelle Borena: P.O. Box 116 and Dire Dewa: P.O. Box 974 

Note: Make sure that you mention the position title in the subject line of your email application. All interested candidates are encouraged to apply for the position advertised. Applications will not be returned and will not be retained for future recruitment efforts. In order to ensure fairness to all applicant’s personal inquiries are not permitted. Only candidates that are short listed will be acknowledged and called for interviews. 

“Mercy Corps is an equal opportunity employer promoting gender, equity and   diversity. Qualified female and young candidates are strongly encouraged to apply. We are committed to empower women and youth.”

DEADLINE FOR ALL APPLICATIONS: 26 March 2022