RESOURCE SUBMISSION
Position type: Full time
Hiring Manager: Director, HCDExchange
Location: Anywhere in East Africa (Preference is Kenya), West Africa, Central Africa and Southern Africa (local hire; candidates must be nationals of a country in these regions)
Salary: Commensurate with experience
Date posted: December 9, 2021
Date applications due: 5 pm December 31, 2021 (EAT time)
Desired start date: as soon as possible
Background
The HCDExchange is a community of implementers, funders, designers, evaluators and youth committed to advancing learning and practice related to the integration of human-centered design (HCD) and adolescent sexual and reproductive health (ASRH) in low-resource settings, with a particular focus on countries in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. The HCDExchange aims, through our learning community, to accelerate the field of HCD+ASRH and thereby elevate young people’s agency and transform sexual and reproductive health outcomes for youth and adolescents.
In 2018, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation funded a convening in Tanzania bringing together people and organizations working at the intersection of HCD in ASRH. This gathering showcased best practices, generated interest, and resulted in the launch of working groups to advance this field. More importantly, those involved started to see themselves as a community with a shared agenda.
The first phase of this work built a more cohesive, and globally accessible and representative body of practitioners and policy makers, expanded HCD+ASRH skills and capacity of practitioners and institutions in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia; and begun to generate a well-curated and researched body of evidence and learning that is accessible to the entire global health community in one location, and tailored to different audiences. In the next phase, the HCDExchange will transition from building a broad-based learning community to accelerating access to knowledge and evidence on HCD+ASRH for a focused set of actors, particularly among professional and institutional stakeholders and specific geographies. The program will employ complexity-aware approaches to synthesize outcomes and learnings from the project thus far and apply them to refine the strategies planned for the second phase.
Learn more about the HCDExchange »
Purpose of the Monitoring and Evaluation Lead
The MEL Lead is a senior strategic role in the HCDExchange who will oversee the implementation and any necessary adaptation of the internal MEL framework, tools and system for guiding our work as an effective, robust and transparent HCD+ASRH community. The aim is to support HCDExchange to promote better understanding, knowledge and learning about HCD+ASRH to accelerate this emergent field of practice through performance management and learning about the Community of Practice and the project.
Our ideal candidate is a natural leader, self-starter, who has an entrepreneurial and curious mindset. S/he is a flexible, adaptive thinker, and systems thinker who has an ability to triangulate multiple sources of data and information, telling the story of HCDExchange and guiding our work with evidence and learning. The candidate should have experience in developing and tracking theories of change and results frameworks, and understand the challenges and opportunities associated with a multi-disciplinary and user-centered approach to networking development professionals and youth, as well as knowledge management and advancing / translating learning for development programming.
The MEL Lead will work under the direction and supervision of the HCDExchange Director. This role includes collaborating with the broader HCDExchange Secretariat team including staff, consultants, Youth Leadership Hub, and the Advisory Committees.
Roles & responsibilities
- Maintain and adapt the HCDExchange Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Plan (MELP) to ensure that relevant, high-quality data is used to monitor performance and effectiveness and inform future iteration and program design.
- Manage HCDExchange’s framework, tools and systems such as monthly performance dashboard, tracker for the knowledge products from the community, progress and learning tracker, etc. and lead all reporting.
- Support the regular analysis and review of the project monitoring indicators into the HCDExchange dashboard. This process will also include developing new or improving upon existing analytics to enhance data use for decision making and management for the HCDExchange and community of practice.
- With the support of the Program Analyst, lead documentation and reporting of processes, success stories, experiences and sharing of lessons learned within the HCDExchange and ensure their dissemination is in line with the organizational, donor and HCDExchange community learning requirements
- Develop and facilitate rapid learning cycles, integrating learning from M&E into program management and informing program adaptation as needed.
- Work with the Community Manager, build processes and templates for various media (audio clips, blog summaries, Zoom call highlight reels, etc.) that enable working groups to summarize learning and generate outputs at a regular cadence.
- Lead the process of regular engagement and reflection with key partners and members of the CoP using qualitative interviewing and interactive workshops to document their experience with HCDExchange and translate them into accessible and lively stories about the work, value and influence of HCDExchange. Facilitate the HCDExchange Secretariat members’ role in identifying and engaging key respondents/actors for these interviews and framing their stories with other HCDExchange reporting.
- Lead and coordinate routine program reporting including donor reports
- Draft and/or contribute to developing blog posts, updates, and articles for publication
- Provide support on any other duties (HCDExchange, JSI) based on the evolving needs of the program and as may be assigned by the supervisor.
Qualification, skills, and experience
Qualifications
Master’s degree (or equivalent) in demography, epidemiology, statistics, social sciences or a related field with focus on research and/or evaluation methodologies.
Required skills and experience
- Eight to ten years of relevant experience in designing and implementing MEL systems, preferably related to communities of practice, networking, and knowledge management in the context of development programming. Understanding of sexual and reproductive health programming and/or HCD is a plus
- Experience developing and implementing MEL plans for dynamic, multifaceted programs
- Experience in relevant technical areas, such as online survey and research tool design and analysis and qualitative research design and execution, analysis and translation into stories and reports.
- Strong technical skills, including the ability to process and analyze data using one or more statistical software packages, including at least one of the following: SPSS, MS Access, STATA, SAS, and qualitative data analysis including Nvivo or other similar packages
- Ability to facilitate regular data use for decision-making practices with programmatic/management teams.
- Experience in the use of MEL systems to support a learning agenda and evolve a theory of change to maximize impact.
- Strong understanding of MEL, policy, and compliance requirements.
- Demonstrated strong management, coordination, teamwork, and planning skills as well as an ability to multitask, meet deadlines, and work effectively in a complex environment
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English, including excellent facilitation skills and demonstrated technical writing skills for publication.
- Ability to work effectively with diverse international teams.
Language
Preference is for a bilingual candidate. English is the working language for this assignment; excellent oral and written communications and presentation skills in English are required. Working knowledge of French will be an added advantage.
Application process
Please click here to apply and submit your CV and a short cover letter outlining why you’re an excellent candidate for this role.
Note that this is a “local hire” — candidates must be nationals of a country located in sub-Saharan Africa.
The application deadline is 5pm on December 31, 2021 (EAT time). Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.
Please note that:
- Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.
- We do not solicit for any fee payment at any stage of recruitment.