Consultant - Strategic Program Support, Resilience Pathways and Implementation at Mercy Corps

Consultant Activities:

The Consultant will:

• Co-develop and support the design of an overall process and facilitation plan for Nawiri’s efforts to tighten program logic, implementation strategies, and workplanning processes to enable adaptive management and learning for collective nutrition resilience program impact. The consultant works closely with a Nawiri SLA and technical team to create and plan a facilitated process, with clear templates and examples of outputs.. The consultant advises on incorporation of best practices in resilience program cycle management to enhance the facilitation and outputs. The process should clearly inform Nawiri’s PREP 5 and learning plan:
  • Review existing program documents to understand and assess how they can inform the facilitation plan. These include: draft program strategies, anchor group guidance/handbooks and program strategy framing documents related to refining program logic, and articulating program approaches.
  • Support the design of a facilitation plan to refine program logic/nutrition resilience pathways around key target populations, linked to anchor groups (GIRL, Adapted Mother 2 Mother Support, REAP 4 Nutrition, BOY, Producer Groups). This should include finalizing prepared “generic” program logic pathways for population groups, anchored in strengthening access and use of resilience capacities towards nutrition resilience.
  • Participate in the design of and help consolidate an example of expected outputs from program logic refinement as a key facilitation tool.
  • Provide technical review of and help finalize facilitation tools and templates for documentation and capturing knowledge effectively for program planning and implementation Deliverable:
    • Written inputs / feedback into agendas, facilitation plan and process design / approach
    • Prepped program logic pathways around population group with clear framework
    • Facilitation plan for reviewing program logic and moving from population based program logic to household and systems pathways
    • Support tools and templates for knowledge capture

Co-facilitate mini workshops / working sessions and assist with workshop knowledge capture. This includes facilitating sessions, assisting with resilience approach integration, supporting agenda redesigns as needed and assisting the facilitation team with documentation in tools and templates during sessions. More specifically:

• co-facilitate the refinement of program logic around population groups and cross-cutting strategies (i.e. resilient livelihoods, water systems integration)
• Support the documentation and consolidation of logic into usable and understandable formats that teams will support teams in thinking through implementation strategies and learning plans.
• Facilitate review of SOP templates to facilitate integration of program logic and additional considerations related to targeting and work planning.
• The consultant will travel to Nairobi to deliver this work.

Deliverable:

• Co-facilitation of workshops / work sessions
• Documentation/capture of workshop decisions, key data
• Refinement of facilitation strategies
• On-going data capture

Organize and consolidate knowledge from the workshops to feed into technical outputs for Y5 / cost extension planning and R-CLA systems

• Work with the Strategic Learning Lead to synthesize outputs from the workshop, ensuring the outputs are designed to intentionally feed into workplan development and contribute to Nawiri’s implementation needs for strategic CLA systems for resilience. The consultant will deliver the majority of this work while in country.

Deliverable:

• Updated program logic - each pathway separately documented and finalized in a usable format, accessible for reflection and learning.
• Recommendations for updating SOPs
• Synthesized learning for PREP 5 implications for each component/program strategic area

Produce a synthesis brief that documents and highlights Nawiri’s overarching process/ steps followed for workplan design using a resilience approach to support Nawiri’s knowledge management. This will be a working document that Nawiri/Mercy Corps will finalize and polish later into a technical learning brief.

Deliverable:

• Rapid synthesis brief highlighting steps in process and where appropriate, pulling in examples

Consultant Deliverables:

• Preparation Deliverables
  • Written inputs / feedback into agendas, facilitation plan and process design / approach
  • Prepped program logic pathways around population group and cross-cutting strategy
  • Support tools and templates for knowledge capture
• Co-facilitation Deliverables:
  • Co-facilitation of workshops / work sessions
  • Documentation/capture of workshop decisions, key data
  • Refinement of facilitation strategies
  • On-going data capture
• Product/Post-Workshop Deliverables:
  • Updated program logic - each pathway separately documented and finalized in a usable format, accessible for reflection and learning.
  • Recommendations for updating SOPs
  • Synthesized learning for PREP 5 implications for each component/program strategic area
  • Rapid synthesis brief highlighting steps in process and where appropriate, pulling in examples

Timeframe / Schedule:

• Remote preparation and input into facilitation plan and prepped program logic for outcome groups: February 10 - 14 (5 days)
• In country preparation and input: February 16 - 19 (finalize facilitation and program logic) (4 days)
• In country facilitation of workshops/work sessions and consolidation of outputs: February 20 - March 5 (14)
• Remote follow up and learning brief development: due March 25th (4 days)
  • Maximum number of remote days: 9
  • Maximum number of in country days including travel days: 18
  • Total: 27 days

The Consultant will report to:

Strategic Learning Advisor

The Consultant will work closely with: Program Quality lead,DCoP, Technical Team Member, learning partner RTI

Required Experience & Skills:

• MA or MS preferred in a relevant field
• At least 7 years of experience in resilience technical work, which must include experience with food security development programs in international contexts
• Demonstrated experience creating and facilitating resilience logic technical design sessions in a development programming context using adult learning methods
• Demonstrated experience developing materials to improve program-level adaptive management / CLA systems (collaborating, learning and adapting)
• Excellent cross-cultural facilitation skills.
• Excellent English writing skills.