Measurement, Learning & Technology Officer at Mercy Corps

Program / Department Summary

Mercy Corps will begin implementation of its Mitigating Election Violence through Social Media project as part of a broader election violence prevention and mitigation program which will work to promote peaceful elections in Kenya by strengthening stakeholders’ capacity to prevent and mitigate election violence and contribute to a peaceful political transition around the August 2022 elections. The project will engage and mobilize community capacities for peacebuilding, conflict mitigation and civic participation, strengthen the response capability of government-led institutions and facilitate improved coordination and collaboration between and among community, county and national-level stakeholders. The project is grounded in the belief that the empowerment of local actors, through systematic, participatory and inclusive processes, are the most sustainable, impactful and effective at preventing conflict and promoting peace.

Mercy Corps with its technology partner, under the Mitigating Election Violence through Social Media project, proposes to expand investment in researching the impact and outcomes of utilizing micro-level social media influencers to facilitate positive behavior change within the digital space, especially as relates to the upcoming elections, which have significant potential for violence and conflict. This evaluation, including on-going measurement of sentiment analysis before, and following, the campaigns will provide Mercy Corps with insight into the effectiveness of these campaigns in a peacebuilding context.

General Position Summary

The Measurement, Learning & Technology Officer is a key member of the program team and will report to the Program Manager. She/he will provide day-to-day support to the program team in the identification of the learning and evaluation needs and opportunities.  The position holder will develop learning and measurement activity ideas and will implement, monitor and report progress.

Essential Job Responsibilities

PROGRAM IMPLEMENTATION

• Support technology partner to work with key online influencers to drive behavior change through campaigns.
• Drawing on state of the art research on digital peacebuilding, including Mercy Corps sources, generate and document insights into how to design and focus peace campaigns built on behavioral, sentiment, and psychographic analysis.
• Continuously ensure that the implementing partner is carrying out social media analytics and sentiments to align the communication strategies and messages and reporting the same to the program manager.
• Ensure influencers have the support and access to resources/content to both promote positive engagement within social media as well as to actively mitigate and/or counter content inciting violence or harassment.
• Researching and documenting the impact and outcomes of the influencer-led interventions.
• In consultation with the technology implementing partner, measure sentiment analysis before, and following, the campaigns to provide Mercy Corps with insights and evidence into the effectiveness of campaigns in a peacebuilding context.
• Support with project implementation, including attending learning activities and events in the targeted locations and virtually.
• Identify needs and opportunities and provide relevant information and learnings to facilitate the program team’s ability to develop activity and further learning ideas.
• Under the direction of the Program Manager, develop and maintain relationships with organizations/ actors in key target sectors (e.g., private sector, CBOs / local NGOs, local government officials, security officials etc.).

RESULTS MEASUREMENT, ANALYSIS AND REPORTING

In conjunction with the country & program-level monitoring and evaluation team:

• Play a key role in the development and review of intervention designs, sector strategies and M&E frameworks.
• Design and maintain all program information databases in conjunction with the program MEL Officer, ensuring monthly backup of program files.
• Receive and ensure proper tracking of all documents/data submitted by the technology partner.
• Ensure that data received from staff is entered into databases within 7 days of receipt and submitted to the Manager according to agreed schedules.
• Produce ad hoc reports generated from databases according to the needs of the program.
• Integrate community approaches, gender sensitivity and capacity building into all activities as appropriate.
• Create and maintain systems ensuring effective and transparent use of grant resources for timely and informative reporting in line with donor and Mercy Corps policies and procedures.
• Fulfill Mercy Corps’ Program Management Minimum Standards based on the organization-wide guide.
• Ensure all interventions adhere to Mercy Corps’ Gender Policy, Do No Harm principles, and beneficiary accountability standards.
• Work with partner to undertake baseline research for sentiment analysis.
• Design online and offline surveys in collaboration with partner to measure impact of interventions.
• Validating and verifying core indicators against the different sources of information by taking part in regular data quality assessment.
• Work with Program Manager to ensure that learning and measurement activities are implemented on plan and progress towards targets is not compromised.
• Meet regularly with the program team to evaluate project progress, identify, and document successes, best practices, human interest stories, challenges and lessons-learned; and adjust practices as necessary to improve performance.
• Prepare and submit to the program reports of specific periods, events, field trips and meetings.
• Support the team in effectively utilizing established monitoring and evaluation formats / tools and provide feedback for their improvement.
• Support timely production of quarterly and annual donor reports based on agreed performance indicators.

PROGRAM ADVISORY

• Maintain an active advisory role with the program team to help guide towards robust and relevant data for decision making.
• Actively participate in all implementations, providing advice and feedback for quality results at any point.
• Establish and maintain strong working relationships with partners and government departments.

RESEARCH AND LEARNING

• Take part in conflict analysis, research and learning activities, in conjunction with other relevant team members.
• Prepare practical reports for dissemination based on experiences from program implementation.
• Together with the program implementation team, generate key learnings and evidence about the program’s implementation and approaches.
• Regularly document and share all learnings from program implementation.
• Support maintenance of an up-to-date database that reflects progress and program indicators.

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.