Monitoring & Evaluation Technical Assistant at Samaritan's Purse

Duty Station: Nairobi (with some travel to South Sudan)
Reports To: Monitoring & Evaluation Manager (South Sudan)

Background

Samaritan’s Purse is a nondenominational evangelical Christian organization providing spiritual and physical aid to hurting people around the world. Since 1970, Samaritan’s Purse has helped meet needs of people who are victims of war, poverty, natural disasters, disease, and famine with the purpose of sharing God’s love through His Son, Jesus Christ.**

Job Summary

The Monitoring & Evaluation Technical Assistance will provide day-to-day support to the management of the monitoring and evaluation activities related to projects/programs in the Unity and Upper Nile regions. The M&E Technical Assistance will work closely in supporting the Monitoring and Evaluation Training Coordinator and the M&E manager on matters related to M&E.

The post holder will assist in providing monitoring and evaluation tools, data analysis and report-writing to support program improvement and compliance with donor reporting requirements. The post-holder will help the M&E department ensure programs are implemented in accordance with the SP’s Program Management Field Operation Guide (PM FOG).

Roles & Responsibilities

• Strategic Level:
  • Excellent knowledge of monitoring and the application of methodology: Good understanding of capacity assessment methodologies;
  • Excellent communication skills (written and oral): Sensitivity to and responsiveness to all program Managers and M&E Manager, Respectful and helpful relations with field and project staff;
  • Ensuring that all activities including data collection tools, methods, analysis and results meet agreed standards of quality;
  • Occasionally (approximately quarterly) travel to South Sudan field locations to support field teams (including for capacity building, enumerator training etc.);
• Project Support:
• Ensure the data collection tools, analysis and results are in line with recognized quality standards;
• Support the M&E department in helping sector Technical Advisors (TAs) and field program manager’s complete routine monitoring of their projects and ensure that activity information is collected in an efficient and timely manner and is in line with SP PM FOG requirements;
• Support the M&E department in developing and maintaining effective information databases for projects which should include activities, results, targets and progress reports;
• Engage in spot checks and process monitoring to track results (output, outcomes and impacts).
• Data collection, management and analysis.
• Assist in formal research and assessment activities (i.e. Develop and refine various data collection instruments - both quantitative and qualitative) and maintain a results database to aggregate data;**
• Lead development of baseline assessment, needs assessment, post-harvest assessment and other assessment tools to inform program design and implementation;**
• Develop and program Mobile Data Collection (MDC) tools using iformbuilder or other MDC applications as needed;**
• Develop data entry tools and analysis templates for project monitoring and assessments where required;
• Assist in analysis of collected project data using accepted international tools and methodologies;
• Conduct statistical analysis of data and write analysis reports when required;
• Manage the information-gathering process for results and performance results, in addition to other briefings, summaries, papers, presentations, etc. for various audiences as needed;**
• Support in report writing (monthly, quarterly, annual, final, etc.) in a timely manner, accurately reflecting field-level conditions and programming impact against objectives which document good practices, lessons learned trends, and implementation issues, etc.
• Research and collect content and stories about the projects achievements;

Qualifications

• To perform this job successfully, an individual must maintain a personal relationship with and be a consistent witness for Jesus Christ, as well as able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily.
• Good report writing and reviewing skills;
• Strong organizational and time-management skills;
• Must be able to work independently and deliver results with minimum supervision;
• Demonstrates substantial experience in M&E, data analysis and/or program roles;
• Strong communication and analytical skills;
• Demonstrated knowledge of statistics (including completion of statistics coursework) preferred
• Strong computer skills including proficiency in MS word and excel (experience with VBA programming preferred);
• Experience using statistical software such as STATA, SPSS or R-GUI preferred;
• Experience creating mobile data collection tools on iFormBuilder, ODK, KoBoToolbox or other platforms preferred;
• Demonstrated ability in Data Collection, Data Management and Analysis;
• Experience of conducting project evaluations including using different survey methodologies e.g. cluster sampling and LQAS preferred;
• Experience living and working in challenging settings preferred.

Education & Experience

• A minimum of a Bachelors’ degree in development related subjects (e.g. Economics, Statistics, etc.) with a minimum of 2 years of experience related to Monitoring and Evaluation and/or data analysis;
• One year of college-level Biblical studies strongly preferred;
• Strong English writing skills required. Demonstrated ability to write quality reports in English strongly preferred;
• Ability to speak effectively before groups of customers or employees of organization. Arabic language skills are helpful but not required;
• Strong mathematical skills including elementary statistics for evaluating M&E data. Prior coursework in statistics preferred;
• Ability to solve practical problems and deal with a variety of concrete variables in situations where only limited standardization exists;
• Ability to interpret a variety of instructions furnished in written, oral diagram, or schedule form;
• Perform activities of moderate physical activity and somewhat strenuous daily activities of a primarily administrative nature;
• Please note that the staff will be expected to:
• Camp in remote field sites;
• Ride in light vehicles over rough terrain;
• May travel in country with exposure to communicable diseases, hot and humid weather conditions.