Trócaire works in partnership with local and church organisations, supporting communities in over 17 countries across Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East to bring about lasting change. Trócaire envisages a just and peaceful world where people’s dignity is ensured and rights are respected; basic needs are met and resources are shared equitably; people have control over their own lives; and those in power act for the common good.

In Sierra Leone, Trócaire delivers integrated programmes that promote women’s economic, social and political empowerment in partnership with 16 local civil society organisations. Core to Trócaire’s partnership approach in Sierra Leone are civil society strengthening and organisational development.

The Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning Officer role is a replacement role on the Trócaire Sierra Leone team. The MEAL Officer will be responsible for ensuring a systematic approach to Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL) in the Country Programme and will lead the implementation of the country programme M&E system, track outputs and outcomes throughout the project lifespan and manage data effectively, thus contributing to quality reporting, continuous learning, programme adaption, innovation and increased visibility of the impact of Trócaire’s work. The MEAL officer will work closely with partners on improving their internal M&E systems, providing coaching and accompaniment to partner staff in MEAL capacities, skills and tasks. The MEAL Officer will support the country office to increase accountability to project participants, partners, donors and other stakeholders, guided by Trócaire’s Accountability & Programme Quality Framework (APQF), and contribution to embedding the Core Humanitarian Standard (CHS) benchmarks in the country programme.

Key Duties & Responsibilities

Technical support

• Provide technical support to the programme team to implement and update the integrated Programme/Projects MEL plans and to design and implement Results Frameworks for new projects that contribute to a strong project result-oriented management
• Provide training and technical advice on monitoring, evaluation, accountability and learning to programme staff, including data collection, analysis and interpretation including qualitative and quantitative methodologies.
• Provide technical support on the design, updating and reporting on Results Framework for Programmes and Projects especially Irish Aid RFs.
• Provide technical support to the Programme Team on measuring reach including the annual collection and reporting of reach at country level.
• In collaboration with Programme Officers (POs), lead in conducting timely monitoring and learning activities, including oversight and quality assurance of field data collection, data management and analysis that will contribute to quality reporting increased accountability, visibility of programme impact and continual programme improvement.
• Advise and support POs to champion the importance of gender sensitive data collection and analysis, including the use of practical indicators and monitoring tools and processes (both qualitative and quantitative) to monitor work on Women’s Empowerment and incorporate learning from same into programmes.
• Advise on the use of Trócaire’s global common indicators, tools and methodologies in programmes
• Lead the development, design and management of programme or project evaluations, baselines or research.
• Support CMT to implement the country’s programme accountability framework, including feedback and complaints mechanisms, to ensure the sharing of monitoring information with programme participants and other stakeholders.
• Support the programme team to use M&E learnings to inform and adapt programme implementation.
• Support CMT to implement key Accountability & Programme Quality Framework (APQF) activities and achieve the CHS benchmarks/ as outlined in the Trócaire Country Programme Strategy.
• Assist in the development of donor reports in close coordination with colleagues and partners.

• Support the programme team and partners in strategic targeting of programme participants in line with organisational standards.

Strengthening MEAL related partner capacity

• Develop and implement a partner M&E capacity development plan, generating training materials and resources where needed.
• Work with POs to support partner use of results based management and engagement with programme learning and review processes.
• Through training and close accompaniment, support partner staff to develop skills and competencies to gather, manage and analyse quality gender-sensitive data.
• In coordination with the programme manager, conduct Data Protection Impact Assessments and implement relevant action plans with partners.
• Mentor partners in their use of digital data collection and advise on data protection and security.
• Support and mentor partner staff to analyse and interpret data to inform programme quality control, produce quality donor reports, document lessons learned and programme impact and to inform future project development.
• Support partners to implement quality field monitoring in a manner that is sensitive to the different needs, responsibilities and capabilities of vulnerable female and male programme participants.
• Support partners in establishing their accountability practices, including safeguarding, complaints and response mechanisms, participation and information sharing mechanisms.

• Ensure that gender and vulnerability issues are addressed in all aspects of M&E work, in relation to partners and in working with colleagues in Trócaire. In particular, champion monitoring and learning approaches which engage with issues of Gender, Vulnerability and Women’s Empowerment.

Documenting and dissemination of learning

• Document and share partner M&E tools and training resources at country and organisation level
• Capture lessons from partner capacity building to share at country and organisational level.
• Actively engage with the Global MEAL Team sharing learning from Sierra Leone.
• Learn from other organisational and external documented learning in rolling out new approaches and methods (e.g. digital data monitoring and innovative participatory M&E methods) and explore how to apply these in the Sierra Leonean context.
• Attendance at strategic meetings with donors, consortium members or key stakeholders in Sierra Leone in relation to programming, particularly MEAL.

• Support the programme team and partners in strategic targeting of programme participants in line with organisational standards.

Other

• Establish and support the growth of an M&E working group among Trócaire staff and partners
• Assist in the development of institutional funding applications (concept notes and full proposals) in close coordination with Programmes team and other colleagues

• Participate in wider organisational planning and review work.
• Any other reasonable duty as may be assigned by the line manager that is consistent with the nature of the job and its level of responsibility.