Under the direct supervision of the Senior Advisor, Country Support, in close collaboration with the Senior Advisor, Global Programmes and under the overall guidance of the Deputy Director, Programmes, the Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning Specialist will work with the wider GenU Programme team to advance GenU’s Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning (MERL) efforts. The MERL Specialist will work to ensure robust and rigorous systems are in place to define and track results generated through GenU country and global programmes, and through GenU’s Public Private and Youth Partnership (PPYP) approach. This will involve working with stakeholders at the global, regional and country levels to help develop and implement monitoring systems and assist in design and undertaking monitoring and evaluation activities. The successful candidate will collaborate across the GenU Global Team and UNICEF Programme Group to strengthen Country Offices and Regional Offices ability to effectively develop/update targets, monitor, report and analyze these, and consolidate this at global through various mechanisms.
To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have…
Support to design and implement measurement frameworks/tools/procedures:
Provide technical guidance to UNICEF Country Office and their in-country GenU partners on monitoring and evaluation, access to technical support for collaborative sector analysis and planning.
Assist in preparing required documents for program reviews and approval for matters related to MERL.
Contribute to quality assurance activities for matters related to MERL.
Support the preparation of measurement frameworks to ensure alignment of activities with the overall GenU mission and its strategic plan, including Regional and Country Office plans.
Collaborate with Country Office throughout all stages of programming to provide support for monitoring and evaluation of results and collection of individual impact stories.
Work with the GenU Global Programmes team and global programme leads to develop and implement an integrated approach to monitoring and evaluating the performance of the global programme portfolio.
Enhance the depth and scope of GenU MERL activities, their application and develop capacity for Global and Country level GenU Stakeholders:
Coordinate and facilitate process to revisit Genu Global targets and methodology to monitor these until 2025 (end of current Strategic Plan) and 2030 (linked to SDGs)
Drive efforts to identify or further develop analysis and measurement on global impact indicators (i.e. Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET), Value of Education, Decent Work, Entrepreneurship, Civic Engagement) towards the achievement of the SDGs
Lead efforts to map, consolidate and disseminate based on target audience key global statistics or data on GenU.
Lead process to map and identify methods to increase application and use of High Frequency Monitoring
Collaborate with ILO on MERL activities connected to the Global Initiative on Decent Jobs for Youth initiative.
Identify and pursue approaches to increasing relevance and wider use of Youth Foresight platform alongside ILO and GenU partners.
Support global activities in promoting GenU MERL advancement, such as presentations, proposal writing for fundraising, etc.
Undertake field missions to assess or establish measurement strategies and provide ad-hoc support in MERL.
Deliver training in MERL to partners in GenU countries of operation.
Provide support to evaluating GenU country operations, if necessary
Coordinate the Global GenU M&E Technical Advisory Group comprised of leading experts from the UN, World Bank, private sector and civil society.
Work with the GenU Global Programmes team and global programme leads to design and execute global programme MERL activities.
Support the preparation of analyses and presentation of results at global, regional and country levels:
Update current Annual Results Reporting process and data collection tools as needed, working closely with partners and key stakeholders at Global and Regional level.
Lead the coordination of GenU’s Annual Result Reporting. In doing so updating templates as necessary, developing/updating guidelines for Country Office inputs, working with UNICEF Programme Group and Regional Offices to throughout the process, collecting, quality assuring, analyzing and presenting results.
Support the numerical and narrative presentation of results as well as individual impact stories for a wide range of GenU stakeholders (Board, Global Leadership Council, Donors, Partners) across a wide range of documents (various governance structure pre-reads, results deep dive, Year in Review and more).
Advance and maintain the Global GenU online Dashboard.
Undertake analysis and support in developing reports based on the data collected during global programme MERL activities.
Design, develop and maintain GenU databases.
Assist on the development of data and information systems for monitoring, tracking performance, and reporting on results.
Ensure data quality and consistency and ease of data extraction/use.
Thought leadership.
Review and contribute to relevant research and impact evaluations on interventions in the youth employment, entrepreneurship, and civic engagement space to measure youth outcomes informing programmes
Identify and promote the use of good practices in monitoring and evaluation relevant to GenU programmes.
Other related duties as assigned by the supervisor and senior team members to ensure the success of the team, including managing, guiding, training, and coaching short-term staff, including consultants, interns and volunteers, as needed.
The following minimum requirements:
An advanced university degree (Master’s or higher) in social sciences, statistics, international development and/or related field is required.
A minimum of eight years of professional experience in designing data collection tools, data processing/ cleaning, analysis, and presentation of findings in a humanitarian and/or development context, at the national and/or international/and levels is required.
Proven experience in writing data-driven reports for technical and non-technical audiences, preferably with a particular focus on education matters is desired.
Field experience with humanitarian and/or development programming is highly desirable.
Advanced knowledge of MS Excel is required and knowledge of statistical tools plus database work preferred.
Fluency in English is required. Working knowledge of another UN language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian and Spanish) is considered an asset.
