Afghanistan: WFP Monitoring & Evaluation Consultant

Nov 27, 2017 | World Food Programme
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The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is the world's largest humanitarian Agency, fighting hunger worldwide. WFP has been working in Afghanistan since 1963. WFP food assistance aims to help the most vulnerable, food insecure Afghans, including women and children, as well as families affected by conflict and natural disasters. In 2016, WFP fed over 3.6 million vulnerable Afghans  through various programme activities such as general distributions (food, and/or cash and voucher as the transfer modality); nutrition programmes, through targeted supplementary feeding; school take-home rations; food for assets creation, Purchase for Progress (P4P), training and capacity development activities.  For more information, see wfp.org 

ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXT

 WFP is a UN agency working to provide food to people who are unable to produce or obtain enough food for themselves and their families.In Afghanistan, WFP provides assistance to IDPs, returnees and refugees affected by conflict and natural disasters or seasonal food insecurity, treatment of moderate acute malnutrition in young children and pregnant and lactating women, take-home rations to school children, and programmes to develop marketable skills for women and to create community assets. In addition, the Country Office works with partners to support sustainable food systems for wheat and soya as well as local production of nutritious foods for women and young children. As WFP Afghanistan is in the process of developing its Country Strategic Plan and will implement activities in line with a new Corporate Results Framework, the CO is looking to recruit an international consultant as Head of Monitoring and Evaluation.  Traditionally the role of the Head of Monitoring & Evaluation is to coordinate and support WFP staff to generate quality evidence on the outcomes and effects of WFP Afghanistan’s activities on the lives of beneficiaries with which to inform operational decision making by using corporate M&E tools and systems in order to demonstrate consistent results to internal and external stakeholders.  

Job Purpose

 Since the M&E national staff capacity is strong and in order to move forward with more creative approaches to gathering and presenting evidence, the Consultant would be expected to bring additional skills and innovations to the team in order to position the operation to develop a dynamic and unique Results Framework for the new Country Strategic Plan.  

KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES (not all-inclusive)

 Monitoring systems and reporting
  1. Along with the national team, review and update the Country Office monitoring standards and guidelines to ensure that field activities are compliant with the WFP strategy, standards and guidelines. This includes review of all monitoring checklists and M&E data-management systems (corporate and country-specific) in relation to the logframe and Cash-Based Transfer requirements, to ensure compliance with corporate minimum monitoring requirements.
  2. Based on the review, work with the team to improve the monitoring system so that its products inform programmatic decision making.
  3. Liaise with the field offices and Operations unit on managing and monitoring the Programme Assistance Teams (PAT), WFP’s third party monitors.
  4. Take the lead in ensuring the sex and age disaggregated data are collected, analysed and presented in all monitoring and evaluation activities and that women’s participation in design, implementation and monitoring of activities is documented and reported.
  5. Lead the team to develop a Quarterly Monitoring Report, using both traditional reporting as well as introducing the use of data visualization or similar tools for more dynamic reporting.
  6. Lead the process of developing the Corporate Results Framework for the Country Strategic Plan, including benchmarks and targets and, together with the VAM unit, prepare a plan for baseline data collection for all activities in the approved CSP.
Evaluation
  1. Along with the Head of Programme, develop a Terms of Reference for a Decentralised Evaluation of a programme activity to be carried out in 2018, with technical guidance and support from the Regional Evaluation Advisor.
Innovations
  1. Support the pilot and roll-out of WFP’s corporate monitoring tool, MDCA and ensure its appropriate use for monitoring activities.  This includes a strategy for rolling out, and development of Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) for MDCA use in the CO and the linkages to VAM and mVAM activities.
  2. Work with other units to support the use of Tableau or other data visualization software for reporting findings from monitoring activities. 
Partnerships and capacity development
  1. Contribute to the development of inter-agency and system-wide monitoring and evaluation frameworks to ensure that these are practice-oriented and aligned with the goals and objectives of response plans.
  2. Identify, adapt, and incorporate major lessons learned and best practices in M&E already identified by other organisations, especially UN agencies already working directly with national governments in designing, building, strengthening national results measurement and reporting systems.
  3. Represent WFP Afghanistan at national and inter-agency meetings to contribute to technical discussions, exchange knowledge and experiences, promote the importance of monitoring and evaluation and develop strategic partnerships.
  4. Manage the M&E team in the CO and field offices, and mentor, coach and guide as required to ensure appropriate development and enable high performance.
  5. Build capacity of CO staff and partners through delivery of training and information sharing to increase awareness of the importance of monitoring and evaluation, quality evidence and overall performance management and promote individual and organisational accountability across WFP.
  6. Other as required.

STANDARD MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS

Education:Advanced University degree in evaluation, epidemiology, social sciences or other relevant field, or First University degree with additional years of most relevant work experience and/or training/courses. 
Experience:Progressively responsible professional experience in public sector management, development projects, emergency assistance, and/or operational aspects of national, bilateral or multilateral food assistance or commercial transactions, including practical experience in the supervision of a comprehensive monitoring system for relief and food assistance operations. Expertise in research methods, vulnerability analysis, GIS and/or data visualization is highly desirable. 
Knowledge & Skills:Research design, sampling, tools development, analysis and report writing in English. 
Languages:Fluency (level C) in English language.