South Sudan: Collaborating, Learning and Adapting Advisor, USAID Monitoring and Evaluation Support Project (MESP), South Sudan

Collaborating, Learning and Adapting Advisor,

USAID Monitoring and Evaluation Support Project (MESP), South Sudan

Company Profile:

MSI, a Tetra Tech Company, is a Washington, DC metro area international development firm with a 35-year history of delivering development results across the world. Our core expertise is in the fields of monitoring and evaluation (M&E), institutional development, public sector management, governance and anti-corruption. MSI has implemented projects in 90 countries around the world such as Jordan, Kenya, Indonesia, Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Colombia, and Mexico. As one of the leading companies in our field, MSI has partnered with organizations across all sectors of international development to support clients ranging from large bilateral and multilateral donors such as USAID, the World Bank and the UNDP to national and local governments, NGOs, think tanks, foundations and universities. For more information on MSI, please visit our website at www.msiworldwide.com.

Project Summary:

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) program office requires support to assist USAID/South Sudan to effectively monitor, evaluate, and relay information about funded interventions. The Monitoring and Evaluation Support Project (MESP) provides USAID/South Sudan with flexible and demand-driven technical, analytic, advisory, training, monitoring, evaluation, and related support services for performance measurement, planning, monitoring, evaluation, reporting, activity mapping, and performance information management and dissemination activities.

Position Summary:

MESP is seeking a collaborating, learning, and adapting (CLA) advisor will support the USAID/Mission’s collaborating, learning, adapting, and knowledge management activities. The selection of final applicant is subject to USAID approval and will be based in Juba, South Sudan.

MESP support to USAID/South Sudan’s CLA agenda includes particular support to adaptive management across the technical offices. The CLA Advisor position is designed to help USAID program management effectively support interventions that are field tested in South Sudan as experimental solutions to problems that are poorly or partially understood. The CLA advisor will also support the Mission to explore alternative approaches to meeting a given set of USAID/South Sudan objectives, where adaptation takes place through the application of prior knowledge and real-time action-learning. In addition to facilitating the emergence of solutions, the CLA advisor will help the Mission to document and disseminate the lessons learned.

Responsibilities:

• Help develop, refine, and implement a robust learning agenda for continuous learning, collaborating, and adapting for USAID and its partners, so that they can implement processes and tools to institutionalize continuous learning and adaptive management.
• Analyze monitoring, evaluation, and research work to develop a learning program and policy for adaptation of appropriate stakeholders/agencies.
• Lead efforts to monitor progress toward learning agenda objectives.
• Coordinate CLA activities in support of USAID with local and international partners, including surveys, case studies, and stakeholder workshop to refine approaches.
• Conceptualize and implement effective ways for the USAID/South Sudan Office and implementing partners to share findings and lessons learned.
• Support efforts to identify key research questions and support the design of studies, provide evidence on best practices and lessons learned, provide evidence to make programmatic decisions and/or adaptations, and contribute to the larger body of evidence related to the adaptive learning approach.
• Coordinate stock-taking exercises such as pause-and-reflect sessions, before-action reviews, after-action reviews, and opportunities to give and receive stakeholder feedback.
• Oversee the compilation and dissemination of information from M&E data and stakeholder feedback on successful and promising approaches, lessons learned and other program results to local, national and regional-level intergovernmental bodies, donors, partners and other stakeholders using simple, user-friendly formats.
• Build capacity of staff, implementing partners, government counterparts, and other stakeholders in program monitoring and evaluation, data collection and management, and CLA methods as necessary.

Qualifications:

• Master’s degree in international development, quantitative research, statistics or other area clearly relevant to data analysis and impact analysis preferred.
• Five (5) to seven (7) years’ experience in international monitoring, evaluation, CLA, knowledge management, and research efforts for large USAID-funded programs.
• Proven track record of work monitoring and evaluation, including supervising and monitoring data collection activities.
• Demonstrated ability to create and maintain effective working relations with USAID, stakeholders, NGO partners, and international donor agencies.
• Demonstrated expertise in qualitative data collection, in-depth knowledge about qualitative sampling, and experience in using interviews, focus groups, and interactive tools to generate qualitative information and analysis.
• Excellent English writing and speaking as well as presentation skills. Excellent organizational and administrative skills and ability to multitask under tight time constraints/deadlines.
• Deep familiarity with South Sudan, and willingness to live in Juba, South Sudan.
• Only candidates who have been selected for an interview will be contacted. No phone calls, please.

MSI is an EEO/AA/ADA Veterans Employer.

https://chc.tbe.taleo.net/chc01/ats/careers/v2/viewRequisition?org=MSI&cws=51&rid=6134