MEAL COORDINATOR

Background

War Child is an independent, and impartial international non-governmental organization investing in a peaceful future for children and young people affected by armed conflict.

War Child interventions aim at improving the well-being and resilience of vulnerable children and youth, by supporting them to shape their own future, together with partners, care givers and communities, creating a lasting impact. The interventions are carried out through a participatory community-based approach that seeks to strengthen existing systems and structures within the communities to (re)create a stable, safe, and supportive environment for children and youth, besides involvement of relevant government agencies in the implementation.

Following the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, War Child began responding through a local partnership model in Moldova, Romania, Hungary, and Ukraine. Within the first six months of the response, War Child and its partners reached over 800 frontline workers with training, and over 25,000 individuals with PSS services, EiE/ECD activities, child protection messaging, or vouchers to support basic needs.

War Child works entirely through a local partnership model, and as such this role has a strong focus on empowering and building capacity of War Child’s partners.

Your Challenge

The purpose of the Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL) Coordinator is to actively contribute to and improve War Child’s MEAL practices by developing and maintaining frameworks, systems, and tools.

The MEAL Coordinator leads on the systematic collection of data on a project basis and ensures the effective use of MEAL information, reports to make necessary changes in project implementation and inform programming and project design. They ensure MEAL systems meet the needs of programmes, donors, implementers, & beneficiaries, and are responsible for project-level MEAL processes & analysis and support cross-cutting programme level MEAL processes.

The MEAL Coordinator also provides technical guidance on developing performance indicators and project log frames during proposal development, oversees data collection & analysis processes, and feeds into internal & external narrative reporting systems.

The MEAL Coordinator will be responsible for providing MEAL expertise to the team and for leading capacity strengthening for all WCH partners within the Ukraine response.

Your Responsibilities

Contribute to the design of new projects

• Support the Head of Humanitarian Programmes and the Ukraine response technical leads in planning for and conducting needs/contextual assessments and in producing the assessment reports.
• Participate in project design workshops by presenting lessons learned and best practices surrounding similar projects and ensuring those are reflected in upcoming project designs.
• Support in proposal writing whenever needed. This includes pulling in the description of MEAL activities and developing log frames based on War Child’s Global Monitoring Framework in thematic areas.
• Participate in proposal review meetings by reviewing project proposals, log frames, and MEAL plans submitted by partners to ensure alignment of MEAL plans to War Child’s Global Monitoring Framework.

Set-up and follow up on MEAL Frameworks for Projects

• Develop and continually refer to a comprehensive and detailed project MEAL plan which outlines key data collection, analysis, and reporting activities to be carried out by partners.
• Adopt/adapt quantitative and qualitative data collection tools that pertain to the defined project indicators.
• Deliver MEAL induction meetings with partners to present the detailed MEAL plan, War Child’s Accountability framework, and planned key data collection moments, evaluations, etc.
• Guide programme teams in using Management Information Systems (MIS) to support data collection, analysis, and reporting needs with adherence to quality and accountability.

Mainstream MEAL Activities

• Provide partner staff with capacity-strengthening workshops or coaching sessions to ensure data is collected promptly, accurately, and in alignment with the project MEAL plan and War Child requirements, including Sex, Age, and Disability Disaggregated Data.
• Develop and/or streamline reporting templates that facilitate the acquisition, aggregation, and flow of information in and between programmes and projects.
• Process, analyse, report and present on collected data required for internal and/or donor reporting.
• Support programme and project design to ensure adherence to sector and War Child standards for programme and project MEAL.
• Provide advice to the Senior Programming Staff, Project Managers and Coordinators, local partners, and communities on necessary project adjustments during implementation and post-implementation based on data coherence with overall programme strategy and any other metrics in place.
• Support the Global MEAL team in producing annual reach reports by verifying the participant reach numbers.

Internal and External Coordination

• Liaise with partners and relevant cluster Information Management leads on data collection and reporting project achievements on the various Clusters’ Activity Info and 5W reporting mechanisms.
• Participate in MEAL working groups and maintain close working relationships with counterparts in other relevant international NGOs, and local NGOs and associations in the region.
• Represent War Child externally in relevant platforms/networks focused on MEAL and information management of programmes and projects.

Your Profile

• Relevant academic background (e.g., development, research, social science, statistics).
• Minimum three (3) years of active MEAL experience in emergency response programming.
• Experience coordinating multiple lines of work and internal & external stakeholders.
• Experience conducting interviews and focus group discussions with vulnerable persons as well as a variety of stakeholders.
• Demonstrated knowledge of quantitative and qualitative MEAL systems and tools.
• Proven experience in data analysis and assessments.
• Commitment to local capacity building and the ability to engage local stakeholders in the project design and implementation.
• Knowledge of sector standards including the Core Humanitarian Standard (CHS).
• Possess transversal skills: result-oriented, attentive to detail with regard routine systems and procedures and cost-conscious, working well in small team, flexible, and proactive.
• Excellent computer skills, including experience with: Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher. Experience in SPSS, Access, SQL, and any other statistical packages is a plus.
• Fluency in English is required.
• Fluency in Ukrainian, Russian, or Romanian is highly preferable.

Our Offer

Depending on the duty station, local contract with salary and secondary labour conditions based on the local salary scale and T&C will apply.

Location: Any country where War Child Holland has its offices. The successful candidate must be eligible to work in that country. Preference will be given to local candidates.

Contract: War Child standardly offers a 1-year contract with the intention to prolong after that.

The Organisation
War Child is a dynamic organization. We try to keep an informal ambiance within our office, with a lot of room for creativity, inspiration and self-initiative from employees. We practice what we preach: dynamic, innovative, integrity focused, and a drive to reach the highest possible results against the lowest possible costs. War Child Holland offers a challenging job in an inspiring workplace.

How to Apply
Interested and qualified candidates are invited to apply before 30 April 2023. Make sure to upload your English CV (maximum of two pages) and cover letter here:

N.B. War Child will be reviewing applications on a rolling basis and reserves the right to close the vacancy if a successful candidate is identified prior to the closing date.

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Safeguarding

War Child is committed to humanitarian values, standards and norms and we expect the same from job applicants. War Child is especially committed to safeguarding the children and youth we support and doesn’t tolerate any form of abuse. Because we want to prevent and deter any actions that place children and youth at risk, conduct references are an important part of our recruitment procedure. As part of the selection process, War Child will request standardized references in accordance with the Inter-Agency Misconduct Disclosure Scheme and a recent Criminal Records statement.

Equal opportunity

War Child has a dream that every child lives in peace - no matter who or where they are. That’s why we pride ourselves on being an equal opportunity employer. We promote diversity and belonging in everything we do and select our potential new colleagues without regard to gender, race, colour, religion, nationality, disability, age or sexual orientation.

Application process

To ensure that we spend as much of our resources on the support of children and youth, War Child needs to operate as efficiently as possible. This means we can only process job applications received through our websites.

If we appoint a suitable candidate before the given closing date, the vacancy will be removed from our websites. In this case, any responses received after removal will not be processed. Sometimes the closing date of a vacancy is extended. If so, and you have not yet heard from us, your application will remain active.