Monitoring and Evaluation Officer (Consultancy)
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Job Title: Monitoring and Evaluation Officer
Type of Contract: International Consultant
Division: School-based Programmes
Duty Station (City, Country): Rome HQ, Italy
Duration: 11 months
BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE OF THE ASSIGNMENT:
Background
WFP is partnering with the Rockefeller Foundation (RF) for 2.5 years (September 2022- February 2024) on a global project, titled ‘Catalyzing good food through school feeding and food-based programs.’ The overarching goal of this project is to improve the nutritional quality of diets, food-based safety net sustainability, equity of national food systems, and positive economic impact for local communities. This will be achieved by leveraging institutional food procurement mechanisms, strengthening supply chains, and influencing healthy eating behavior through food-based programmes, primarily school meals programmes.
The global project will start developing and testing approaches to shift towards more nutritious options for school meals which boost local economic opportunity and increase environmental sustainability. Activities will address micronutrient deficiencies, improve schooling effectiveness, and improve intergenerational opportunity for vulnerable populations, particularly young girls. This will in turn have a ripple effect in the overall food system, as the demand for nutritious foods signals for supply chains to shift to be responsive. Through this influence, WFP can also support local value chain actors including small holder farmers and caterers, the vast majority of whom are women, and have a significant impact on their inclusion in markets, economic empowerment, and livelihoods. WFP’s work around local and regional food procurement offers a framework for addressing bottlenecks in value chains, strengthening the livelihoods and resilience of smallholders and enhancing food systems by integrating and mainstreaming procurement innovations within school feeding and other food-based safety net and social protection programmes.
Key project deliverables
The global project has four components which are standard for the entire project across countries and globally. There will be work done on each of these at the global and country levels with varying degrees of intensity:
- Component 1: Optimization of school menus and strengthening of demand and supply chains (national level). Objective: demonstrate different options for optimization of school menus and their associated supply chains, while strengthening the demand side through Social and Behavioral Change Communications or SBCC and other methods.
- Component 2: Assessment, metrics and indicator development (global and national levels). Objective: Strengthen our level of understanding and ways of measuring the health and nutrition status of school children (disaggregated by sex), diversity of meals and diets, the in-country options to optimize the menus, and strategic actions to support more sustainable and equitable value chains.
- Component 3: Advocacy and support for policy adoption and change (global and national levels). Objective: promote policies, practices, programs and funding aimed at more nutritious, sustainable and equitable food-based programs, including school feeding, globally and in the proposed country contexts.
- Component 4: Development of the Good Food Scoring Framework (global level with testing in selected countries). Objective: explore the design of a tool to begin to encourage national governments and large institutions to direct their buying power towards better food options as identified in the scoring framework.
Companion project at regional level
The project will be implemented at global and national level (4 countries). Concurrently WFP is also implementing a regional project with similar objectives and activities in Burundi and Rwanda (2 countries). Both the global and regional projects comprise a combination of direct implementation to scale interventions and parallel work towards knowledge and evidence creation, testing of metrics and advocacy for changes in healthier diets.
ACCOUNTABITLITIES / RESPONSIBILITIES:
Under the overall supervision of WFP Director of School Based Programmes, the direct supervision of Head of the Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL), and in close coordination with the Global Coordinator in Rome and Focal Points in Regional Bureaux, the M&E consultant will:
Monitoring:
- Lead the development of country-level Theories of Change of the countries of the global project (Benin, Ghana, Honduras, and India) that are aligned with global level Theory of Change.[1]
- Lead the development of country-level Logframes of the countries of the global project (Benin, Ghana, Honduras, and India), based on corresponding country-level Theories of Change, agree on indicators and strategic learning questions for each country.[2] Ensure that CO monitoring systems and tools are in place and compliant with corporate standards, including the minimum monitoring requirements (MMR), standard operational procedures (SOP) and establishment of baselines and targets in alignment with the updated corporate result framework (CRF).
- Support the development and implementation of the 6 country-level Monitoring, and Evaluation plans in both the global and regional projects (Benin, Burundi, Ghana, Honduras, India, and Rwanda) that will provide the most relevant and strategic information to manage progress towards achieving expected results (as set out in the global Theory of Change), while being compliant with WFP evaluation and monitoring requirements.
- Advise and support evidence-based decision-making on programme design and implementation in 6 countries in both the global and regional projects (Benin, Burundi, Ghana, Honduras, India, and Rwanda), notably through linking monitoring findings to the ToC and making them accessible, developing innovative, user-friendly and informative products.
- Support WFP Management in addressing recommendations from monitoring, reviews and evaluations to ensure that follow-up actions are taken as required in complex portfolios.
- Build monitoring capacity of WFP staff and partners including national government as required, through design and delivery of training and information sharing, to enable them to effectively implement the monitoring of this project.
- Provide inputs to any knowledge product relating to M&E that is generated by the project.
- Other duties as required.
Evaluation:
- Manage the evaluation of the Rockefeller- funded project –Catalyzing good food through school feeding and food-based programs, commissioned by School Based Programmes Division in line with WFP’s Decentralized Evaluation Quality Assurance System (DEQAS). This entails managing the evaluation from planning to completion, to ensure an independent, credible, and useful process and products. Specific tasks are:
- To draft the evaluation TOR using the DEQAS template and follow the process for review, quality assurance, finalization, and approval
- Prepare and present budget and team for approval.
- Serve as the main contact point in WFP for the evaluation team throughout the evaluation process.
- Convene on behalf of the chair, the evaluation reference group and evaluation committee and provide secretariat services.
- Consolidate the library of information needed for the evaluation before the start of the inception phase.
- Take responsibility for the administrative and logistical needs of the evaluation.
- To recruit the evaluation team following WFP procedures and guidance
- To manage the inception phase to ensure that the team delivers a high-quality inception report that responds to the evaluation TOR and meets WFP quality standards
- To manage the field work and ensure sufficient stakeholder engagement in line with approved inception report
- To manage the analysis and reporting phase to ensure that the evaluation team delivers a high-quality evaluation report that meets WFP quality standards
- To support WFP and ensure that the management response sufficiently responds to the evaluation recommendations
- To actively disseminate evaluation findings and results through workshops and other activities to promote the use of the findings and recommendations.
Reporting:
- Lead the generation of templates for reporting, memos and other such documents required to address accountability requirements of project.
- Coordinate and oversee the production of monitoring reports with status of results and implementation progress.
- Support country offices as required to generate reports and memos as per deliverables.
DELIVERABLES QUALIFICATIONS AND EXPERIENCE REQUIRED:
DELIVERABLES:
|
Deliverable |
Due Date |
|
Monitoring Results |
|
|
28 February 2023 |
|
30 April 2023 |
|
31st July 2023 |
|
Ad hoc |
|
Adaptive Evaluation |
|
|
Adaptive Evaluation Inception Report |
By 30 June 2023 |
|
Adaptive Evaluation Mid-term Report |
By 31st January 2024 |
|
Adaptive Evaluation Report and Management Response are publicly available and actively disseminated |
By 31st May 2024 |
|
Accountability: Reporting |
|
|
28th February 2023 |
Support as necessary to:
|
30th April 2023 |
|
Year 1
Support as necessary to:
|
30th November 2023 |
QUALIFICATIONS AND EXPERIENCE REQUIRED:
Education: Advanced university degree in one of the following disciplines: M&E, international studies, development studies, gender studies or other related fields.
Experience: Minimum 5 years of progressively responsible professional experience in coordination and project management. Previous experience in monitoring and managing evaluations of projects on school feeding, food procurement and supply chain, value-chain development, nutrition, food technology or related fields. The ability to coordinate multi-stakeholders in a multi-cultural environment is an important asset.
Knowledge and Skills:
- Proven abilities to monitor and evaluation complex school feeding and food procurement related projects in low- and middle-income countries.
- In-depth knowledge of school feeding programming and its linkages to agriculture, nutrition and gender issues/inequality in development settings.
- Proven capacity to manage evaluations. Specific training in corporate EvalPro will be considered an advantage.
- In-depth knowledge of international norms and standards for evaluation and can apply them appropriately
- Demonstrates ethical behaviour at all times and communicates WFP’s expectation that all personnel act ethically in furtherance of the ideals of the UN and WFP’s mission
- Understands the specific implications of ethics in evaluation activities and is able to consistently ensure that appropriate actions are taken to safeguard ethics
- Ability to validate data quality and ensure that data collection and analysis have been conducted ethically
- Ability to select and apply high quality, credible, analytical approaches, and qualitative and quantitative methods appropriately
- Knowledge of a range of evaluation methods, data collection and analysis methods and is able to define key methodological requirements and critically review the evaluation design proposed by evaluation teams
- Demonstrates skills to communicate effectively key evidence from evaluations to a range of stakeholders, with the ability to create clear, influential messages to senior audiences, using a variety of communication platforms (verbally and in writing)
- Strong interpersonal skills with demonstrated ability to work effectively and sensitively in diverse teams and to promote constructive engagement from stakeholders with diverse, complex, and high-stake interests and seek guidance and engagement from management where appropriate
- Strong organizing skills and proven ability to produce results to deadlines
- Understanding of the country/regional context
- Practical knowledge/experience on how WFP’s monitoring data is collected, compiled, analysed and presented for management decisions, programme adjustment and donor reporting.
- Knowledge of the UN system, including gender-related mandates is an asset.
Languages: Excellent command of English, French and Spanish
Terms and Conditions
WFP offers a competitive compensation package which will be determined by the contract type and selected candidate’s qualifications and experience.
Please visit the following websites for detailed information on working with WFP.
http://www.wfp.org Click on: “Our work” and “Countries” to learn more about WFP’s operations.
Deadline for applications: 18 October 2022
All employment decisions are made on the basis of organizational needs, job requirements, merit, and individual qualifications. WFP is committed to providing an inclusive work environment free of sexual exploitation and abuse, all forms of discrimination, any kind of harassment, sexual harassment, and abuse of authority. Therefore, all selected candidates will undergo rigorous reference and background checks.
No appointment under any kind of contract will be offered to members of the UN Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ), International Civil Service Commission (ICSC), FAO Finance Committee, WFP External Auditor, WFP Audit Committee, Joint Inspection Unit (JIU) and other similar bodies within the United Nations system with oversight responsibilities over WFP, both during their service and within three years of ceasing that service.
[1] The Theories of Change for the regional project countries (Burundi and Rwanda) have already been developed
[2] The Logframes for the regional project countries (Burundi and Rwanda) have already been developed.
[3] The Theories of Change for the regional project countries (Burundi and Rwanda) have already been developed
[4] The Logframes for the regional project countries (Burundi and Rwanda) have already been developed.
