MEAL Officer

TITLE:  MEAL Officer

BASED IN: Beqaa, Lebanon (100% full time – 10 months)

REPORTING TO: Program Director and Country Manager for Lebanon

CONTRACT TYPE: 100% full time; 1 year contract including three-month probationary period

BENEFITS: 20 days annual leave plus public holidays; 2 months maternity leave and we provide a crèche (child care) in our centres for babies and children under the age of 7.  Therefore we encourage mothers and fathers with childcare responsibilities to apply.

TO APPLY: Please send a CV and a one-page Cover letter explaining how you fulfil the person specification below to: [email protected]

START DATE: as soon as possible

BACKGROUND:

Women Now for Development is a feminist, women-lead non-governmental organization dedicated to deepening and strengthening women’s role in communities by enhancing their social, economic and cultural participation. Women Now was established in June 2012 by in response to the conflict in Syria and ensuing humanitarian crisis.  Today, we implement programmes in two Women and Girls Safe Spaces (WGSS) in Beqaa, Lebanon, reaching hundreds of beneficiaries annually.  We work in four integrated programmatic areas: 

• Protection - Psychosocial support, and Health Awareness
• Empowerment - Education and Vocational Skills training,
• Participation - Leadership training and Rights Awareness
• Advocacy and Campaigning - at the local and international level. 

At Women Now we work from the ground up, to empower ourselves, and the community around us in order to bring about significant, long-term change.

PURPOSE OF THE POSITION:

The MEAL Officer will be a crucial member of the Women Now for Development team in Lebanon, responsible for all Monitoring and Evaluation, Accountability and Learning for our programmes in Protection, Empowerment and Participation.   As we operate at a smaller scale than INGOs, this role provides an opportunity for real creative control – you will be able to help shape and drive our approach to MEAL, designing tools and needs assessments; you will be working in the field, and you will be involved in projects from the design phase.  This is an exciting role for a motivated, detail-oriented team-player who genuinely cares about improving the quality of programming for women and adolescent girls in vulnerable communities in Beqaa.

ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:

Under the supervision of Program Director and Country Manager, the MEAL Officer will work to complete the following tasks:

• Helping to ensure that all implementing staff are aware of agreed workplans and targets.
• Coordinate data collection with implementing staff, in order to ensure that sufficient data is collected in a timely manner, in order to report on vulnerability indicators, outputs, outcomes and impact including success stories.
• Collating attendance sheets, pre and post tests and internal reports and ensuring these are complete and filed properly online.
• Monitoring implementation to help ensure that activities are implemented to a high standard and in accordance with the proposal, workplan and targets.
• Identifying and reporting any issues that may arise as quickly as possible to the Programme Director.  Consulting colleagues to find mitigation measures and creative solutions.
• Reflecting on existing data management systems and MEAL tools, and working to improve on them where possible, in consultation with the Programme Director and implementing staff.
• Assisting with narrative report writing, including written analysis of the impact of programmes, challenges faced, solutions implemented, lessons learnt etc, as well as accurately updating numerical data on outputs and outcomes.
• Helping to ensure that existing Safeguarding procedures are being implemented and working with management staff and other colleagues to further enhance Safeguarding practices, including standard operating procedures for handling of sensitive complaints.
• Finding ways to increase Accountability to Affected Populations, in collaboration with the Programme Director and other colleagues.
• Representing her/his work and the work of the organisation to donors in a professional and positive manner
• Maintaining positive, beneficial relationships with colleagues at all levels, partners and consultants.
• Attending trainings as required and ensuring that knowledge is shared with members of the team who may find it useful
• Maybe required to deliver training to other members of staff
• Other ad hoc tasks as required

PERSONAL SPECIFICATIONS:

Qualifications, Knowledge and Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in project management, statistics, gender studies, or another relevant subject
• 2+ years’ experience working in MEAL in Rights-based or Humanitarian NGOs
• Knowledge/Experience of MEAL:

Essential:

• • monitoring implementation according to targets and the workplan,
  • contributing to narrative reports, by reporting on outputs and outcomes and providing analysis of challenges and lessons learnt,
  • conducting monitoring /observation sessions
  • developing MEAL Plans – selecting and developing appropriate tools (eg. to measure vulnerability indicators and outcomes, collect success stories and record beneficiary feedback)
  • improving on existing MEAL systems and procedures
  • finding creative ways to increase accountability and beneficiary involvement
  • processing or responding to beneficiary feedback and complaints (non-sensitive)
  • implementing needs assessment and needs monitoring,

Desirable:

• • designing needs assessments
  • contributing to development of Logrames: supporting the process of selecting outcomes, and outputs and target setting
• Experience of working on Safeguarding and sensitive complaints handling
• Understanding of accountability to affected populations, donor requirements, and due diligence
• Experience of delivering training on MEAL, Feedback and Complaints procedures, or Safeguarding
• Experience of supporting a diverse team, working in different programmatic areas whilst fostering a sense of collaboration and cooperation amongst team members
• Knowledge/experience of programme areas: Protection, Empowerment, Participation
• Experience in working on programmes specifically for women and adolescent girls, with a sophisticated understanding of gender mainstreaming
• Excellent understanding of Lebanese context, including issues facing refugees
• Experience of work/activism/volunteering related to women’s rights, political or social justice issues, and/or issues affecting refugees (desirable)

Skills:

• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills: ability to build and maintain good professional relationships with: colleagues at all levels, beneficiaries, partners and donors
• Excellent problem-solving skills: the ability to anticipate, pre-empt and solve problems
• Excellent organizational skills and good follow-through

Language Skills:

• Excellent knowledge of Arabic and English are required

Personal Qualities

• Strong sense of accountability and professionalism
• Independent and resourceful; able to work well within a team, but with limited supervision
• Accurate, and attentive to detail, analytical, curious and thorough
• Team spirit. – cooperative, professional and committed
• Shows initiative and the desire to learn and grow
• Commitment to Women now’s values and strong motivation in putting them into practice.

• Please send a CV of 2 pages, a 1-2 page cover letter explaining how you fulfill the person specification, and contact details for two referees to: [email protected]  Deadline for applications is 7 August.
• We appreciate the time it takes to write an application, however, due to the volume of applications we may not be able to respond to all applications individually.  If you have not received a response by 31^th August, unfortunately you have not been successful this time.  We thank you very much for application and encourage you to apply for other opportunities with us in the future.