MEAL Manager

CONTEXT 

Founded in 1994, La Chaîne de l’Espoir (CDE) is an international NGO headquartered in Paris, France. Its mission is to strengthen healthcare systems and provide everyone, especially children, equal chances and opportunities for survival and development.  

CDE is currently active in twenty-seven (27) countries with a global approach, mainly focusing on children, mothers, and disadvantaged communities. Find our activities briefly elaborated as follows: 

• Prevention and screening from an early age, particularly through school health programs. 
• Care and surgery to meet the most urgent needs of children and their mothers. 
• Training and transfer of skills to local teams (capacity building) thanks to our international network of experts in all areas of surgery. 
• Construction and equipment of hospital facilities adapted to local needs. 

CDE has been implementing humanitarian activities in Lebanon since 2005, working through local partners, such as HeartBeat, in order to provide access to medico-surgical care to children suffering from cardiopathies and orthopedics disabilities. Late 2020, CDE eventually opened its mission in Lebanon to respond to growing needs due to the significant deterioration of the situation. Since then, CDE is implementing activities related to the tertiary healthcare, including several aspects such as the strengthening of the healthcare system, early detection of congenital orthopedics disorders, psychosocial support, etc – via direct and indirect (through local partners) implementation. Lately, CDE is launching a large-scale project to provide general pediatric surgery for vulnerable populations through a network of governmental hospitals.

Aiming at enhancing its monitoring and evaluation processes as well as incorporating field-experience learning into its programming, also ensuring accountability to affected populations, CDE Lebanon is looking for a MEAL Manager. 

GENERAL DESCRIPTION 

Under the management of the Head of Mission, the MEAL Manager will lead on all CDE's MEAL work and work closely with all departments in CDE Lebanon office, with a continuous coordination with the program team.  

MAIN RESPONSIBILITIES 

Assessment 

• The MEAL Manager will conduct first a review of the mission’s Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) existing processes and tools 
• Review existing projects’ logical framework and monitoring plans, taking into consideration donors’ specific requirements and regulations
• Identify gaps and areas of improvement with a strong participatory approach based on a robust assessment engaging CDE’s staff and partners
• Update and review the assessment regularly to ensure the development of needs-based policies. 

Procedures  

• Develop a strategy in several steps to establish a strong MEAL system at CDE Lebanon within a year based on the assessment and in close collaboration with CDE’s staff
• Review the Feedback, Complaint and Response Mechanism (FCRM) policy and ensure that the mechanism is continuously improved and properly implemented and that measures for Protection Against Sexual Abuse and Exploitation (PSEA) are also in place
• Design and draft Standards Operating Procedures (SOPs) to systemize MEAL practices in CDE Lebanon and develop the necessary tools with practical guidelines
• Train staff and partners on the procedures and tools and conduct refresher training when necessary

Monitoring and Evaluation 

• Create, review, and update monitoring plans with the program teams, ensuring that they are consistent with the logical framework and other projects’ documents
• Conduct field monitoring visits to monitor field activities and ensure cohesion of data collected on field under each project
• Validate drafted template for focus group discussions, interviews, baseline, endline surveys, and the generation of the related digital collection tools 
• Ensure data received is accurate and reliable for integration into the database and for reporting purposes
• Identifying the gaps and updating the system as necessary to ensure accountability internally and externally 

Reporting

• Collaborate closely with the Project Team to have a clear distribution of tasks for the different reporting exercises (internal and external) 
• Support, when necessary, in drafting donors’ narrative reports
• Engage actively in the internal reporting efforts

Learning and Development 

• Coordinate and lead on the needs assessment to be conducted with the relevant stakeholders. Engage colleagues in collaborative exercise with a strong methodology
• Be in charge of integrating monitoring and evaluation’s results in the different project’s development steps (project’s proposal, review, etc.)
• Ensure that the learning development efforts always follow a needs-based approach to enhance Accountability to Affected Populations (AAP)
• Collaborate closely with CDE’s local partners and support, when necessary, on the technical level to contribute to CDE’s localization strategy

Coordination 

• Participate, when necessary, in external coordination exercises (ex. Humanitarian sectors, NGOs forum, etc. ...) to promote a coordinated response to the humanitarian needs 
• Actively engage in all internal coordination efforts and ensure all relevant staff are involved in the above-mentioned staff

Any other tasks as requested by the line manager and agreed upon based on urgent/important needs. 

TEAM RELATIONSHIP 

Line and technical manager:   Head of Mission 

Line and technical reports:     N/A 

Close collaboration with:        Program Team 

PROFILE 

Academic background 

• University degree in Business Administration, Statistics, Economics, Social Sciences, or any relevant field [required] 
• Training related to FCRM, PSEA and safeguarding policies [required] 
• In-depth knowledge of MEAL procedures and tools [required] 
• Good knowledge of health public and private system in Lebanon is a plus

Working experience 

• At least 7 years of similar experience [required] 
• Experience working in Humanitarian sector (Local or International NGOs) [required] 
• Experience in healthcare is a plus 
• Experience working with institutional donors (EU, AFD) is a plus

Specific skills 

• Excellent command of Microsoft office suite (Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint) [required] 
• Excellent command of data collection and analysis tools and system [required] 
• Strong communication skills and ability to work in collaboration with multiple stakeholders and staff members [required] 
• Excellent writing / reporting skills [required] 
• Capacity to travel to CDE’s projects’ implementation areas of Lebanon [required] 
• Sharing of key humanitarian values with cross-cultural sensitivity [required] 

Languages 

• Fluent in Arabic (speaking, writing, reading) [required] 
• Excellent command in English (speaking, writing, reading) [required] 
• Knowledge of French is a plus

CDE always ensures its team members:

• Are driven to answer beneficiaries’ needs  
• Works in line with the humanitarian principles and CDE’s values 
• Respects at all-time CDE’s procedures in place 
• Have a sense of teamwork in multicultural context 
• Maintain confidentiality of work