Company Profile

Catholic Relief Services is the official international humanitarian agency of the Catholic community in the United States. CRS works to save, protect, and transform lives in need in more than 100 countries, without regard to race, religion or nationality. CRS’ relief and development work is accomplished through programs of emergency response, HIV, health, agriculture, education, microfinance and peacebuilding. CRS Ghana was established in 1958, a year after Ghana gained independence. In Ghana, CRS works with local partners to tackle poverty on several fronts including improving health and nutrition; increasing access to safe water and improved sanitation; promoting agriculture to enhance food security; and increasing financial assets through Savings and Internal Lending Communities. 

Job Description

• Job Title: Technical Advisor I – EMPOWER West Africa MEAL and IM 
• Department: WARO Regional Office
• Grade: 9
• Reports To: EMPOWER West Africa Coordinator (Program Manager II)
• Country/Location: West Africa Regional Office

Job Summary
The EMPOWER West Africa Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability, and Learning and Information Management Technical Advisor I (MEAL and IM TA) will provide technical advice and accompaniment to local organizations participating in the EMPOWER West Africa program on a range of program design and implementation issues in the area of emergency MEAL and IM.  You will support participating organizations to strengthen their institutional capacity for humanitarian response programming, informed by CRS program quality principles and standards, donor guidelines, and industry best practices to advance the delivery of high-quality programming to the poor and vulnerable. As a part of the EMPOWER team, you will support local national organizations to achieve their institutional objectives for humanitarian response MEAL and information management.  You will also manage the overall EMPOWER West Africa MEAL System.  

Roles and Key Responsibilities

• Provide technical assistance and lead capacity strengthening activities for EMPOWER West Africa participating organizations on MEAL and IM. Capacity strengthening may be achieved through remote or on-site trainings, workshops, learning events, peer-to-peer exchanges, simulations, coaching, and on-the-job training.
• Support participating local organizations to develop project management and MEAL documents and tools, technical manuals or guidance, learning and training materials, and quality improvement plans.
• Provide capacity strengthening on surveys and assessments, including the use of appropriate ICT4D data collection and analysis tools such as CommCare, Excel, and PowerBI.  As needed/requested, directly support methodological design, development of data collection tools, training of data collectors, data collection and analysis.
• Contribute to, and in some cases lead, the development of the technical design for MEAL strategies for proposals, including defining appropriate MEAL systems and indicators. Advise project teams on integrating donor strategies, priorities and technical requirements into CRS’ approach.
• Provide capacity strengthening on Feedback, Complaints and Response Mechanisms (FCRM) and how to apply learning for adaptive management, including ensuring that diverse, vulnerable people’s feedback is frequently solicited and incorporated into project design and implementation through adaptive management.
• Assume a direct support, management or leadership role in MEAL and IM during emergency responses via remote or on-site secondment to local humanitarian actors, as needed/requested.
• Monitor and manage the EMPOWER West Africa MEAL system, supporting internal and external knowledge management, database and dashboard management, documentation, learning, and reporting.

Supervisory Responsibilities:  
Occasional temporary supervision or management roles during deployments, as needed/requested.

Key Working Relationships:  

• Internal: EMPOWER West Africa Coordinator and Team members, WARO Regional Team and Country Program Staff, HRD Technical Advisors
• External: Program, Operations, and Management Staff from Participating Local Organizations; UN, NGO, and Cluster agencies operating in targeted countries

Required Skills or Experience

Education and Experience:

• Master's Degree in a relevant field such as Social Sciences, Statistics, International Development, Economics, Humanitarian Management, Data Science required. A bachelor’s degree with significant relevant work experience may replace the requirement for a master’s degree.
• Minimum of three years relevant work experience with progressive responsibilities, ideally with an international NGO, with minimum of two years significant time in a MEAL and information management capacity, ideally in complex emergencies in partnership with local humanitarian actors. 
• Thorough familiarity with the principles of, and field experience in, current approaches to MEAL for emergency relief programs, including both qualitative and quantitative methods. General knowledge of other related disciplines such as partner capacity strengthening, market-based approaches and protection mainstreaming to ensure proper cross-sectoral approach. 
• Experience with program monitoring and evaluation, including applying data collection tools and methodologies, data analysis, and data presentation.
• Experience in implementing relational databases in humanitarian or development contexts, including data cleaning, troubleshooting, data analysis and creation of dashboards
• Expertise in Excel and statistical software, with experience in PowerBI and digital data collection tools such as CommCare.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:

• Excellent relationship management skills with ability to influence and get buy-in from people not under direct supervision and to work with individuals in diverse geographical and cultural settings
• Excellent strategic, analytical, problem-solving and systems thinking skills with capacity to ability to quickly adapt technical guidance to any given operating environment 
• Knowledge of capacity strengthening best practices and partnership principles.
• Extremely flexible and able to cope with stressful situations in emergency environments
• Proactive, resourceful, results and service-oriented
• Presentation, facilitation, training, mentoring, and coaching skills including remote and online settings 

Required Languages

• English and French oral and written language proficiency required, capable of conducting trainings, writing reports and proposals, holding meetings, conducting interviews and communicating with participating organizations in both English and French.
• Knowledge of West African languages or Portuguese a plus. 

 Travel

• Willingness and ability to travel internationally up to 50% of time (6 months out of the year).
• Willingness and ability to deploy quickly to support responses to rapid onset emergencies, when necessary, primarily within West Africa but may include opportunities to deploy to other regions as agency needs dictate.

Agency-wide Competencies (for all CRS Staff): 
These are rooted in the mission, values, and guiding principles of CRS and used by each staff member to fulfill his or her responsibilities and achieve the desired results. 

• Trusting Relationships
• Professional Growth
• Partnership
• Accountability