The MEL team sits within the Strategy, Advocacy and Learning (SAL) department and works primarily to support Country Programmes. Central to the MEL team is their collaboration with technical advisors and programme teams across our core sector areas of Health, Nutrition, WASH, Education and Livelihoods as well as in our thematic approaches of Equality, Climate and Environment, Conflict Sensitivity, Disaster Risk Reduction and Protection. The MEL team plays a key role in shaping the global MEL strategy and approaches implemented across 26 countries.
Concern offers in-house management and leadership courses and tailored organisation-wide learning opportunities both in-person and online. We are committed to providing our staff with the skills needed to excel in their jobs. All employees are required to undertake training in equality, diversity and inclusion; the Code of Conduct; and safeguarding, along with any other training required for the role.
Our culture is values driven and friendly. A global engagement survey conducted in 2022, responded to by 3,577 of our staff, showed that 89% of our staff would happily recommend Concern as a great place to work and 94% are proud to tell people that they work for Concern.
Our office is located in Dublin 2 and we are currently working a hybrid model (50% remote working) and offer flexi time. This role involves up to 30% travel to Concern’s countries of operations.
The job: You will primarily provide support on monitoring, evaluation and learning to Concern’s Irish Aid funded programmes (under both the Long-Term Development (LTD) Stream (17 countries), Chronic Humanitarian Crises (CHC) Stream (10 countries ) and Global Citizenship Education) as well as supporting Concern’s wider global monitoring and evaluation activities as part of the work of the Strategy, Advocacy and Learning (SAL) Directorate. You will report to the Senior Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Adviser in SAL, while coordinating closely with the Irish Aid Programme Coordinator in the International Programmes Department and the Humanitarian Adviser in the Emergency Directorate.
Job location: Dublin (candidates must be legally entitled to work in Ireland at the time of application).

If you join us, this is what you will be doing:

Supporting the monitoring of the Irish Aid funded Long Term Development, Chronic Humanitarian Crises and Global Citizenship Education programmes within the Ireland Civil Society Partnership (ICSP) in Concern. This includes:
• With the Senior MEL Advisor, undertaking regular coordination with the Irish Aid Programme Coordinator and International Programmes Directorate to ensure appropriate MEL support is provided to all countries implementing Irish Aid funded programmes.
• Overseeing the joint team work of MEL Advisors (following the country Focal Point allocations) when working with country teams to develop comprehensive M&E plans, conduct baselines and set targets within the ICSP.
• In coordination with other MEL advisers in SAL and Concern’s Digital Data Gathering (DDG) team, support the development of data collection tools at all levels (activity, output, outcome) for all participating countries, ensuring standardisation where possible.
• Conducting annual reviews of M&E plans and indicator tracking tables.
• In coordination with country teams, support the annual survey process in each country, ensuring standard processes are followed, that meet Irish Aid requirements, with regard to sampling, indicator collection, cohort monitoring, use of standard data collection tools, training of enumerators.
• Ensure that any agreed changes to Results Frameworks with Irish Aid are reflected in updated M&E plans, data collection tools and data collection strategies.
• Develop and manage annual country level M&E Support Plans for the LTD and CHC programmes, including identifying teams with higher support needs and coordinating M&E support missions with other SAL advisers.
• Conduct 3-4 country support visits to prioritized countries implementing the Irish Aid funded programmes (shared between LTD and CHC).
Improving on the data management, visualisation and analysis of data. This includes:
• Undertaking further analysis of the data collected through the monitoring system, including identifying (and addressing) data quality issues.
• Providing support to countries on the use of data for documentation of learning, including supporting the reporting process to Irish Aid.
• Work with the SAL DDG team to develop programme dashboards for each country on the Concern data visualisation system (Zoho reports), updating these dashboards as required throughout the programme cycle.
• Develop global dashboards, to bring together key data from different countries on common themes for comparison and learning, identifying trends and issues that may need to be addressed, and subsequently raise support needs with SAL.
• Contribute to overall improvements to monitoring in Concern, developing guidance on key issues to be shared on Concern’s Programme Quality Guide.
Support the Reviews and Final Evaluations of the funded programmes. This includes:
• Taking the technical lead on the Thematic and/ or Annual Reviews, as well as Mid Term Reviews of the LTD and CHC programme streams, in coordination with the relevant programme coordinators.
• Taking the technical lead on the final evaluation of the ICSP programme.
• Contributing to improving evaluations and learning in Concern.
Other Tasks will include:
• Support the MEL team in the focal point allocation system (for countries implementing Irish Aid programmes). This includes regular monthly calls with countries to check in on challenges and progress. Based on the support needs identified, either provide the required support or refer to other MEL colleagues.
• Provide technical MEL support to the MEAL Coordinator of the The Horn of Africa (HoA) Child Wasting Initiative (CWI) programme funded by Irish Aid, implemented in Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya.
• Liaise with SAL advisers to identify guidance in need of a review and updating relevant resources on the PQ Guide.
• Participating in and contributing to monthly MEL Cafés hosted by SAL on various monitoring, evaluation and learning issues.
• Sharing any new indicators, data collection tools, and lessons learned developed within the framework of this Programme for use globally by Concern.
• Supporting the Programme Knowledge and Learning Officer to maintain the Irish Aid programme page on Concern’s knowledge hub.
• Participation in standing and ad hoc working groups related to key elements of the IA programming.
• Participation in external fora (ICSP ME Framework consultation meetings, Dóchas Results Working Group, among others).