Monitoring and Evaluation Officer – International Union for Conservation of Nature

BACKGROUND;

The IUCN Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Office (ESARO) runs a Regional Hub on Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR) based in Kigali Rwanda. The aim of the Regional Hub is to provide technical support to regional efforts towards the restoration of 350 million hectares of degraded and deforested lands by 2030 – also known as the Bonn Challenge. The Bonn Challenge is an initiative of the Global Partnership on Forest Landscape Restoration (GPFLR), for which IUCN provides the Secretariat. The Regional FLR Hub is hosted within Rwanda country office and implements various projects. These projects include but not limited to;
– Landscape and Integrated Water Resources Management and Restoration in Sebeya and other Catchments;
– Improving resilience of farmers’ livelihoods to climate change through innovative, research proven climate-smart agroforestry and efficient use of tree resources in the Eastern Province and peri-urban areas of Kigali city;
– Large scale Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR) in Africa – tree rich landscapes to foster biodiversity, climate change resilience and better livelihoods;
– In addition to the recently approved GCF project named “Transforming Eastern Province of Rwanda’s capacity to adapt to climate change through forests and landscapes restoration”.

To strengthen the project implementation teams and the overall FLR programme in the Hub, IUCN seeks to recruit a Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) Officer to support the monitoring of ongoing projects. This will be a local recruitment open only to Rwandan nationals. The position will be located in the IUCN-Rwanda office. Furthermore, the M&E Officer will be integrated in the wider FLR programme team and shall support monitoring and evaluation processes of other regional projects, ensuring that evaluations are carried out in accordance with contracting requirements.

MAJOR RESPONSIBILITIES:

Working under the supervision of the Programme Manager, with technical guidance from Regional Monitoring and Evaluation Manager, the M&E Officer is responsible for ensuring that field monitoring data is collected, registered in the M&E system, analysed and reported in accordance with the reporting schedule prescribed in the project monitoring and evaluation reporting plans.

SPECIFIC DUTIES:

The M&E Officer will be responsible for the following main duties:

Monitoring;
• Support the development of appropriate monitoring, tracking and reporting plans, systems, tools and templates that enhance monitoring of project outputs and quality, generate quality evidence on project impact and promote and ensure use of data for decision-making processes, and ensure the effective use by staff, partners and stakeholders as necessary;
• Develop appropriate research tools for conducting both qualitative and quantitative surveys and training staff and external enumerators in the use of the tools;
• Support Program Managers in the formulation of baseline measures and targets, during writing and set up of donor project proposals as well as throughout project implementation;
• Build capacity of staff in project monitoring and data collection against set indicators, and use of such information in development of project reports;
• Support field officers to develop and promote the use of standard indicators, tools and forms (as appropriate) and M&E practices across the projects and coordinate the collection of information required for country-level management;
• Undertake regular field visits to provide support for proper application of M&E frameworks and tools;
• Review or edit project data in reports as requested and required; produce analytical summaries: graphs, charts, tables, narratives as requested, to fulfil internal and external reporting requirements;
• Analyse project data and provide timely feedback to partners and programme and project teams on projects’ performance based on monitoring data findings;
• Ensure regular reviews of programmes/lessons learnt sessions and implementing necessary changes to existing and future programmes;
• Keep abreast of the latest industry developments in M&E and network with other organizations for best practices and technical assistance.

Evaluation;
• Assist the Forest, Landscapes and Livelihoods programme in coordinating and conducting project evaluations (including mid-term and end-term) in close consultation with the Regional M&E Manager;
• Working with the Communication Officer, ensure evaluation findings are appropriately disseminated;
• Review the quality of existing natural resources, social and economic data in the project areas, methods of collecting it and the degree to which it will provide good data for results based evaluations;
• Assist the FLL programme in providing a management response to evaluation findings and recommendations.
• Ensure all relevant programme staff are able to utilise the database to analyse program information and results; develop the necessary tools for the field team to feed in data in the data base in a way that minimize entry errors;
• Manage project databases to facilitate timely information updates, data quality assurance, sharing of information and learning, and data use for decision-making;
• Review data being collected in order to locate and fix problems with data entry or integrity, document database contents, protocols and update manuals for smooth functioning of the data management system;
• Prepare data reports (tables, charts, narratives, visuals) at regular intervals and ad hoc as needed to respond to requests for information, inputs to project work plans and semi-annual reports, and other internal and external data analysis and reporting requirements;
• Work closely with the communication department in developing and disseminating programme results, best practices and success stories;

Reporting;
• Update project reports in IATI Standard on quarterly and annual basis;
• Assist in developing quarterly and annual M&E performance reports;
• Support the team in developing the quarterly ESARO milestone and presentations.

Learning and Sharing;
• Assist in designing and conducting impact evaluation case studies;
• Ensure that experiences, lessons, and best-practices from projects activities are identified, captured and synthesized and shared;
• In consultation with regional M&E Manager, support in training project teams and stakeholders in the application of M&E tools.

Management of Compliance and Risk Management Systems;
• Ensure Project Portal or Project Appraisal & Approval System (PAAS) is fully updated at all times for all FLR Hub projects;
• Ensure compliance to IUCN and donor risk management guidelines;
• Support FLR Hub Project Managers in the development of risk management tools and ensure project risk register is regularly updated
• Ensure monitoring of the environmental and social performance of the FLR projects

Other duties;
• Carry out other relevant tasks assigned by, and mutually agreed with, the direct and co-direct line managers.