Save the Children ,Evaluation Consultant Jobs in Rwanda

Closing date: 29 Jun 2015

POSITION
ANNOUNCEMENT

Rwanda
Country Programme, Kigali Rwanda

BACKGROUND:

Save the Children is
the world’s leading independent organisation for children. We work in 120
countries. We work together, with partners, to inspire breakthroughs in the way
the world treats children and to achieve immediate and lasting change in their lives.
Save the Children works in seven regions in Rwanda with a current staff
complement of approximately 80 staff.

Save the Children is
an organization for talented people with different backgrounds and
perspectives. We are proud that our people are representative of the children
we work with and we thrive on our diversity. We are an equal opportunity
organization dedicated to our core values of Accountability, Ambition,
Collaboration, Creativity and Integrity. Our culture is embedded in these
values, along with a strong commitment to our Child Safeguarding Protocol,
ensuring that all representatives of Save the Children demonstrate the highest
standards of behavior towards children both in their private and professional
lives.

SCI Rwanda country
office would like to recruit an experienced Evaluation Consultant, familiar
with literacy education programming.

PURPOSE OF
THE CONSULTANCY:

In close
collaboration with other members of the Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability,
and Learning (MEAL) team, the incumbent of this consultancy will be responsible
for the planning, managing, monitoring, strengthening and development of
mechanisms and procedures, tools and systems for Signature Programme evaluation
activities, ensure quality and rigor in all evaluation activities under the
supervision of the Senior MEAL Specialist and in coordination with other MEAL
staff. The incumbent will coordinate the evaluation activities, tracking of
outcome and impact indicators and ensure the latter are measured in relevant
evaluations. The incumbent will also support the evaluation capacity building
of MEAL staff by developing advanced analytical skills. This consultancy is
also responsible for supporting and supervising other external evaluation
consultants to ensure rigor and sound methods in all evaluations conducted
externally.

This consultancy is
for a period of six months and the incumbent will report to the Senior
Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability, and Learning Specialist.

Background

In 2013, Save the
Children launched an education signature program, advancing the Right to Read
(ARR), components of which are currently operational in five districts in
Rwanda. The program aims to contribute to addressing the global crisis in
learning by providing a continuum of services

for children aged
zero to nine years, focused on supporting emergent and early-grade literacy to
ensure all children leave school able to read.

As a Signature
Program, Save the Children is striving for replicability and positive results
at scale for children. Therefore, the ARR program endeavors to generate
evidence, which proves that our approach delivers the intended results, is
possible at scale, represents good value for money, and can be implemented by
government and communities. To build this evidence base, a series of
evaluations have been planned and are being implemented for the different
components within the overall program. The program is now nearing the middle of
its implementation period, and as such, 2015 has seen the implementation of 5
evaluations through May, with a further 9 evaluations planned through the end
of the year. A summary of these can be found in the attached table.

Key
responsibilities

In
close collaboration with other members of the MEAL team, coordinate,
manage, and lead all Signature Programme related evaluations at SCI CO.
Develop
evaluation tools, systems for quality assurance, including compiling
indicators from various CO evaluations.
Support
the development of user-friendly proactive evaluation planning tools,
mechanisms and systems that drive forecasting capabilities and strategic
insights as well as identification of ways to continuously improve
evaluation quality and efficiency.
Consolidate
monthly and/or quarterly oversight, quality assurance indicators for
presentations at MEAL Meetings.
Provide
on-site support to help CO MEAL team identify capacity gaps and set up
sustainable capacity building measures/actions in response to critical
capacity gaps identified.
Contribute
to the development of knowledge management systems including but not
limited to an oversight of learning from evaluations and evaluation
database accessible and usable by CO and relevant partners.
Coordinate
evaluation activities including training of data collectors, supervision
of data collection, implementation, data management and quality assurance
and other related tasks.
Alongside
the Senior MEAL Specialist, conduct debriefings with implementers on
evaluation findings.
Throughout
the evaluation period, be able to exercise strong communication, organizational,
team leadership and interpersonal skills; update Senior MEAL Specialist as
requested.
Ensure
all evaluation findings are disseminated through written reports,
user-friendly flyers, and/or presentations, and lead in the presentation
of these findings in close collaboration with the Sr. MEAL Specialist and
relevant Programme Managers.
Develop
a consolidated report of all Signature Programme evaluation key findings.

Qualifications
of Successful Candidate

At
least an advanced university degree (Master’s) in Social Sciences,
Statistics or a directly-related technical field(s) is required,
specialization in Literacy / Education field is preferred.
Relevant
experience, at the national and international levels, in research,
monitoring and evaluation is required.
Prior
experience in development evaluation, including complex statistical and
quantitative and qualitative data analysis, complex evaluation reporting
and information presentation is required.
Fluency
in English (written & verbal) is required.
Previous
experience leading and managing evaluation activities is required;
Extensive
experience in conducting program evaluations with both quantitative and
qualitative methods for data collection and analysis with knowledge of
randomized controlled trials is highly desired.
Familiarity
with ethical clearance processes is desired.
Prior
evaluation experience in Sub-Saharan Africa is desired.

Competencies
of Successful Candidate

Communicates
effectively to varied audiences, including formal public speaking and
formal writing.
Creates/encourages
a climate of team-working & collaboration in a multi-cultural
environment.
Consistently
achieves high-level results, managing and delivering evaluation projects
on-time and in an organized manner.
Analyses
and integrates potentially conflicting numerical, verbal and other data
from a number of sources.
Sets
clearly defined objectives for self and effectively plans evaluation
activities.
Demonstrates,
applies and shares expert technical knowledge across the team.

NOTE: Selection will be based on
relevance of the CV, review of the two samples of previous similar assignments
(to be provided by the consultant during the application), and reference
checks. Interviews will be conducted with the final candidate.

SKILLS AND
BEHAVIOURS (our Values in Practice)

Accountability:

Holds
self-accountable for making decisions, managing resources efficiently,
achieving and role modelling Save the Children values
Holds
the team and partners accountable to deliver on their responsibilities –
giving them the freedom to deliver in the best way they see fit, providing
the necessary development to improve performance and applying appropriate
consequences when results are not achieved
Creates
a managerial environment to lead, enable and maintain our culture of child
safeguarding.

Ambition:

Sets
ambitious and challenging goals for themselves and their team, takes
responsibility for their own personal development and encourages their
team to do the same
Future
orientated, thinks strategically and on a global scale

Collaboration:

Approachable,
good listener, easy to talk to; builds and maintains effective
relationships with colleagues, Members and external partners and
supporters
Values
diversity and different people’s perspectives, able to work
cross-culturally.

Creativity: