Palladium
Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning Director, USAID/Malawi, Youth Prosperity Through Agriculture Pathways
About Palladium:
Palladium is a global company working to design, develop, and deliver a positive impact on the lives and livelihoods of people around the globe; broaden access to health, water, power, and infrastructure; build enduring, sustainable, and transformative institutions and market systems to address global challenges; and conserve the natural world. We operate in over 90 countries and have a workforce of 4,000 talented, motivated, and diverse staff of all religions, races, languages, and gender identities.
This Proposal Opportunity:
Palladium is seeking a Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) Director for an anticipated USAID-funded agriculture higher education strengthening program expected to begin in 2024. The USAID/Malawi Youth Prosperity Through Agriculture Pathways Activity aims to increase Malawian youth’s contribution to the country’s economic growth. The activity will increase access to higher education with a specific focus on agriculture training, improve the quality, governance, and relevance of agriculture training institutions’ systems, and increase economic growth opportunities for graduates to contribute to the formal economy.
Position Summary
The Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) Director is a full-time position and is responsible for leading the design and implementation of the program monitoring and evaluation framework and information system to track delivery against targets/projections, indicators, outcomes, and impact. They will be responsible for ensuring valid and verifiable data collection, reporting, and analysis, and communicating program results to USAID and external stakeholders. They will link M&E data to a process of learning and iterative adaptation.
Primary Duties and Responsibilities:
- Lead the development and monitoring of MEL work plans and review and update the project’s MEL plan on an ongoing basis.
- Develop and implement a framework for project results measurement, accountability, learning, and development effectiveness to measure and report project success, including articulation of Theories of Change (ToC).
- Provide technical leadership to capture and communicate program results, as well as ensure high-quality, timely, valid, and verifiable data collection, reporting, analysis, and learning.
- Work closely with the technical leads of project components to ensure compatibility and coordination within the M&E framework and ensure that the MEL system adheres to USAID guidelines and meets the needs of the program for learning, analysis, and reporting.
- Focus on strengthening the M&E system, building capacity of partners and staff, and improving alignment and support to host-country M&E systems.
- Institute routine data reviews as part of an adaptive management process including analyzing, interpreting, and presenting data to project management and technical leads.
- Responsible for developing and designing project systems to track program progress against indicators, collecting and verifying information, and maintaining performance monitoring plans, reports, work plans, and monthly reports.
- Ensure that key learnings and best practices are captured, synthesized, reported, disseminated, and used to make timely adjustments to the program using the Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting (CLA) approach.
Key Competencies Required:
- Demonstrated experience developing and implementing MEL and CLA work plans, preferably for a USAID program.
- Demonstrated experience establishing and managing MEL systems that track project performance and results, especially in higher education.
- Proficiency in data analysis software and demonstrated experience in monitoring tools.
- Demonstrated analytical skills to measure the outcomes of the project’s activities and support project supervision.
- Demonstrated experience in gathering, organizing, and analyzing large amounts of data as well as the ability to design manageable, transparent M&E systems that report progress against indicators throughout the life of the project.
- Prior experience developing, implementing, and managing performance monitoring plans (PMPs).
- Demonstrated experience with complex donor-funded development projects.
- Strong understanding of USAID regulations and M&E reporting requirements, preferably in higher education or agriculture sectors.
- Excellent organizational and management skills to manage MEL teams and activities.
- Familiarity with or prior experience working in higher education, agriculture, or workforce development.
- Experience working with vulnerable groups including people with disabilities, ethnic and linguistic minorities, women, and youth.
- Proficient written and spoken Chichewa – not required but strongly preferred.
- Written and spoken fluency in English.
Equity, Diversity & Inclusion – Palladium is committed to embedding equity, diversity, and inclusion into everything we do. We welcome applications from all sections of society and actively encourage diversity to drive innovation, creativity, success, and good practice. We positively welcome and seek to ensure we achieve diversity in our workforce; and that all job applicants and employees receive equal and fair treatment regardless of their background or personal characteristics. These include (but are not limited to) socio-economic background, age, race, gender identity and expression, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, nationality, veteran, marital or Indigenous status.
Should you require any adjustments or accommodation to be made due to a disability or you are a neurodivergent individual or for any other circumstance, please email our team at [email protected] and we will be in touch to discuss.
Safeguarding – We define Safeguarding as “the preventative action taken by Palladium to protect our people, clients, and the communities we work with from harm”. We are committed to ensuring that all children and adults who come into contact with Palladium are treated with respect and are free from abuse. All successful candidates will be subject to an enhanced selection process including safeguarding-focused interviews and a rigorous due diligence process.