Mercy Corps
Career Opportunity: County Learning & Accountability Coordinator
Location: Samburu
Job Category: Programming
Requisition Number: COUNT002415
About Mercy Corps
Mercy Corps is a leading global organization powered by the belief that a better world is possible.
In disaster, in hardship, in more than 40 countries around the world, we partner to put bold solutions into action — helping people triumph over adversity and build stronger communities from within.
Now, and for the future.
Program / Department Summary
With funding from USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA), Mercy Corps is leading a consortium of Kenyan and international partners on a five year journey to sustainably reduce persistent acute malnutrition in Turkana and Samburu Counties of Kenya.
Through an approach that emphasizes partnership, learning, and co-creation with government, civil society, communities, and the private sector, the USAID Nawiri program aims to drive sustained reductions in acute malnutrition in both counties.
Mercy Corps’ consortium brings together the global leadership, research capacity, technical expertise, and implementation experience necessary to partner with local institutions to test, adapt, and scale evidence-based solutions.
The program has taken a robust county-centered design with government leadership, active engagement from communities, the private sector, and civil society.
Together we will sustainably reduce persistent acute malnutrition for vulnerable populations in Turkana and Samburu counties.
General Position Summary
The Samburu County Learning and Accountability Coordinator (CLAC) plays a key role in ensuring USAID Nawiri delivers responsive, well-informed and high-quality programming in Samburu.
As a key member of the Collaborating, Learning and Adapting (CLA) Team led by the Strategic Learning Lead, the CLAC Samburu is responsible for operationalizing USAID Nawiri’s Phase II CLA Strategy at the county level, ensuring the progressive integration of CLA principles and practices into all activities.
The CLAC Samburu plays a leadership role in embedding and supporting a culture of collaborating, learning, and adapting across USAID Nawiri initiatives at county level, including by identifying and actioning innovative, cost-effective ideas for generating excitement and commitment to learning.
Essential Roles and Responsibilities:
- Lead USAID Nawiri CLA actions at the county level, including developing and managing the work plans for the scope
- Work with the Adaptive Learning Facilitators to develop/adapt and organize adaptive learning frameworks/modalities and see to the implementation of learning agendas across diverse implementation streams
- Guide and support quality data gathering, management and analysis, as requested/ guided.
- Develop, oversee and support the implementation of systems and guidelines for capturing field-based observations and perspectives and ensuring they are fed back into adaptive learning cycles.
- Support development of innovative and contextually appropriate mechanisms for learning with communities and enhancing the community voice in program decisions.
- Facilitate and support USAID Nawiri teams, county government, partner organization and other key actors’ efforts to lead the collective sense-making and reflective review of program and other developments to enable timely programmatic adjustments and evidence-based decision-making.
- Ensure the quality documentation of regular sense-making and reflection activities, both scheduled (e.g. weekly, monthly, quarterly progress review) and ad hoc (e.g. after action reviews), with mechanisms/processes that allow for the contribution of county and community stakeholders.
- Work with the Reporting Officer to ensure key insights, lessons learned, and corresponding adaptations are documented and shared in relevant donor reports (weekly, quarterly, annual) and other fora, as relevant.
- Collaborate with the CLAC Turkana to implement a learning agenda that drives progressive improvements in CLA practices and processes, while building a culture and enabling environment for learning.
- Collaborate with the program’s systems strengthening team to support program teams to develop, execute, monitor, learn from and progressively adapt plans for enhancing internal and external collaboration.
- Facilitate processes that inspire innovation in the development and testing of modalities/processes for addressing identified inefficiencies and bottlenecks in the adaptive learning cycle
- In collaboration with the communications team, support the program team and county counterparts to identify, capture, and package significant learning for sharing through publication, conferences, and other channels.
- Work with the Adaptive Learning Facilitators embedded within implementation teams and Communications Advisor, to develop and execute an ambitious yet realistic plan for the regular production of learning briefs on cross-cutting, priority themes
- Coordinate with the USAID Nawiri Turkana CLAC to develop and implement mechanisms and processes for inter-county learning (Samburu and Turkana).
- Coordinate with the county-based learning coordinators in Isiolo and Marsabit (under CRS-led USAID Nawiri Consortium) to plan for and organize cross-county learning exchanges and learning events
- Support and enhance USAID Nawiri knowledge management systems, processes, and products as guided
MANAGEMENT & CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT
- Directly supervise and mentor the Adaptive Learning and Communication Officers in USAID Nawiri’s Samburu sub-county offices.
- Facilitate a culture of curiosity, learning and adaptive work planning and implementation with program teams; facilitate self-assessments of USAID Nawiri’s CLA “maturity” and help individuals’ teams develop and track action plans to enhance CLA capacity
- Build the program team’s capacity to identify unintended outcomes, collect high-quality qualitative and quantitative data, interpret findings from quantitative and qualitative analyses, and translate insights into implications for action.
- Build the capacity of program staff and stakeholders to facilitate learning activities and processes, including documentation of the same.
REPRESENTATION
- Support in ensuring continuous, transparent communication and engagement with USAID Nawiri participants and other relevant stakeholders on Nawiri progress.
- Develop and maintain strong relationships with USAID Nawiri stakeholders and proactively identify, pursue, and nurture additional partnerships with county stakeholders (including civil society organizations) that will contribute to Nawiri influence and impact.
- Represent Nawiri in PREG Learning and other coordination fora, as requested. Capture and disseminate relevant insights/learning from other initiatives/programs and counties (including Nawiri in Marsabit and Isiolo) to USAID Nawiri partners in Samburu
OTHER
Other duties as assigned. The County Learning and Accountability Coordinator, Samburu, must remain flexible and open to taking on new responsibilities as USAID Nawiri evolves and progresses, especially as requested/ guided by the Strategic Learning Lead.
SECURITY
- Ensure compliance with security procedures and policies as determined by country leadership.
- Proactively ensure that team members operate in a secure environment and are aware of policies.
Living Conditions / Environmental Conditions
The position is based in USAID Nawiri’s Samburu County office in Maralal town.
PERSONAL GROWTH & LEARNING
USAID Nawiri team members are committed to personal growth and learning.
All staff are expected to commit 5% of their time to activities that help them broaden their perspectives, build their skill sets, or otherwise help them progressively improve their contribution to the program.
ACCOUNTABILITY TO PARTICIPANTS
Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts toward accountability, specifically to our beneficiaries and to international standards guiding international relief and development work, while actively engaging beneficiary communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring and evaluation of our field projects.
Supervisory Responsibility:
The CLAC will supervise USAID Nawiri’s Adaptive Learning and Communication Officers.
Accountability
- Reports Directly To: Strategic Learning Lead
- Works Directly With: Field Director, Strategic Learning Lead, M&E Lead and team; Research & Design Lead and team; Systems Strengthening and Institutionalization Lead; All Technical Advisors; partner agencies, county government, communities, private sector, CBOs, USAID, PREG and other implementing partners.
Required Qualifications:
- Bachelor’s degree in the Social Sciences; Demography, Sociology, Statistics or another MEAL-related field. Master’s degree is an added advantage. Additional education may substitute for some experience.
- Minimum of five years of relevant work experience in accountability and learning, participatory development, or adult learning, ideally with an international NGO working with county governments.
- Experience setting up and implementing accountability and learning systems
- Demonstrated attention to detail, ability to follow instructions, meet deadlines and work independently and cooperatively with team members is required.
- Demonstrated ability to facilitate and moderate dialogue and discussion among diverse groups
- Demonstrated ability to communicate complex thoughts and ideas clearly and concisely in writing; keen attention to detail.
- Excellent interpersonal skills, with an ability to deeply connect and empathize with a range of individuals with broad backgrounds and expertise.
- Experience using MS Windows and MS Office packages (Excel, Word, PowerPoint), Web Conferencing Applications, information management systems, knowledge-sharing networks is required.
- Experience in participatory action planning and community engagement a strong advantage.
- Experience in using mobile-data collection and management software a strong advantage.
Success Factors
The County Learning and Accountability Coordinator, Samburu, should be an exceptional listener and analytical thinker with a strong passion for learning and leveraging communications for social change.
S/he/they must demonstrate the ability to innovate and improve processes as well as possess the flexibility and ability to work and engage with diverse teams and stakeholders.
The ability to adapt quickly to change is crucial for the position.
The successful candidate must demonstrate a learning mindset and a commitment and passion for fostering a culture of curiosity and learning.
S/he/they must have a proven ability to learn quickly, multi-task, prioritize, meet deadlines, take initiative, and be accountable for results.
The successful candidate is a systems thinker and learning champion who is able to understand the larger picture while simultaneously focusing on the details and encouraging colleagues to do the same.
All successful USAID USAID Nawiri team members possess the following core competencies:
- Listening: Ability to actively listen (i.e., seeks to understand, asks good questions, paraphrases, and is in tune with speaker’s emotional state)
- Vulnerability & Courage: Ability to share lack of knowledge, mistakes, or failures; give and receive feedback; and raise difficult questions or concerns
- Curiosity: Ability to articulate and explore novel areas of learning that would contribute to greater effectiveness
- Systems Thinking: Ability to understand, affect, connect, and leverage various parts of a system while maintaining sight of the whole system
- Critical & Reflective Thinking: Ability to analyze and understand situations from a variety of perspectives
- Flexibility: Ability to accept the unexpected and adjust to what the situation now requires rather than what was planned
- Self-awareness & Personal Improvement: Ability to recognize and develop personal strengths and areas in need of improvement and adjust style and approach depending on what the situation requires
- Decision-Making: Ability to make informed, timely decisions based on a mixture of analysis, evidence, and experience.
Required Languages: Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
Achieving our mission begins with how we build our team and work together.
Through our commitment to enriching our organization with people of different origins, beliefs, backgrounds, and ways of thinking, we are better able to leverage the collective power of our teams and solve the world’s most complex challenges.
We strive for a culture of trust and respect, where everyone contributes their perspectives and authentic selves, reaches their potential as individuals and teams, and collaborates to do the best work of their lives.
We recognize that diversity and inclusion is a journey, and we are committed to learning, listening and evolving to become more diverse, equitable and inclusive than we are today.
Equal Employment Opportunity
Mercy Corps is an equal opportunity employer that does not tolerate discrimination on any basis. We actively seek out diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and skills so that we can be collectively stronger and have sustained global impact.
We are committed to providing an environment of respect and psychological safety where equal employment opportunities are available to all.
We do not engage in or tolerate discrimination on the basis of race, color, gender identity, gender expression, religion, age, sexual orientation, national or ethnic origin, disability (including HIV/AIDS status), marital status, military veteran status or any other protected group in the locations where we work.
Safeguarding and Ethics
Mercy Corps is committed to ensuring that all individuals we come into contact with through our work, whether team members, community members, program participants or others, are treated with respect and dignity.
We are committed to the core principles regarding prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse laid out by the UN Secretary General and IASC and have signed on to the Interagency Misconduct Disclosure Scheme.
We will not tolerate child abuse, sexual exploitation, abuse, or harassment by or of our team members. As part of our commitment to a safe and inclusive work environment, team members are expected to conduct themselves in a professional manner, respect local laws and customs, and to adhere to Mercy Corps Code of Conduct Policies and values at all times. Team members are required to complete mandatory Code of Conduct elearning courses upon hire and on an annual basis
Disclaimer: This job description is NOT an exhaustive list of the skills, effort, duties, and responsibilities associated with the position.
To Apply:
Interested applicants must APPLY ONLINE HERE to submit the following by 5 pm EAT on June 3, 2022
CV in PDF of no more than 4 pages
Cover letter. At a minimum, the cover letter must show that the
applicant possesses the required qualifications for the position, and
include a response to the following: Tell us about a recent mistake you
made. What did you learn from the experience? How have you applied what
you learned since then?
Please note that any application submitted that does not follow the above instructions will be automatically discarded.
Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.
Qualified female candidates are highly encouraged to apply.
Mercy Corps does not charge any fees at any stage of the recruitment process.