The Community-Led Monitoring Evaluation and Learning (Co-MEAL) Officer provides technical leadership in designing, initiating, and facilitating productive, collaborative, and solution-oriented community-level monitoring, evaluation, accountability, and learning systems. The role focuses heavily on strengthening community ownership and capacity, particularly among marginalized and vulnerable groups, to lead their own MEAL processes, generate evidence, and use it for decision-making, accountability, and advocacy related to Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) and Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV).
Specific Tasks
- Design, initiate, and facilitate productive, collaborative, respectful, and solution-oriented community-level monitoring evaluation, accountability, and learning systems.
- Provide technical leadership in planning, scheduling, and implementing CoLMEAL activities, ensuring all processes are carried out and reported within workplan timelines.
- Facilitate and support community monitoring teams to make evidence-based decisions and report results, while guiding community members to identify their SGBV issues, define the changes they want to see, and develop their own indicators and measures of success to strengthen community ownership.
- Foster and maintain strong relationships with community members, local government, and other stakeholders by promoting community-led rights protection and integrating SRHR/SGBV activities within existing community and government structures. This includes supporting the initiation and strengthening of community-based processes and systems for data collection, analysis, service delivery, and long-term project sustainability.
- Develop and implement work plans for the CoLMEAL scale-up, ensuring they strengthen community-led rights protection among AGWs.
- Actively identify and incorporate opportunities to link CoLMEAL activities with other ongoing program interventions.
- Conduct engagement activities with local, regional, and national stakeholders for policy change and impacts on the ground.
- Act as the lead trainer on CoLMEAL by providing targeted mentorship, skills-building, and continuous guidance to community members—including marginalized and vulnerable groups—to enable them to lead their own MEAL processes. This includes training and coaching in community-led rights protection, data collection, analysis, validation, dissemination, reporting, and the effective use of evidence to achieve the project's intended outcomes.
- Work with communities to co-design data collection tools (e.g., surveys, FGD guides) that are context-specific, fit-for-purpose, and accessible to different groups in line with their pathways.
- Promote data use and learning by ensuring that information gathered from the field is primarily used by communities for decision-making, adaptive management, continuous learning, and project reporting.
- Support communities to use their self-generated evidence to foster accountability and drive SRHR/SGBV advocacy, including holding duty-bearers accountable, advocating for improved services, and influencing local SRHR/SGBV policies and decision-making processes.
- Provide support in project communication to ensure all stakeholders are informed about project objectives, activities, progress, and opportunities for involvement throughout implementation.
- Contribute to the development of the Program Implementation Plan (PIP), annual work plans, and detailed implementation plans (DIPs) to identify project targets and ensure inclusion of M&E activities.
- Support the development, design, and writing of proposals and concept notes for related programming information management and reporting.
- Perform other duties as deemed relevant to the assignment and advancement of the project objective by the supervisor.
Desired Competencies and Minimum Qualifications
- Education: University degree in statistics, demographics, public health, or international development with additional training in the field of monitoring and evaluation is preferred.
- Experience: At least three (3) years of experience in project implementation, with demonstrated expertise in community-led approaches for rights protection and their contribution to enhancing protection rights against GBV and CEFM.
- Extensive experience in facilitating training and mentorship, with a strong focus on community empowerment and GBV prevention/response.
- Strong background in participatory analysis, community evidence generation, and supporting communities to use evidence for action, advocacy, and accountability.
