Monitoring & Evaluation Advisor at Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO)

Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO), is the world's leading independent international development organisation that works through volunteers to fight poverty in developing countries. Our high impact approach brings people together to share skills, build capabilities, promote international understanding and action to change lives and make the world a fairer place.

We are recruiting to fill the position below:

Job Title: Monitoring & Evaluation Advisor
 
Location: Minna, Niger
Employer: VSO Nigeria
Duration: 12 Months

Job Purpose

• To play a key role in the implementation of the Increasing Market Access for the Poor (IMA4P) Project , enabling partners and beneficiary farmers to access greater economic and social benefits through changes in selected value chains; training in monitoring & evaluation, data collection and report writing processes with focus on value chain crops (soybean, maize,).
• You will contribute to the project objectives as listed below. 

Project Summary   
Improving Market Access for the Poor (IMA4P):

• Goal: To increase income and income security for the poor through more equitable participation in value chains.

Project Objectives

• Support poor and marginalized people to access greater economic and social benefits through changes in selected value chains
• Improve the skills of poor and marginalized people to enable them to participate more fully in selected value chains
• Strengthen the capacity of VSO, our partners and local institutions to deliver EBD programmes at scale in selected value chains.

Responsibilities
The volunteer will have a range of tasks and activities:

• Train and build the capacity of the partners, the community agriculture extension volunteers (CAEVs) and other project partners on routine data collection and analysis as it relates to the IMA4P project.
• Train and build the capacity of the partners, the community agriculture extension volunteers (CAEVs) and other project partners on monitoring and evaluation processes for the IMA4P project and other related programmes.
• Train partners and community volunteers on reporting, sharing success stories and case studies.
• Explore opportunities to strengthen impact such as: build networks and relationships for partners to link with major strategic organizations (e.g. government agricultural department, INGOs, NGOs,) working in a similar field that may be able to support partner intervention through funding/knowledge sharing/joint working/to address major overarching issues.
• Analysis of needs assessment reports and developing action plan for interventions on the identified needs
• Work with partners and all stakeholders to develop monitoring tools for collecting routine data that informs the monitoring and evaluation framework.
• Fulfill an advocacy role for VSO as and when required
• Actively participate in the Monitoring and Evaluation of the programme (baseline, periodic monitoring, gathering data, analysis and reporting).
• Write periodic progress reports as per VSO requirements.

Note: Due to the nature of our volunteer placements, it is possible that the responsibilities of this role may differ in reality and therefore the postholder will need to be prepared to be flexible and adapt to their environment as necessary.

The Key performance indicators
The Key performance indicators of this placement are that:

• Number of partners and volunteers who have increased skills in data collection and analysis.
• Number of partners and volunteers who have increased knowledge in monitoring and evaluation and in the use of the M & E tools.
• Number of partners, volunteers and other beneficiaries who are able to write reports, case studies and success/significant change stories.
• Evidences of monitoring and evaluation support to project partners and VSO, through reports and feedbacks.
• Number of linkages along the value chain crops and value chain markets identified as a result of baseline conducted.

Note: Objectives will be confirmed in a three way discussion between the volunteer, employer and VSO in the first three months of the placement.

Personal considerations
In addition to the job description, the following information should be used when considering whether a placement is suitable for you.