Job Description

Hours: 40 hours a week
Salary: Commensurate with required experience and qualifications
Reports to: MEL Advisor
Grade: C
University Research Co., LLC (URC)
Guided by a strong vision of equitable and resilient systems that respond to people’s needs and emerging threats, URC helps countries and local actors to build, implement, and sustain science-driven, scalable solutions. Established in 1965, URC offers a range of technical expertise to empower governments, communities, and service providers toward strengthening their own health and social systems and improve service quality. We aim to expand access to and improve the quality of services, addressing maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health; global health security and infectious diseases, including HIV/AIDS, TB, and malaria; reproductive health and family planning; nutrition and water, sanitation, and hygiene. In our interactions with each other and our clients, we stay true to our values for transformative change by focusing on:

• Creativity: by unleashing our creativity, we enhance engagement and interaction to improve problem-solving.
• Collaboration: not only our work towards the same vision and mission instill staff with a strong sense of purpose, but also enables us to complement each other’s skills and allocate work to maximize everyone’s strengths.
• Accountability: we hold ourselves responsible for accomplishing goals, completing assignments, and making decisions.
• Diversity, equity, and inclusion: we embrace the importance of a diverse, equitable, and inclusive environment, where our leadership and staff model behavior that enriches our organization, demonstrates respect for all people, and supports opportunities for all staff.
• Transparency: we understand that when employees deeply trust one another and their leaders, they will be more engaged in their roles because they will not be worried about unfair treatment.

Overview:
URC is searching for an experienced M&E Specialist for the USAID BARMMHealth project in Philippines. BARMMHealth is a five-year project to bolster the capacity of the Ministry of Health- Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (MOH-BARMM) in facilitating local health solutions in family planning, adolescent and youth reproductive health, and maternal and child health, towards self-reliance and sustainability.
The project works on three objectives: Improve social norms and strengthened healthy behaviors among underserved adolescents, youth, women and men, fortify quality of family planning and maternal and child health service, and bolster key public health policies and systems needed to support behaviors and services for maternal and child health.
Responsibilities:
The MEL Specialist will lead and guide the provincial teams in performance data collection and monitoring, activity output tracking, data consolidation and analysis, and reporting.
Specific responsibilities include the following:

• Coordinates with the technical teams and provincial officers to track, monitor, record, consolidate, analyze and report project FP and MCH performance data vis a vis targets and commitments;
• Coordinates with technical team to facilitate and conduct project-specific assessments that will inform decision-making and promote learning;
• Supports the MEL Advisor in conducting the project’s Pause and Reflect Sessions, and defining innovative solutions for regional level and provincial level gaps and barriers;
• Provides technical guidance to the Provincial MEL Specialists in designing and conducting capacity building/training activities for provincial and municipal data collection and monitoring, data quality and utilization, in close coordination with the Provincial FP and FHSIS coordinators;
• Provides support to project design activities including development of strategic frameworks;
• Trains and provides continued coaching to field staff in monitoring and evaluation processes, tools, and USAID compliance;
• Provides support in conducting Data Quality Checks (DQCs) and Data Quality Assessments (DQAs) and ensures that BARMMHealth performance data are valid, reliable, precise, timely, and reported with integrity;
• Provides technical assistance to project partners in relation to monitoring and reporting issues;
• Maintains, updates and administers the MEL database, in coordination with the IT/GIS specialist;
• Tracks best practices, innovations, and adaptive solutions in monitoring and evaluation to advise MEL Director on project performance improvement;
• Support the MEL Advisor in the regular review and analysis of performance data to jointly formulate solutions and provide recommendations for addressing gaps and barriers to achieving project results;
• Provides technical support in the development of MEL tools (data capture forms, consolidation, provincial performance tables/reports), job aids and training materials;
• Works with Knowledge Management and Communications team and other technical staff in identifying learning agendas, communicating local successes and learning, and supporting dissemination to stakeholders;
• Supports related operational research/implementation research activities, if any;
• Supports the MEL Advisor in ensuring timely and complete submission of the project’s quarterly and annual performance reports, and other required performance-related reports by USAID;
• Carries out additional responsibilities as may be assigned from time to time in consultation with the COP and M&E Advisor.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities
Excellent communication skills, work ethic, ability to work under pressure, ability to work with people of different cultural backgrounds, and ability to develop and maintain relationships with internal and external colleagues, including geographically dispersed teams.
Qualifications:
Required Experience and Qualifications

• Masters’ degree in public health, sociology, or other related field;
• Minimum of 5 years of work experience in MEL, preferably for FP and MCH programs;
• Previous experience in the BARMM preferred;
• Knowledge of major evaluation, data collection and analysis methodologies;
• Experience in performance measurement, including indicator selection, target setting, reporting, and database management;
• Strong written and spoken English and local languages.

This job is open to candidates legally authorized to work in Philippines.
Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted. Unless otherwise directed we will retain your CV in our database for future opportunities.
URC is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer.
We value and seek diversity in our workforce