Internews Europe Monitoring & Evaluation Consultant Central African Republic (CAR)

Job Title: Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) Consultant Reports To: Country Director, CAR Deadline: Applications reviewed daily until position filed Location: Remotely, with at least one field visit to CAR Duration: 34 days of work during the life of the project (mid Feb-mid August 2012), as follows:

• 4 days preparation

• 10 days on the field (Bangui)

• 3 days/month remotely over the period of the project (15 days total)

• 5 days write up of final report

BACKGROUND “Integrating Local Media and Information and Communications Technology (ICTs) into Humanitarian Response” is a new project recently awarded to Internews by the Humanitarian Innovation Fund (HIF) to set up an innovative system that will foster a bounded network of trusted local media organizations to gather real-time first- hand information from affected populations to create a two-way communication flow with humanitarians. This system will eventually improve emergency response, community participation and community resilience.

SCOPE OF WORK: The M&E consultant will play a vital role in the implementation and the learning component of this six-month groundbreaking project in CAR in the following capacities:

1. Conduct baseline and train local M&E Officer in country: Design and conduct, in partnership with a local M&E Officer, a baseline survey with humanitarian organizations, local partners and local journalists from the radio stations participating in the project. Equally important, a selected number of community members (i.e. IDPs and refugees) identified by the radio stations/local partners will be also interviewed remotely. Note: the project will identify community members that normally don’t have phone access so the project doesn’t only interview those with phones.

For the methodology, it is recommended a mixed quantitative/qualitative (i.e. an adapted Rapid Assessment Process (RAP) approach. Changes in opinions, attitudes etc. are always hard to investigate, particularly over such a short time-scale, however, this would be much harder to show with just qualitative inputs.

Suggested is a series of informal and formal unstructured and semi-structured interviews with a group of key informants. This could include a number of survey questions from which true baseline data can be collated, as well as key demographic info, which is then supplemented by more probing open-ended qualitative (depth) questions. This can be supplemented by a series (limited) of focus groups.

• When: Late Feb-Early March (TBC) for 1 week when the training for the journalists in Bangui is set up. The M&E consultant will be in country with the Country Director, Humanitarian Media Liaison Officer and Innovation Advisor.

• Output:

• Baseline report of no more than 10 pages.

• 3 blogs with pictures featuring this component of the assignment –editorial support will be provided.

• The Local M&E officer will be trained to, with remote supervision, to conduct and support the M&E work on the ground.

1. Ongoing evaluation: On a regular basis (i.e. every 6-8 weeks), the consultant, in close coordination with the local M&E officer, will re-connect with a selected number of stakeholders involved and conduct an ongoing survey to assess how the project is changing and what opinions and attitudes stakeholders involved in it have. This ongoing evaluation will also use reports from both the Ushahidi platform and the FLSMS installed in the two radio stations participating as pilots in the project. The ongoing evaluation will also include feedback from listeners.

This ongoing monitoring could be restricted to a panel approach with the key stakeholders – again using a questionnaire that combines a series of quantitative questions/measures with a number of qualitative impressions administered bimonthly. The instrument could be short so as not to be a burdensome (or expensive) requirement –simply a good way to track changes and perhaps more importantly raise any issues/red flags for consideration.

• When: Every 6-8 weeks (2-3 times during the life of the project)

• Output: On-going blogs featuring some of the findings of the ongoing assessments

1. Final evaluation: At the end of the project, the M&E consultant will conduct an evaluation to assess the impact and effectiveness of the project. The final evaluation will be a repeat of the approach used in the baseline. Analysis will then draw the data from all three elements. Ideally there would be at least one further iteration of research a number of months post hoc to establish the level of sustainability, impacts etc.

• When: Month 6.

• Output:

• Final evaluation report of no more than 10 pages

• 1 blog featuring some of the findings of the ongoing assessments

QUALIFICATIONS (must have all)

• Fluency in spoken and written French and English.

• Proven experience conducting reviews and evaluations of communications projects and studies, particularly in Africa.

• Very strong research design and implementation skills, including in approaches to evaluation.

• Experience of planning and coordinating research and analysis across multi-disciplinary projects and in complex environments.

• Ability to train and mentor local researchers or newcomers to the research sector.

• Ability to communicate complex technical ideas using non-technical language to a wide range of audiences such as journalists, production staff, humanitarian staff or government officials.

• An understanding of the vision/mission, core values and objectives of Internews.

• Understanding of and passion for the area of communications with disaster-affected communities.

• Excellent communication and reporting skills, both written and oral.

• Excellent time management and the ability to prioritize a heavy workload under pressure.

• Excellent administrative and organizational skills.

• Psychological resilience and a sense of humor.

• Relevant university degree.

Desirable: • Good knowledge of the mandates and modalities of the international humanitarian sector including the UN cluster system and capacity to train reports on the humanitarian system.

• Knowledge of citizen journalism and familiarity with ways to leverage social media will be an asset, as will knowledge of mapping and crowd-sourcing software (i.e. Ushahidi and Open Street Map) and mobile technology software (i.e. FrontlineSMS).

• Understanding of media and how the area of communicating with affected populations has been developing in humanitarian practice.

• Experience training inexperienced researchers in various research methodologies and building their research capacity.

TO APPLY:

• Interested candidates meeting the qualifications should forward a cover letter and resume to jobs(at)internews(dot)eu (re-write in standard format)

• Reference to mention: “M&E – CAR” and name in the subject line

• Deadline for applications: 5/02/2012

How to apply:

TO APPLY:

• Interested candidates meeting the qualifications should forward a cover letter and resume to jobs(at)internews(dot)eu (re-write in standard format)

• Reference to mention: “M&E – CAR” and name in the subject line

• Deadline for applications: 5/02/2012