Careers

Program Evaluation Specialist

Type: M&E, Impact measurement

Role: Program Evaluation Specialist

Venture: Engineers Without Borders Canada, Monitoring & Evaluation Team

Location: Accra, Ghana

Deadline: July 14, 2019

 

About Engineers Without Borders Canada (EWB)

EWB is a free-thinking charitable organization that brings people and ideas together to tackle the most crucial causes of poverty and inequality. We nurture talent and leadership, enable social entrepreneurship and advocate for policy innovations to cross-breed systems-changing innovations to ensure economic and public opportunity reaches everyone, including the most underserved and marginalized populations, especially women and girls.

Through our leadership curriculum and Fellowships Program, we offer experiential learning opportunities in Canada and sub-Saharan Africa to launch future shapers equipped to understand and re-engineer complex social systems.  For more information, visit ewb.ca.

 

About Engineers Without Borders Monitoring & Evaluation Team

Engineers Without Borders (EWB) Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) Team is responsible for measuring the outcomes of key areas of the organization’s work, especially the outcomes of our Volunteer Cooperation Program (VCP) project with Global Affairs Canada and our social impact investments. As a seed-stage investor, we are working to determine the best fit for purpose when it comes to evaluation. Currently we are piloting a transformative “Africa-made” evaluation in partnership with the African Evaluation Association, Donna Mertens, and venture partner M-Shule to determine ways to deepen beneficiary voice in our social impact measurement process. The VCP project evaluation includes the measurement of the results of our volunteer sending programs, venture development and venture-driven innovation, sector-based innovations, leadership skills development (Kumvana Fellows), and mobilization of Canadians around international development.

EWB is a learning organization where program evaluation is highly valued for its use in data-driven decision making, program improvement, and accountability to ultimate beneficiaries.

EWB’s overall approach to evaluation typically involves mixed methods, triangulation of data, and retrospective and longitudinal data collection. We are currently in the process of developing core evaluation principles to guide evaluation work across the organization. While still in development, they will be based on EWB’s Core Values. See the table below for how these values are being translated into evaluation principles.

EWB Core Value Description Application in Evaluation
Strive for Humility We learn by being open – open to new ideas from anywhere and anyone, and open about our mistakes. Hire and collaborate with local evaluators wherever possible; Use local evaluation approaches and methods (e.g. Made in Africa evaluation); Commit to meta-evaluation.
Address Root Causes for Impact We start by clearly defining the impact that we want to help bring about, and then think through the complexity of social change so that our actions target root causes. Adhere to the Accuracy standards of the Program Evaluation Standards from the Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation to ensure our results are an accurate representation of our impact; Involve stakeholders in the development of evaluation questions, evaluation purpose, and analysis and use of data.
Dream Big & Work Hard We strive to make the impossible possible, through a combination of imagination, hard work, innovation, passion, and a willingness to take risks. Find creative ways to engage stakeholders throughout the evaluation process; innovate where necessary to create evaluations that fit the context and needs of each scenario.
Invest in People We know that true change will require a movement of socially-minded leaders. We support and invest in each other to help build this movement together. Utilize empowerment evaluation methods and provide evaluation training to capacity-build where appropriate; Seek to provide evaluation contracts, jobs, and other opportunities to evaluators from marginalized communities.
Courageously Commit All change begins within ourselves. We commit to personal growth through regular self-assessment and have the courage ask for feedback. Use transformative and culturally-responsive evaluation techniques to promote self-reflection and self-assessment with respect to our power and privilege as evaluators.
Ask Tough Questions We only improve when we ask tough questions about our past, present, and future work to determine if we are having the maximum impact for beneficiaries. Take the time to develop thoughtful evaluation questions in collaboration with stakeholders; work with project teams and stakeholders to analyze data.
Our Bottom Line: We put beneficiaries first We strive to do what they would advise us to. We help bring their voice into the rooms where they need to be heard. We stay independent to be able to stay true to their interests. Utilize transformative, culturally-responsive, participatory, and other similar evaluation methods whenever possible.

 

About You

The VCP project funded by Global Affairs Canada is a critical part of EWB’s theory of change. The volunteer-sending activities of the project are intended to increase the capacity of developing country partners to deliver sustainable development results, in response to local needs, by making use of the skills and expertise of qualified Canadian volunteers. These developing country partners span diverse sectors, business and organizational models, locations, sizes, and internal capacity for program evaluation. Importantly, though evaluative data is valuable for all of our developing country partners, many have limited evaluation expertise and/or resources, leading to underinvestment in data collection and data-driven decision-making.

It is in this context that EWB is seeking to hire a Program Evaluation Specialist to directly support our VCP developing country partners to develop and improve their program evaluation processes, and to support the overall evaluation of the VCP project.

Responsibilities

As a Program Evaluation Specialist on the EWB M&E Team, your responsibilities will include:

  • Review existing partner evaluation capacity;
  • Develop a plan for harmonizing VCP partner reporting requirements with other EWB partner reporting;
  • Prioritize partner support based on determined need;
  • Work with highest priority partners to develop evaluation plans that are right-sized for partner capacity and resources;
  • Monitor and follow up with partners to ensure sustainability of evaluation implementation;
  • Provide limited VCP evaluation support to other Long-Term Fellows;
  • Support EWB Impact Evaluation & Learning Manager to use beneficiary data appropriately in EWB’s internal evaluation processes and VCP reporting;
  • Contribute to VCP annual reporting;
  • Other related duties assigned.

Sound exciting? Here’s who we are looking for.

 

Skills & Qualifications

Required:

  • Passion for evaluation and commitment to alleviating poverty;
  • 2+ years of professional experience in program evaluation, impact evaluation or social impact measurement; or university education in evaluation methods, economics, public health, education research, sociology, research methods or similar social science;
  • Demonstrated experience designing an evaluation plan;
  • Some analytical and quantitative skills, such as descriptive statistics;
  • Some qualitative data collection and analysis skills, such as interviews;
  • Familiarity with mixed methods research;
  • Demonstrated ability to work autonomously;
  • Comfort being managed remotely;
  • Willingness to travel within country of work, and possibly to other countries in West Africa.

Preferred:

  • Experience living/working in a developing economy – West Africa considered an asset;
  • Graduate degree;
  • Experience with survey design and implementation, interviews, data cleaning and data management;
  • Training in monitoring and evaluation;
  • Experience managing others;
  • Experience with Acumen’s Lean Data.

 

Application Inquiries

 

Application Instructions

For further details, please refer to our website.

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