MRELA Officer NGO Job Mercy Corps

NGO Jobs. Mercy Corps Jobs

Program / Department Summary

Mercy Corps is seeking a Monitoring, Reporting, Evaluation, Learning and Adaptation (MRELA) Officer for the FCDO-funded Border Security Programme (BSP).  Irregular migration and associated criminal activity in East Africa remain a complex and escalating challenge which leads to significant exploitation of vulnerable people on the move.  The planned Border Security Programme will take a multifaceted approach – integrating ‘prevention’, ‘prepare/protect’ and ‘pursue’. An important purpose of this programme is to support the pursuit of human traffickers and smugglers who are exploiting vulnerable populations on the move.  Initial interventions will take place in the Kenya border regions, with planned and phased expansion to Uganda, Ethiopia and possibly Somalia border areas.

General Position Summary

The MRELA Officer plays a key role in Mercy Corps’ programme quality assurance, accountability, documentation, and learning function, providing direct support to the BSP programme. Reporting to the Programme MRELA Manager, the position holder supports the design and implementation of monitoring, reporting, evaluation, learning, and adaptation activities, including ensuring data quality, generating evidence for adaptive management, and supporting accountability to participants, partners, and the donor.

The role combines hands-on data collection, facilitation of learning processes, and capacity strengthening of programme staff and implementing partners. Given the sensitivity of the programme’s context and the vulnerability of its target population, the MRELA Officer is expected to demonstrate a strong commitment to ethical and responsible data practices throughout all aspects of their work.

Key Responsibilities

STRATEGY SUPPORT AND MRELA SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION

• Support the development, testing, and roll-out of MRELA tools and system components for the BSP programme, including data collection instruments, indicator tracking tools, and data management systems.
• Contribute to the development of intervention designs, sector strategies, and the MRELA framework.
• Support inputs into programme logic, theories of change, and review documents, helping to refine approaches to reflect monitoring evidence and learning.
• Support the program in ensuring adherence to Mercy Corps’ MEL Minimum standards.

MONITORING & DATA MANAGEMENT

• Maintain an accurate and up-to-date indicator performance tracking table.
• Validate and verify results data received from implementing partners and grantees against primary source documents while applying systematic data quality checks.
• Implement a Data Quality Assessment (DQA) plan; conduct periodic DQAs and document findings, tracking corrective actions through to resolution.
• Conduct monitoring visits to programme sites and partner locations, collecting supplementary data and qualitative information, both independently and as part of programme teams.
• Maintain a secure, well-organized data management system that enables timely retrieval, analysis, and aggregation of programme data, in compliance with Mercy Corps’ data protection and responsible data policies.
• Ensure monitoring approaches are protection-sensitive and responsive to the confidentiality and safety needs of beneficiaries in a trafficking and irregular migration context.
• Work with the MRELA Manager and programme staff to ensure activities are on track against targets, surfacing data-driven concerns through regular planning and review meetings.

EVALUATIONS AND ASSESSMENTS

• Support the planning, coordination, and supervision of programme assessments, evaluations and thematic research.
• Contribute to the development of Scopes of Work (SoWs), survey instruments, sampling methodologies, data collection protocols, and analysis frameworks for evaluations and assessments.
• Assist in the recruitment and training of data collection teams and enumerators.
• Supervise data collectors, and ensure they adhere to ethical and data protection standards.
• Support or manage the recruitment and day-to-day supervision of external evaluation consultants where required, ensuring deliverables meet quality standards and timelines.
• Contribute to and review evaluation reports, ensuring findings are evidence-based, clearly presented, and accompanied by actionable recommendations.

REPORTING

• Coordinate results reporting with consortium partners, tracking deadlines and ensuring adherence to reporting formats, indicator definitions, and quality standards.
• Support the timely production of donor reports, compiling, analyzing, and synthesizing quantitative and qualitative results data and contributing clear evidence-based narrative against agreed performance indicators.
• Review partner reports for data accuracy, completeness, internal consistency, and alignment with the programme’s monitoring framework before consolidation and submission.
• Maintain well-organized documentation of all monitoring data, evaluation reports, and supporting evidence, ensuring all reported results are traceable to source documentation.

LEARNING, ADAPTATION, AND KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

• Maintain an up-to-date database that accurately reflects progress against programme indicators and learning outcomes, ensuring data is accessible to the programme team.
• Support facilitation of regular programme reflection and learning events to enable the team to analyse monitoring data and translate findings into adaptive management decisions.
• Document and support dissemination of programme lessons, good practices, and emerging insights in accessible formats for internal and external audiences.
• Contribute to the programme’s learning and research agenda, supporting the identification of priority learning questions and the design of activities to address them.

CAPACITY BUILDING

• Assess MEL capacity gaps among grantees and provide targeted training and coaching to build their ability to implement p