Background

In East and Horn of Africa, UNIFEM Sub-regional Office based in Nairobi covers eight countries. These are Djibouti, Eritrea, Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia and Tanzania. UNIFEM has country programme offices in Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, Ethiopia, and Tanzania and manages programmes from distance in Somalia. Djibouti and Eritrea are countries where UNIFEM support the UN Country Teams on need basis.  In the East and Horn of Africa, UNIFEM collaborates and cooperates with the state institutions and civil society, in particular, women's rights organizations for the promotion and protection of women's human rights, economic rights security, governance and transformative leadership, HIV-AIDS, and peace and security. UNIFEM does this by supporting programmes and strategies, particularly through technical backstopping for the state institutions, financial assistance to the civil society, and advocacy with member states, bi-laterals and multilaterals for the adoption, implementation and full compliance with the international and regional instruments. UNIFEM also assists the governance and civil society institutions, including women's movement, and sister UN agencies to foster women's empowerment and gender equality by managing trust funds, basket funds and joint programmes geared towards securing women's human rights, and engendering policy and programmes outcomes and outputs. The UNIFEM programmes in the stated countries are mainly supported through donor funds that require regular reporting   on progress and results.
It is against the above background that UNIFEM is seeking a PME & Donor Reporting Officer to support planning, monitoring and reporting to UNIFEM donors and ensuring compliance to donor requirements.

Duties and Responsibilities

The PME & Donor Reporting Officer will play a key role in the delivery of Sub-regional Strategy. S/he will support planning and progress tracking of the country programmes and sub-regional initiatives against UNIFEM's Strategic Outcomes at the sub-regional level. The PME & Donor Reporting Officer will assist the countries in annual planning and review process and consolidate them at the Sub-regional level.  S/he will monitor and support compliance with commitments made to donor in spending and reporting.

The PME & Donor Reporting Officer will undertake the following responsibilities: 

1. Planning support to countries and sub-regional planning, and consolidation of plans
2. Monitoring of results against UNIFEM's Strategic Outcomes and as per approved plans 
3. Monitoring and supporting compliance with donor requirements and reporting results (including reporting to donors)
4. Task managing reviews and evaluations
5. Any other duties that might be assigned

Planning support to countries and sub-regional planning, and consolidation of plans

• Assist in the dialogue aimed at developing linkages between the Planning and Monitoring, Review and Evaluation with the country programmes.
• Document and/or collect, disseminate and apply best practices and lessons learnt in new and revised planning.
• Review the Development Results Framework (DRF) and Management Results Framework (MRF)1 of the country programmes and prepare the same for the sub-regional office. Involve and country programme managers and other staff as assigned in refining the frameworks to meet SMART2 criteria.
• During visits to the countries, assist/train staff to have a common understanding of Human Rights Based approach and Results Based Management (RBM) concepts, techniques and appreciate the importance of RBM to achieving UNIFEM Outcomes.
• Assess the adequacy of performance-based monitoring, review and reporting arrangements in the countries and give work with the country programme managers to adopt improved PME systems and capacity of staff in establishing baselines, at the outset to measure progress and results, in collecting, analyzing and reporting on monitoring data as well as documenting and using information on performance and lessons learned in the revised and new planning.
• Provide feedback as needed into project design, including comments on project proposals and results matrixes from PME perspective.
• Reinforce budgeting for PME, employing reviews of the programme documents; supporting identification of monitoring, review and evaluation needs during programmes/project planning, etc.

Monitoring of results against UNIFEM's Strategic Outcomes and as per approved plans 

1. Develop and support institutionalization of a PME system in all the countries.
2. Guide and coordinate the review of the DRF and MRF including the provision of technical advice for the revision of the deliverables and delivery planning.
3. Ensure implementation & documentation of targets, planning indicators, process indicators, output indicators, outcome indicators (already set by UNIFEM at the global level), impact indicators, means of verification or sources of data to be included in PME system and incorporation of quarterly reviews, delivery rate tracking and reviews,  and reporting in the in the MRF.
4. Compile data sources for UNIFEM in the sub-region, employing collection and/or meta-analysis of monitoring data from the countries and sub-regional initiatives.
5. Undertake visits to countries to support monitoring of results and plan reviews and planning process as required.
6. Support integration of Human Rights Based Approach and Result Based management in the collection and analysis of data, employing review of progress, demonstration of how-to-do, etc.
7. Develop and apply a sub-regional framework for collecting, analyzing and disseminating information on performance of the country programmes and sub-regional initiatives toward UNIFEM's Strategic Outcomes.
8. Develop monitoring and review guidelines, formats and tools.
9. Analyze and synthesize country reports and sub-regional monitoring data on quarterly basis and present to UNIFEM sub-regional management to inform decision-making, including decision related to programme design, programme implementation procedures and corrective steps.

Monitoring and supporting compliance with donor requirements and reporting results (including reporting to donors)

1. Review and synthesize quarterly, half yearly and annual reports from the country programmes and of the sub-regional initiatives.
2. Prepare sub-regional annual report.
3. Support design and maintain an information system for donor contract management, including tracking donor contracts, UNIFEM's contractual obligations, other delivery requirements of the contract, grant tranches or instalment schedules, reporting schedule and reporting requirements.  
4. Support the country programme managers in timely preparation and submission of reports to UNIFEM sub-regional management and through the sub-region to the donors by reminding, highlighting areas of concern and other means as appropriate.
5. Review  donor reports, both narrative and financial, submitted  by country programmes  and sub-regional initiatives, provide feedback on quality (in particular on gender analysis) and compliance, and support improvement till they meet the UNIFEM donor  reporting  requirements.
6. Support and ensure compliance with evidence based reporting, ie, case studies which show from the participant perspective whether the intervention under consideration was successfully carried out, descriptive data on how the intervention was actually delivered and how gender was analysed and incorporated; extent to which participants participated in the intervention processes (with gender, age, ethnicity, ability disaggregation), analysis of the intervention's effect on participants and end recipients of benefits (with gender, age, ethnicity, ability disaggregation), estimates of consequential changes for women and men, recording of unintended changes among women and men or in their contexts, etc.

Task managing major reviews and evaluations commissioned by the sub-regional management

1. Monitor and reinforce reviews of the programme progress by the country programme managers
2. Assist designing and implementation of major reviews of programme performance.
3. Support commissioning of the evaluation, including drafting of ToR and Request for Proposals, supporting procurement process, etc.
4. Support formation of reference groups (Core, Internal, External or Mixed) for the evaluation and share progress and products with the established reference groups.
5. Coordinate and report to the Evaluation (Commissioning) Manager/Evaluation Management Group set up for specific evaluation.
6. Act as the interlocutor between the evaluator/evaluation team and the Evaluation (Commissioning) Manager/Evaluation Management Group.
7. Convene meetings, provide documents and other resources as required, make logistical arrangements, set up appointments, ensure direct contact with stakeholders, etc for the purpose of supporting the evaluator/evaluation team.
8. Support refinement of evaluation criteria and questions during evaluation inception.
9. Where applicable, ensure that selection, orientation and training of team members, assistants and interpreters are conducted by the evaluator/evaluation team.
10. When and where applicable, ensure capacity development of stakeholders, national or other, resulting from the research demands of the evaluation process is carried out by the evaluator/evaluation team
11. Monitor and take corrective measures/necessary action to ensure research process and products of evaluation meet UNEG Standards and Norms, as well as UNDP and UNIFEM Evaluation Guidelines and are engendered.

Competencies

Corporate Competencies:

1. Demonstrates integrity by modeling the UN's values and ethical standards, including those relating to ending sexual exploitation and abuse.
2. Promotes the vision, mission, and strategic goals of the UN in general and of UNIFEM in particular.
3. Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability.
4. Practices the principles of fair treatment and no harm.

Functional Competencies: 

Knowledge Management and Learning 

1. Ability to promote a knowledge sharing and learning culture in the office.
2. Good knowledge of current multi-sector development issues and gender equality and women's empowerment
3. Ability to transfer skills and acquire new skills fast.

Development and Operational Effectiveness 

1. Ability to initiate and promote planning, results-based management and reporting.
2. Ability to lead and support formulation of monitoring and evaluation plans and their implementation
3. Trainer level ability in knowledge of results based management.
4. Good understanding of human rights based approach.
5. Capacity to develop PME and reporting frameworks and formats.

Personal Attributes

1. Ability to simultaneously manage several competing demand.
2. Ability to focus on impact and result and to act on feedback.
3. Constructive and calm attitude.
4. Ability to deliver on deadlines.
5. Demonstrated strong oral and written communication ability.
6. Ability to builds strong relationships among distant offices.
7. Demonstrated ability to be organized, think clearly, logically and use structured reporting formats.

Required Skills and Experience

Education

• Master's Degree in any one of the following: gender, international relations, development studies, development management, economics, or public policy, with a course in planning/monitoring and evaluation. A longer term course/advanced certificate in monitoring and evaluation will be an asset.

Work Experience

• A minimum of seven years of progressive experience in designing and implementing monitoring and evaluation plans and reporting for international development programmes.
• At least five years of progressive experience in planning.
• Experience of providing advisory services in the area of results based management, results matrixes and PME processes and implementation, including developing baseline, proposing modifications to improve the quality of various indicators, milestones/targets, sources of verification, etc used for measuring results and reporting.
• Proven PME experience, preferably within one or more of the partner UN entities, with sound knowledge and experience in all aspects of project cycle (designing, planning, implementation, monitoring, review & evaluation).
• Demonstrable experience to provide a critical analysis of the programme progress, logical frameworks and results frameworks of development programmes, particularly with regards to the logic and coherence between different level results
• Demonstrable skills in and experience of investigate how and to which degree any existing resources can be used to provide the data UNIFEM's sub-regional office needs for programme management and corporate purposes.
• Demonstrable capacity to identify activities to improve monitoring and evaluation.
• Ability to support and adhere to institutional arrangements (roles and responsibilities) for PME and reporting for each country programme.
• Excellent demonstrable skills in analytical report writing and general documentation skills.
• Very good knowledge of qualitative research methods and methodologies, including case studies.
• Sound financial skills including demonstrable experience of budget tracking and ability to analyze spending against programme progress.
• Experience of developing comprehensive terms of references and calls for proposals.
• Experience in design of outcome evaluations.
• Demonstrable knowledge of reporting requirements of lead donors.
• Advanced user level computer skills and strong knowledge of various software including Excel, PowerPoint and Word.

Language Requirements

• Excellent knowledge of English and ability to communicate clearly in written and spoken English.
• Knowledge of Kiswahili and Arabic can be an advantage.