Background

The UN Trust Fund to End Violence Against Women (UNTF) is a global multi-lateral grant making mechanism supporting national efforts to prevent and end violence against women and girls. The UN Trust Fund was established through the UN General Assembly Resolution 50/166 in 1996 with UN Women as its Administrator on behalf of the UN system. The UN Trust Fund provides grants to advance the development of innovative models and strategic interventions in the area of ending violence against women and girls. Grantees –  comprising governments and non-governmental organizations -  have engaged diverse actors, such as women’s, men’s, adolescents and youth groups, indigenous communities, religious and traditional leaders, human rights organizations and the media. To date, the UN Trust Fund has awarded US $129 million to 463 initiatives in 139 countries and territories. In 2015 the UN Trust Fund developed a new five-year (2015-2020) strategic plan with the mission to “advocate for and finance innovative approaches for preventing and ending violence against women and girls, to catalyze learning from global evidence collected from the programmes funded by the UNTF and to leverage its unique mandate and convening power to foster global giving to end violence against women and girls”. It will achieve this mission through three inter-connected pillars of work:

1. Grant giving to initiatives to end violence against women and girls;
2. Building a global Evidence Hub on ending violence against women and girls based on the evaluated results of UNTF grantees; and
3. Advocating for global giving for work on ending violence against women and girls.

This position is intended to support the second pillar: the development of an evidence hub. The UNTF has built up a comprehensive body of knowledge about the kinds of solutions that carry a promise of positive impact and the contexts in which they will be most effective. However, the challenge has been how to effectively “harvest” this knowledge, first by analyzing and evaluating the information and second by making it accessible to the global community. In order to capitalize on this specific and unique body of knowledge and experience, this second pillar of the UNTF’s Strategic Plan will form a strong link between our first pillar, grant giving (including its existing monitoring and evaluation processes and activities), and the third pillar, namely identifying effective initiatives so that global resources can be allocated accordingly. To develop the Evidence Hub there is a need for additional expertise in the team. 

We are looking for an evaluation specialist with experience in the field of ending violence against women. The specialist will assist with the improvement of our evaluation policy and guidelines, extract, analyze and summarize findings from project evaluations, assist with knowledge management events and help with capacity building of our project partners in evaluation, data collection and monitoring.  We are looking for an experienced, self-motivated, hard-working and analytical person who can work well alone and in a team. The job is suitable for either someone based in New York, USA but (for the right candidate) we may consider the option of remote working / home-based support. 

Duties and Responsibilities

Reporting to the UN Trust Fund’s Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist:

1. To review and improve the UN Trust Fund’s Evaluation Policy and Guidelines, specifically:

• Update and improve the evaluation policy and evaluation guidelines for the UN Trust Fund, in response to the findings from the UN Trust Fund meta-evaluation (2016) and updated guidelines from UN Women’s Evaluation Office. This will include guidelines and a checklist for staff to review the quality of evaluations and a management response template for the grantees, as well as related procedures.
• Research and develop options for centralizing the external evaluation of projects under the small grants portfolio – to be managed by the UN Trust Fund Secretariat – including an approach to ensuring that plans for evaluation are embedded in project design for projects starting in 2017. This will include providing advice to small grantees on the design of Results Frameworks, data collection methods and monitoring tools, to ensure the projects can be evaluated (supervised by the Small Grants Portfolio Manager).

2. To review, analyze and summarize the findings from final project evaluations and develop an approach for the UN Trust Fund team to consolidate, catalogue and share this evidence with partners:

• Read, analyze and summarize the findings from final project evaluations published in 2016 and 2017, developing a method for categorizing the lessons and results in a useful manner that can be continued by the team and shared externally.
• Use this analysis to inform objective one above (improvements to the evaluation policy) and document any other lessons for (internal) UN Trust Fund Secretariat use, in terms of reviewing the quality of evaluations, evaluation planning and management.

3. To contribute to the design and implementation of new and improved methods to build the capacity of UN Trust Fund grantees to collect data, monitor and evaluate projects:

• Contribute to the design of online training sessions, tools, guidelines and coaching for grantees on evaluation practice, including project design, data collection and monitoring.
• Contribute to providing one-on-one support and advice to grantees on the design of results and resources frameworks, data collection, monitoring and evaluation plans – as required and requested by the M&E Specialist.

4. To contribute to the development of knowledge products from UN Trust Fund evidence, through desk-based analysis and management of knowledge exchange events:

• To contribute to identifying areas of expertise, knowledge and evidence from UN Trust Fund projects that can be consolidated and shared with partners – and to develop these into products (web-stories, fact sheets or other products).
• To contribute to the planning, preparation, analysis and management of at least one knowledge exchange event which will bring together UN Trust Fund grantees to share lessons and results on one knowledge theme, in contribution to a knowledge product.

Competencies

Corporate Competencies:

• Demonstrates integrity by modeling the UN’s Values and ethical standards;
• Plans, prioritizes, and delivers quality products per schedule;
• Participates effectively in a team-based, information-sharing environment, collaborates and cooperates with others;
• Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability.

Functional Competencies:

• Focuses on impact and results and responds positively to feedback;
• Consistently approaches work with energy and a positive, constructive attitude;
• Builds strong relationships with clients and external actors, at the senior levels;
• Remains calm, in control and good humored even under pressure;
• Demonstrates openness to change and ability to manage complexities;
• Ability to work under pressure and to meet deadlines;
• Proven track record in undertaking complex and comprehensive assessments
• Proven ability to coordination with a team of international organizations and senior national stakeholders;
• High level of communication (verbal and written) and interpersonal skills and working effectively within a multi-cultural environment;
• Excellent report writing skills.
• Ample knowledge and use of computer office tools (Excel, PowerPoint, Word etc.)
• Excellent English writing and communication and analytical skills are required

Required Skills and Experience

Qualifications:

• An advanced level university degree (Masters) in any social science, preferably including gender, evaluation or social research; A Bachelors university degree in combination with an additional two years (a total of 7 years) of qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree.

Experience:

• 5 years of working experience in data collection, monitoring and evaluation of development projects – preferably relating to gender equality, women’s empowerment and/or ending violence against women
• Experience in evaluation and/or programmatic and operational performance assessments of development programmes is essential (and/or managing evaluations);
• Experience and background in human rights based and gender responsive approaches to programming, specifically on issues related to ending violence against women and girls.
• Experience in developing, improving or implementing evaluation practices, guidelines and tools;
• Experience in training organizations and people in data collection, monitoring and evaluation;
• Experience in working with NGOs, and multilateral/bilateral institutions and donor entities is an asset;
• Experience in comparative research design, qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis and statistical analysis, including the use statistical software packages such as SPSS to analysis and present data – would be an asset.
• Excellent and proven knowledge of evaluation methodologies and approaches;
• Experience with meta-evaluation and meta-analysis of evaluation reports, preferably with UN agencies, is an asset;

• Ability to produce well written reports demonstrating research skills, analytical ability and communication skills.
• Working knowledge of Spanish and/or French an advantage, as some of the evaluations will be in these languages