The International Rescue Committee (IRC) responds to the world’s worst humanitarian crises and helps people to survive and rebuild their lives. Founded in 1933, the IRC offers lifesaving care and life-changing assistance to refugees forced to flee from war or disaster. IRC has been working in Ethiopia since 1999 and is implementing integrated, community-managed programs aimed at improving the quality of lives and recovery of livelihood of the disaster-affected population’s through promoting individual participation, strengthening institutions, and emergency response.

Position overview

The MEAL Assistant is part of the M&E department based at project site and will work closely with the field office based MEAL Officer and MEAL assistant and CR Officer based in Addis Ababa. The MEAL Assistant will be responsible for ensuring the implementation of robust client feedback channels at their respective locations. These may include design and administration of surveys, focus group discussions, proactive and reactive feedback mechanisms. The MEAL Assistant will be responsible for aggregating client feedback, identifying key themes and challenges or opportunities to respond to, and presenting these to the management team for a decision on how to respond. The MEAL Assistant will also be responsible for recording and monitoring feedback, and for ensuring that the loop is closed, clients are informed of decisions taken.

Specific Responsibilities:

 Feedback Planning and Implementation:

• Collect client feedback through various channels that IRC installs including community meetings, surveys, discussions, phone lines, suggestion boxes, SMS among others.
• Regularly update the excel based Feedback Registry on everyday basis and raise cases including breach of IRC code of conduct, allegations of child abuse or sexual exploitation and other major programmatic complaints.
• Receive, record and classify complaints for attention by the MEAL Officer and refer to the respective sectors.
• Collect response from the program staff on the feedback and communicate back to client
• Facilitate and conduct field level surveys with communication and approval of MEAL officer (he/she is responsible for the proper survey implementation and data quality).
• Facilitate the preparation of CRA logistics before field visits e.g. paper based data collection tools, promotional materials etc.
• Ensure accurate and confidential filing of CRA reporting forms such as client feedback form, Feedback Registry, surveys, interview, minutes from community meetings, reports, datasets among others
• Generate reports on the implementation and use of feedback channels, per sector, including limitations and challenges.

 Feedback Monitoring, Reporting, and Response:

• Aggregate and dis-aggregate client feedback (according to gender, age, status, sector, risk-level and other client appropriate dis-aggregation).
• Present statistics on feedback received and feedback content in clear formats to highlight feedback trends to the program team, as well as synthesize qualitative feedback in ways which provide the detail that the program team will need to design an appropriate response.
• Analyze key themes, challenges, and opportunities for program improvement.

 Others

• Provide support to the M&E Office to conduct ongoing monitoring and evaluation activities.
• Other duties as assigned by the supervisor to enable and develop IRC programs

Requirements

Qualifications

• BA degree or Diploma/Level IV in social science and other relevant field of studies
• 1 year work experience for BA Degree and 3 years work experience for Diploma holders
• Analyze and communicate data in a way that facilitates effective decision making
• Proactively engage with clients and community members, acting as a community liaison focal point
• Driven and able to balance multiple task, commitments, and to work flexibly in a team
• Creativity, curiosity and enthusiasm, and the ability to develop and test new ways of working and solutions to problems 
•  Strong oral and written communications in local language and Amharic is required.

Desirable:

• Working experience with refugees and/or IDPs, and an understanding of the feedback channels preferred by displaced people
• Experience in implementing feedback channels. These may include surveys, FGD, hot lines, suggestions boxes, open feedback etc.
• Written and verbal communication in English is an added advantage.
• Passionate about humanitarian work and assistance.