The International Rescue Committee, one of the world’s largest humanitarian international NGOs, provides relief, rehabilitation, and development support to vulnerable people and communities over 30 countries. We began work in Ethiopia in 2000 in response to severe drought in Ethiopia’s Somali region and are currently providing assistance to Ethiopians and refugees in six regions in Ethiopia, implementing emergency and development programs in health, water and sanitation, economic recovery and development (ERD), women’s protection and empowerment, education, child protection, and multi-sectoral emergency response.

Job Overview:

The MEAL Assistant is part of the M&E department and will work closely with the field-based M&E Officer 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 supervising feedback, and for ensuring that the loop is closed, clients are advised of decisions taken.

Major 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 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 craft an appropriate response.
• 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

Qualifications

 Educational Requirements:    BA degree or Diploma/Level IV in social science and other relevant field of studies

Preferred experience & skills: 

• 0-1 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 tasks, 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
• Fluent speaking and writing English and good understanding of local language (Amharic)
• 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.

 Language Skills:   Fluency in English, spoken and written, is the most important requirement for this job; Knowledge of Amharic and other local language is advantageous. (The written English skills will be tested through an exam).