Job Opportunity for MEL Coordinator at SEWA Bharat in New Delhi

About SEWA Bharat:
 
Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) is a movement to empower women working in the informal economy. SEWA Bharat is part of the national SEWA movement. Established in 1984, it is a national federation of SEWA organizations of women working in the informal economy. SEWA Bharat emerged out of the need to address the SEWA movement’s challenges with geographical expansion and coordination. SEWA Bharat comprises a family of SEWA organizations to further informal women workers’ rights, livelihoods, financial independence, education, health and social security.

Programme Description: 

SEWA Bharat runs a microentrepreneurship programme that works towards building resilient women microentrepreneurs, to address the needs of women-owned collective social enterprises and women micro-entrepreneurs as part of COVID-19 preparedness and response. The COVID-19 pandemic has majorly impacted all businesses, especially women owned enterprises, who are either incurring income losses due to the recurring lockdowns, and/or are faced with the additional burden of domestic chores. With supply chains being affected, and demand dwindling, these enterprises continue to pay fixed costs like salaries and rents forcing grave losses. This programme aims to provide technical assistance to entrepreneurs to help them gain better access to markets, finance and assets. In particular, SEWA Bharat recognizes that the women will need extra resources to overcome the backsliding they faced during the lockdown. Training will assist women to use new tools and approaches for entrepreneurship through training in digital literacy and by linking women with e-commerce opportunities and digital market information.

The specific objectives of the programme are as follows:

• To help women nano and microentrepreneurs identify opportunities to diversify or expand businesses in the current COVID-19 context, understand their rights and entitlements and access avenues to improve their lives.

• To strengthen social enterprises promoted by SEWA Bharat to help members prepare for and respond to COVID-19 through market-based approaches

• To support the creation of an enabling environment that allows microentrepreneurs and enterprises to thrive.

SEWA Bharat runs this programme in 10 states, such as Delhi, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Punjab, Bihar, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, and Nagaland. SSKs are present in various forms and models across the states with the commission objective of outreach.

Job Description:

We are seeking a suitable candidate for the role of the MEL Coordinator, who will be responsible to anchor the process of continuous learning and assessment of all activities as well as intended impacts. The MEL Coordinator will act as the results monitoring lead of the project,
documenting processes and reflecting on the lessons learned across all states. The MEL Coordinator will coordinate with, accompany and build capacity of the field teams, ensure the quality of the monitoring and data gathering on the ground as well as rapid synthesis and data
management to ensure feeding this into annual and quarterly reporting as well as SEWA’s ongoing reflection about the programme.
The MEL Project Coordinator will be guided by and work under the supervision of the Project Coordinator and will coordinate monitoring and reporting efforts with all State Coordinators. She/he will have to build a good understanding of the other projects in the organisation to ensure
work is aligned to the overall organizational outcome. Specific activities include the following:

Monitoring and Evaluation

• Continuously evaluate the MEL plan and all trackers under the programme.

• Train and build capacities of all state teams, project field staff to monitor and report according to the MEL plan, and the USAID formats.

• Monitor the ongoing delivery and management of monitoring systems to track progress on indicators monthly.

• Use qualitative and quantitative techniques to assess the impact of the project on women’s economic empowerment, support the state teams in organising and conducting regular semi-structured interviews with women in the project sites across the states depending on the activity to be monitored; commissioning and managing specific surveys/studies and managing the delivery of these.

• Ensure availability of up-to-date information on all critical issues in the project area and work with the MIS software agency to update information on the MIS system;

• Managing the external evaluation of the microentrepreneurship programme with the partner agency.

• Maintain accurate documentation and M&E database for reporting and record-keeping.

• Identify and lead areas of team M&E capacity building and implementation for long- term sustainability.

• Monitor and report on projects by observing project activities, formally and informally interviewing participants and stakeholders, other data collection as needed.

• Contribute to general monitoring, evaluation and learning processes, activities and products with SEWA Bharat program staff.

• Ensure safe and secure storage of data, verification and collation of the data, and transmission of the same to the SEWA Bharat Team.

Reporting and Knowledge Management

• Identify and report any implementation challenges of the programme and design strategies to mitigate the same, so that maximum benefit to stakeholders and client is achieved;

• Ensure compliance reporting for gender and environmental plans, in accordance with the USAID requirements

• Liaising with the Project Coordinator to generate monthly, quarterly and annual results monitoring reports and lessons learnt reports, as required by the project. This will require both the collation of data as well as the writing of narrative reports.

Communication and Advocacy

• Support in knowledge building and knowledge sharing of the programme at relevant forums, and with relevant stakeholders;

• Design outreach, advocacy and communication plan for the program in collaboration with the SEWA communication team. Work closely with USAID to promote the learnings of the program to a larger audience through collaterals, events, social media advocacy.

• Liaising with the research team for analysis of MEL data for research outputs

• Organising dissemination events based on the lessons learnt/results of the project.

Key Skills and Qualifications:
 
• Experience of theories of change based monitoring approaches, developing MEL systems, including MEL Plans, indicators, data collection tools, analysis methodologies, reporting and disseminating learning.

• 3-5 years’ experience of MEL reporting for mid-size international donor funded projects.

• 2-4 years’ experience of reporting on, evaluating and capturing lessons learnt from action research projects, especially in the areas of women empowerment, micro and nano-entrepreneurs, social enterprises, and gender.

• A Masters’ degree from a recognized university is mandatory.

• Experience in qualitative and quantitative research.

• Good working knowledge of Microsoft excel, data management and analysis is essential. Experience of other analysis software (qualitative and quantitative) would be desirable.

• Experience of working closely with grassroot communities, thus having a deep familiarity of their requirements is desirable.

• Passion for bringing about real, sustainable, large-scale change for women in India’s most marginalized communities

• Willingness to travel and spend extensive time in the field across project location. Travel exceptions will be given due to the COVID situation but in case of an improved environment to travel, the candidate would be expected to visit field locations as per requirements.

• Strong oral, written, and interpersonal communication skills, in both English and Hindi. These will be assessed in the interview. Ideal candidates will have experience working, writing and communicating in Hindi.

• Ability to work in an organized and efficient manner within a relatively unstructured work environment

• Ability to take initiative and leadership even with minimal supervision

Location & Application Process:
 
Location: Delhi

Candidates will be hired on an urgent basis. Please send in your resume with cover letter to harshita@sewabharat.org