Evaluation Officer

Details

Mission and objectives

UNICEF, also known as the United Nations Children's Fund, is a United Nations agency responsible for providing humanitarian and developmental aid to children worldwide. The agency is among the most widespread and recognizable social welfare organizations in the world, with a presence in 192 countries and territories. UNICEF's activities include providing immunizations and disease prevention, administering treatment for children and mothers with HIV, enhancing childhood and maternal nutrition, improving sanitation, promoting education, and providing emergency relief in response to disasters.

Context

UNICEF Kenya Country Office (KCO) embarked on a new Government of Kenya-UNICEF Country Programme in July 2022. The Planning Monitoring and Evaluation (PME) section in UNICEF Kenya Country Office provides strategic guidance to the CO on programme design/planning, contribution management, performance monitoring, situation monitoring (evaluations), capacity development, quality assurance and knowledge management. PME team consists of the Chief PME (Head of section), Evaluation Specialist, Planning and Monitoring Officer, Partnership Officer, and a Programme Associate. The PME section is managing the “Evaluation” function within the office and thus entails strengthening the evaluation systems and processes and working with the Government and other UN agencies to strengthen the national evaluation capacities in Kenya. There is a heightened requirement to meet the high standard of quality for all the evaluation commissioned/undertaken by the office. In addition, there is increasing need of not only undertaking other evidence generation activities which are largely cross-sectoral but also to promote the section’s knowledge management effort through some review or meta-analysis of the existing and completed outputs by focusing on their utilisation. UNICEF-KCO is the lead agency for coordinating the work related with Devolution, Nutrition, WASH and Child Protection clusters within the current UNSDCF in addition to contributing to all other strategic priorities. This requires technical and coordination support both within office as well as with the other participating/contributing UN agencies. The objective of hiring the National UNV thus is to provide technical support to PME and the CO on (a) strengthening the evaluation systems and processes within the office and working with the Government and other relevant UN agencies to strengthen the national evaluation capacities in Kenya, (b) support/facilitate other evidence generation activities manged by the PME section, and (c) support additional activities relating to quality assurance, Results Based Management and planning and monitoring including coordination of UNSDCF related works within the office, other UN Agencies and Government partners.

Task description

Under the direct supervision of Chief Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation, the UN Volunteer will undertake the following tasks: · Coordination of the Evaluation work within and outside the organization: the UNV will extend technical support and contribute significantly to “Evaluation” work being undertaken by the KCO which entails strengthening the evaluation systems and processes within the office and working with the Government and the Evaluation Society or similar public organisation to strengthen the national evaluation capacities in Kenya. · National Evaluation Capacity Development (NECD): The UNV will support to coordinate and facilitate organising trainings and other capacity building initiatives to promote the evaluation agenda with the Monitoring and Evaluation Directorate (MED), Government of Kenya and other relevant public organisations and UN agencies. This will involve engagement with the ongoing work on rolling out the county level M&E policy and the Kenya Evaluation Guideline (KEG) within the devolution agenda. · Data Analytical and Knowledge Management function: The UNV will provide facilitative support in reviewing and quality assuring other evidence generation activities undertaken by the PME section. This can include undertaking meta-analysis of relevant evidence generation products the office has generated focusing on the findings and their usage for programme improvement. · Support additional activities relating to quality assurance, Results Based Management and planning and monitoring including coordination of UNSDCF related functions.