MEAL Coordinator

Solidarites International

Kyiv, Ukraine

About the job

The main challenges:

Turnover of international staff in late 2024/early 2025 provides lots of opportunities for new ways of working and collaboration, but does risk loss of institutional knowledge. The outgoing MEAL Coordinator has worked with the country program for over two years, so the new MEAL Coordinator will need to take the time to build the level of knowledge of their predecessor, whilst still under pressure to deliver and oversee MEAL activities on active projects.The MEAL Coordinator will need to quickly build relationships with staff in field bases and Coordination to build understanding of the mission and challenges, whilst supporting the immediate pressures of multi-base, multi-donor programs balanced with mid- and long-term work to implement new process. The MEAL Coordinator is expected to make regular trips to field offices to support base MEAL teams, all of whom are now national.

SI is working in partnership in Kharkiv, and significant monitoring, support and capacity building of the partner is required. The MEAL Coordinator will need to actively contribute towards this.

The MEAL Coordinator will need to actively contribute to the MEAL working group as part of a 5-NGO BHA-funded 'Dorijka' consortium. This will include incorporating feedback from the external evaluation of the consortium in 2024.

The MEAL Coordinator will need to support the Deputy Data Manager who is making significant progress in streamlining and standardising SI's data collecting and management, and use of project management tools.

Priorities for the 2/3 first months:

Lead on supporting field offices to conduct effective secondary data reviews and needs analysis, to ensure that SI's activities are designed to be responsive to actual needs and appropriate to the context
Actively contribute to Project Cycle Manager and SMT meetings and decision making, supported by data-driven analysis, presenting high level findings from base-level FCRM analysis
Contribute to the final reporting on a long-running ECHO project that has included multiple MRs and a national partnership
Contribute to the successful start of a new anticipated ECHO project, with a full MEAL Plan and indicator tracking tool, including a MEAL Plan and capacity building for SI's national partner
Plan and launch the next MSNA

Security constraints:

There are few security constraints in Kyiv, though the context can evolve quickly and there are periodic attacks that generally target known areas (SI accommodation and office is deliberately chosen to reduce the proximity to target areas). Nevertheless, air alarms are still very frequent and can last for hours, which can cause stress. SI security rules and set-up is a very effective protection against the effects of the attacks and the risk to staff is therefore very low in Kyiv.

National curfew is in place between midnight and 5am. Noise of explosions can sometimes be heard. Security briefings are given pre-departure, upon arrival, and upon travelling to field bases (where additional security protocols may be in place). SI Ukraine offers 24/7 psychological support to any staff affected by the stress of the security situation, and takes staff wellbeing and safety extremely seriously.

Your profile

DIPLOMAS AND EXPERIENCE:

Project Management or similar
Experience in the humanitarian sector : 3-4 years
Experience on a similar position: 0-2 years

SKILLS:

TECHNICAL SKILLS

Experience in the full range of MEAL activities
Experience of proposal development
Experience of assessments, and ideally leading on MSNAs. Detail oriented with analytic and critical thinking skills
Experience of strategy development
Communications skills: understanding ethical communication, experience developing communication products relevant to external stakeholders

TRANSVERSAL SKILLS

Communications skills: understanding ethical communication, experience developing communication products relevant to external stakeholders
Communication skills to ensure lead interdepartmental coordination
Management skills to supervise the team and build their capacity.
Communication and external representation