Requisition ID: req59281 Job Title: MEAL Officer Sector: Evaluation & Learning Employment Category: Regular Employment Type: Full-Time Open to Expatriates: No Location: Al-Raqqa, Syria Work Arrangement:In-person Job Description Background/Context: The IRC has operated in Syria since 2012, providing protection, health, economic recovery, and early childhood development programs in Idleb, Aleppo, Ar-Raqqa, Hassakeh, and Deir ez-Zor, with new programs expanding into Hama, rural Damascus, and Homs. With a team of 350 members, the IRC has established trust and strong community relationships, ensuring access and effective service delivery. It plays a significant role in Syria’s NGO, donor, and coordination forums, holding key positions and adapting to the evolving context. Our longstanding experience in the country to date provides a strong foundation for the IRC to further adapt and expand its programming across Syria, in order to respond to the new realities, with a greater focus on resilience and recovery initiatives. Alongside this, the IRC also plays a significant role in Syria’s NGO, donor, and coordination forums, holding key positions and actively engaging in advocacy efforts, adapting to the evolving context. Job Overview: The MEAL Officer supports the implementation of Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability, and Learning (MEAL) systems to ensure high-quality program delivery and learning across IRC’s operations in Syria. This role involves implementing MEAL plans, tracking indicators, supporting data collection and analysis, and contributing to donor reporting. The officer collaborates closely with program teams, partners, and the Information Management (IM) unit to ensure data quality, visualization, and use in decision-making. Additionally, the MEAL Officer helps implement accountability mechanisms, including complaints and feedback systems, and provides capacity building to partners and staff to strengthen MEAL practices and ensure compliance with IRC and donor standards. Responsibilities: Monitoring and Evaluation: + Support or lead the design and implementation of MEAL plans, Indicator Performance Tracking Tables (IPTTs), with support from the MEAL Manager, including Sector Leads and the team. + Support the establishment and maintenance of strong M&E systems and practices in Syria that follow the country program strategy, global guidelines and standards, encompassing both programs implemented by IRC as well as programs implemented in partnership with partners. + Provide M&E technical assistance to program and partner teams and inputs into the set-up, implementation, and close-out stages of program management, including measurement methodologies, plans and tools, and data collection, quality assurance, management, and analysis. + Support the reporting of project-specific MEAL plans, including indicator tracking, data collection tools, and reporting templates, and coordination with the MEAL manager. + Contribute to donor reports by providing timely and accurate data analysis and narrative inputs. + Support the implementation of internal or external program evaluations, e.g., TPMs. (Baseline, Final Evaluation, Need Assessment) + Provide technical oversight and quality assurance for data visualization and reporting products developed by IM staff. + Contribute to sharing and use of data, research, and learning within IRC’s program sectors, ensuring interventions are responsive to needs and informed by a sound understanding of the humanitarian context in Syria. + Support partners` MEAL in overseeing MEAL plans, Indicator Performance Tracking Tables (IPTTs), in addition to providing capacity building for the partners regarding MEAL theory and various tools and applications. + Support the MEAL Manager to work with program sector teams and the Grants Unit in ensuring that MEAL elements, including IM products, support strong proposals for new funding and high-quality reporting on current programs. Accountability + Support/ lead with Senior CR Officer to the design and implementation of effective Complaints Feedback and Response Mechanisms for programming. + Ensure that the complaints & feedback mechanism is functional and accessible to all beneficiaries in the field. + Develop a monthly trend analysis of complaints & feedback at the organizational level, giving the status of response by program teams and share with the Senior CR Officer, MEAL Managers, and Coordinator + Assist Senior CR Officer, MEAL Managers, and Coordinator in carrying out inquiries into serious nature of complaints + Support partner MEAL team on establishing a functional MEAL system in line with the above. Partnership and Capacity Building: + Build the capacity of program and partners’ staff in MEAL and IM technical and management competencies. + Provide feedback to program staff on all program technical data quality, systems strengths, and issues to improve both M&E and IM performance. + Ensure appropriate proactive and reactive communications and engagement with IRC partners to implement sub-grant agreements and complete program deliverables, including alignment and support for IM systems and tools through regularly scheduled partnership management meetings. Information Management Engagement: + Collaborate closely with the Information Management (IM) Focal Point and relevant sectoral teams to support the development, maintenance, and alignment of data systems, dashboards, and digital tools that meet monitoring and evaluation needs across sectors. + Actively support the creation and routine updating of Indicator Tracking Tables (ITTs), ensuring that indicator data is accurately collected, verified, and compiled in a timely manner for all ongoing projects. + Contribute to the maintenance of beneficiary databases and program activity tracking tools by regularly validating field-level data and ensuring alignment with MEAL data protocols. + Engage in the design and refinement of information products (e.g., dashboards, maps, visualizations), providing analytical inputs and supporting quality checks using tools such as Excel, Power BI, or equivalent platforms. + Work with the IM team to contribute to regular data summaries and analytical outputs that inform programmatic decision-making, donor reporting, and learning agendas. + Support efforts to strengthen data quality assurance mechanisms by coordinating closely with the MEAL Manager and IM Focal Point, ensuring coherent data flow across departments and field sites. + Ensure that all monitoring data and datasets are reviewed for appropriate disaggregation (e.g., by age, gender, disability, location) and meet project and donor requirements.