Job Title:
UNWOMEN: REGIONAL EVALUATION SPECIALIST FOR AFRICA
Location : Nairobi, KENYA
Application Deadline : 24-Jul-12
Type of Contract : FTA International
Post Level : P-4
Languages Required :
English French
Refer a Friend Apply Now
Background
UN Women, grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations (UN), works for the elimination of discrimination against women and girls; the empowerment of women; and the achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security. Placing women’s rights at the center of all its efforts, the UN Women leads and coordinate UN system efforts to ensure that commitments on gender equality and gender mainstreaming translate into action throughout the world. It provides strong and coherent leadership in support of Member States’ priorities and efforts, building effective partnerships with civil society and other relevant actors.
The mandate and functions of UN Women call for the promotion of organizational and UN system accountability on gender equality through evaluation, strengthening evaluation capacities and learning from evaluation, and developing systems to measure the results and impact of UN Women with its enhanced role at country, regional and global levels. The purpose and role of evaluation in UN Women is to enhance accountability, inform decision-making and contribute to learning on the best ways to achieve women’s empowerment and gender equality through operational and normative work.
Reporting directly to the Executive Director, the independent Evaluation Office (EO) of UN Women serves as the custodian of the evaluation function in line with United Nations Evaluation Group (UNEG) Norms and Standards. The Evaluation Office deploys quantitative and qualitative approaches to evaluate transformative changes in gender equality and human rights and UN Women’s contribution therein. It undertakes corporate evaluations and promotes their use at decision making levels; supports decentralized evaluations for improved programming and evidence generation on what works for gender equality; supports evaluation capacity development within the organization and of regional and country partners, and promotes coordination with the UN system on joint evaluation of gender equality and the inclusion of gender in system wide evaluation.
In addition, in the framework of the UN Women regional and country level work, decentralized evaluation function and capacity is strengthened and supported by regional level evaluation specialists based in regional centres.
UN Women is searching for a Regional Evaluation Specialist to be based in Nairobi Regional Center. Under the supervision of the Chief of Evaluation, based in New York, the Regional Evaluation specialist will support decentralized evaluations at regional and country level by strengthening decentralized evaluation systems, ensuring use of evaluation findings and recommendations, providing evaluation capacity development and promoting coordination on evaluation that is gender responsive at regional and country levels. The Director of the Regional Center will maintain a matrixed reporting relation with the Specialist as the Secondary supervisor.
Duties and Responsibilities
Summary of key functions
Undertake and manage evaluations and strengthen decentralized evaluation systems at regional and country levels in Africa
Undertake and manage evaluations in the region, including country evaluations, promoting stakeholder’s ownership and learning, alignment with country evaluation systems and partners participation;
Provide sound methodological advice and quality assurance to decentralized evaluation processes, including the preparation of TOR, evaluation study, final evaluation report and dissemination strategy;
Support the planning, monitoring and implementation of evaluation plans in UN Women’s regional and country offices;
Coordinate with the Regional Planning and Coordination Specialist to ensure the alignment of evaluation with RBM systems of the Regional Centres and country offices
Keep abreast of developments in the area of evaluation, exploring innovative approaches in the area of gender equality and women’s empowerment
Contribute to corporate level evaluation processes led by the EO and ensure alignment to corporate Evaluation systems.
Contribute to the effective deployment of human and financial resources of the EO.
Promote the use of evaluations and that evaluation findings and recommendations are followed up
Prepare aggregate analysis and qualitative assessments of decentralized evaluations to input to Evaluation Office Annual report and management briefs;
Organize meetings, workshops and other discussion fora to establish a dialogue on evaluation results and the evaluative knowledge management at regional level;
Ensure that evaluation results are taken into account for the continued implementation of strategies, programmes/projects and for the design and appraisal of new projects/ programmes;
Ensure that project/programme managers respond to recommendations and monitor the follow up on evaluations.
Promote evaluation capacity development at regional and country levels
Provide training and coaching on evaluation, self-evaluation, UN Women evaluation policy and guidelines, monitoring and results based management within the Regional Center and country offices, including substantial support in coaching and training M&E focal points at country level;
Provide advice, information, and guidance to programme managers on evaluations, including technical inputs to Programme Appraisal Committee on programme design from evaluability perspective;
Establish partnerships with governments, regional evaluation associations, networks and academic institutions to promote capacity and learning on gender responsive evaluation;
Substantially contribute to the development of methodologies for country evaluations, and to the review of guidelines, systems, procedures and tools related to decentralized evaluations.
Promote UN coordination on evaluation that is gender responsive.
Collaborate with UN Country Teams on evaluation and regional inter-agency evaluation working groups on integrating gender equality perspective in evaluation;
Collaborate with other UN joint evaluation initiatives at regional ad country level;
Contribute to UN Women in United Nations Evaluation Group taskforces and substantial contribution to the inclusion of gender equality dimensions in system-wide evaluation
Collaborate with professional evaluation bodies in the area of gender responsive evaluation.
Regional Evaluation Specialist will perform other related duties and assignments as and when required.
Impact of Results:
The key results have an impact on the successful implementation of the EO strategy and of region strategies in Africa
Competencies
GUIDING PRINCIPLES:
Ethics: Acts according to the standards of ethical conduct for evaluators, including policies on receiving and giving gifts, conflicting financial interests, outside employment and activities, misuse of position, impartiality in performing official duties and related statutory authorities. Acts with integrity and honesty in relationships with all stakeholders.
Integrity: Demonstrating consistency in upholding and promoting the values of UN Women in actions and decisions, in line with the UN Code of Conduct.
Cultural Sensitivity/Valuing diversity: Demonstrating an appreciation of the multicultural nature of the organization and the diversity of its staff. Demonstrating an international outlook, appreciating differences in values and learning from cultural diversity.
CORE COMPETENCIES:
Ethics and Values:
Promoting Ethics and Integrity / Creating Organizational Precedents
Organizational Awareness:
Building support and political acumen
Developing and Empowering People / Coaching and Mentoring:
Building staff competence, creating an environment of creativity and innovation
Working in Teams:
Building and promoting effective teams
Communicating Information and Ideas:
Creating and promoting enabling environment for open communication
Self-management and Emotional intelligence:
Creating an emotionally intelligent organization
Conflict Management / Negotiating and Resolving Disagreements:
Leveraging conflict in the interests of the organization & setting standards
Knowledge Sharing / Continuous Learning:
Sharing knowledge across the organization and building a culture of knowledge sharing and learning
FUNCTIONAL COMPETENCIES:
Knowledge of UN context and gender equality:
Has a detailed knowledge of the role of the UN and its components and UN Women’s mandate with the UN system. Has a detailed understanding of the Organization, funds and programs and the distinctions between them. Has a good knowledge of key UN topics. Has competencies to provide supervision to evaluation staff in the evaluation of gender equality and women's human rights activities, projects and programmes.
Technical and professional skills:
Evaluation design - Has the required competencies to develop well-focused Terms of Reference that includes a complete background, addresses salient issues, and identifies potential impact, with minimal guidance. Has a good understanding of various methodologies in evaluation, both qualitative and quantitative, such as surveys, record reviews, focus groups and case studies and is able to contribute to the development of the most efficient and effective methodology for the design, with minimal guidance. Has a good understanding of various sampling techniques and their applications and is able to develop the most accurate sampling technique for the methodology. Has grounded knowledge of how to address gender equality on evaluation design.
Data collection and analysis - Has the required competencies to collect reliable, valid and accurate information in an objective way. Masters effective interviewing skills and is able to conduct interviews independently. Has a good understanding of questionnaire design and is able to develop questionnaires and other review instruments that will address issues identified in the design, independently. Masters effective interviewing skills and is able to conduct interviews independently. Has the skills to use programme data and documents and to design and conduct case studies independently. Is able to guide and direct junior staff in data collection and to ensure the data analysis addresses evaluation issues.
Gender analysis – has experience in conducting gender analysis; has grounded knowledge of gender equality and women’s human rights.
Oral and written communication:
Has the required competencies to: articulate relevant subject matter in a clear and concise way; pose basic questions and contribute information appropriately in formal settings; effectively use appropriate support items, including charts, graphs, audio-visual techniques, and hand-outs; conceptualize ideas and issues during the evaluation reporting process; and use critical thinking to formulate findings and recommendations based on the results of both qualitative and quantitative data, and the broader context of evaluation issues. Is able to develop clear, concise and compelling evaluation reports that meet UNEG reporting standards, with minimal guidance.
Evaluation process management:
Masters the skills of evaluation management, including developing a plan and schedule, assigning tasks, ensuring milestones are met on a timely basis, ensuring project costs are within and approved budget and ensuring evaluation objectives are adequately addressed. Is able to independently assume responsibility for managing complex evaluation projects and to supervise evaluation team members. Has skills to negotiate outside the organization on issues related to evaluations and conflict resolution skills. Ethics: Acts according to the standards of ethical conduct for evaluators, including policies on receiving and giving gifts, conflicting financial interests, outside employment and activities, misuse of position, impartiality in performing official duties and related statutory authorities. Acts with integrity and honesty in relationships with all stakeholders.
Knowledge Management and Learning
Shares knowledge and experience
Encourages office staff to share knowledge and contribute to UN Women practice areas
Develops substantive knowledge of one or more Practice Areas
Promotes a learning environment in the office
Provides helpful feedback and advice to others in the office
Actively works towards continuing personal learning and development in one or more practice areas, acts on learning plan and applies newly acquired skills
Development and Operational Effectiveness
Ability to perform a variety of specialized activities related to HR management, including performance evaluation, learning and reporting.
Strong IT skills
Ability to provide input to business processes re-engineering, implementation of new systems
Leadership and Self-Management
National ownership by promoting the leadership and ownership of evaluation processes by country key stakeholders
Focuses on result for the client
Consistently approaches work with energy and a positive, constructive attitude
Demonstrates strong oral and written communication skills
Remains calm, in control and good humored even under pressure
Demonstrates openness to change and ability to manage complexities
Responds positively to critical feedback and differing points of view
Autonomy, working remotely and prioritizing
Required Skills and Experience
Education:
Master’s degree (or equivalent) in evaluation, relevant social science or related field.
Experience:
A minimum of 7 years professional experience in evaluation;
Relevant experience working on gender equality and human rights;
Background in international relations, proven knowledge of gender equality analytical work and programming, knowledge of current development issues;
Proven field work experience;
Experience related UN Women’s mandate and activities an asset.
Language Requirements:
Fluency, both oral and written, in English
Working knowledge of French
Knowledge in any other UN official language an asset.
How to Apply:
http://jobs.undp.org/cj_view_job.cfm?cur_job_id=31109
Deadline: 24th July 2012
UNWOMEN: REGIONAL EVALUATION SPECIALIST FOR AFRICA
Location : Nairobi, KENYA
Application Deadline : 24-Jul-12
Type of Contract : FTA International
Post Level : P-4
Languages Required :
English French
Refer a Friend Apply Now
Background
UN Women, grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations (UN), works for the elimination of discrimination against women and girls; the empowerment of women; and the achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security. Placing women’s rights at the center of all its efforts, the UN Women leads and coordinate UN system efforts to ensure that commitments on gender equality and gender mainstreaming translate into action throughout the world. It provides strong and coherent leadership in support of Member States’ priorities and efforts, building effective partnerships with civil society and other relevant actors.
The mandate and functions of UN Women call for the promotion of organizational and UN system accountability on gender equality through evaluation, strengthening evaluation capacities and learning from evaluation, and developing systems to measure the results and impact of UN Women with its enhanced role at country, regional and global levels. The purpose and role of evaluation in UN Women is to enhance accountability, inform decision-making and contribute to learning on the best ways to achieve women’s empowerment and gender equality through operational and normative work.
Reporting directly to the Executive Director, the independent Evaluation Office (EO) of UN Women serves as the custodian of the evaluation function in line with United Nations Evaluation Group (UNEG) Norms and Standards. The Evaluation Office deploys quantitative and qualitative approaches to evaluate transformative changes in gender equality and human rights and UN Women’s contribution therein. It undertakes corporate evaluations and promotes their use at decision making levels; supports decentralized evaluations for improved programming and evidence generation on what works for gender equality; supports evaluation capacity development within the organization and of regional and country partners, and promotes coordination with the UN system on joint evaluation of gender equality and the inclusion of gender in system wide evaluation.
In addition, in the framework of the UN Women regional and country level work, decentralized evaluation function and capacity is strengthened and supported by regional level evaluation specialists based in regional centres.
UN Women is searching for a Regional Evaluation Specialist to be based in Nairobi Regional Center. Under the supervision of the Chief of Evaluation, based in New York, the Regional Evaluation specialist will support decentralized evaluations at regional and country level by strengthening decentralized evaluation systems, ensuring use of evaluation findings and recommendations, providing evaluation capacity development and promoting coordination on evaluation that is gender responsive at regional and country levels. The Director of the Regional Center will maintain a matrixed reporting relation with the Specialist as the Secondary supervisor.
Duties and Responsibilities
Summary of key functions
Undertake and manage evaluations and strengthen decentralized evaluation systems at regional and country levels in Africa
Undertake and manage evaluations in the region, including country evaluations, promoting stakeholder’s ownership and learning, alignment with country evaluation systems and partners participation;
Provide sound methodological advice and quality assurance to decentralized evaluation processes, including the preparation of TOR, evaluation study, final evaluation report and dissemination strategy;
Support the planning, monitoring and implementation of evaluation plans in UN Women’s regional and country offices;
Coordinate with the Regional Planning and Coordination Specialist to ensure the alignment of evaluation with RBM systems of the Regional Centres and country offices
Keep abreast of developments in the area of evaluation, exploring innovative approaches in the area of gender equality and women’s empowerment
Contribute to corporate level evaluation processes led by the EO and ensure alignment to corporate Evaluation systems.
Contribute to the effective deployment of human and financial resources of the EO.
Promote the use of evaluations and that evaluation findings and recommendations are followed up
Prepare aggregate analysis and qualitative assessments of decentralized evaluations to input to Evaluation Office Annual report and management briefs;
Organize meetings, workshops and other discussion fora to establish a dialogue on evaluation results and the evaluative knowledge management at regional level;
Ensure that evaluation results are taken into account for the continued implementation of strategies, programmes/projects and for the design and appraisal of new projects/ programmes;
Ensure that project/programme managers respond to recommendations and monitor the follow up on evaluations.
Promote evaluation capacity development at regional and country levels
Provide training and coaching on evaluation, self-evaluation, UN Women evaluation policy and guidelines, monitoring and results based management within the Regional Center and country offices, including substantial support in coaching and training M&E focal points at country level;
Provide advice, information, and guidance to programme managers on evaluations, including technical inputs to Programme Appraisal Committee on programme design from evaluability perspective;
Establish partnerships with governments, regional evaluation associations, networks and academic institutions to promote capacity and learning on gender responsive evaluation;
Substantially contribute to the development of methodologies for country evaluations, and to the review of guidelines, systems, procedures and tools related to decentralized evaluations.
Promote UN coordination on evaluation that is gender responsive.
Collaborate with UN Country Teams on evaluation and regional inter-agency evaluation working groups on integrating gender equality perspective in evaluation;
Collaborate with other UN joint evaluation initiatives at regional ad country level;
Contribute to UN Women in United Nations Evaluation Group taskforces and substantial contribution to the inclusion of gender equality dimensions in system-wide evaluation
Collaborate with professional evaluation bodies in the area of gender responsive evaluation.
Regional Evaluation Specialist will perform other related duties and assignments as and when required.
Impact of Results:
The key results have an impact on the successful implementation of the EO strategy and of region strategies in Africa
Competencies
GUIDING PRINCIPLES:
Ethics: Acts according to the standards of ethical conduct for evaluators, including policies on receiving and giving gifts, conflicting financial interests, outside employment and activities, misuse of position, impartiality in performing official duties and related statutory authorities. Acts with integrity and honesty in relationships with all stakeholders.
Integrity: Demonstrating consistency in upholding and promoting the values of UN Women in actions and decisions, in line with the UN Code of Conduct.
Cultural Sensitivity/Valuing diversity: Demonstrating an appreciation of the multicultural nature of the organization and the diversity of its staff. Demonstrating an international outlook, appreciating differences in values and learning from cultural diversity.
CORE COMPETENCIES:
Ethics and Values:
Promoting Ethics and Integrity / Creating Organizational Precedents
Organizational Awareness:
Building support and political acumen
Developing and Empowering People / Coaching and Mentoring:
Building staff competence, creating an environment of creativity and innovation
Working in Teams:
Building and promoting effective teams
Communicating Information and Ideas:
Creating and promoting enabling environment for open communication
Self-management and Emotional intelligence:
Creating an emotionally intelligent organization
Conflict Management / Negotiating and Resolving Disagreements:
Leveraging conflict in the interests of the organization & setting standards
Knowledge Sharing / Continuous Learning:
Sharing knowledge across the organization and building a culture of knowledge sharing and learning
FUNCTIONAL COMPETENCIES:
Knowledge of UN context and gender equality:
Has a detailed knowledge of the role of the UN and its components and UN Women’s mandate with the UN system. Has a detailed understanding of the Organization, funds and programs and the distinctions between them. Has a good knowledge of key UN topics. Has competencies to provide supervision to evaluation staff in the evaluation of gender equality and women's human rights activities, projects and programmes.
Technical and professional skills:
Evaluation design - Has the required competencies to develop well-focused Terms of Reference that includes a complete background, addresses salient issues, and identifies potential impact, with minimal guidance. Has a good understanding of various methodologies in evaluation, both qualitative and quantitative, such as surveys, record reviews, focus groups and case studies and is able to contribute to the development of the most efficient and effective methodology for the design, with minimal guidance. Has a good understanding of various sampling techniques and their applications and is able to develop the most accurate sampling technique for the methodology. Has grounded knowledge of how to address gender equality on evaluation design.
Data collection and analysis - Has the required competencies to collect reliable, valid and accurate information in an objective way. Masters effective interviewing skills and is able to conduct interviews independently. Has a good understanding of questionnaire design and is able to develop questionnaires and other review instruments that will address issues identified in the design, independently. Masters effective interviewing skills and is able to conduct interviews independently. Has the skills to use programme data and documents and to design and conduct case studies independently. Is able to guide and direct junior staff in data collection and to ensure the data analysis addresses evaluation issues.
Gender analysis – has experience in conducting gender analysis; has grounded knowledge of gender equality and women’s human rights.
Oral and written communication:
Has the required competencies to: articulate relevant subject matter in a clear and concise way; pose basic questions and contribute information appropriately in formal settings; effectively use appropriate support items, including charts, graphs, audio-visual techniques, and hand-outs; conceptualize ideas and issues during the evaluation reporting process; and use critical thinking to formulate findings and recommendations based on the results of both qualitative and quantitative data, and the broader context of evaluation issues. Is able to develop clear, concise and compelling evaluation reports that meet UNEG reporting standards, with minimal guidance.
Evaluation process management:
Masters the skills of evaluation management, including developing a plan and schedule, assigning tasks, ensuring milestones are met on a timely basis, ensuring project costs are within and approved budget and ensuring evaluation objectives are adequately addressed. Is able to independently assume responsibility for managing complex evaluation projects and to supervise evaluation team members. Has skills to negotiate outside the organization on issues related to evaluations and conflict resolution skills. Ethics: Acts according to the standards of ethical conduct for evaluators, including policies on receiving and giving gifts, conflicting financial interests, outside employment and activities, misuse of position, impartiality in performing official duties and related statutory authorities. Acts with integrity and honesty in relationships with all stakeholders.
Knowledge Management and Learning
Shares knowledge and experience
Encourages office staff to share knowledge and contribute to UN Women practice areas
Develops substantive knowledge of one or more Practice Areas
Promotes a learning environment in the office
Provides helpful feedback and advice to others in the office
Actively works towards continuing personal learning and development in one or more practice areas, acts on learning plan and applies newly acquired skills
Development and Operational Effectiveness
Ability to perform a variety of specialized activities related to HR management, including performance evaluation, learning and reporting.
Strong IT skills
Ability to provide input to business processes re-engineering, implementation of new systems
Leadership and Self-Management
National ownership by promoting the leadership and ownership of evaluation processes by country key stakeholders
Focuses on result for the client
Consistently approaches work with energy and a positive, constructive attitude
Demonstrates strong oral and written communication skills
Remains calm, in control and good humored even under pressure
Demonstrates openness to change and ability to manage complexities
Responds positively to critical feedback and differing points of view
Autonomy, working remotely and prioritizing
Required Skills and Experience
Education:
Master’s degree (or equivalent) in evaluation, relevant social science or related field.
Experience:
A minimum of 7 years professional experience in evaluation;
Relevant experience working on gender equality and human rights;
Background in international relations, proven knowledge of gender equality analytical work and programming, knowledge of current development issues;
Proven field work experience;
Experience related UN Women’s mandate and activities an asset.
Language Requirements:
Fluency, both oral and written, in English
Working knowledge of French
Knowledge in any other UN official language an asset.
How to Apply:
http://jobs.undp.org/cj_view_job.cfm?cur_job_id=31109
Deadline: 24th July 2012
