MEAL Officer - National Post - Lebanon - Beirut

The Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL) Officer is responsible for planning, coordinating, and implementing monitoring, evaluation, accountability, and learning activities to ensure high-quality data collection, analysis, reporting, and evidence-based decision-making. The role supports project quality through field monitoring, data quality assurance, accountability mechanisms, and continuous learning while providing technical guidance to the MEAL Assistant and program teams. The MEAL Officer is responsible for maintaining accurate project data, preparing monitoring reports, and ensuring compliance with RI's data quality, confidentiality, and accountability standards.

 

Key responsibilities 

Accountability and Complexity

The job holder works with a moderate level of independence, applying professional experience, judgment, and established procedures to complete assigned MEAL responsibilities within agreed guidelines and SOPs. The role involves solving a range of straightforward technical and operational problems, analyzing possible solutions, and making day-to-day decisions related to data collection, monitoring, reporting, and accountability processes. The position may provide line supervision or informal guidance to junior team members, enumerators, or field staff, with responsibility for the quality of their own work and contribution to the wider MEAL team’s outputs. Supervise, mentor, and provide day-to-day technical guidance to the MEAL Assistant, ensuring timely completion of assigned tasks and adherence to RI MEAL standards and procedures.

Monitoring, Evaluation and Accountability

• Support the development, adaptation, testing, and implementation of project MEAL tools, including PHCC and PSU monitoring checklists, patient-exit and satisfaction surveys, baseline and end-line assessments, post-distribution monitoring tools, training-evaluation forms, focus group discussion and key-informant interview guides, and outcome-monitoring tools.
• Configure and test electronic data-collection tools using ODK, KoboToolbox, or other approved platforms, ensuring that validation rules and project indicators are accurately incorporated.
• Develop sampling plans for monitoring exercises and assessments by calculating appropriate sample sizes and selecting representative beneficiaries or households in line with approved methodologies.
• Coordinate and support data collection for project assessments, including monitoring of PHCC and PSU services, Community Health Clubs, MHPSS activities, IYCF counselling, malnutrition screening, NFI distributions, Cash for Nutrition assistance, home visits, referrals, and capacity-building activities.
• Train and provide technical guidance to data collectors, CHVs, program teams, and other relevant staff on the correct use of monitoring tools, informed consent, confidentiality, interview techniques, and data-quality requirements.
• Conduct regular field-monitoring, observation, distribution-monitoring, validation, and data-verification visits to project implementation locations, including supported PHCCs, PSUs, collective shelters, and community outreach sites.
• Monitor the relevance, quality, accessibility, safety, and timeliness of project activities.
• Conduct daily or periodic data-quality checks during assessments, identify data gaps or inconsistencies, and coordinate timely corrective action with program and field teams.
• Analyze monitoring findings, identify trends, service gaps, risks, over- or underachievement, and provide practical recommendations to program teams.
• Support monthly data-reflection meetings and quarterly lessons-learned exercises.
• Document best practices, success stories, innovations, and lessons learned, and support the use of monitoring findings to improve project implementation and adaptive programming.
• Collect and document beneficiary feedback during field visits and support the dissemination of information on RI’s feedback, complaints, safeguarding, and referral mechanisms.
• Coordinate with the Accountability and Safeguarding team to ensure that sensitive feedback, safeguarding concerns, and complaints are referred through the appropriate confidential reporting channels.

Data Management, Reporting and Documentation

• Oversee the accuracy, completeness, consistency, and timeliness of project data collected by program teams, CHVs, PHCCs, PSUs, and other data collectors.
• Conduct data cleaning, validation, and reconciliation across project databases and source documents.
• Maintain and regularly update project indicator trackers and MEAL databases, ensuring appropriate disaggregation by sex, age, population status, disability, location, and other donor-required categories.
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