Senior Monitoring, Evaluation & Learning (MEL) Steward job at SINA (Social Innovation Academy)

Senior Monitoring, Evaluation & Learning (MEL) Steward

2025-09-08T10:32:37+00:00

FULL_TIME

Nonprofit, and NGO

Admin & Office

2025-09-20T17:00:00+00:00

 

Uganda

8

Role purpose
You steward a practical, participatory and adaptive MEL practice that turns experience into evidence and evidence into action across SINA communities—tracking changes in wellbeing, growth mindset, personal income and job creation—while keeping data accessible locally and pooled centrally for portfolio learning.

How you’ll contribute
Start from what exists (theory of change, surveys, tools), then improve, simplify and standardize where it helps. Pilot → learn → adapt and train

Change in people (four core indicators across the SINA empowerment journey):
– Growth mindset through collective narratives and a short validated mindset survey.
– Wellbeing through low-barrier tools chosen with communities (life maps, blob tools, brief indices)
– Income through context-fit proxies (assets, consumption patterns, simple vignettes) and
  self-reported change.
– Jobs and enterprise creation through light employment checks, enterprise records and founder reflections.

Health of each SINA community (supportive rhythms, not audits):
– Quarterly community health reflections through three lenses—quality, engagement,
  regularity—with brief evidence used for supportive conversations, not appraisal.
– A one-page stage/cycle tracker per community (planned vs delivered sessions, continuity
  across phases, expected vs actual timelines).
– Facilitator-guided learner check-ins at key transitions (confidence and agency, inclusion  
  and safety, “what I need next”).
– Light tracking of public storytelling

Data that flows and does no harm
Clear, lean SOPs and ethics (consent, confidentiality, do no harm). Data is housed centrally and remains community-visible through simple dashboards and short briefs.

Capacity that lasts
Practical training for SINA community focal points on interviewing (with gender-aware matching, and female-to-female as default where appropriate), bias awareness (courtesy bias, social desirability, selection), consent and safeguarding, data hygiene and basic analysis/visuals and how to interpret and use their data.

How you’ll work together
– Partner closely with MEL focal points and relevant circle roles in each SINA Community;
  convene a simple peer practice to swap tools, make sense of results and
  co-improve methods.
– Interface with roles in SINA Global (e.g., Fundraising) to keep indicators coherent, ethics
  aligned and portfolio dashboards useful; bring tension-backed proposals through
  governance so improvements stick.
– Enable, don’t gatekeep: keep templates, instruments and data guidance open by default
  and coach for self-reliance so communities can run MEL confidently without you present.

Use and learning (including donor reporting)
Turn data into decisions. Surface good practices and enable cross-community support. Maintain a living MEL Learning Log (what changed, why, with evidence). Co-create donor-ready outputs—contribution analyses, annual impact summaries and brief stories—so external reporting also strengthens internal learning.

Your profile
Must-have
– Substantial MEL practice in refugee/displacement or low-resource settings with strong
  facilitation and fieldwork experience (typically 5+ years or equivalent responsibility).
– Demonstrated participatory, mixed-methods approaches that communities actually adopt.
– Hands-on with Kobo/ODK and Excel/Google Sheets; solid qualitative methods (interviews,
  focus group discussions, narrative synthesis).
– Clear spoken and written English and strong communication in diverse groups.
– Values fit: self-organization, humility, co-creation and freesponsibility.
– Self-drive and thriving without much supervision.
– No specific degree required.

Nice-to-have
Fluency in French, Kiswahili, Arabic, Somali or other languages common among refugees in Uganda. Trauma-informed practice. Lived displacement experience is strongly preferred.

How you’ll contribute Start from what exists (theory of change, surveys, tools), then improve, simplify and standardize where it helps. Pilot → learn → adapt and train Change in people (four core indicators across the SINA empowerment journey): – Growth mindset through collective narratives and a short validated mindset survey. – Wellbeing through low-barrier tools chosen with communities (life maps, blob tools, brief indices) – Income through context-fit proxies (assets, consumption patterns, simple vignettes) and   self-reported change. – Jobs and enterprise creation through light employment checks, enterprise records and founder reflections. Health of each SINA community (supportive rhythms, not audits): – Quarterly community health reflections through three lenses—quality, engagement,   regularity—with brief evidence used for supportive conversations, not appraisal. – A one-page stage/cycle tracker per community (planned vs delivered sessions, continuity   across phases, expected vs actual timelines). – Facilitator-guided learner check-ins at key transitions (confidence and agency, inclusion     and safety, “what I need next”). – Light tracking of public storytelling Data that flows and does no harm Clear, lean SOPs and ethics (consent, confidentiality, do no harm). Data is housed centrally and remains community-visible through simple dashboards and short briefs. Capacity that lasts Practical training for SINA community focal points on interviewing (with gender-aware matching, and female-to-female as default where appropriate), bias awareness (courtesy bias, social desirability, selection), consent and safeguarding, data hygiene and basic analysis/visuals and how to interpret and use their data.

 

Substantial MEL practice in refugee/displacement or low-resource settings with strong   facilitation and fieldwork experience (typically 5+ years or equivalent responsibility). – Demonstrated participatory, mixed-methods approaches that communities actually adopt. – Hands-on with Kobo/ODK and Excel/Google Sheets; solid qualitative methods (interviews,   focus group discussions, narrative synthesis). – Clear spoken and written English and strong communication in diverse groups. – Values fit: self-organization, humility, co-creation and freesponsibility. – Self-drive and thriving without much supervision. – No specific degree required.

JOB-68beb0c57f2b3