TERMS OF REFERENCE
FOR RESULTS MEASUREMENT MANAGER
Reports to: Programme Manager
Works with: Sector Analysts, Senior Sector Analyst, Deputy Portfolio Manager, Portfolio Managers, Communications Manager
Supervisory responsibility of: Results Measurement Analysts
Duty station: Kathmandu
Contract type: Full time
1. Introduction
Samarth-Nepal Market Development Programme (Samarth-NMDP) is a five-year UK Aid funded programme that aims to reduce poverty in Nepal. Samarth-NMDP is implemented by Adam Smith International (ASI) in partnership with the Springfield Centre and Swiss Contact. The Samarth-NMDP Results Measurement Manager is responsible to lead results measurement system of the designated portfolio such as Crops, Livestock, Media and Tourism
2. The logic to Samarth-NMDP
The goal of Samarth-NMDP is to reduce poverty in Nepal. The outcome of NMDP is to improve the incomes and growth for poor and disadvantaged people in key sub-sectors within agriculture and other rural markets.
There are two outputs of the programme:
ï‚· The underlying pro-poor performance of rural sectors – particularly agriculture – is improved.
ï‚· The capacity for effective pro-poor market development among key stakeholders – including government, NGOs, donors and research organisations – throughout Nepal is enhanced, leading to positive and sustained practice change.
3. Samarth-NMDP’s strategic framework
Samarth will rigorously apply Making Markets Work for the Poor (M4P) as its strategic framework. M4P is aimed at effectively and sustainably improving the lives of poor people by understanding and influencing market systems which affect them. In practice, this means that NMDP will:
ï‚· Identify and address the underlying systemic causes of weak sector performance;
ï‚· Facilitate change in the market systems around the poor, rather than delivering directly ourselves;
ï‚· Use resources to address constraints and catalyse substantial, transformative change; and
ï‚· Work with a variety of market players and facilitators from the private sector, public sector and from civil society, as appropriate.
4. Samarth-NMDP results measurement system
The key principles of Samarth’s results measurement system:
ï‚· Integration of monitoring and results measurement into design, implementation, monitoring and scaling up of interventions. Essential changes to be measured are:
- Net income changes for the target groups, attributable to interventions
- Changes to target group competitiveness as a result of interventions
- Changes in the sustained access of target groups to growth opportunities
- Changes in target group behaviour stimulated by interventions
- Increases in the demand from the target group for the induced changes (service market)
- An increase in new entrants/service providers, or total additional volume
ï‚· Monitoring these changes will be the basis for the programme’s internal and external knowledge management and learning strategies.
ï‚· The system will inform management to make continuous decisions on the overall value for money of the programme’s portfolio
The system is aimed at generating information used in the achievement of three objectives:
1. To help managers, project staff, and implementation partners improve programme and intervention implementation in order to maximize pro-poor growth and poverty reduction. The system will encourage managers and staff to think through sector strategies and intervention designs with a pro-poor lens, choosing those strategies and interventions with the greatest potential for sustainable poverty reduction. The system also aims to provide regular information on programme outputs and outcomes and higher level results to help managers and staff adjust implementation to better achieve intervention goals. The system helps managers and staff to determine if the number and type of activities have
been effective in addressing specific constraints or if more are required. Lastly, the system helps managers and staff to glean lessons from past implementation in order to improve future activities.
2. To help Samarth-NMDP report programme performance and results to DFID. DFID requires that Samarth-NMDP reports on the results of the programme at various levels including net attributable income change of target group, enterprise performance, changes in market system and impact on any special focus issues (e.g. excluded groups and women). The system will be designed to regularly deliver information on each of these levels so that it can be easily consolidated and put into reports for DFID.
3. To help Samarth-NMDP inform others in the wider community about Samarth-NMDP’s results, successes and lessons learned. It is essential that programmes share such information in order to improve the state of practice in pro-poor private sector development in Nepal. Hence Samarth-NMDP will periodically share information on results, successes and lessons with the wider community. Sharing information also helps Samarth-NMDP build a good reputation that is important in attracting high calibre national staff. The system will be designed to regularly deliver information on Samarth-NMDP’s results, successes and lessons that can be easily incorporated into publications, presentations and other information sharing media.
The system is designed to document Samarth-NMDP’s interventions, and generate information on resulting changes in service/output delivery, providers, and farms/SMEs using the services. The specific indicators of change tracked by the system are based on a “results chain” that is developed for each intervention. Based on this information, reasoned estimates are made of Samarth-NMDP’s contribution to overall changes related to target group income. While the system will be developed to serve the aims above, attention has been paid to complying with the control points and compliance criteria in the Donor Committee for Enterprise Development (DCED) Standard on Measuring and Reporting Results.
5. Roles and responsibilities
The Samarth-NMDP Results Measurement Manager has responsibility for ensuring that monitoring and results measurement activities are well planned, resourced and carried out so that relevant and useful information is generated on intervention performance. To ensure this, she/he will:
ï‚· Be responsible for working with Samarth-NMDP’s sector team, to ensure that all interventions are designed in compliance with the DCED standard. In practice this involves intensive coaching and building the capacity of the staffs in monitoring and results measurement.
ï‚· For each intervention, take charge that each results chain is designed before implementation and ensuring that a Measurement Plan is in place before interventions are executed and that an Intervention Guide is finalised within one month of intervention approval.
ï‚· Provide advice to sector team on attribution strategies, survey designs and data collection tool: the data from which will be used for making decisions on closure, parking, continuation and scale up of interventions.
ï‚· Be responsible for ensuring quarterly progress reports are completed and submitted on time by project teams; assist in the preparation and running monthly meetings and quarterly strategic reviews.
ï‚· Be responsible for the validation of data arising from the implementation of the Measurement Plans to verify that the results conform to “best practices”.
ï‚· Be responsible for aggregation of the impact of all interventions into a ‘programme results’ aggregation sheet.
ï‚· Take charge for carrying out baselines and impact assessments.
ï‚· Supervise research companies to produce quality work, it includes coaching research companies in defining sampling strategy, analysing data and preparing report.
ï‚· Track an internal assessment of risk for each intervention.
ï‚· Support sector team and communication team in preparing case studies on both successful and unsuccessful interventions that analyse what happened, what was achieved and what lessons can be drawn from this experience.
ï‚· Participate actively in portfolio update meeting, monthly sector meeting and quarterly strategic review meeting.
ï‚· Appraise each partnership agreement in line with “Effectiveness and Cost-effectiveness” aspect of 3Es framework of value for money approach.
ï‚· Update Results Measurement Manual to reflect current needs and practices.
ï‚· Take the lead in preparing all documentation and orientating project teams for ‘mock’ audits and DCED audits.
ï‚· Supervise a team of Results Measurement Analysts.
6. Candidate profile
ï‚· At least seven years of proven experience in Monitoring & Evaluation of development programmes with at least two years of experience using DCED Standard for Results Measurement
ï‚· Master's Degree in rural development, social sciences, statistics or relevant field
ï‚· Proven experience in research and data collection, including survey design and using a mix of qualitative and quantitative techniques
ï‚· Proven ability to work effectively in close-knit teams and to interact effectively with a diverse range of stakeholder groups
ï‚· Understanding of market development principles, particularly the M4P approach
7. Timing and duration
Start date: As soon as possible
End date: A commitment of at least 18 months is desirable
Apply via mail at recruitment@samarth-nepal.com
Samarth-NMDP is a five year DFID-funded rural market development programme that aims to Reduce Poverty In Nepal by increasing incomes of 300,000 smallholder farmers and small-scale entrepreneurs.