National Governance Expert

National Governance Expert, SajhedariBikaas Evaluation - Nepal

Overview:

CAMRIS International is an international development and research firm that realizes innovative solutions to health and development challenges through high-quality, cost-effective program and research management services. With experience working in more than 80 countries, we combine our proven systems with today’s most effective, evidence-based best practices to improve the lives of people around the world. We apply a customized, customer-centric, cost-effective business approach to offer greater value to our clients and challenge the way things have always been done in our field. CAMRIS' clients include U.S. government agencies and multilateral and private organizations. Our core practice areas include public health, agriculture and food security, economic development, education, environment, humanitarian assistance, democracy and governance, and medical research.  

CAMRIS seeks a qualified  National Evaluation Team Member (Governance Expert) for endline evaluation of SajhedariBikas (Partnership for Local Development) under  the current USAID/Nepal Monitoring and Evaluation and Learning (MEL) project. The MEL Project supports achievement of USAID/Nepal’s Country Development Cooperation Strategy development objectives by assisting the Mission in planning, designing, conducting, disseminating and learning from more rigorous monitoring and evaluation of development activities. This includes designing and implementing both quantitative and qualitative evaluations and assessments, as well as providing expert analysis and technical assistance to USAID/Nepal’s programs. 

The MEL project has three major components:

• Component 1: Support greater rigor and coherence in USAID/Nepal’s M&E efforts
• Component 2: Design and conduct analyses, evaluations, surveys, studies, and assessments
• Component 3: Support improved knowledge management within the Mission

Background of the Project to be Evaluated: 

Sajhedari’s aim is to improve local governance in Nepal through four principal objectives:

1.  Establish and improve the enabling environment for community development;
2.  Improve communities’ ability to access resources for development;
3.  Improve communities’ ability to effectively implement inclusive development project 
4.  Increase the ability of existing and new government units to function effectively.

This evaluation will focus on activities implemented during the life of the project to synthesize evidence for results to date to better understand the extent to which USAID’s development hypothesis/es were validated or not through the course of the project, document lessons learned, and provide recommendations for planning any future development programming in the area of local governance. Specifically, the evaluation will consider the following lines of inquiry: a) Governance Systems and Ownership Impact, b) Peace Impact, c) Intra-project Complementarity and GESI Impact, and d) Cross-Sectoral Impacts.

Responsibilities:

• Review project document and relevant literatures to identify the approaches, good practices, methods and tools that will be applied to evaluation the democracy, governance and conflict sensitive interventions at the national to local levels;
• Design high quality and rigorous evaluation tools and pilot test the tools to ensure content richness and conflict sensitivity;
• Collect field data in close coordination with and building trust of major stakeholders such as government, community and civil society;
• Provide technical support, training and mentoring to field team members on conflict/gender-sensitive/peacebuilding to ensure quality evaluation;
• Help the team to ensure the quality of their work by supporting in consistent data verification and quality reporting.
• Ensure to include in the report the content on governance, reconciliation and peacebuilding issues that is unbiased and representative of diverse viewpoints including the voices and issues of marginalized and underrepresented groups;
• Ensure timely and quality deliverables such as evaluation design, work plans, and report;
• Undertake other duties as assigned by the Team Leader.

Qualifications:

• Master’s degree in governance, political science, conflict studies, or related field; PhD will be a plus point;
• Minimum of eight years’ experience in implementing or managing conflict mitigation, peace building, or civil society strengthening programs (e.g. peace dividends, early warning/early response systems, peace dialogues, reconciliation projects and civil society strengthening);
• Experience in USAID programs, especially in Democracy, Rights and Governance, and Conflict Mitigation is an added advantage;
• Experience in designing and conducting evaluations of conflict prevention/ mitigation and peace building programs;
• Experience in quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis methods (including focus group discussion, key informant interviews, survey design and statistical analysis);
• Familiarity with USAID evaluation standards and requirements;
• Demonstrated written communications skills in English, especially in drafting evaluations, assessments and reports;
• Knowledge of current political economy of Nepal (e.g. Comprehensive Peace Agreement, new Constitution, elections and devolution);
• Knowledge of national bodies and their functions such as Ministry of peace and Reconstruction and Ministry of Federal Affairs and Local Development. Likewise, local governance and community mediation centers such as Ward Citizen Forum.

Qualified applicant are requested to apply through following link:

https://careers-camris.icims.com/jobs/2840/national-governance-expert%2c-sajhedari-bikaas-evaluation---nepal/job