School Meals Accelerator: Evidence, Monitoring & Reporting Consultant

Your privacy is important to usSchool Meals Accelerator () is the fifth and newest initiative under designed to support governments to scale and strengthen their national school meal programmes and turn their ambitions into real impact. Acting as a network catalyst and convenor, the Accelerator mobilizes resources and expertise from the right partners to deliver strategic technical assistance where it matters most. Purpose of this role: This role is part of the Engagement Team of the Accelerator, which is responsible for ensuring that the Accelerator’s engagement at the political level continues to enable and facilitate its work, generating more support, tapping into diverse networks, and deepening relationships that can continue to create a favourable authorizing environment for the initiative. The Evidence, Monitoring & Reporting Consultant strengthens SMA’s results, reporting, and adaptive learning functions. The postholder leads day-to-day monitoring and end-to-end reporting workflows—including donor reporting, periodic management reporting, annual and midterm reviews—and ensures information is accurate, timely, and aligned with SMA’s systemic learning-oriented approach rather than a traditional monitoring and evaluation role. A core part of the role is to lead value capture processes by systematically identifying, documenting, and synthesizing emerging patterns, system shifts, and learning from Accelerator country engagements. By curating evidence and translating it into clear decision-ready system narratives, the consultant supports adaptive decision-making, strengthens collective sensemaking, and ensures that SMA’s work reflects real system change.The role promotes disciplined monitoring of key performance indicators, systems-oriented measurement, high-quality reporting, and continuous learning across countries and workstreams, contributing to SMA’s mission of delivering credible insights, accountability, and system level influence. The postholder is also expected to coordinate closely with the School Meals Coalition Secretariat and other global initiatives to ensure aligned approaches, shared messaging, and coherent support to countries. Responsibilities 4) People Leadership, Ways of Working & Culture* Model SMA’s systemic leadership mindsets by practicing inclusive engagement, constructive feedback, transparency, and cross‐team collaboration; reinforce shared standards, disciplined documentation, and coherent communication flows across dispersed teams and workstreams.* Demonstrate strong political and cultural awareness in interactions with governments, partners, and colleagues, while upholding data protection, safeguarding, and “do‐no‐harm” principles across all evidence and reporting activities.* Lead value‐capture and learning cycles by identifying emerging system shifts, patterns, and weak signals; synthesizing insights from monitoring data and qualitative inputs into accessible products (e.g., briefs, snapshots, learning notes) that inform strategic decisions and adaptation.* Facilitate and embed collective sense‐making by supporting after‐action reviews, reflection sessions, and leadership discussions; maintain learning repositories, update tools and guidance, and translate complex system‐level learning into clear narratives and visuals for internal planning, reporting, and strategy processes.Individual developmental expectations within the SMA Systemic Leadership Framework:**Reflective engagement with complexity**: “ As set out in the Framework, these expectations represent floors, not ceilings. Ways of engaging with complexity are descriptive rather than evaluative, are not tied mechanically to seniority or performance management**,**and are used to support reflection, learning and development over time, rather than ranking or judgement.What the Systemic Leadership Framework Means for Your Recruitment and Role:All roles in the School Meals Accelerator are expected to be enacted in line with the Systemic Leadership Framework. In recruitment and selection, the Framework supports informed conversations about how candidates make sense of complexity, uncertainty and systemic change, alongside assessment of technical expertise and role fit. In ongoing work, the Framework provides a shared orientation to “how we work here” and supports individual and collective learning over time.5) Learning, Continuous Improvement & Knowledge **SMA Systemic Leadership Framework**, which sets out six shared leadership mindsets, core leadership practices and more systemically demanding practices, that guide how we work in complex, fast-changing environments. The Framework also describes “ways of engaging with complexity”, which reflect how individuals make sense of and act in uncertain, interdependence situations. While developmental maturity and role seniority are independent, the SMA sets minimum developmental expectations by grade to support clarity and fairness in recruitment and early employment. For this **Consultant Level II role**, the minimum expectation is: This role operates within the School Meals Accelerator’s systemic leadership approach. All SMA roles are expected to be enacted in line with the Staff members are increasingly able to step back from experience and notice their assumptions and reactions, often after the event. Reflection supports learning and adjustment over time, though it is not yet consistently available in the moment”.Advanced University degree in social sciences, statistics, development economics, performance management, monitoring and evaluation or other related fields; Knowledge & Skills* Strong data‐organization and quality‐management skills, including clean datasets, consistent definitions, clear documentation, and basic descriptive analysis.* Excellent written communication, with the ability to translate data and system insights into concise narratives, tables, visuals, and evidence products for leadership and donors.* Ability to capture system dynamics—including behavioural shifts, collaboration patterns, incentives, weak signals—and synthesize them into decision‐useful insights.* Facilitation and sense‐making skills, including supporting reflection sessions, after‐action reviews, and learning discussions with diverse teams.* Solid planning and coordination abilities, including workflow management, calendars, QA steps, version control, and timely follow‐up across multiple stakeholders.* Familiarity with monitoring frameworks and practical data‐collection methods (indicators, baselines, targets, milestones; surveys, templates, routine reporting), and proficiency with tools such as Excel/Sheets, PowerPoint, and collaboration platforms (e.g., SharePoint); awareness of data protection, safeguarding, and do‐no‐harm principles.Qualifications:Education or First University degree with additional years of relevant work experience and/or training/courses. Experience * At least five years of progressively responsible experience in evidence, learning, monitoring, reporting, analytics, or research in international development, humanitarian, or public‐sector settings.* Demonstrated international collaboration with diverse partners (governments, IFIs, UN agencies, civil society, private sector, academia) across regions and organizational levels.* Experience applying systems‐informed evaluation or adaptive‐management approaches, including synthesizing qualitative and quantitative insights (patterns, themes, weak signals) to inform programme learning and adaptation.* Hands‐on experience with data collection, validation, and basic descriptive analysis, maintaining trackers/dashboards, and producing evidence summaries, visuals, or briefs for decision‐makers and non‐technical audiences.* Experience managing or coordinating end‐to‐end reporting processes, including planning calendars, consolidating inputs, QA, visualization, drafting
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