Intern – Humanitarian Programming Evaluation

Job Title: Fall Intern – Humanitarian Programming Evaluation

Department/Location: CARO (Central Africa Regional Office) / Virtual FLSA: Non-Exempt, part time, 10 hours/week

Reports To: CARO Learning Regional Technical Advisor Duration: Fall (September – December)

About CRS: Catholic Relief Services carries out the commitment of the Bishops of the United States to assist the poor and vulnerable overseas. Our Catholic identity is at the heart of our mission and operations. We welcome as a part of our staff and as partners people of all faiths and secular traditions who share our values and our commitment to serving those in need.

As an organization that celebrates and promotes diversity and inclusion, and which is committed to the ongoing work of racial equity and anti-racism, we welcome applicants of all backgrounds.

Background: CRS’ Central Africa Regional Office (CARO) supports ten country programs – Benin, Burundi, CAR, Chad, Cameroon, DRC, Nigeria, RoC, Rwanda, and Togo – under a unified regional strategy while addressing unique needs in each context. Several country programs have sustained significant humanitarian portfolios in recent years, implementing life-saving and early recovery interventions with vulnerable communities. The regional team comprised of various technical advisors assists and accompanies these teams to improve the quality of programming and capture learning that enhances our impact. This internship seeks a graduate student seeking to obtain work experience that aligns with his/her studies in international development, monitoring & evaluation, or a similar field and/or to fulfill requirements for an academic course or degree.

Primary Function: This intern will support CARO’s regional learning agenda, with a focus on the learning question: What multi-sectoral approaches best enable disaster-affected communities to progress from surviving to thriving? The intern will lead metanalysis of a collection of final evaluation reports written by external consultants during the close-out of CRS-led humanitarian projects. The aim of this effort is to identify trends in CRS’ programmatic strengths (which approaches appear to be most impactful, agile, cost-efficient, etc.) across the region as well as to document knowledge gaps which future evaluations could be designed differently to address. Additionally, the intern will support efforts to document Covid-19 responses across the region, ranging from stand-alone responses to integration of emergency interventions into existing development programs.

Leveraging this opportunity, the intern will gain the following:

• Practical monitoring and evaluation experience with a focus on metanalysis as well as development of recommendations for future evaluation design
• Practical communications experience learning to articulate conclusions and recommendations for an external audience including NGOs and donors
• Nuanced insights on the latest trends within humanitarian programming (in response to chronic conflict, natural disasters, and the Covid-19 pandemic)
• Cross-cultural experience working with development professionals (country program staff and regional technical advisors) in an international NGO setting

Job Responsibility:- Read and analyze a series of program final evaluations (including original datasets), synthesizing information to identify trends and knowledge gaps

• Draw and cohesively present actionable conclusions in a professionally written humanitarian portfolio metanalysis report and executive summary
• Develop a learning brief documenting CRS/CARO’s Covid-19 portfolio from the start of the pandemic to-date for external sharing
• Support the Learning RTA with other tasks related to advancing regional learning related to strengthening our humanitarian solutions

Key Working Relationships:- Internal: CARO Learning Regional Technical Advisor (supervisor), CARO Deputy Regional Director, CARO Heads of Programming, CARO Project Managers or MEAL Advisors, other CARO Technical Advisors as relevant

• External: N/A

Catholic Relief Services carries out the commitment of the Bishops of the United States to assist the poor and vulnerable overseas. Our Catholic identity is at the heart of our mission and operations. We welcome as a part of our staff and as partners people of all faiths and secular traditions who share our values and our commitment to serving those in need.