Head of Monitoring, Evaluation & Learning (MEL) job at Lively Minds

About Lively Minds

Weʼre on a mission to get quality early childhood development (ECD) to millions of rural preschoolers by activating the power of parents. A staggering 250 million children globally miss out on ECD, the majority in rural communities in the Global South. Governments and formal pre-primary systems have an essential role, but the most critica and most overlooked—part of the challenge is parents. Rural children spend 75% of their time at home, giving parents the greatest opportunity to influence development. Yet many struggle to provide nurturing care and early learning. They believe they lack resources and skills, and many donʼt realise how crucial the early years are. Targeted support is scarce, especially in low-literacy communities. Women who carry the bulk of childcare alongside farming and domestic work face the greatest burden.

Our big idea: Parents are the sleeping giants. We awaken their potential, transforming them into confident, capable ECD providers. We pair this with innovative scale solutions and rigorous implementation systems to replicate quickly, cheaply, and sustainably. We deliver at scale in Ghana and Uganda through two proven models:

Government partnerships, where our parent-centered programme is delivered through existing systems and staff, integrating simple, practical, play-based activities into pre-primary structures.

Radio programming, providing practical parenting tools to millions of rural parents weekly in local languages.

In Ghana and Uganda, the programme reaches 138,000 parents and 314,000 children weekly across 3,800+ communities, and radio guidance reaches 2.6 million parents in 24 languages. Independent evaluations show children make gains equivalent to an extra year of schooling, while parents demonstrate significantly improved knowledge, confidence, and home-based practices.

We are an award-winning, bold, fast-moving organisation of around 100 people working across the UK, Ghana, Uganda and expanding to new geographies. Our ambition is big: to lead a paradigm shift and make parent-powered ECD the norm.

To find out more about our programme, please visit www.livelyminds.org.

Role Purpose

At Lively Minds, evidence is essential to all our work. As Head of MEL, you will guide evidence creation across all our projects and support our planning and organisational development work. You will bring experience and knowledge to helping us create theories of change, tools, and frameworks, as well as ensuring that data points and evidence are available at the “right time to the right quality standards” to enable us to make decisions throughout the organisation. This role requires expertise in every aspect of change theory, monitoring, evaluation, and analysis including managing relationships with external evaluators. You will continue to strengthen our data systems so we can track, assess, and support our progress and learning during an important phase of growth. Collaboration will be key: you’ll work closely with other Senior Management Team members and staff to ensure MEL efforts match our strategic goals. As a key member of the organisational Effectiveness Directorate, you will help us to grow and develop as an organisation through our people, the way we work, and how we work with others. This will include helping to set and measure KPI’s and organisational goals as well as to understand valuable performance indicators for the future. The Head of MEL sits on Lively Minds’ Global Senior Management Team (SMT), reports to the Director of Organizational Effectiveness, and leads the MEL team, which includes one Manager and four officers.

Responsibilities

MEL Leadership

• Be a member of the senior management team and contribute to the global strategy for Lively Minds.
• Lead development of theories of change and programme design, facilitating the input from senior team members from across the organisation.
• Support internal teams to identify, track and review KPIs and incorporating learning into planning and implementation.
• Support the dissemination and uptake of evidence across Lively Minds.
• Coach and train the MEL team to deliver high-quality monitoring, evaluation, and learning outputs, including training on specific techniques and approaches.
• Training government partners to support ownership of MEL in our government partnership projects.

Data Systems

• Optimize data systems, visualization, and sharing for Lively Minds internal teams and, where required, government partners. This will include reviewing Lively Mindsʼcurrent systems against scoped needs and ensuring that systems are fit for purpose as Lively Minds grows and needs change.
• Oversee MEL team conducting key data processes, including data cleaning, analysis and regular reporting.

Reporting

• Work closely with Fundraising, advocacy, and Communications colleagues to contribute to fundraising proposals, donor reporting and external communications publications

Technical

• Ensure the LivelyMinds theory of change and MEL frameworks are used and embedded across the organisation and review these tools when necessary.
• Lead on the development of new MEL processes and systems as required.
• Guide Lively Minds' decision-making on MEL approaches in different project contexts.
• Oversee the MEL Team to develop high-quality data collection tools (both quantitative and qualitative), analysis and reporting of findings.

External

• Be responsible for commissioning and managing external impact and process evaluations and other MEL contracts and projects.
• Ensure that findings, learnings, and recommendations from external evaluations are shared internally to strengthen the impact and delivery of the programme.
• Ensure that evaluation and research findings are shared with a wide range of external audiences through the development of articles, reports, blogs, presentations, etc.

You may be assigned any other responsibility in agreement with your line manager, in contribution to Lively Minds' work, and in recognition of your experience and skills. It is therefore expected for staff to be flexible and willing to contribute to the work of the wider team.

Person Specification

Essential

You must be:

• Experienced in quantitative and qualitative approaches, including selection of the most appropriate approach in different contexts, design of research and evaluations, developing data collection tools, sampling approaches, QA protocols, data verification and validation, data cleaning, and analysis methods.
• Experience in setting up as well as using and adapting digital data collection platforms and solutions for remote and offline monitoring.
• Experienced in producing reports for different audiences, which clearly visualise data in ways that support strategic decision-making.
• Adept at making technical data understandable to and engaging for lay audiences (donors, stakeholders, other team members, and beneficiaries).
• Experience managing and coaching teams, especially remotely.
• Experience of commissioning and managing external evaluation partners and contractors.
• Strong understanding of data safeguarding and ethical standards, including ensuring informed consent, data privacy, and data management processes across all Lively Minds MEL data.

Desirable

• Familiar with Kobo Toolbox.
• Familiar with data analysis and visualization software (e.g., VBA, R, Python, and AI tools).
• Familiar with the international education sector and ECE.
• Experience working in sub-Saharan Africa.

• Be a member of the senior management team and contribute to the global strategy for Lively Minds.
• Lead development of theories of change and programme design, facilitating the input from senior team members from across the organisation.
• Support internal teams to identify, track and review KPIs and incorporating learning into planning and implementation.
• Support the dissemination and uptake of evidence across Lively Minds.
• Coach and train the MEL team to deliver high-quality monitoring, evaluation, and learning outputs, including training on specific techniques and approaches.
• Training government partners to support ownership of MEL in our government partnership projects.
• Optimize data systems, visualization, and sharing for Lively Minds internal teams and, where required, government partners. This will include reviewing Lively Mindsʼcurrent systems against scoped needs and ensuring that systems are fit for purpose as Lively Minds grows and needs change.
• Oversee MEL team conducting key data processes, including data cleaning, analysis and regular reporting.
• Work closely with Fundraising, advocacy, and Communications colleagues to contribute to fundraising proposals, donor reporting and external communications publications
• Ensure the LivelyMinds theory of change and MEL frameworks are used and embedded across the organisation and review these tools when necessary.
• Lead on the development of new MEL processes and systems as required.
• Guide Lively Minds' decision-making on MEL approaches in different project contexts.
• Oversee the MEL Team to develop high-quality data collection tools (both quantitative and qualitative), analysis and reporting of findings.
• Be responsible for commissioning and managing external impact and process evaluations and other MEL contracts and projects.
• Ensure that findings, learnings, and recommendations from external evaluations are shared internally to strengthen the impact and delivery of the programme.
• Ensure that evaluation and research findings are shared with a wide range of external audiences through the development of articles, reports, blogs, presentations, etc.

• Experience in quantitative and qualitative approaches, including selection of the most appropriate approach in different contexts, design of research and evaluations, developing data collection tools, sampling approaches, QA protocols, data verification and validation, data cleaning, and analysis methods.
• Experience in setting up as well as using and adapting digital data collection platforms and solutions for remote and offline monitoring.
• Experienced in producing reports for different audiences, which clearly visualise data in ways that support strategic decision-making.
• Adept at making technical data understandable to and engaging for lay audiences (donors, stakeholders, other team members, and beneficiaries).
• Experience managing and coaching teams, especially remotely.
• Experience of commissioning and managing external evaluation partners and contractors.
• Strong understanding of data safeguarding and ethical standards, including ensuring informed consent, data privacy, and data management processes across all Lively Minds MEL data.
• Familiar with Kobo Toolbox.
• Familiar with data analysis and visualization software (e.g., VBA, R, Python, and AI tools).
• Familiar with the international education sector and ECE.
• Experience working in sub-Saharan Africa.

• Experienced in quantitative and qualitative approaches, including selection of the most appropriate approach in different contexts, design of research and evaluations, developing data collection tools, sampling approaches, QA protocols, data verification and validation, data cleaning, and analysis methods.
• Experience in setting up as well as using and adapting digital data collection platforms and solutions for remote and offline monitoring.
• Experienced in producing reports for different audiences, which clearly visualise data in ways that support strategic decision-making.
• Adept at making technical data understandable to and engaging for lay audiences (donors, stakeholders, other team members, and beneficiaries).
• Experience managing and coaching teams, especially remotely.
• Experience of commissioning and managing external evaluation partners and contractors.
• Strong understanding of data safeguarding and ethical standards, including ensuring informed consent, data privacy, and data management processes across all Lively Minds MEL data.
• Familiar with Kobo Toolbox.
• Familiar with data analysis and visualization software (e.g., VBA, R, Python, and AI tools).
• Familiar with the international education sector and ECE.
• Experience working in sub-Saharan Africa.