About Palladium:

Palladium is a global company working to design, develop and deliver positive impact on the lives and livelihoods of people around the globe; broaden access to health, water, power, and infrastructure; build enduring, sustainable, and transformative institutions and market systems to address global challenges; and conserve the natural world. We operate in over 90 countries and have a workforce of 4,000 talented, motivated, and diverse staff of all religions, races, languages, and gender identities.

This Opportunity:

USAID’s Future Growth Initiative (FGI) works to increase the competitiveness of high-growth industries in Central Asia through a market systems approach that incentivizes private and public sector behavior change. The activity facilitates the regionalization of business advisory and enabling environment ecosystems, harmonizes policies and regulations, fosters trade, and market linkages, and aligns the skills of women, youth, and vulnerable populations with private sector needs. From September 2023, the second phase of the initiative, FGI 2.0, launched and will additionally support the growth and competitiveness of digital and green economies, increase the participation and competitiveness of women entrepreneurs, promote greater involvement of youth in entrepreneurship and startup ecosystem development, and strengthen inclusion of vulnerable populations in national economies.

Palladium is seeking a MEL Assistant support the FGI project. The Assistant will work with the MEL Director in collecting and aggregating data, drafting reports, managing the project’s database, and coordinating data accumulation with the project’s technical and country teams.

Location:

This position will be located in Almaty, Kazakhstan; Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan; Dushanbe, Tajikistan; or Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

Duration

The performance period of the USAID E4 IDIQ Activity will end on September 30, 2026.

Reporting and Supervision:

The MEL Assistant will report to the MEL Director.

Primary Duties and Responsibilities:

• Support the systematic communication with the FGI project Partnership Specialists
• Assist the maintaining the data/knowledge management system
• Support the systematic data collection from the Partnership Specialists
• Updating the database of the FGI projects
• Support to the updating the FGI projects and Grants trackers
• Draft the MEL related weekly updates
• Support the data collection process for the quarterly/annual reports
• Assist to the organizations of MEL Site visits
• Participate in the MEL activities that may include but not limited: learning events, site visits, spots checks, data quality assessment etc.
• Support for drafting the survey and other MEL tools
• Assist the data collection, data aggregation of the MEL studies – Annual Survey, MEL study/assessments, interviews, focus group discussions etc.
• Organize the meetings with the FGI project partners when needed
• Visualize the results for formative (progress) and summative (annual/final) reports
• Back up the MEL Director during his/her absence
• Support the FGI projects’ GIS data collection and data entering process for USAID
• Other tasks assigned by the supervisor

Key Competencies Required:

• Bachelor’s degree in IT, Economics, Social Studies and/or other relevant fields
• Two (2) years of experience in international development projects in Central Asia
• Experience in Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) position(s)
• Experience in database and/or data management positions or responsibilities
• Professional level of MS Word and Excel, Power BI, and Access
• Fluency in English and Russian

Competencies Preferred:

• Master’s degree in IT, Economics, Social Studies and/or other relevant fields is an asset
• Fluency in Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tajik, Turkmen, and/or Uzbek

Application Deadline

The application will close on September 1, 2024

Equity, Diversity & Inclusion – Palladium is committed to embedding equity, diversity, and inclusion into everything we do. We welcome applications from all sections of society and actively encourage diversity to drive innovation, creativity, success and good practice. We positively welcome and seek to ensure we achieve diversity in our workforce; and that all job applicants and employees receive equal and fair treatment regardless of their background or personal characteristics. These include: (but are not limited to) socio-economic background, age, race, gender identity and expression, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, nationality, veteran, marital or Indigenous status.

Should you require any adjustments or accommodations to be made due to a disability or you are a neurodivergent individual or for any other circumstance, please email our team at accessibility@thepalladiumgroup.com and we will be in touch to discuss.

Safeguarding – We define Safeguarding as “the preventative action taken by Palladium to protect our people, clients and the communities we work with from harm”. We are committed to ensuring that all children and adults who come into contact with Palladium are treated with respect and are free from abuse. All successful candidates will be subject to an enhanced selection process including safeguarding-focused interviews and a rigorous due diligence process.

Our company provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability or genetics.