Director of MEAL
About the role
About Imagine Worldwide
All children have immense potential, but hundreds of millions don't have access to the learning they need. Imagine Worldwide's mission is to empower millions of children across Sub-Saharan Africa with the literacy and numeracy skills they need to reach their full potential. We provide an innovative education technology solution and implementation model to the global literacy/numeracy learning crisis using an application and various toolkits and systems to support implementation. Nine Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) across multiple countries and settings have shown dramatic learning gains, increased school attendance, and gender parity, all for less than $7 per child per year.
Imagine Worldwide partners with governments, organizations, and communities to provide child-directed, tablet-based learning that is accessible, effective, and affordable. We are a California-based (United States) nonprofit organization operating across seven Sub-Saharan African countries.
Role Overview
The Director of MEAL will play a critical role in carrying out Imagine's mission to scale tablet-based learning solutions that enable children to become literate and numerate. They will join a highly committed and collaborative team that is working together to empower every child everywhere to achieve their full potential.
They will lead our monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEAL) strategy, build high-performing MEAL teams in our countries, and drive data-driven decision-making across program implementation. They will oversee MEAL managers in our portfolio countries, ensuring that the MEAL function delivers rigorous monitoring, analysis, and organizational accountability. This role provides thought leadership on measurement and evidence generation to drive decisions in real time to improve the learning experience and outcomes for children as well as operational effectiveness across Imagine's global footprint.
Key Responsibilities
The Director of MEAL will report to the Head of Delivery and work in close collaboration with all global function teams and country delivery teams. The role will collaborate closely with the Director of Analytics to ensure data tools are fit-for-purpose. The Director's responsibilities will include but will not be limited to:
- Oversee MEAL frameworks, indicators, and measurement plans across countries.
- Own and continually refine Imagine's Theory of Change, ensuring monitoring, evaluation, and learning strategies are aligned with how Imagine enables improvements in learning outcomes.
- Develop and maintain Master Data Management (MDM) definitions, procedures, standards, data review rhythms, and reporting deadlines in collaboration with all relevant stakeholders.
- Maintain an up-to-date repository of program metrics for internal performance reporting, proposals, reports, and external parties, donor materials, and communications.
- Ensure that program data is trusted, accessible, actionable, and aligned with organisational impact goals.
- Ensure program dashboards, visualizations, and data platforms are intuitive, accessible, and optimized for leadership, country, and function teams to promote data-driven decision-making across the organization.
- Ensure alignment of all data sources (LMS, platform analytics, MEAL tools, partner systems) with master data standards.
- Establish robust data governance and quality assurance protocols for timely, accurate, and ethical decision-grade data collection.
- Collaborate with the Director of Analytics to ensure interoperability and a unified data architecture that enables a single source of truth across all systems.
Program Data Analyses and Reporting
- Lead the development of dashboards, performance reports, and analysis to support program and organizational decision-making.