Concern Worldwide recruits 01 Programme Quality and Development Coordinator – Burundi/Rwanda
Concern Worldwide is one of the biggest humanitarian organisations operating in Burundi, where it has been present since 1997. Its operations have grown substantially in the last three years to meet growing challenges in the domains of social protection, food security, health, nutrition, WASH and refugee reintegration. This is an exciting opportunity to support the development of existing and new programmes for Burundi and ensure that they are implemented to the highest quality. The role will also support a smaller scale programme in Rwanda.
About the role: This is a 12 month, new role with unaccompanied terms based in Bujumbura, with frequent trips to other programme locations. It has a salary of of Grade 4.
You will report to the Programme Director and will lead the Programme quality team with line management of the M&E Manager, the Accountability and Gender (A&G) Officer, and the Communication Officer. You will work closely with the Dublin M&E Technical Advisors and Desk Officer.
We would like you to start in April 2021.
Your purpose: One of your priorities is to lead on the grants and compliance aspects of Concern’s programme in Burundi/Rwanda, including managing all grants, finalising reports and making sure they are compliant with donor requirements and writing high quality proposals based on Concern strategic objective. Concern’s Rwanda portfolio is small in scale and attached to the Burundi programme.
You will ensure high quality programme design and implementation through the continued critical review of M&E systems, ensuring learning is incorporated in programme design, and cross cutting issues including gender and protection, are systematically included. You will take a lead on research activities, liaising with external consultants and Dublin technical experts, and will be the focal person for all mainstreaming and accountability issues, both internally and as part of our programme activities. You will also ensure that appropriate programme documentation, reporting and filing processes are in place.
Programme Design and Quality:
- Lead on proposal development with the support of the Communications Officer and the rest of the programme and support teams to ensure a coordinated plan and strong programme logic in line with the programme strategy
- Coordinates processes to ensure program quality including the full program cycle, strengthening systems for proposal development, program implementation, monitoring and evaluation and learning.
- Monitor programme activities to ensure they are carried out in line with organisation’s internal systems and procedures and that adherence to the Core Humanitarian Standard’s commitments on accountability are met.
- Ensure that agreed reports and other information are communicated in a timely and relevant manner to various stakeholders.
- Oversee the implementation of a robust complaints and response mechanism (CRM) and ensure that any feedback or complaints from stakeholders are handled in an appropriate and systematic way.
- Ensure that Concern mainstreaming polices and “How Concern Understands Extreme Poverty” (HCUEP) are understood by all staff and are implemented at all levels, both in the programmes and internally.
- Develop fact sheets on programme quality initiatives and best practice.
- Promote a culture of shared learning across all programme locations and with colleagues in the region including organising quarterly project review meetings and grants opening and closing meetings.
Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning:
- Oversee the integrated and results based M&E system that provides appropriate measure of programme progress against agreed objectives.
- Support the M&E Manager in coordinating and strengthening programme-level M&E activities, including implementation of baseline, midline and endline surveys.
- Support the M&E Manager in the implementation of technical surveys working (e.g. SMART, KAP) with the relevant programme teams to ensure that data collection techniques are robust, that staff and agents involved have a good understanding of their roles, that the data entry processes are timely and accurate, and that the data analysis is timely and meaningful.
- Develop a knowledge management system to capture lessons learned and disseminate these within Concern in Burundi and wider.
- Ensure all aspects of the programme activities adhere to programme quality standards and policies (PM&E, accountability and mainstreaming) in a coherent and integrated manner.
- Prepare for, and oversee any research activity conducted by the country programme, both directly and through consultants and ensure research outcomes are clearly documented.
- Facilitate support visits from technical advisors and ensure dissemination of learning.
Accountability and Gender:
- Integrate a gender perspective, with help of the Accountability & Gender Officer, into Concern’s routine activities and the organization’s programme portfolio, and provide expert advice on this to Bujumbura and field offices.
- Support training sessions by the Accountability & Gender Officer for all staff (Concern and partners) to support and ensure adequate consideration of gender issues (e.g. in program implementation and recruitment processes at all levels).
- Follow up on and use feedback from comments and complaints from beneficiaries.
Support to Programme Management:
- Liaise with your team and other colleagues to complete internal, HQ and donor reports as required.
- Work with the Communication officer in developing quality donor proposals based on the most updated contextual information before sharing with the Programme Director.
- Participate in preparing complete, accurate and realistic budgets for donor proposals and as part of Concern’s internal budget procedures, ensuring that all M&E.
- Support programme staff in the writing of human success stories and case studies to illustrate key outcomes and impact of programme interventions for annual and donor reporting.
- Ensure the allocated budget for programme quality is utilised effectively and any necessary adjustments are requested in a timely manner.
- Ensure high quality internal and external reports are prepared by the programme and grants team.
- Ensure that all grant documents are properly filed for reference and retrievable for donor and other audits and otherwise whenever required.
- Promote donor compliance, ensuring that programme managers understand and adhere to donor regulations as stipulated in donor contracts.
- Provide needs-based training for Concern staff and partners on project cycle management and M&E tools that will enable the teams to implement the M&E plan effectively. Expose staff to a range of M&E methodologies for the collection of both qualitative and quantitative data with help of the M&E Manager.
- Build the capacity of the staff, specifically in development and use of log frames for planning and monitoring of progress as well as in report writing in general.
- Ensure that knowledge of approaches filters down to front line staff and partners.
People Management:
- Manage the M&E Manager, the Communication Officer, and the Accountability & Gender Officer contributing to their capacity building through technical support and on-the-job training and coaching, including a thorough induction at the start of their contract.
- Ensure that they have tangible goals to follow up on and that they fully understand outcomes which are expected of them, by setting SMART objectives.
- Ensure that they are aware of and comply with all of Concern’s policies and procedures.
- Monitor and review performance of these staff and hold them accountable for meeting their success criteria; give corrective feedback where required and take decisive action in the case of poor performance.
- If any of these staff have line management responsibilities as well, ensure that they meet the requirements above for each of their team members.
- Ensure that work within the team(s) is planned and organised in a way which will meet the organisation’s needs in the most cost effective manner possible; ensuring that team members are given appropriate workloads and are working efficiently.
- Inculcate a sense of responsibility, accountability and pride in programme excellence within the team.
Other:
- Actively participate in collective exercises such as preparation or updates of in-country and international Concern initiatives.
- Take measures to address equality and protection issues, particularly relating to gender, in programme as well as operational (e.g. HR) activities.
- Ensure the highest stands of accountability through ensuring good communication and information sharing within and outside the programme and enabling staff, beneficiary and other stakeholder participation at all stages of the project cycle.
- Be aware of, understand and comply with all of Concern’s policies and procedures (P4, Safe Guarding, finance, logistics, HR, security management etc.).
- Contribute to ongoing security management and planning as necessary.
- Actively participate in any emergency response if called upon to do so (within the existing programme area or in a new one).
- Undertake other related duties as may reasonably be assigned by the Country Director or the line manager (if changed)
- Represent Concern in national and where appropriate technical working group, cluster meetings program and technical fora
Your skills and experience will include:
Essential:
- Relevant graduate degree (economics, agriculture, development or equivalent)
- Five years relevant field based experience in the development/humanitarian sector
- Fluent English and French – written and spoken
- Demonstrated experience of proposal development for NGOs
- Demonstrated experience of working with rural communities
- Demonstrated experience in all stages of the PCMS (Programme Cycle Management Systems): assessments , programme development, including the logical framework approach
- Knowledge of M&E approaches
- Experience in preparing budgets and reports for international donors.
- People management
- Computer skills including Microsoft Word and Excel
- Knowledge of mainstreaming Equality (especially Gender) and Protection
- Ability to work independently and under own initiative
- Ability to work under pressure and prioritise, often to strict deadlines
- Good networking skills, interpersonal communication, presentation and motivational skills
- Strong analytical and problem solving abilities.
- Empathy with Concern’s goals and a commitment to capacity building, protection and participation.
- Willingness to travel to rural areas up to 30% of the time between programme locations
- The ability to quickly develop fluency in Concern Worldwide’s policies and procedures, including policies such as equality and systems policies in logistics and transport.
- Excellent organisational skills.
- Excellent writing skills in both French and English
- Cross cultural awareness and sensitivity.
- Knowledge of development issues and concepts.
- Creativity
- Experience in staff capacity development.
Desirable:
- Post graduate degree in relevant discipline
- Practical experience of implementation of mainstreaming activities, especially in the key dimension of equality.
To apply:
Les candidatures en français sont les bienvenues.
All applications should be submitted through our website at https://jobs.concern.net by the closing date and CV’s should be no more than four pages in length.
All candidates who are short-listed for a first round interview will be notified via email after the application deadline
Concern Worldwide is an Irish-based non-governmental, international, humanitarian organisation dedicated to the reduction of suffering and working towards the ultimate elimination of extreme poverty in the world’s poorest countries.
Concern Worldwide is an equal opportunities employer and welcomes applications from all sections of the community.
Due to the urgency of this position, applications will be short listed on a regular basis and we may offer posts before the closing date.