The Position Summary

The Program Manager is responsible for supporting the country offices implementation of the GIRL-H program, including ensuring that project activities result in positive outcomes for male and female participants of different age groups. S/he will support program start-up and implementing, while building team members’ and partners ‘capacity to integrate a gender and youth perspective into project activities. The PMU Manager will support country Program Managers (PMs) to ensure the effective and timely execution of all activities within this program, including social capital and life skills, linkages to formal, informal, and technical education, promotion of the enabling environment for young girls. The Manager will support country offices integration of Safe Spaces into relevant programs. S/he is responsible for supporting the design and implementation of training modules and support the management of the Mercy Corps GIRL-H Safe Space activities for adolescent girls and boys, within relevant programs, including the GIRL-H program.

Essential Job Responsibilities

STRATEGY AND VISION

• Support the development of a clear vision for the program, as well as a clear and effective strategy for program implementation and evaluation and ensure that the vision and mission are aligned with contextual realities.
• Ensure that the program strategy is clear and communicated to team members, local beneficiaries, and partners.
• Ensure that program implementation is responsive to communities and partners and aligned with

Mercy Corps’ principles and values.

• Collaborate with other related Mercy Corps programs to create synergies wherever possible.
• Guide the technical implementation of women and girls’ leadership country strategies based on Mercy

Corps’ Country Strategy for Uganda, Haiti and Kenya.

• Promote gender strategies across the country portfolio, adapt, and improve them as needed.
• Lead the development of a resource mobilization and communication strategy for the program and support its operationalization at the country level.

PROGRAM MANAGEMENT

• Support program implementation, in cooperation with key project stakeholders, including local non- governmental organizations, local government officials, community-based organizations, other international agencies on the ground, and key donors.
• Collaborate with program, finance and administrative staff to ensure program systems comply with donor and Mercy Corps policies and procedures, including adherence to Mercy Corps program management minimum standards.
• Work with the PMs to maintain systems ensuring effective and transparent use of financial resources for timely and informative reporting in line with donor and Mercy Corps policies and procedures.
• Increase Mercy Corps and partner organization staff capacity by designing and delivering technical training and coaching plans on topics related to building resilience and achieving gender-equitable program outcomes.
• Provide support and guidance in all aspects of program implementation, management, and evaluation across the three target countries.

MONITORING, EVALUATION & LEARNING

• Ensure compliance with donor and Mercy Corps regulations related to gender, resilience, and safes spaces programming.
• Support effective program monitoring and reporting systems for both internal and external use and ensure high quality input is obtained from team members.
• Use reporting results to monitor program success, measure impact, and calibrate program strategy accordingly.
• Ensure documentation of achievements and lessons learned to ensure best practices are captured and disseminated in quarterly and final program reports.
• Monitor adherence to the donor grant agreement as well as Mercy Corps’ and donor’s policies and procedures for procurement and compliance.

REGIONAL SYSTEMS AND SUPPORT FUNCTIONS

• Support country team adherence to Mercy Corps and donor policies and procedures.
• Capture and disseminate best practices on operations, finance, and HR systems across country teams to ensure highest quality and standards.
• Provide dedicated support to country teams in the event of an emergency.

HUMAN RESOURCES, SAFEGUARDING AND DIVERSITY

• Support Mercy Corps global and regional initiatives for human resources, including safeguarding and diversity.

RISK MANAGEMENT

• Engage and support GIRL Program across the region to ensure that adequate risk management systems are in place.
• Collaborate with GIRL Country PMs to support preparedness and response to major disruptive events.
• Engage with country teams on the internal audit process to track findings and ensure country team compliance with Internal Audit findings and recommendations.

Accountability to Participants and Stakeholders

• Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts toward accountability, specifically to our program participants, community partners, other stakeholders, and to international standards guiding international relief and development work. We are committed to actively engaging communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring and evaluation of our field projects.

Knowledge and Experience

• Masters or equivalent experience in International Development, Political Science, women’s studies, Economics, Sociology or other relevant field.
• 7-9 years’ experience in gender and youth development work including experience developing and conducting gender training, gender/youth mainstreaming and engaging in gender advocacy.
• Experience in program start up.
• Demonstrated ability to implement a program, manage a team and develop their capacities.
• Demonstrated capacity to lead the collection, analysis and utilization of information from a broad range of sources to ensure effective integration of gender and youth concerns throughout the project’s duration. In-depth understanding of gender, age and other socio-cultural factors in the context of food security / livelihoods programming.
• Ability to foster commitment and build capacity among project staff and in-country actors around gender and youth integration.
• Experience in the Africa region is preferred
• Strong public speaking and facilitation skills required.
• Proficiency with Microsoft Office

The Position Summary

The Program and Research Assistant (PRA) will support the PMU, working with the PMU members and reporting directly to the Program Manager - PMU. The PRA will support collaboration with program, finance, and administrative staff to ensure GIRL-H Program and MEL systems comply with donor and Mercy Corps policies and procedures, including adherence to Mercy Corps program management minimum standards. The ideal candidate should have extensive experience working within both Programs and Research departments in the development sector.

Core Functions:

The core functions of this position are:

Program Management:

• Work with country offices to tease out learnings across board and track program performance.
• Track program expenditure and report same to PMU- Country and Global.

Global Initiatives:

• Track and develop materials to commemorate global events.
• Expand GIRL-H visibility.

MEL

• Document program performance by developing reports.
• Track performance on learning agenda.
• Identify and develop success stories.

Essential Job Responsibilities

STRATEGY AND PLANNING

• Work with the PMU Manager to support the teams in implementing the program’s strategy following the donor and Mercy Corps standards.
• Contribute to preparing the global level reports by collating information from the country level reports and providing the gaps to PMU Manager for follow up with the countries.
• Support the PMU team in administering the program budget by preparing procurement and expense requests, following up with relevant departments, and tracking expenses at the PMU level.
• Schedule, organize, and document minutes for PMU-led meetings and events. The person will also follow up with respective staff on specific action points.
• Working with the PMU team, organize and maintain the program filing system under the guidance, ensuring a clear trail of versions and appropriate filing.
• Support the PMU Manager in tracking and reporting on the status of deliverables as per the PMU and Country Workplans, sending advance reminders to the responsible staff for upcoming deliverables.

RESEARCH & SUPPORT

• Provide administrative support to the MEL Manager to prepare various research protocols for ethical approval in Kenya, Uganda, Haiti, and Nigeria.
• The PRA will track deliverables expected by the ethical approval body.
• The PRA will schedule, organize, and document Research, Monitoring, Evaluation, & Learning (RMEL) related meetings and events.
• Provide administrative and quality control support for RMEL activities led by PMU, e.g., baseline survey, midline assessment, end-of-project evaluation, ad-hoc research, and dissemination, among others.
• Support in data collection activities such as desk research and key informant interviews to address specific research questions defined by the MEL Manager.
• Support the MEL Manager in collating data from various countries to feed into; the global program log frame and periodic donor reports.
• Provide support in implementing quality assurance and control for all program and research data collection/collation activities as guided by the MEL Manager.
• Provide support in developing various data collection tools addressing adhoc research questions and problems under guidance from the MEL Manager.
• Support in testing electronic data collection scripts prepared for various research and monitoring activities.
• Support in various components of program implementation within the countries.
• Other duties as assigned by the PMU

Accountability to Participants and Stakeholders

Mercy Corps team members, we are expected to support all efforts toward accountability, specifically to our program participants, community partners, other stakeholders to international standards guiding

international relief and development work. We are committed to actively engaging communities as equal partners in designing, monitoring, and evaluating our field projects/programs.

Minimum Qualification & Transferable Skills

• A minimum of a Bachelor’s degree with at least three (3) years cumulative experience working as an assistant in a program and research environment within the development sector
• Experience in supporting multi-country program management in a program or research environment is desired
• Experience in supporting/implementing quality assurance and control for programs and research activities
• Ability to develop and manage work plans for complex multi-country programs within the development sector
• Effective written and oral communication in English
• Qualification in project or program management will be an added advantage
• Proficiency in MS Office specifically in MS Excel and MS PowerPoint are required
• Knowledge of an analysis software is an added advantage e.g. SPSS, STATA or R