Enterprise Assistant at Search For Common Ground’s International

Location: Maiduguri, Borno (North-East Nigeria)
Reports to: Deputy Project Manager/ Child Protection Manager
Direct Report: The Enterprise assistant will have no direct report

About the Project Qualifications
In the past decade, states in the North East region of Nigeria have faced frequent attacks by Boko Haram militants leading to widespread displacement, violations of national laws, international humanitarian and human rights laws, and a deepening humanitarian crisis. Children, who are the most vulnerable members of society, have suffered the worst impacts as pre-existing problems of access to social protection, education and healthcare increase, new threats emerge, and the systems to protect children fails.

This project aims to ensure that children verified and separated from CJTF receive a comprehensive child protection package including counselling, psychosocial support and socio-economic reintegration, and that their communities understand the importance of their separation and reintegration. Search will work closely with the children, their families and communities, and CJTF to address the psychosocial and economic needs of the children and to influence the attitudes of communities and CJTF so they understand the negative impact of associating with armed groups on children and prevent the CJTF from using children. By increasing the resilience of children associated with CJTF and increasing their employability, this project will facilitate lasting reintegration of these children and amplify positive narratives around their role in communities as productive civilian actors and agents for peace.

Position Summary
We are searching for:

• The Enterprise Assistant supports the Enterprise Officers to implement the economic reintegration component of the “Supporting the Socio-Economic Reintegration of Children Associated with Armed Groups, and other vulnerable children, in North-East Nigeria” project. This will ensure the timely and quality implementation of all project activities as defined in the proposal.
• The Enterprise Assistant will support coordinate training for enterprise beneficiary children to ensure they are equipped with technical skills and knowledge. Enterprise Assistants will then ensure children of legal age are matched with mentors from their local community to develop skills through informal apprenticeships, before then being supported with seed grants to procure basic items to set up small scale businesses in their area of skills development.
• The Enterprise Assistant will motivate, inspire and support children in target communities in making informed choices regarding their skills development, to assist them in the future.

Roles and Responsibilities

• Work directly with selected enterprise adolescent children and help increase their financial capabilities and coordinate their enrollment in the apprenticeships and micro-enterprise training on a one to one basis, as well as a selection of self-employment and wage-employment businesses opportunities;
• Identify & organize micro-enterprise training courses/workshops to facilitate the development of start your own business skills of the target participants; Support individuals in their applications for the creation and engagement of bank accounts;
• Provide support and information to target participants with regard to improving their job-seeking skills through support and referrals to other initiatives;
• Support target beneficiaries in their application to establish bank accounts
• Develop terms of reference (TORs) and Purchase Requests (PRs) for required trainings and workshops.
• Provide support and information to target adolescent children to improve their job-seeking skills through support and referrals to other initiatives.
• Provide necessary support in organizing Business Opportunities and Administrative Support sessions that will help trained target participants in identifying and accessing small business seed grants, employment opportunities, and information on available economic resources;
• Support the coordination of all training activities that will take place in targeted communities;
• Help identify, assess and select the local artisans/small business owners in targeted communities;
• Support in sensitizing local artisans/small business owners in targeted communities by providing the necessary support to empower the children;
• Monitor each young person’s relation with his/her employer and pay random visits per quarter to each involved business;
• Collect monitoring data from the field in line with program indicators and submit regular updates, reports and case studies on success stories and lessons learned;
• Prepare activities reports on a regular basis and contribute to the period progress reports; Keep proper records of field expenditures when appropriate and report on these to the Project Manager;
• Track information and report about other related activities implemented in the LGA as part of the project; and
• Keep abreast of local context and security situation to provide feedback on Search’s weekly context analysis.
• As job descriptions cannot be exhaustive, the position holder may be required to undertake other duties that are broadly in line with the above key duties.

Qualifications
Education:

• University degree or equivalent in Marketing, Business Management, Social Science, or a related field.

Required Experience:

• Minimum of 2 years experience in marketing, livelihood, or a related field.
• Minimum 2 years of experience with business and strategy development processes.
• Experience working with Children Associated with Armed Groups.

Other Relevant Requirements:

• Familiarity with principles including the best interest of the child, do no harm, humanitarian principles, amongst others.
• Strong cross cultural communication and interpersonal skills.
• Highly organised and systematic, with excellent attention to detail.
• Experience working in emergency settings
• Experience working in different communities in Borno State
• Experience working with refugees, IDPs, host communities, and other vulnerable populations
• Excellent analytical and writing skills

Desirable:

• Good analytical, problem solving and project planning skills.
• Ability to prioritise, plan, organise workflow to tight timeframes, handle multiple tasks, and be flexible with changing priorities.
• Community oriented and respect for local culture.
• Good IT skills, particularly with MS Office - Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint.
• Strong command of both written and spoken English.
• Knowledge of a local language (Hausa, Kanuri) a must.
• Holds self and others to account to deliver on agreed goals and standards of behaviour.
• Demonstrates a high degree of professionalism/integrity.
• Provides good administrative and logistical support to the team.
• Strong attitude towards teamwork and collaboration.
• Actively seeks support in addressing difficulties in the execution of duties.
• Strategic thinking and effective contribution to own work and organisational development.
• Sound judgement and decision-making in complex situations.
• Strong emotional intelligence including self-awareness.
• Leads by example to motivate high performance of others.
• Strong commitment to continuous learning.