Deputy Chief of Party (SCRI) at FHI 360

Requisition: 2021201104
Location: Damasak, Borno

Job Summary

• FHI 360 is seeking qualified Deputy Chief of Party (DCOP) level candidates to support an anticipated five-year USAID funded project that will provide flexible and responsive education services for children and youth in Northeast Nigeria.

Position Description

• The Stakeholder Coordination, Relations, and Innovation (SCRI) DCOP is responsible for focused engagement with national, state and local stakeholders across OTL’s education landscape. That engagement will include coordinating priorities across stakeholders and regions, identifying opportunities to engage with stakeholders, building synergies with current and new education interventions, child protection, WASH and livelihoods activities, representing OTL’s activities across formal groups and creating informal groups where necessary.
• The SCRI DCOP will communicate to the team and prepare communications for external dissemination.
• The SCRI DCOP will help to develop innovative responses as necessary and relevant to the Nigerian context along the lines of continued COVID 19 response, ensuring girls and young women are engaged in programming, identifying challenges and areas of leverage or duplication across interventions.
• The SCRI DCOP will partner with the Technical Managing DCOP to ensure that OTL’s interventions are relevant and aligned with other actors in the field. The SCRI DCOP will report to the COP of the project and contribute to the strategic direction for technical interventions to benefit children and youth adversely effected by Northeast Nigeria’s fragile context, including but not limited to on-going and severe communitarian violence, lack of access to safe learning spaces, and lack of access to quality teaching.
• The SCRI DCOP is aware of the priorities of the Northeast Nigerian context, is able to identify new challenges and risks to programming and can raise those in meetings with stakeholders. He/She is a contributor and team player, able to listen and aggregate information to apply it to OTL’s interventions. The SCRI DCOP will work closely across stakeholders, both inside and outside of the project and with the Education in Emergencies Working Group and counterparts.
• The SCRI DCOP will be an advocate for OTL across the education sector, integrating information into programming to strengthen it and to identify potential challenges, etc., in the sector to proactively address them.
• The SCRI DCOP will maintain positive relationships with INGO partners, the Education Cluster, other groups relevant to the sector vis a vis data gathering, triangulating information, and predicting strategi direction. The SCRI DCOP will be able to maintain strong relations with stakeholders outside of the project at the implementer level.

Minimum Requirements

• Master’s degree or higher in education, international development, or a related field.
• At least ten years of experience supporting education projects in developing or conflict affected countries. Experience working in Northeast Nigeria strongly preferred.
• Demonstrated experience developing and implementing education programing that is flexible and responsive to changing needs and security
• Demonstrated experience working with and across stakeholder groups, advocating for best practice and Do No Harm interventions
• Demonstrated ability to manage an influx of multiple streams of data and identify disconnects between data and intervention;
• Attend regular meetings with stakeholders and implementers in the field to build relationships and to advocate for OtL and children and youth;
• Ability to advocate powerfully for young women and girls’ rights to access education;
• Ability to advocate for the power of education for children and youth across conflict affected areas of NE Nigeria;
• A strong network of contacts through which to advocate for access for all children and youth to quality education;  
• Must have at least five years of progressively more responsible supervisory experience that involves direct leadership of professional and support staff as well as oversight and evaluation of staff performance.
• Strong understanding of monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) activities and experience working with MEL counterparts to measure, learn from and adapt programming.
• Experience managing large scale activities including conducting strategic planning, work planning, contingency planning and report writing
• Demonstrated knowledge of United States Government rules, regulations, policies, and procedures as they relate to project and program compliance and reporting.
• Demonstrated ability to work in a highly challenging political context with multi-lateral and bi-lateral donors.
• Ability to forecast needs in the education sector as it relates not only to student learning but also to civic stability.
• Excellent team player, with keen ability to build strategic coalitions.
• Fluency in English required.