Village Savings & Loan Association (VSLA) Coordinator at CARE International

JOB SUMMARY:

CARE seeks to engage a Village Savings and Loan Association (VSLA) Coordinator for its anticipated Bloomberg funded Women Economic Development Program to alleviate living standards of economic marginalized women and girls in Bauchi state, Nigeria. This will be a 1-year pilot program aimed at increasing capacity, strengthening women’s networks, enabling access to finance and gender equitable access to financial products and services leveraging CARE’s signature VSLA model. 

JOB RESPONSIBILITIES: 

Job Responsibility #1: Activity Planning, Implementation and Reporting     

• Prepare a detailed VSLA implementation plan and ensure the partners understand well and properly implement.
• Ensure physical target achievements are as agreed; and review regularly the progress and maintain regular update of the workplan and track outputs.
• Facilitate and ensure establishment of VSLAs, the target communities.
• Lead and provide technical guidance on financial inclusion interventions and strengthen the engagements between the VSLAs and the private sector players.
• Identify technical capacity and challenges for the project participants and VSLA facilitators skills /knowledge on VSLAs, Business Management, etc. and plan for the relevant capacity trainings.
• Oversee and regularly monitor as well as provide technical support when the VSLAs are conducting the share purchase, social contributions and borrowing and repayment of loans to ensure proper documentation.
• Facilitate stakeholder, traders, and financial services providers engagements as part of establishing strategic linkages for VSLAs.
• Document lessons learned and capture stories of change on VSLAs.
• Consolidate/compile monthly, quarterly, and annual activity reports and special events showing achievements, lessons, constraints, and recommendations and submit to supervisor on agreed time.

Job Responsibility #2: Capacity Building/ Technical Support   

• Review and adapt basic business, financial and relevant technical training material.
• Conduct VSLA training for the partners, VSLA Facilitators and monitor step down training.
• Facilitate peer-to-peer support and ensure social cohesion within VSLA.

Job Responsibility #3: Coordination and Representation   

• Participate in CARE Community on Financial Inclusion activities.
• Represent the CARE on coordination meetings at LGA, community and wards

Resource Mobilization 

• Contribute to CARE’s resource mobilization efforts.

Other Responsibilities as Assigned

QUALIFICATION/EXPERIENCE/TECHNICAL SKILLS

Required

• University degree in Agri-business Management, Economics, Business Management, or any related field.
• Minimum 4 years of work experience in VSLA programming.
• Ability to write reports of high quality.
• Sound knowledge of entrepreneurship and value chain development related activities.

Desired

• Previous experience with INGOs or NGOs. 
• Advanced computers skills (MS Word, Excel, and PowerPoint
• Ability to establish priorities, plan, coordinate and organize own work plan.
• Knowledge of local languages spoken in Bauchi State.

Competencies:

• Approachability                                 
• Building Effective Teams 
• Customer Focus 
• Integrity and Trust 
• Drive for Results 
• Comfort around Higher management 
• Business Acumen 
• Negotiating 
• Organizational Agility