Youth Engagement Gender & Conflict Sensitivity Officer at Mercy Corps

Location: Damaturu, Yobe
Position Status: Full-time, Regular

Program / Department Summary

• Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa, and its influence spreads across the continent. Yet, inequality and insecurity have consistently undermined Nigeria's development. Mercy Corps Nigeria was established in 2012 to respond to these challenges. The Nigeria team is headquartered in Abuja, in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), with offices throughout Nigeria.
• With a strong and growing team of over 200 staff, Mercy Corps is currently serving over 600,000 beneficiaries across the country with programming in Lagos in the South; Kaduna, Benue, Nasarawa and Plateau in the Middle Belt; Kano, Yobe and Borno in the North.
• Programs include girls’ education and financial inclusion, community peacebuilding, market-based livelihoods and a multi-sector humanitarian response that has a strong emphasis on WASH, Shelter, Cash and Protection. With the vision of a Nigeria in which all people are empowered, engaged, resilient and secure, Mercy Corps Nigeria focuses on the root causes of conflict, governance, humanitarian response, and market systems development.
• Working with a diverse funding base that includes the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), UK Department for International Development (DFID), United Nations (UN), European Commission (EC), European Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection (ECHO), Global Affairs Canada (FKA DFATD), and several foundations, Mercy Corps empowers people to recover from crisis, build better lives and transform their communities for good.
• Mercy Corps is starting a five-year, $30 million USAID-funded Rural Resilience Activity in Nigeria’s northeast. The purpose of the Rural Resilience Activity (RRA) is to sustainably move people out of chronic vulnerability and poverty. The Rural Resilience Activity will enable individuals and communities to engage in strong and sustainable market systems rather than continuing to rely on humanitarian assistance and faltering with each new shock.
• The Rural Resilience Activity is a five-year, $30 million USAID-funded Program in Nigeria’s northeast. The purpose of the Rural Resilience Activity is to sustainably move people out of chronic vulnerability and poverty.
• The Rural Resilience activity will enable individuals and communities to engage in strong and sustainable market systems rather than continuing to rely on humanitarian assistance and faltering with each new shock.
• To achieve this purpose, the Activity will have four components and four cross-cutting elements:
  • Component 1: Provide up-to-date evidence for the selection of market systems, livelihoods and employment opportunities that contribute to inclusive and resilient growth and improved nutrition.
  • Component 2: Stimulate market systems growth and diverse economic opportunities (Pull activities).
  • Component 3: Build capacity to take advantage of market systems opportunities (Push activities).
  • Component 4: Sequencing, layering, integrating (SLI), and collaborative learning to improve activity effectiveness, sustainability, and scale.

General Position Summary

• The Youth Engagement, Gender and Conflict Sensitivity Officer will be responsible for implementing all aspects of youth integration and engagement strategies, as well as gender and conflict sensitivity aimed at ensuring that interventions result in positive outcomes for male and female participants of different target age groups and “do no harm”.
• S/he will have overall responsibility for building team members’ and partners’ capacity on promising practices to be youth centred and gender-sensitive.
• S/he will provide field and office-based support to the Youth Engagement Advisor with dotted lines to the Gender, Nutrition and Peace and Conflict Advisors.
• S/he will work closely with the technical teams in the implementation of strategies to link youth and women to informal and formal life skills training, access to services and products, and markets.
• The position will support the training of staff, the provision of technical assistance; and ensuring that youth engagement, gender and conflict sensitivity strategies are mainstreamed across activities.
• As conflict and gender play a crucial role in youth and wider societal dynamics in the program area, the Officer will also lead efforts on the ground and with our partner's organizations to ensure that our program is conflict and gender-sensitive.
• This will include efforts to ensure that the program makes a meaningful contribution to building peace, strengthening good governance, and promoting gender equity.

Essential Job Responsibilities

• Lead the implementation of youth engagement, GESI, Conflict and Nutrition interventions across sectors of the Rural Resilience Activity.
• Lead and work with the technical team in the implementation of youth engagement strategies and women economic empowerment focusing on business and life skills training and mentorship, capacity building and increased participation in markets.
• Participate in youth and women-led market research to inform program design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation.
• Work with technical teams including financial services and market systems development to identify the private sector actors to promote, advocate and build capacity on the benefits of engaging youth and women as clients, suppliers and employees, and effective methods of doing this.
• Work closely with markets and financial services teams to identify and promote sectors, services and products that have a high potential for growth and youth engagement.
• Support all research and assessments conducted under RRA and integrate relevant analysis of conflict and gender dynamics.
• Develop and implement action plans for conflict management and gender sensitivity - drawing from research and assessments conducted under the project - that are integrated into existing RRA programming in order to ensure a strong link between the peace, gender, markets and resilience components of the program.
• Provide assistance to public and private sector partners to effectively deploy and operationalize sustainable gender-transformative approaches and practices in their business models
• Assist team members with information, tools and resources to improve performance & reach objectives.
• Create and sustain a work environment of mutual respect where team members strive to achieve excellence.
• Build the capacity of the RRA team and partner organizations in inclusive, youth-friendly and gender transformative market systems development approaches.
• Represent Mercy Corps at government, donor, NGO and other relevant events, in close coordination with the Chief of Party and country leadership.
• Coordinate activities with consortium partners, sub-grantees, private sector partners, local government and other implementers, as well as with other Mercy Corps programs.
• Represent Mercy Corps externally at relevant conferences, workshops and other convenings.

Security:

• Work closely with the country team’s security focal point to develop and maintain systems that promote the safety and security of all team members.
• Ensure that programs are designed and implemented with a clear analysis and understanding of security.

Organizational Learning:

• As part of our commitment to organizational learning and in support of our understanding that learning organizations are more effective, efficient and relevant to the communities they serve, we expect all team members to commit 5% of their time to learning activities that benefit Mercy Corps as well as themselves.

Accountability to Beneficiaries

• Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts toward accountability, specifically to our beneficiaries and to international standards guiding international relief and development work, while actively engaging beneficiary communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring and evaluation of our field projects.
• Team members are expected to conduct themselves in a professional manner and respect local laws, customs and MC's policies, procedures, and values at all times and in all in-country venues.

Supervisory Responsibility:

• None

Accountability

• Reports Directly To: Youth Engagement Advisor with a dotted line to the Gender and Conflict Advisors
• Works Directly With: (Deputy) Chief of Party, Program technical specialists/Officers, MEL team, partners, finance and operations teams

Knowledge and Experience

• BA required and Master’s Degree preferred in a related field.
• 3+ years working in designing and delivering youth engagement activities in markets systems, agribusiness and enterprise development.
• Ability to foster commitment and build capacity among project team and partners around gender and youth development.
• A clear understanding of contemporary development issues particularly those related to economic opportunities for youth.
• Excellent organizational, written and verbal communication skills.
• Spoken and written proficiency in English, Hausa language capabilities a plus.
• Ability to facilitate meetings, effective presenter and open collaborator.

Success Factors

• The ideal candidate will be results orientated, self-motivated and have demonstrated analytical skills.
• The ideal candidate will be familiar with market-based agricultural programs targeting youth and will demonstrate cultural knowledge and sensitivity, while also demonstrating skills and ability to provide incentives and capacities for market actors working with youth and offer technical assistance on youth engagement across project partners.