Jobs at the International Rescue Committee (IRC)

Scope of work

• The Country Director will provide the strategic vision and leadership for the country program with the main focus on ensuring IRC Nigeria's programs meet the expressed needs of the beneficiaries we serve.
• S/he is responsible for ensuring the delivery of quality programs, maintaining/expanding donor and government relations, fundraising and budget management, security and operations management, and developing a motivated and professional team.
• Reporting to the Regional Director, the Country Director will work closely with, and receive support from regional and headquarters program technical units, safety and security services, regional finance and operations staff.
  

Responsibilities
Strategic Planning and Management:

• Working closely with the Regional Director, and regional team, manage annual review and implementation of IRC Nigeria's Strategy Action Plan (SAP) and ensure Nigeria's SAP is socialized and institutionalized within the country program;
• Engage effectively with Strategy team members in NY and the UK on IRC2020 strategy initiatives.
• Ensure that structures and systems are in compliance with IRC standards, and that they support program delivery and promote management coordination and efficiency throughout the country program;
• Lead a cohesive and effective management team, promoting collegiality and professionalism among peers and conduct regular senior management team meetings and communicate decisions to IRC Nigeria staff.

Program Quality & Development:

• In coordination with country grants and program staff, ensure that all IRC Nigeria proposals are developed using the Outcomes and Evidence Framework (OEF) tools and resources and that all initiatives include OEF core outcome indicators;
• Ensure the consistent use of well managed assessment, design and proposal development processes, prioritizing beneficiary engagement in design and ensuring gender equity issues are highlighted;
• Promote a team approach and positive learning environment utilizing headquarters, country program and operations staff and partners to consistently enhance the quality of design and implementation.
• Commit to improving IRC Nigeria's ability to effectively collect, analyze, and utilize program measurement data to meet IRC2020 commitments.

Key Partner & Donor Relations:

• Strengthen program and support staff's understanding of partnership principles, partner relationship management and mentoring and develop IRC as a partner of choice for major local and international donors;
• Develop and maintain a high level of understanding of donor priorities, country plans and planned funding initiatives;
• Maintain and expand participation with key donors, host government, local stakeholders and relevant policy and coordinating bodies;
• Work with the partner to ensure that program activities are reported upon in a timely, accurate and well-presented manner, in compliance with IRC and/or donor requirements;
• Develop and maintain effective working relationships with all stakeholders in Nigeria - including community leaders, NGOs, government ministries/authorities, UN agencies, to enhance cooperation and coordination;
• Represent IRC Nigeria in external coordination and policymaking forums and networks, including liaison with donors;

Fundraising and Budget Management:

• Ensure submission of appropriate, timely high quality proposals and lead required donor negotiations;
• Provide timely and effective oversight of the financial position of the country program including identification and implementation of required changes to match funding levels;
• Maintain effective and coordinated budget monitoring processes for grant funds and discretionary funds;
• Pro-actively seek appropriate funding opportunities and act as country program representative in discussions with HQ senior staff on strategic opportunities;
• Work with finance and compliance staff to ensure good financial forward planning and deal with audit requirements.

Security & Operations Management:

• Prepare and lead the expansion in new LGAs in Borno State whilst ensuring safety of IRC Nigeria staff members, national and international.
• In coordination with the Regional Safety and Security Advisor ensure that the security management plan for the country program is updated and ensure the consistent monitoring and analysis of the security environment and adherence by all staff to the IRC security protocols and procedures;
• Working with country senior management team ensure the development, implementation and monitoring of financial and operational policy and procedures to ensure constant compliance with IRC and donor policies across the program;
• Promote coordination and teamwork between program and operations staff to improve quality of proposal submissions and program delivery.

Staff Development & Retention:

• Develop a positive work environment for all staff supported by a professional level human resource management function;
• Ensure IRC national salaries and benefits remain competitive to attract and retain mid and senior level staff;
• Support and hold management staff accountable for providing staff development opportunities and planning;
• In coordination with the HR department, lead efforts to address staff concerns raised during the annual employee engagement survey;
• Identify and mentor high-performing staff.

Requirements

• University degree in related field or equivalent program management and development experience at senior level;
• Minimum 6 years of relevant experience;
• Ability to work in a highly volatile environment and make rapid decisions;
• Proven abilities in all aspects of project design and implementation;
• Familiarity with US and European donors and their rules, requirements and guidelines;
• Previous experience managing a remote and diverse team;
• Proven experience in new business development;
• Experience of working with local stakeholders - demonstrated ability to collaborate with peer agencies, local government and community leaders to work effectively towards a common and agreed upon results;
• Demonstrable experience in capacity building of partners (civil society, public and/or private sectors);
• Experience living in a post-conflict and conflict environment;
• Excellent verbal and written English skills.
• IRC and Africa experience is desirable.

Other Details:

• This is an accompanied post.

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Job Overview/Summary

• With direct management support from Deputy Director of Programs and technical support from the Regional Measurement Action Coordinator, the Monitoring and Evaluation Coordinator will ensure that the IRC Nigeria country program implements the monitoring and evaluation commitments as set out in its Strategic Action Plan -SAP 2020. Core to that the M&E focal person will be ensuring that suitable monitoring and evaluation systems are in place, implemented as intended, and reporting in a comprehensive and timely manner to facilitate program coordinators and managers deliver programs that achieve the desired outcomes /impacts.

Responsibilities

• Technically support IRC Nigeria to meet standards set out in Strategic Action Plan (SAP 2020) and IRC's global Monitoring for Action (MfA) initiative for improving monitoring practice and use of data within the organization, including through:

Strengthening Outcome / Program / Sector M&E:

• Responsible for providing technical oversight & support for establishment and maintenance of routine monitoring systems, presentation of findings and building related staff competencies
• Work with project and support staff to ensure that project design in proposals is logically sound, beneficiary-informed and contextually appropriate, based on learning from previous projects and technical best practice, and includes a Theory of Change and SMART log frame (with IRC core indicators and enabling assessment of project progress, quality, outcomes, and if relevant impact).
• Responsible for ensuring that detailed and feasible project monitoring plans are developed that: i) provide an indicator matrix, ii) map M&E roles and responsibilities of project and support staff, iii) consider ethical and safe collection and storage of data, iv) consider data quality audits, v) consider storing, protecting and sharing project documents, and vi) consider the end of project learning review.
• Work with project and support staff to determine which monitoring activities will take place and which data collection methods will be used to ensure their adequacy and appropriateness.
• Work with project and support staff to ensure that monitoring activities are adequately resourced, with sufficient project and support staff and adequate budget.
• Work with project and support staff to ensure that the project work plan includes monitoring activities (or that a stand-alone monitoring work plan is in place), is up-to date and progress tracked.
• Work with project and support staff to develop, translate, pilot and finalize data collection tools as needed.
• Work with project and support staff to establish project/program databases &/or tracking sheets, &/or set up in the data platform (COMET).
• Assist in training of staff in data collection methods, management, analysis and action techniques.
• Work with project and support staff to ensure that data is collected and entered into databases &/or tracking sheets, &/or the data platform on a regular basis.
• Responsible for providing consistent, supportive supervision to strengthen staff performance as necessary to meet monitoring objectives and ensure data quality.
• Responsible for conducting data quality audits of projects & programs to identify and resolve systemic problems affecting data quality, and documenting and storing findings in project files on Box.
• Assist in conducting regular analysis and action planning meetings to:
  • Compare data against project milestones, targets, and quality expectations across project sites;
  • Identify issues requiring further attention;
  • Define action needed and assign responsibility and deadlines,
• Work with project and support staff to track progress on action points related to implementation and M&E activities.
• Work with project and support staff to provide M&E inputs for reports written during project implementation.
• Work with project and support staff to share reports written during project implementation with donors and other stakeholders and upload them to project files.

Technical Oversight and Support for Surveys, Assessments and Other Discrete Learning Activities, and Building Related Staff Competencies:

• Work with project and support staff to develop the TORs for needs assessments and surveys.
• Work with project and support staff to develop detailed work plans and budgets for needs assessment and survey activities.
• Assist in recruitment of enumerators & HR onboarding.
• Assist in selecting respondents following predefined sampling strategy.
• Work with project and support staff to clean and conduct descriptive analysis of needs assessment and survey data.
• Responsible for conducting advanced analysis (inferential statistics) of needs assessment and survey data.
• Provide the M&E inputs for needs assessment and survey report writing
• Provides inputs from survey and assessment data for tracking of overall progress on projects, programs and strategic priorities.

Learning:

• Assist in conducting and documenting end of project learning reviews, and sharing lessons learned and best practices, incorporating these into new project designs.
• Assist in identifying, documenting, storing and sharing lessons learned that have implications for refinement of best programmatic practice.

Strengthening Country program M&E:

• Responsible for compiling routine data across sites and for cross-cutting strategic objectives (safety and power)
• Responsible for establishing overall country program core indicator tracking sheets &/or dashboards.
• Responsible for establishing cross-sectorial approaches to monitoring (for example for activities being undertaken by more than one sector, or beneficiary counting).
• Assist in completing quarterly Monitoring for Action project assessments and identifying projects in need of targeted support.

Establishing cross-cutting M&E systems:

• Responsible for providing technical oversight and leadership for cross-cutting thematic M&E (such as trainings and sensitizations beneficiary accountability mechanisms and establishing coherent approaches to beneficiary counting)

Key Working Relationships:

• Position Reports to: Deputy Director Programs
• Position directly supervises: M & E Manager (X2)

Other Internal and/or External Contacts:

• Internal: Program Coordinators and Managers throughout the country program, relevant Regional/HQ-based
• External: Partners

Professional Standards:

• IRC staff must adhere to the values and principles outlined in IRC Way - Global Standards for Professional Conduct. These are Integrity, Service, and Accountability. In accordance with these values, IRC operates and enforces policies on Beneficiary Protection from Exploitation and Abuse, Child Safeguarding, Anti-Workplace Harassment, Fiscal Integrity, and Anti-Retaliation.

Requirements

• University degree (statistics, social science, public health, development economics, or a related discipline)
• Minimum four (4) years of international experience within the development / humanitarian sector, at least 2 of which are at management level preferably in Africa.
• Proven technical skills in monitoring and evaluation, including experience with multi-sectorial and multi-donor funded programs and experience with qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis;
• Proven abilities in developing monitoring plans, data collection, information management, use of databases, and analysis and performance monitoring;
• Demonstrated ability to train and build capacity of others;
• Comprehensive knowledge of humanitarian accountability principles and their translation into practice;
• Strong planning, organizational and interpersonal skills;
• Excellent analytical, presentation, and reporting skills;
• Excellent database, data management and data analysis skills, with experience using at least 2 software applications such as Microsoft Excel, Access, SPSS, STATA;
• Previous experience with electronic/mobile data collection (Magpi, CommCare,) and GIS mapping preferred;
• Strong commitment to IRC's mission, purpose and values.

Housing:

• The M&E Coordinator is an unaccompanied position and will be based in Yola field Office, North East Nigeria and accommodation is in shared-housing.

Deployment Security Protocols:

• North East Nigeria is security phase 3 (ORANGE) so the M&E Coordinator will be expected to respect the various security protocols in place in country. Phase 3 requires clear contingency planning in place with staff prepared should hibernation or evacuation be called.