Diakonie Katastrophenhilfe
Position Title: Project Manager AA
Reports to: Regional Director
Supervises: Finance Officer AA
Close coordination with Diakonie Katastrophenhilfe country offices in Somalia, South Sudan, and Ethiopia, and Regional Finance Controller
Department/Function: Programme, more precisely AA Project Coordination Unit
Duty station Regional Office Nairobi, with travel to partner offices and project locations in Somalia, South Sudan, and Ethiopia
Project: Multi-sectoral and integrated humanitarian response with a focus on food security and livelihood for conflict and climatic shocks affected vulnerable people and communities in Somalia, South Sudan, and Ethiopia. The project aims to save lives, improve access to basic services and restore living conditions of conflict and climate shock affected, vulnerable people throughout 5 project outcomes:
- Outcome 1 covers protection needs,
- Outcome 2 livelihood and food insecurity,
- Outcome 3 WASH needs.
- Outcome 4 climate crisis-induced disasters
- While these 4 components will be implemented by the partner organizations,
- Outcome 5 aims to promote locally led aid and develop the capacities of the project’s partners and will be managed by Diakonie Katastrophenhilfe Regional Office in Nairobi.
The project is based on a regional approach, as there are common patterns of humanitarian crises such as conflict and sudden-onset natural disasters in the three target countries. Gender, protection, and inclusiveness are mainstreamed; Cash and Voucher assistance programming is the preferred way of rendering assistance. Nexus programming is followed to ensure sustainability and enable self-reliance of the crisis-affected people. This is complemented by adopting a community-led approach to build up community capacities for protection, sustainable water infrastructure and services, and disaster preparedness action. To effectively react to sudden-onset natural disasters, the proposed action adopts a flexible approach through integrated crisis modifiers, most prominently cash-based response mechanisms for emergencies.
Under the coordination of Diakonie Katastrophenhilfe (DKH), who is the contractual partner of the donor (German Foreign Office), the project is implemented by 9 local partners – 3 local partners in Somalia, 2 local partners in Ethiopia and 3 local partners in South Sudan (managed by an international NGO).
The overall project is coordinated, supported, and supervised by Diakonie Katastrophenhilfe Regional Office. The three country offices/desks for South Sudan, Somalia, and Ethiopia support and supervise the implementing partners in their respective countries.
Donor: German Foreign Office (GFFO or AA in German)
Overall, Job Purpose
The Project Manager AA manages the regional project with an emphasis on ensuring the timely and high-quality achievement of the project outcomes by the respective implementing partners and full compliance with donor and DKH standards and regulations.
The Project Manager functions as the focal point for the project and brings together the country reports for consolidation and joint reporting to the Head Office for onward submission of the reports to the donor. He/she is responsible for monitoring the project progress through monitoring of indicators in collaboration with the DKH country structures and synchronization of achievements of MEAL milestones. He/she supervises the Finance Officer AA who is, likewise the Project Manager, part of the AA coordination unit, and reports to the Regional Director.
Roles and responsibilities
Project Coordination and reporting
- Ensure proper and timely implementation of the project according to the approved proposal and log frame and agreed policies and donor requirements.
- Monitor the overall project progress against the master log frame and proposal and ensure, together with the Finance Officer AA, compliance with donor and DKH regulations and standards.
- Generate on a half-yearly basis a high-quality interim narrative and oversee the interim financial reports and submit both timely to the Head Office in Berlin for an extension to the donor.
- Produce monthly-consolidated reports on the same by using the partner’s/country narrative reports to generate a combined monthly report and disseminate these consolidated reports to the country offices.
- Validate the content of reports received by implementing partners through the country offices
- Promote harmonization of approaches and methodologies across countries, where applicable and possible (f.i. in Cash for Assets activities, WASH), by implementing common tools
- Coordinate with other relevant projects such as the AA-funded ToGether consortium and others for synergies and complementarity.
- Stay informed about the localization agenda and initiatives in ETH, SSD, and SOM and identify ways of creating linkages/synergies.
- Responsible for keeping the Regional Director and Heads of Mission in South Sudan and Somalia updated on the overall project progress, challenges, and planned mitigation measures in addition to the monthly reports.
Compliance
- Ensure, by supervising the Finance Officer AA, overall budget monitoring, financial management, and expense control for the project in line with donor rules and guidelines
- In collaboration with Finance Officer AA, train partner staff on the detailed AA financial guidelines and requirements to implement activities and execute budgets accordingly with full compliance.
- Oversee preparation for external audits.
Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning Framework (MEAL)
- Oversee the comprehensive MEAL framework for the project, which outlines the monitoring components for each country program and assists implementing partners in defining which data is adequate and needs to be collected, enabling measuring project progress and informing project decisions.
- Guide country offices on the use of monitoring tools for implementing partners which include cross-cutting outputs on protection mainstreaming and gender-based actions.
- Monitor project progress against the master log frame and er work plan and share continuous learning from the implementation. Ensure that technical quality and standards are considered and respected during project implementation.
- Conduct, in collaboration with the country offices, monitoring visits and preparing, together with the Finance Officer for on-the-spot checks.
- Together wit
- h the Finance Officer AA, review and identify discrepancies between financial and program progress and provide mitigation measures to implementing partners through the country offices.
- Create opportunities for experience-sharing and learning
- Engage, guide, and supervise consultants for capacity building, training, quality assurance, end-line study, etc.
- Organize in collaboration with the DKH Capacity Building Coordinator learning and training events under outcome 5, identify and engage facilitators (where needed and in line with the budget) and ensure smooth implementation of the events and that results inform project implementation.
- Organize and facilitate any other meeting (project partners, stakeholders, etc.) which has significance for the overall progress of the project.
Project Quality Assurance
- Enhance the quality of programming throughout the project cycle through project review meetings, program quality initiatives (such as gender analysis, stakeholder mapping exercise, etc.), close-out meetings, and program quality checks.
- Ensure the implementation of accountability mechanisms (participation and effective communication of beneficiaries at all stages of the project cycle
- Quality checks and monitoring in line with the commonly agreed MEAL framework (standards and designs, monitoring tools, beneficiary selection criteria): review all project-related documents prepared by the country offices and implementing partners e.g. ToRs, and MoU among other project documents.
- Advise implementing project partners on the implementation process and work on standardization of project-related processes and development of SOPs
Communication
- Making use of the resources of the offices to deliver different communication products on the project such as technical papers and presentations about approaches and technical setup to be used f.i. for clusters in the respective countries and communication to donors in the region
- Ensure regular and open/transparent communication between the 3 country offices, the Regional Offices, and their implementing partners to share best practices and learnings.
Other Functions
- To attend RO and any other meeting related to his/her areas of responsibility.
Minimum Qualifications and competencies
Education
- BA Degree in political or social science, agriculture, or a related field
- Post-graduate qualification in project management or experience in the management of large-scale programs
Working experience
- Minimum 5 years of field experience in Project coordination/management positions in INGOs managing complex humanitarian projects
- Significant exposure and experience in successfully managing and leading consortia or multi-sectoral, complex projects with several partners
- Relevant working experience in at least 2 of the project sectors such as Protection, Food/Livelihood through CVA, WASH, Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR)
- Knowledge of cash transfer programming including practical experiences in the implementation or management of CVA activities is a strong advantage
- Broad working knowledge and experience working with German donors (AA, BMZ)
Skills and Abilities
- Proven ability to prioritize tasks, meet deadlines, and work with limited supervision and under pressure.
- Excellent interpersonal skills and demonstrated ability to establish effective working relations at all levels
- Demonstrated skills in ensuring donor compliance.
- Fluent in written and spoken English
- Willingness to travel to ‘insecure areas within the constraints of DKH security policy
- Computer literate with significant experience in Microsoft Office and proficiency in MS Excel and ideally in project management/monitoring software
- Experience in capacity-building skills is an added advantage.
- Previous work experience in a hostile environment and certified attendance of a personal security course (HEIST, HEAT, etc.) is an advantage
- Ability to work in a team-based environment and achieve common goals
How to apply
The position is open for internal and external applications.
If you are the right candidate, please explain your motivation and abilities to fill this position by sending a signed application letter, your signed CV, a list of references (all in .pdf format), as well as any supporting documents by email (not exceeding 6 MB) to: recruitment.ken@diakonie-katastrophenhilfe.org mentioning “PM-AA” followed by your name in the subject line. The deadline for receiving applications is March,1st, 2023.