About CRS
Catholic Relief Services is the official international humanitarian agency of the Catholic community in the United States. CRS works to save, protect, and transform lives in need in more than 100 countries, without regard to race, religion or nationality. CRS’ relief and development work is accomplished through programs of emergency response, HIV, health, agriculture, education, microfinance and peacebuilding.
CRS Sudan is as dynamic and diverse as the needs of the people we serve. Since 1978, CRS Sudan has been assisting the people of Sudan across the emergency, recovery, and development spectrum. Key sectoral areas for CRS Sudan include food security, livelihoods, nutrition, health, peacebuilding, and natural resource management. CRS Sudan has an expanding portfolio of programs crossing the emergency response and resiliency spectrum. Currently, CRS Sudan oversees programming across five Darfur states and the Red Sea.
Note: This position is contingent on donor funding.
Job Summary:
Catholic Relief Services (CRS) Sudan Program seeks a qualified program manager to provide management leadership on the implementation of an anticipated third phase of a USAID/BHA funded project entitled “Recovery in Sudan for Improved Nutrition and Growth (RISING)” in West Darfur – Sudan. The project currently provides recovery livelihood and nutrition services across five states of Darfur. The anticipated third phase of funding will enable the program to build on lessons learnt and focus on supporting the target communities in promoting food and cash crops using value chain approach to agricultural development. The project aims to help integrate farmers and related micro-enterprises into commodity value chains so that they gain improved access to markets, and more empowered relationships with supplies, processors, and traders.
The Program Manager (PM II) will oversee high quality program development, implementation, monitoring and reporting of a multi-sectoral response program in West Darfur. The PM will be responsible for providing technical support and administrative leadership, coordination and management support to the CRS RISING project implementation team in West Darfur to attain high quality impact on household and community resilience to recurrent shocks and stresses in alignment with CRS strategic goals. S/he will lead and supervise a team in the El Geneina and deep field offices in West Darfur and is responsible for building their competencies and growth in resiliency programming with a particular emphasis on strengthening the capacity of local staff, NGO partners, and government counterparts. S/he ensures program quality of resilience building activities and coordinates with other stakeholders (national and local government, other NGO, UN bodies) in West Darfur. S/he will contribute to the development of new resiliency project proposals which if successful, would also come under his/her project management. The proposed timeframe for this part of the project is from July 2022 to June 2023
Roles and Key Responsibilities:
Implementation:
- Develop work plans and ensure the project is implemented to meet donor and communities’ expectations in terms of time, scale, quality, and budget, including successfully implementing strategies for phase-out and sustainability.
- Proactively identify issues and concerns and use participatory processes to overcome implementation obstacles.
- Work with Technical Advisors within CRS and broader consortium to improve technical interventions and promote integration of cross-cutting themes including gender, peacebuilding, accountability, and integral human development (IHD).
- Ensure that communities and individuals are appropriately targeted, and that program implementation is responsive to communities and consistent with CRS’ and donor’s guidelines and quality standards, CRS Guiding Principles and Values, and in line with the agency’s strategic plan.
- Ensure integration of interventions with other leveraged resources and programs.
- Ensure that safeguarding, protection, and gender equity are consistently and intentionally streamlined into all activities, including staff recruitment and training to ensure robust systems of prevention and response.
Financial Management:
- Manage and monitor CRS and local partners’ financial and material resources relevant to project need.
- Review actual expenditures against the budget and in coordination with Finance, prepare regular timely financial reports that explain variances.
MEAL and Reporting:
- Ensure effective use of project monitoring, evaluation, accountability, and learning (MEAL) systems.
- Champion learning with project staff and partner teams in West Darfur and contribute through analysis and evaluation of performance data, regular participation in learning events and workshops, and leadership on assessments and operational research.
- Provide regular updates to Chief of Party on progress, priorities, and constraints and prepare high quality reports and success stories for sharing with the donor and other key stakeholders.
Partnership and Representation:
- Maintain strong relationships including with local government, other NGOs, private sector partners, and other stakeholders.
- Assess and strengthen partnerships, applying appropriate partnership principles, tools and approaches with support from CRS Partnership team.
- Design, implement and monitor capacity building plans for partners including institutional capacity strengthening, individual capacity building of partner staff, and overall accompaniment.
- Represent CRS in relevant technical and operational working groups at the state level,
Supervision:
- Manage team dynamic and ensure staff well-being in coordination with Chief of Party and Field Office Manager.
- Supervise and coach six (6) program staff to achieve objectives while using appropriate systems and tools.
- Effectively manage talent and promote professional development for team members, particularly as it relates to resilience programming.
- Identify training needs and opportunities for staff and facilitate training as appropriate.
Other:
- Contribute to the Country program’s learning between large flagship projects.
- Contribute to other initiatives including program design and new business development, assessments, success story documentation, development of sector-related manuals and guides, and other activities that support new and/or current resilience programming.
- Contribute to creating and maintaining the proper conditions for learning. Help establish a safe environment for the sharing of ideas, solutions, and difficulties and the capacity to detect,
- Ensure that you and your team understand and adhere to CRS’s staff safety and security policies and plans.
Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:
- Excellent oral and written communication skills including good presentation and facilitation skills.
- Ability to lead and motivate a team in challenging circumstances and contribute to a positive team dynamic.
- Ability to relate to people at all levels internally and externally. Strategic in how you approach each relationship.
- Strong strategic, analytical, systems thinking, and problem -solving skills, with capacity to see the big picture and ability to make sound judgement and decisions and offer innovative solutions.
- Strong relations management abilities.
- Team building leadership abilities
- Proactive, resourceful, solutions oriented and results oriented.
- Strong organizational and planning skills.
- Ability to handle and coordinate multiple priorities in a fast-paced environment.
- Ability to transfer knowledge and skills through formal and informal training
- Knowledge of CRS program quality standards and partnership principles preferred.
Required/Desired Foreign Language – Proficient in English (speaking, reading and writing ability) required; Arabic speaking and reading capability will be an added plus.
Travel Required – Ability and willingness to travel up to 45% of the time to remote areas of the country.
Work conditions/Environment conditions: Based in El Geneina, West Darfur. The living situation is a guesthouse with other staff. This is a non-accompanied post.
Key Working Relationships:
***Supervisory*;** Program Managers, Senior Project Officers and Project Officers
Internal: Chief of Party, Program Managers, Senior Project Officer, Field Office Managers, MEAL Manager, Senior MEAL Officers, Learning and Communications Manager, Head of Programs, Country Representative, Head of Operations, other key staff in Geneina and Khartoum Offices, Regional Technical Advisors (RTAs).
External: Host country government agents in West Darfur, UN Officials, NGO agents, donor officials and local partners.
Qualifications – External
Basic Qualifications:
- Master’s degree in International Development, International Relations, or in the field of community development, agriculture, natural resource management, health and nutrition, or related field is required. Additional experience may substitute for some education.
- Minimum 5 years work experience in program management required with at least 2-3 year’s field experience in humanitarian or resilience programming. Experience with agro-enterprise and/or agricultural value chains programming preferred.
- Experience managing moderately complex projects preferably with an International NGO.
- Prior supervisory experience required; experience supervising remote teams in a complex operating environment strongly preferred.
- Demonstrated ability to write high quality technical proposals and reports
- Experience implementing monitoring, evaluation, accountability, and learning systems required.
- Prior experience managing USAID funded projects with understanding of USAID expectations and trend for food security and livelihood activities preferred.
- Competence using MS Windows and MS Office packages (Excel, Word, Powerpoint, Outlook, Teams). Web Conferencing Applications, information and budget management systems, and knowledge sharing networks
- Experience engaging partners and strengthening partnerships.
- Staff management experience and abilities that are conducive to a learning environment.
- Some experience and abilities in capacity strengthening – developing curricula and facilitating trainings.
- Self-reliant with high emotional maturity and an ability to work in a challenging and demanding environment.
Agency-wide Competencies (for all CRS Staff)
These are rooted in the mission, values, and guiding principles of CRS and used by each staff member to fulfill his or her responsibilities and achieve the desired results.
· Integrity
· Continuous Improvement & Innovation
· Builds Relationships
· Develops Talent
· Strategic Mindset
· Accountability & Stewardship
*Our Catholic identity is at the heart of our mission and operations. Catholic Relief Services carries out the commitment of the Bishops of the United States to assist the poor and vulnerable overseas. We welcome as a part of our staff people of all faiths and secular traditions who share our values and our commitment to serving those in need.
*Disclaimer: This job description is not an exhaustive list of the skill, effort, duties, and responsibilities associated with the position.*
Note: All positions requiring residence or frequent travel outside their home country must undergo and clear a pre-employment medical examination.
CRS’ talent acquisition procedures reflect our commitment to safeguarding the rights and dignity of all people – especially children and vulnerable adults – to live free from abuse and harm.
CRS welcomes candidates from the countries and regions in which we work. In the event the successful candidate is an expatriate or global telecommuter, the anticipated duration of the assignment is informed by a term limit, based on the type and level of the job and the needs of the agency.
CRS is an Equal Opportunity Employer