Francophone Partnership Adviser – Ireland At Concern Worldwide

Our vision, our mission and our work are all defined by one goal – ending extreme poverty, whatever it takes. We believe that no-one should have to live in fear that they won’t have a home to sleep in or enough food to feed their children. For over 50 years we have been working with the world’s poorest people to transform their lives.

Today we are a team of over 4,400 highly skilled and dedicated professionals from 50 countries who share an exceptional depth and diversity of experience. We want committed, values driven staff to join our HQ team and are currently looking for a fluent French speaking Partnership Adviser to be part of our Strategy, Advocacy and Learning (SAL) department.

Concern offers in-house management and leadership courses and tailored organisation-wide learning opportunities both in-person and online. We are committed to providing our staff with the skills needed to excel in their jobs. All employees are required to undertake training in equality, diversity and inclusion; the Code of Conduct; and safeguarding, along with any other training required for the role.

Our culture is values driven and friendly. A global engagement survey conducted in 2022, responded to by 3,577 of our staff, showed that 89% of our staff would happily recommend Concern as a great place to work and 94% are proud to tell people that they work for Concern.

Our office is located in Dublin 2 and we are currently working a hybrid model (50% remote working) and offer flexi time.

The job: To support Concern country offices to develop strong equitable partnerships with local civil society actors in line with Concern’s commitment to localisation.

This will entail working with country offices to (i) strengthen their internal capacity to work in partnership, (ii) support the development of tools and systems to aid partner project management and (iii) ensure effective capacity strengthening of local organisations.

This will be achieved through direct and remote support to country offices along with documenting and sharing best practice and new developments in this area of work, to enhance cross-organisational learning.

Job location:

• Dublin or locations where Concern has an office (more information here).
• If based in a Concern operational country, pay scale will be benchmarked for that country.
• Candidates must be legally entitled to work in Ireland or any other Concern operational country at the time of application.
• Our office is located in Dublin 2 and we are currently working a hybrid model (50% remote working) and offer flexi time.

The role will incorporate up to 30% travel.

If you join us, this is what you will be doing:

Providing support to Country Offices to:

• Assess their internal capacity to work in partnership with local civil society actors, and provide necessary training and accompaniment to teams to strengthen this capacity.
• Develop, update and roll out partnership strategies and partnership related strategic approaches and tools to ensure a harmonised approach to programming with local civil society partners.
• Map and select local civil society partners.
• Reflect and adapt, assuring and improving the quality of their work with local civil society partners.
• Facilitate participatory capacity assessment and support approaches, and ensure budgeted capacity support plans are implemented to maintain quality of programming and support local civil society partner’s organisational and strategic development.
• Roll out the localisation agenda for humanitarian action, focusing on emergency preparedness and response by local civil society and other community level actors.
• Support country management teams with the change management process

Programme Design, Monitoring and Evaluation:

• Support country programmes to ensure local civil society partners are integrated in all stages of programme and proposal design and can participate in decision-making.
• Support country programmes to develop project management tools and templates for effective planning, implementation and monitoring of programmes with local civil society partners, ensuring quality and accountability.
• Work with Concern’s head office-based M+E and Digital Data Gathering teams to strengthen data collection tools and dashboards to monitor Concern’s support to local civil society partners and their programmes.
• Support country teams to work with local civil society partners to monitor and strengthen approaches to safeguarding and accountability, in line with international best practice.

Documentation and Learning:

• Contribute to Concern’s learning efforts on equitable partnerships by assessing progress and learning with country programmes, and documenting this for sharing across the organization.
• Contribute to annual reports on Concern’s progress on its work with local civil society.
• In coordination with other advisers working on partnership, develop and disseminate guidance for country teams on working with local civil society partners, with a specific focus on capacity strengthening for local civil society partners.
• Contribute to an online database of documentation and guidance materials and tools on partnership, through engagement with staff in the country offices and within other head office directorates.
• Stay abreast of the localisation debate within the Region, and work with country teams and head office colleagues to support the roll-out of an upcoming Concern position on localisation.
• Carry out trainings, workshops and webinars as appropriate.

Representation/Networking:

• Support country programmes to establish and maintain relationships with Partnership specialists in other NGOs, institutions and with professional groups.
• Provide information on Concern’s Partnership and Capacity Strengthening work for other INGOs, IOs and donors, if requested.

Skills you will bring:

Essential:

• At least five years’ experience (of which at least three overseas) working with local civil society partners or supporting country programmes working through a partnership model in fragile and conflict-affected contexts. (Experience working in West and Central Africa with local partners and supporting civil society strengthening programmes would be a distinct advantage.)
• Experience facilitating participatory capacity assessments and developing support plans with local partners.
• Experience of capacity strengthening and mentoring for staff on partnership principles and approaches.
• Experience developing practical guidance and templates for staff and partner organisations, to ensure quality programming and effective project management.
• Demonstrable understanding of the key challenges of working in fragile and conflict-affected contexts including working towards both humanitarian and development objectives.
• Ability to work in French and English.

Personal Skills

• Excellent staff and partner facilitation and training skills.
• Excellent analytical and critical thinking skills.
• Excellent interpersonal communication skills and ability to operate as part of a team.
• Ability to work independently.
• Ability to communicate complex information clearly and in an accessible format.
• Excellent presentation skills.

You will report to the Senior Localisation and Partnership Advisor and will work with SAL Technical Advisers, Desk Officers in the International Programmes Directorate and key overseas staff, as well as with the Alliance partners’ staff.

The salary will depend on location and pay scales for that country; this is a fixed term (two years) contract, with the possibility of extension. If based in Dublin, the range is €54,500 to €62,286.