The African Initiatives for Relief and Development (AIRD) is a non-political, non-religious and non-profit making NGO with a presence in Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Liberia, Niger, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda. AIRD’s mission is to enable the compassionate movement of those displaced by natural or man-made disasters to safety and providing them and their host communities with opportunities to build their lives and thrive for the long term. AIRD provides operational technical support, including but not limited to-transport, logistics, rehabilitation of infrastructures, sustainable livelihoods, WASH, and environmental sustainability initiatives to promote resilience and empowerment for displaced people and their host communities. in partnership with relief and development organizations that focus on disaster-affected, poverty-infested, and development-oriented areas. AIRD delivers for and through partners including but not limited to UN Agencies, international and national donor organizations and governments.
Position
The ideal candidate for Program Manager will provide leadership for strategic program design, implementation, evaluation, organizational learning and knowledge management, ensuring alignment of country programs program strategies with AIRD’s corporate strategy, multi-year country strategic and annual business plans, core intent, program outcomes, and sectoral program standards, as well as with local context, government development, refugees, IDPs and host community priorities, partnership and donor opportunities.
Overall Responsibility /Job summary
Reporting to the Director of Programs (DoP), the Program Manager (PM) will be responsible for leading, guiding, designing, monitoring and execution of programs, providing business development, awards management, communications, and operational support to AIRD country programs as well to AIRD Head Office (HO). The PM will closely work with the country programs, grants, partnerships, and finance staff, as well as the HO team to ensure compliance to donors’ terms and conditions, monitoring and tracking progress, timely and accurate awards reporting and maintaining grants records. The PM will also guide and assist with new proposal development as needed. The position entails potential travel to country programs as determined by country program support needs.
Key responsibilities
1. Proposal Development and Awards Management
· In collaboration with the funding coordinator, review, edit, and provide substantive feedback on the technical components of proposal development and grants reports prior to donor submission in a timely manner, proactively engaging with country program and HO teams to assure the inputs and content of the donor proposals and reporting are of the highest quality.
· Engage and support in capacity and systems strengthening for country program and HO teams to ensure high quality and timely satisfaction of key donor compliance requirements, reporting, partnership matters, as well as adherence to AIRD’s policies, procedures, and systems.
· Review sub-award proposal packages, sub-award agreements and modifications, ensuring compliance with donor requirements and AIRD’s Partnership Excellence Guidelines, Policies and SOPs
· Assist DoP in ensuring the technical soundness and review of grant proposals/modifications and submissions, including collaborating with various departments to acquire signed approvals and helping to complete proposal packages.
· Assist in maintaining the HO’s awards filing system and various grant and CPs support trackers.
· Support country program teams in the management, review, and approval of grant workflows.
· Support onboarding of program, grants, and partnerships staff to country programs and HO.
· Support roll-out of AIRD’s Project Cycle Management Manual guidance; and any new organizational process.
· In partnership with the DoP, support country program teams with accessing, interpreting and actioning various donors’ compliance guidelines
· Work with DoP and country program team and grants staff to ensure that grant opportunities on various portals, including UN Portal are monitored and responded to in a timely manner
· Collaborate with other AIRD departments as needed
2. Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL)
· The PM will be responsible to develop and lead the design and implementation of a complete MEAL system for AIRD. This includes:
a. Designing, refining, and managing data, information, reporting flow and reporting processes and products to ensure AIRD SMT can take sound management decisions based on accurate and validated data. This includes but is not limited to:
i. Developing new human-impact Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for AIRD as per international accepted standards,
ii. Improving information management and data quality,
b. Ensuring a process to share learnings and lesson learnt is in place, supervise dissemination of these to the global AIRD community as well as partners, and provide recommendation of how to integrate these into operations (i.e. “operationalize” learnings). This includes but is not limited to:
i. Strengthening knowledge sharing and learning across the organization.
ii. Ensure that MEAL provide ongoing evidence and inputs for improving the programs interventions.
iii. Identify lessons learnt and develop case studies to capture qualitative outputs of the country programs.
· The PM will also provide technical assistance on existing and new projects. This includes:
a. Develop, implement, and assess monitoring frameworks for all AIRD activities and projects, as well as for funding proposals.
b. Assume responsibility for full-cycle monitoring and evaluation of AIRD’s programs, developing appropriate methodologies and tools to design evaluations.
i. Develop the overall framework for project M&E systems in collaboration with senior project staff, including requirements, reporting, baseline, and evaluation surveys; develop and monitor project management plan to systematically document performance.
ii. Facilitate design of “SMART” objectives, logic models, monitoring frameworks, and evaluation plans during annual work-planning process and as required.
iii. Identify capacity building gaps; develop and roll out training modules (initial, refreshers, etc) for AIRD.
iv. Develop tools (workshops, webinars, etc) to share learnings and best practices to improve the quality of country program activities.
v. Assist the DoP in monitoring routines and regular follow ups
3. Internal and External Communications
· Participate in monthly calls with country program teams and meetings.
· In collaboration with the Communications & Marketing Manager:
a. Respond to day-to-day requests for information, and draft internal and external communications.
b. Provide editing and writing support for country program updates, factsheets, sitreps and other communications materials, as needed.
4. Administrative Support
· Compile necessary documentation for and seek signatures for agreements, proposals, Power of Attorney requests; as well as any other documents needing signatures and approvals.
· Develop and/or manage trackers and other documentation systems, including all grant proposals, awards and KPRs and KPIs for CPs tracker, donor reporting, subawards, etc.
5. Country Programs Reports
· Develop, review, and update existing tools and templates for country program reports (monthly, quarterly, annual) for Head Office
· Monitor AIRD operations activities by analyzing operations data, reports and other relevant documents submitted by country offices.
· Provide support to country teams in improving their activity reports ensuring all activities are included (including all donors and AIRD fundings)
· Provide regular feedback to DoP on AIRD country programs and flag relevant issue that need a follow up from HO.
· Monitor implementation of each grant by reviewing, enhancing, and validating project reports before submission to donors
· Report to the DoP on regular basis on programs implementation
· Review and validate program reports before submission to donors.
6. Support to country offices operations
· Ensure all activities implementation is in accordance with AIRD SOPs and donors project guidelines.
· Develop templates for M&E, work plans, baselines, to support project implementation at country office levels.
· Prepare work plans for each new country projects and ensure compliance and accountability in delivering and reporting on country programs.
· Assess the need for and draft new Operations policy and processes as necessary.
· Undertake country performance assessments using existing processes, propose new tools and processes when required.
· When necessary, conduct field visit to country offices to verify implementation of donor’s requirements and AIRD SOPs and provide technical support.
7. Fundraising and Communication
· In collaboration with the Strategic Partnership and Business Development Department
a. Develop a thorough AIRD track record including case studies, to be used for fundraising purpose.
b. Contribute to proposal development for donors and other stakeholders.
c. Contribute to AIRD annual reports.
8. Strategic alignment
· Ensure country program results are in line with Program Partnership Agreements (PPA) in all country programs reports.
· Propose new Key Performance Indicators (KPI) and Key Performance Results (KPR) to be included in donors’ proposal.
· Develop KPI and KPR to ensure AIRD activities are aligned with Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)
9. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
· Work with the ERP focal points to ensure all data are accurately and timely captured.
· Extract monthly reports for existing modules, and follow up and discrepancies with operations managers in country.
· Flag any concerns to DoP
10. Strategic Leadership and Program Management
· Develops and coordinates the implementation of the County Programs multiyear strategic plans; work closely with senior management and country management team across AIRD CPs and HO to develop/update the strategic plan annually, ensuring successful implementation, monitoring, and improving the County Program’s overall strategic progress.
· Collaborate with senior management country management team to determine and establish strategies and objectives within specified areas while championing the use of performance measures, key performance results indicators, data, and analytics to inform and guide business decisions.
· Review and evaluate the strategic plan’s progress and modify the plan as needed and provide oversight for the day-to-day implementation of assigned projects to ensure integration into the County’s business strategy to include monthly monitoring reviews of progress against strategic objectives.
11. Supervision (PO)
· Manage the performance of the Program Officer, providing adequate mentorship, review of performance and suggesting areas of improvement as well as rewarding successes.
12. Other
· Participate in special projects as needed and as discussed with DoP;
· Travel to CPs to provide monitoring, ad-hoc support or to gap fill as needed.
Qualifications, experience and skills
· A University Degree in Project Planning & Management, Monitoring and Evaluation or a related field with 8 years of progressive experience or an advanced University degree in similar fields with 5 years of progressive experience.
· Experience in institutional and organizational strengthening, project planning and management.
· Proven knowledge & experience in conducting M&E work in humanitarian relief and development.
· Ability to write clearly articulate proposals, reports, and correspondence.
· Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
· Good analytical skills and ability to present complex information in a precise and organized manner.
· Capacity to lobby, influence and represent AIRD at all levels.
· Experience in working with international development partners, international non-governmental organization (INGOs) and donors.
· Ability to effectively collaborate closely with people within and across departments both CPs and HO in a multi-cultural environment.
· Strong teammate and an independent performer in a fast-paced environment.
· Strong administrative skills, and the ability to prioritize projects with attention to detail.