Economic Strengthening Advisor

Background: 

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) responds to the world’s worst humanitarian crises and helps people to survive and rebuild their lives. The IRC has been one of the largest providers of aid in South Sudan for over 20 years, delivering emergency relief and post-conflict assistance since 1989.  Today, we provide services for more than 900,000 people across five states—Central Equatoria, Northern Bahr El Ghazal, Unity, Jonglei, and Lakes. 

Position Summary:

The IRC is seeking an Economic Strengthening Advisor for a three-year, multimillion dollar USAID-funded livelihoods project in South Sudan aimed at promoting recovery with resilience in the most heavily conflict-affected areas of South Sudan. The project will focus on four sub-objectives: 1) infrastructure; 2) agriculture, livestock, and fisheries; 3) economic opportunity, and 4) water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH). The project will have a flexible implementation model that will integrate conflict sensitive and peacebuilding approaches throughout all its interventions. The Economic Strengthening Advisor will be responsible for all activities associated with the agriculture, livestock, and fishery and economic opportunity objectives under this project. S/he will report to the Chief of Party and supervise a team of technical coordinators. S/he will be responsible for developing and implementing technical strategies and activities that layer humanitarian response with longer-term development. This position is contingent on the IRC being awarded funding and is anticipated to begin in July 2015.

Specific responsibilities include the following:

• Work with the COP to provide direct leadership, supervision, and oversight of the economic strengthening and development project components

• Ensure the implementation of an efficient and effective project that addresses the needs of beneficiary populations in the most cost-effective manner.

• Coordinate the design and implementation of all economic strengthening activities—including carrying out any necessary market assessments—and the setting of high quality performance targets ensuring the adherence to technical standards, best practices, and USAID guidelines.

• Lead collaboration with partners, local stakeholders, and communities regarding economic strengthening activities.

• Explore avenues for sustainability elements during program implementation, working closely with local communities and partner organizations.

• Carry out ongoing reviews of project performance and, working with the Conflict and Gender Advisor, ensure that project design evolves to align with the changing context and needs of target groups.

• Ensure linkages with other donor-funded economic strengthening programs operating in the target areas, where appropriate.

• Provide technical support to field-based program staff and conduct technical trainings when required.

• Work closely with the M&E unit and the other technical advisors on monitoring, evaluation, and learning systems and analyze the data it generates to inform project management, technical programming, and development of best practices and applied research.

• Conduct frequent field visits to project sites to monitor activities and engage local stakeholders, including private sector actors.

Required Skills:

• Technical proficiency in livelihoods/economic development program design, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation, especially in conflict-prone areas.
• Demonstrated experience managing similarly complex projects in emergency contexts similar to South Sudan, involving management of multi-million dollar budgets/portfolios and coordination with multiple programs and partner institutions.
• Demonstrated knowledge and application of conflict sensitive approaches and disaster risk reduction (DRR) within program design.
• Knowledge and prior application of participatory methodologies.
• ·     Solid experience implementing both emergency and longer-term development programs with a focus on recovery with resilience.
• ·     Skills in the area of results-based management and the use of monitoring and evaluation frameworks as a primary management tool.
• ·     Experience implementing youth-focused economic opportunity programming highly desired.

Experience/Qualifications:

• Master’s Degree in international development, agriculture, agronomy, or a closely related field is required.
• S/he must have at least five (5) years of experience designing, implementing, and managing economic strengthening initiatives in/for conflict-affected countries.
• Prior experience managing USAID-funded programs.
• Experience in leveraging private public partnerships is preferred.
• Fluency in English is required.