BRACED Consortium Coordinator

Job posted by: Concern Worldwide - Wed, 1 Oct 2014

Job Details:

Organisation: Concern Worldwide

Deadline Tue, 14 Oct 2014

Job type: Contract

Location: United Kingdom

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Working with the world’s poorest people to transform their lives, Concern Worldwide is an international humanitarian organisation dedicated to tackling poverty and suffering in the world’s poorest countries. We work in partnership with the very poorest people in these countries, directly enabling them to improve their lives, as well as using our knowledge and experience to influence decisions made at a local, national and international level that can significantly reduce extreme poverty.

 

Building Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Extremes and Disasters (BRACED) Programme:

Concern Worldwide (UK) is establishing consortia in Chad and Sudan and in South Sudan. These consortia will be funded by the Department for International Development of the UK Government. The aims of these consortia respectively are:

   ·      Improving resilience of settled and nomadic marginalised men and women to climate and conflict-related shocks and stresses in Eastern Chad and Western Sudan. This consortium comprises Concern Worldwide as lead agency; Tufts University - Feinstein International Centre, World Agroforestry Centre (International Centre for Research in Agroforestry). A key strategic partner is the Sudanese organisation, Al Massar.

   ·      Supporting 250,000 vulnerable farmers and agro-pastoralists, particularly women and girls, in South Sudan to become resilient to climate stresses and shocks. The consortium comprises the Agency for Technical Cooperation and Development (ACTED), the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), Oxfam GB and a South Sudanese research organisation, Sudd Institute.

The overall governance of the consortium is outlined in a Governance Agreement.

The following position is being advertised subject to approval of the consortium proposal by the Department for International Development.

Job Title: BRACED Consortium Coordinator

Reports to: Regional Director (South Sahel and West Africa), Concern Worldwide (Lead Agency in both consortia)

Job Location: London

Contract Details: Three Years

Pay Band: 8a: starting salary £51,154 per annum

Job Purpose:The purpose of the role of the Consortium Coordinator is to ensure the effective implementation of BRACED consortia programmes, funded by DFID. This entails significant support to the consortium in Chad and Sudan; and providing support and representation functions to the consortium in South Sudan, which will be managed in-country by a Consortium Manager. The role will also input significantly to the on-going development of Concern’s broader expertise in resilience programming.

Key elements of this position include

  • Providing overall representation of consortia member agencies
  • Liaising with donors and other external actors (including other BRACED consortia funded by DFID and actors implementing programmes related to resilience building, climate and the environment).
  • Providing effective leadership and coordination of the member agencies within the BRACED Consortium Chad & Sudan on behalf of Concern.
  • Managing contracts management and grant compliance (most particularly for the Chad & Sudan BRACED consortium).
  • Managing the Consortium Coordination Unit established to support the BRACED programme.
  • Contributing to Concern’s overall resilience programming.

This position requires significant travel to programme and other relevant locations.

Main duties &Responsibilities: General Responsibilities:

Ensure that all elements of the Chad & Sudan BRACED Consortium coordinate effectively to deliver the commitments of the consortium in an efficient, effective and economical manner.

Support the South Sudan BRACED Consortium with representation and other areas of strategic, technical engagement as required.

Contribute to developing Concern Worldwide’s expertise in resilience work through engagement with relevant staff and groups within the organisation and external institutions.

Strategic Management:

· Developing and maintaining relationships internally between consortium members and externally with relevant actors.

· Strategically managing BRACED Chad & Sudan programme to identify opportunities for increasing impact of the consortium approach; for both consortia, influence sectoral actors based on evidence and identify additional funding sources to fund the resilience building strategy.

· Representing and communicating consortia programme initiatives to relevant stakeholders.

· Coordinating, monitoring, reviewing, evaluating and sharing lessons learnt from the activities of members in each consortium to support the achievement of outcomes and impact.

· Coordinating knowledge sharing events, advocacy initiatives and learning.

Consortium Coordination Unit Management

The Consortium Coordinator manages all staff employed in this Unit in collaboration with Consortium Members. This is done through ensuring the following:

· Managing, supervising and supporting the Consortium Coordination Unit to ensure that the team fulfil its responsibilities.

· Providing secretariat support to the consortium.

· Reporting and making presentations to the BRACED Chad & Sudan Consortium members on activities and on opportunities to increase the added value of the consortium approach.

· Ensuring effective communication and information sharing between the members of the Chad & Sudan BRACED consortium and with other relevant actors and stakeholders according to the advocacy and communications strategy of the consortium.

· Attending appropriate coordination fora, representing both consortia at such meetings and reporting back to the relevant consortia groups on the outcomes of such meetings.

· In consultation with relevant Consortia member agencies’ technical staff, ensuring that monitoring and evaluation (M&E) tools are applied consistently by all members; that there is effective M&E of all BRACED Consortia Programme activities, and that M&E reports are regularly sent to consortia members and relevant external funding agencies as appropriate.

· Making recommendations to Concern as lead agency for changes to Consortium procedures, systems and processes providing adequate justification. Play a key role in ensuing discussions with consortia members.

· Conducting regular programme visits to ensure the BRACED Chad & Sudan Consortium Members have a thorough understanding of all aspects of the programmes to ensure accurate representation of the BRACED Consortium. Visiting South Sudan BRACED programme as necessary to effectively support this programme.

· Developing proposals, activity plans, reports and other relevant BRACED Chad & Sudan Consortium Programme documents for consortium members that meet the requirements of external funding agencies.

· Undertaking other appropriate duties as required.

Finance and Donor Compliance

Supporting the country financial controllers or other designated finance staff of Concern Chad and Sudan and BRACED Chad & Sudan consortium member agencies to assure the following finance and grant compliance activities:

· Being responsible for overall financial oversight of the consortium budget and expenditure.

· Ensuring that compliance to donor agreements are adhered to within the Consortium Coordination Unit and Consortium members

· Ensuring development and implementation of work and expenditure plans and ensure that programmes are implemented within agreed and approved budgets through undertaking regular budget monitoring of expenditure against budget.

· Ensuring that internal and donor financial reports are submitted in a timely manner and up to high quality standard.

· Supporting Concern Worldwide in conducting internal and external audits of the Consortium Programme.

· Ensuring implementation of recommendations from due diligence assessments and continuous monitoring to ensure controls and risk mitigation measures are in place.

Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E)

Supporting the coordination of monitoring and evaluation of the Consortium Programme:

· Ensure adherence to monitoring and evaluation guidelines, frameworks and indicators for the BRACED Consortia Programmes and provide technical support to embed M&E and accountability in consortium implementation.

· In coordination with consortia members, ensure and enhance primary stakeholder ownership of the programme via community participation and consultation and use of participatory approaches in M&E.

· Organise and facilitate meetings (remote or otherwise) with Consortia members on progress, learning from consortia programming and innovations, analysing challenges and developing solutions to develop learning points in order to share learning and contribute to the development of best practice.

· Communicate widely within the consortia and externally, best practice developed through implementation, based on evidence.

Advocacy, Communications and Visibility

The BRACED Consortium Coordinator is responsible for coordinating advocacy, communication and visibility activities of the BRACED Chad & Sudan Consortium Programme including:

· Maintaining the Consortium website.

· Producing briefing papers, press releases and other publications which are approved by the Consortium members for wider dissemination to influence practice and policy in the sector and promote the work of the consortium.

· Ensuring that high quality translations of documents are produced where required.

· Ensuring that documents produced for external advocacy, communication and visibility purposes are approved by individual consortium agencies prior to dissemination.

· Ensuring that the Consortium identity is clearly identified on all documents for public consumption.

Accountability

· The Consortium Coordinator is responsible for coordinating and documenting accountability activities agreed by the BRACED Chad & Sudan Consortium members and tracking progress against the consortium accountability framework.

Training and Capacity building

· Identifying training needs of staff recruited to support the BRACED Chad & Sudan consortium.

· In consultation with consortium members, identify their training needs and that of the partners/contractors with whom they work.

· Planning, and where appropriate, providing interventions to meet the identified training needs. Person specification: Essential:

· Appropriate qualification at Master’s degree level, such as public management, development administration or a relevant social science. A background in climate and environment, policy related programming and working in similar contexts are desired and a distinct advantage for candidates.

· Proven experience (at least 5 years) in senior programme management and leadership positions working with national governments, INGO’s, NGOs, CBOs, parastatal organisations, other civil society groups and the private sector.

· Experience of working with major international donors, particularly DFID.

· Excellent written and spoken English and French languages skills.

· Strong analytical, interpersonal, communication and organisation skills.

· Strong coordination skills specifically with the ability to effectively coordinate among consortium members.

· Ability to build and maintain effective relationships with senior representatives of donor, INGO and Government structures and to represent the consortium at national or international level fora

· Thorough understanding of gender, equality and protection issues.

· Strong experience of financial management and donor compliance processes.

· Experience in the design and use of monitoring and evaluation systems.

· Experience of working in or managing a consortium model of working.

· Knowledge of the key tools used by donor agencies, such as logical frame works, results chains, theories of change, results-based management and financial administration systems

Desirable:

· An understanding of accountability as applied within humanitarian and development programming.

· An understanding of programme participant protection policies and international humanitarian standards and how to apply these across a range of international actors.



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