Senior Localization and Partnerships Coordinator

Programme & Policy

Job Description

Responding to the world’s worst humanitarian crises in a great variety of roles, the International Rescue Committee’s staff is a force for humanity and hope. If you’re skilled and passionate, we’d like to add your energy to ours.

We are one of the world’s largest humanitarian agencies, provide relief, rehabilitation and post-conflict reconstruction support to victims of natural disaster, oppression and violent conflict in 42 countries. We are committed to innovation and creative partnerships. Active in public health, education, livelihoods, women's empowerment, youth development, and protection and promotion of rights, we assist people from harm to home.

Job overview

Within the Programs and Awards Management Unit, the Senior Localization and Partnerships Coordinator leads the country team in its strategic ambition for greater localization of the Ukraine response, including all aspects of the partnership management lifecycle. This includes setting the strategic direction of IRC’s localization and partnerships work in Ukraine and representing the organization in relevant localization and inter-agency coordination bodies. This role will help ensure IRC supports, enhances and empowers local actors and entities in Ukraine to lead, shape and build a robust humanitarian response and early recovery. This role oversees the broader Partnerships team, which is responsible for contractual and process elements of partnerships, such as partner selection, due diligence, risk management, monitoring and reporting processes, and capacity sharing with partners, in line with the IRC’s Partnership Excellence for Equality and Results System (PEERS).

The partnership management team is also responsible for working with other departments to ensure that our approach to our partnerships is in line with the IRC’s guiding partnership principles of equality, complementarity, mutuality, solidarity, results-orientation, and humility.

The Senior Localization and Partnerships Coordinator will report to the Deputy Director of Programs.

Responsibilities

Strategy and Program Approach

• Co-facilitate and support robust stakeholder analysis processes that enable the Strategy Action Plan (SAP) and each program design to be based on how we can best support, reinforce and complement local civil society, government and private sector actors.

• Collaborate with technical coordinators to foster a network of local civil society, government and private sector partners, empowering those entities to lead key decision making and service delivery, and positioning IRC as the partner of choice.

• Under the guidance of the SMT, support technical coordinators to identify, engage with and build long term Strategic Partnerships with local actors, fostering collaborating on strategy, program design and development, and capacity sharing, with regular senior management engagement.

• Serve as secondary focal point for and facilitate relationship management with partners and local authorities.

• Facilitate IRC’s progress toward its Strategy100 partnership spending and Strategic Partnerships targets.

• Support effective engagement with donors to resource the SAP partnership component.

• Develop and lead the implementation of IRC Ukraine’s partnership strategy including, but not limited to identifying partners engagement approaches and providing recommendation for partner selection processes.

• Proactively engage and support local responders in program development and strategy validation efforts.

Localization Coordination, Advocacy and Representation

• Ensure IRC is well represented in key Localization discussions at the national and international level, including with ministries, authorities, donors and government representatives.

• Actively participate in Localization working groups and coordination fora, and seek opportunities to enhance IRC’s work, value add and visibility in the sphere of supporting local organizations, institutions and coordination fora.

• Seek opportunities to map and design programs to support local response and coordination mechanisms, both in frontline humanitarian and early recovery settings, including, but not limited to: Increasing the volume, quality and duration of funding to national and local actors; Exploring the development of new pooled funds and consortia modalities for smaller and newer humanitarian NGOs and voluntary networks to get access to funding; Seeking to harmonize and simplify reporting procedures, due diligence and compliance processes; Institutionalizing regular direct dialogue and consultation with diverse national and local actors to define coherent approaches to localization, prioritize shared goals and regularly update local needs assessments; and Ensuring meaningful consultation and participation of Ukrainian civil society organizations and affected communities in all decision-making spaces and dialogue on humanitarian and recovery policies and practices.

• Seek opportunities to increase advocacy about and visibility of the locally led, people-centered humanitarian and early recovery responses and initiatives in Ukraine.

• Organize/co-organize external events to support and highlight the work of local civil society and authorities.

• Assess, document, review and provide recommendations on IRC’s localization work in Ukraine, for purposes of greater learning in country and within the larger organization.

• In collaboration with the CD, the Communication Officer and local partners, increase visibility of IRC’s work with and through local partners in communication and media.

Building Blocks of Partnership Success

• Facilitate the ongoing development of IRC’s internal capacity to partner, including by establishing the six core building blocks for partnership success: self-assessment; defined and resourced roles across all departments; partnership working group; partnership training; stakeholder analysis; and collaborative design.

• Consistently promote and effectively use IRC’s Partnership Excellence for Equality and Results System (PEERS) and ensure that partnership decision-making and action is driven by IRC’s partnership principles.

• Manage the Partnership Working Group, helping the PWG drives cross departmental collaboration and the effective and efficient management of partnerships, including referral of issues to SMT as appropriate.

• Support the Partnership Working Group members to ensure timely and effective partner program, finance, and compliance review and reflection (monitoring).

• Support the Partnership Working Group members to ensure project support plans are implemented in line with agreements.

Promote Effective Partnerships

• Promote and apply the IRC’s Partnership Excellence for Equality and Results system (PEERS) with specific attention to modalities available for collaboration with local initiatives. Contribute to building a strong understanding of PEERS throughout the IRC Ukraine team, and ensure that IRC’s partnership principles, skills and approaches are applied by staff across programs and projects with partners.

• Facilitate systematic partner feedback on IRC’s management of the partnership relationship, including the documentation of, and response to partner feedback.

Program Facilitation

• Co-facilitate and guide competitive and non-competitive partner selection processes to identify new partners, as well as new applications from existing partners.

• Manage and facilitate funding opportunities for local organizations, making efforts to target women-led and women/girls serving organizations.

• Actively promote partner collaboration in program design and resource allocation, and partner participation in key program delivery design making in the context of PCM.

• Co-lead and coordinate due diligence processes, and facilitate collaborative partnership risk management, including through effective mitigation, monitoring and reflection and reporting processes.

• Develop draft partnership agreements with partners and facilitate internal review and approval.

• Lead facilitation and coordination of partnership management processes to ensure well planned, timely, coordinated and coherent partnership management.

• Process partnerships agreement modifications in a timely manner ensuring that the relevant IRC units (in-country and at the HQ) provide their inputs and approve the modification.

• Liaise with finance to achieve timely funds transfers and proper financial follow up and support for partners; work with finance to address any challenges in payments and raise any proposed disallowed costs to SMT.

• Coordinate narrative and finance reporting processes, including reviews and feedback.

• Co-lead the review of the performance of the partner, of the IRC (including on the basis of partner feedback), and of the partnership, including successes, challenges and lessons learned, fostering ongoing partnerships beyond the sub-award project cycle.

• Oversight of partner feedback systems, including by co-leading partnership health check processes, ensuring that IRC consistently addresses partners’ concerns and recommendations in a timely manner.

• Maintain complete and organized partnership files for each partner.

• Maintain up to date Partnership Project Tracker / Monitoring Schedule.

Staffing

• Ensure IRC’s structuring, recruitment, staff development, and performance management processes for partnership management roles are guided by PEERS and IRC’s principles, skills and approaches.

• Lead efforts to build a strong understanding and application of PEERS and partnership principles, skills and approaches among all departments.

• Promote a strong team spirit and providing oversight and guidance to enable staff to successfully perform in their positions.

• Work to address any performance issues in a timely manner, devising corrective action plans where needed.

• Ensure team member(s) have clearly delineated function, work tasks and responsibilities to enforce accountability and clarity in role.

• Identify individual training needs and ensure access to training and professional development resources appropriate to their skill gaps/needs.

Partner Support and Capacity Sharing

• Facilitate the collaborative development and delivery of the partner project support plan, ensuring that it appropriately addresses issues identified in the due diligence process, and coordinate with relevant departments for the timely, quality implementation of the plan.

• Support the resourcing of organizational development support where appropriate for partners; coordinate organizational development support to partners.

• Collaborate with technical coordinators to integrate technical capacity sharing approaches, including how IRC can learn from local partners.

• Promote and identify ways for continual learning between IRC staff and partners.

Other

• Any other duties as assigned by the Deputy Director of Programs.

Key working relationships:

Position Reports to: Deputy Director of Programs

Position directly supervises: Partnerships Coordinator, Finance Partnerships Manager

Other Internal and/or external contacts: The position regularly corresponds and attends meetings with external and internal audiences, thus a strong ability to communicate and maintain positive working relationships is highly desirable for this position.

Internal: Senior management team, technical coordinators, and field-based technical teams; M&E Coordinator; Programs and Awards Management Unit team members; Finance Unit; Supply Chain Unit; HR Unit; IRC Regional Awards Management Unit.

External: Donors; local and international partners

Requirements:

• Fluency in English. Knowledge of Ukrainian or Russian a plus.

• Bachelor’s degree in relevant discipline, Master’s degree a plus in International Development or Affairs, Social Science, Business or related field a plus – or relevant work experience.

• Minimum of 6 years’ work experience with INGOs or NGOs, including previous experience leading work with local and national partners.

• Significant knowledge of donor rules and regulations as they apply to partnership management including the U.S. Government and EU.

• Experience implementing and training others in IRC’s PEERS approach is a plus.

• Strong budget management skills

• Demonstrated technical skills in monitoring and evaluation at the field level.

• Experience in qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis.

• Strong data interpretation skills, reporting writing, and presentation skills.

• Experience in training, capacity building, and mentoring NGOs/CBOs staff.

• Excellent oral and written communication skills, including the ability to present to groups of all sizes.

• Self-starter with ability to work independently and part of a team.

• Demonstrated ability to work effectively under pressure and handle multiple simultaneous tasks and demands coming from multiple sources.

• Hard-working, sharp and detailed oriented.

• Exceptional interpersonal skills; tact, patience, diplomacy, and appropriate assertiveness.

• Proficiency in MS Office software suite – including Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook and experience working with databases and/or other tracking systems.

Standards of Professional Conduct: The IRC and IRC workers must adhere to the values and principles outlined in the IRC Way – Code of Conduct. These are Integrity, Service, Equality and Accountability. In accordance with these values, the IRC operates and enforces policies on Beneficiary Protection from Exploitation and Abuse, Child Safeguarding, Harassment-Free Workplace, Fiscal Integrity, Anti-Retaliation, Combating Trafficking in Persons and several others.

Gender Equality: IRC is committed to narrowing the gender gap in leadership positions. We offer benefits that provide an enabling environment for women to participate in our workforce including parental leave, gender-sensitive security protocols and other supportive benefits and allowances.

We acknowledge and honor the fundamental value and dignity of all individuals. We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and consider all applicants on the basis of merit without regard to race, sex, color, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, marital status, veteran status, disability or any other human demographic.

Qualifications

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Added 8 months ago - Updated 5 months ago - Source: rescue.org