Country: Lebanon, Syrian Arab Republic
Closing date: 30 Apr 2016
We are looking for a highly qualified Program Quality and Development Manager (PQDM) to join our team. Duty station will be defined later (either Damascus or Beirut).
Who are we?
The Danish Refugee Council (DRC) is an International non-governmental organisation, which promotes and supports durable solutions to the problems faced by refugees and internally displaced people worldwide.
DRC has been actively assisting people and communities affected by the current Syrian crisis since 2011, with programmes in support of Syrians in Lebanon, Jordan and of course Syria.
The DRC Syria programme, headquartered in Damascus, currently have 10 expatriate staff and more than 70 national employees – some of which are based at the DRC Community Centres located in 5 different areas throughout the country. In addition to this, DRC has a network of more than 200 volunteers supporting DRC’s operations.
Since 2007 DRC has worked with both the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC), the Ministry of Education (MoE) and the Ministry of Social Affairs (MoSA) to provide assistance to refugees and since June 2012 to IDPs. DRC is one of the few international NGOs allowed to work from Damascus to assist displaced and conflict-affected Syrians, and currently it is the biggest NGO operating from Damascus.
DRC has a permanent field presence in Aleppo, Homs and Deraa, as well as Damascus/rural Damascus. DRC programme in Syria is composed by three pillars: Emergency response, Risk education, and Community services which includes protection, community services through community centres, support to formal and informal education, and livelihood.
About the job
The overall objective of the post-holder is to ensure the accountability of DRC’s program towards the crisis-affected populations in Syria and the donors supporting the response. The Programme Quality and Development Manager (PQDM) is expected to contribute to the quality assurance of programme implementation across all grants implemented in Syria and ensure that DRC projects bring a significant contribution to meeting immediate humanitarian needs.
The PQDM is a key senior position in DRC Syria programme, responsible for cross-cutting programmatic information management, sound design of and overseeing assessments, monitoring and evaluation, and ensuring that information collected is reflected upon, used to improve ongoing projects, and is incorporated into consistently high quality grant proposals and reports.
Duties and Responsibilities
1. Quality Management
In close collaboration with the Head of Programme, coordinate the design of a global Quality Management Policy and ensuring the quality management of the whole DRC programme in Syria, including AME processes and tools development, data system & analysis, grants and reports writing, lessons learnt & capacity building.
Coordinate with the Head of Programme on project design, including gathering information for concept notes and grant proposals and assisting in the design of assessments and logframes, in pursuit of high impact and cost effective program strategies and activities.
Provide leadership in developing a response-wide MEL strategy, with standard approaches and shared practices and systems.
2. Assessment, Monitoring and Evaluation
Ensure that DRC team members are supporting all efforts towards accountability, specifically to beneficiaries and to international standards guiding international relief and development work, while actively engaging beneficiary communities (as far as possible) as equal partners in the design, monitoring and evaluation of DRC projects.
Orient the MEL Manager in developing a computerized M&E system that inform and improve each project and link to the broader response-wide country program strategy.
Ensure the development of appropriate monitoring, tracking and reporting systems, tools and templates that enhance monitoring of program outputs and quality, generate quality evidence on program impact and promote and ensure use of data for decision-making processes.
Establish and maintaining effective data reporting, monitoring and evaluation systems for both internal and external use for timely and smooth monitoring of projects progress and impact and make program adjustments accordingly, as well as reporting requirements.
Continue to develop and improve systems that strengthen DRC ability to analyze, improve, and represent impact internally and externally and most of all to communities themselves.
3. Information Management
Supervise the development of a coordinated/integrated data management system/structure to centralize and facilitate timely information updates (Institutional Knowledge Building), data quality assurance (M&E), sharing of information and learning.
Work with IT professionals to develop and implement plans for further integration of information management systems and learning platforms within DRC Lebanon mission.
Manage the institutional knowledge within the response projects and contributing to wider knowledge management across DRC.
4. Grant Proposals and Reports
Coordinate with a variety of teams to ensure that grant proposals & reports are timely, high-quality, and responsive to donors’ requirements. The focus of this function will be team capacity building through coaching in report writing and quality control of final written products;
Supervise the set up and sharing of a Grant Proposals & Reports Timeline Follow up;
Build the capacity of coordination & field staff on how to capture and organize information for accurate documentation and reporting;
Supervise the development of program reporting templates that facilitate the acquisition and aggregation of information in programs and assist the program implementation team in timely and accurate reporting to donors.
5. Donor Relations and Fundraising
Pursue funding opportunities in all DRC competence areas, and coordinate the capacities of the program managers and SMT to identify and materialize opportunities.
Proactive communications with external donors.
Trigger and oversee the drafting of concept notes, proposals and donor reports by program managers (including budgets for cost-related activities) in coordination with the Head of Programme, the Grant Manager, the Head of Finance and Administration, and the Head of Logistics, and in line with DRC HQ/Region and donor requirements.
Effectively stay abreast of donor policies, procedures, rules and regulations; and train DRC program staff in these policies.
Ensure timely and targeted communication and information flow to all internal and external parties and coordination with the Country Director, Head of Programme, DRC Region, DRC Headquarter and other program stakeholders to remain informed about program achievements.
6. Organizational Learning and Capacity Building
Build the capacity of all relevant team members to develop and maintain an excellent culture/awareness on quality management, including the periodic reflection and analysis of program monitoring data
Support and inculcating a culture of learning across programs through consistent sharing of M&E processes, systems and tools.
About you
To be successful in this role you must have:
Master’s degree in International Development and/or Humanitarian Assistance, Project Management, Humanitarian Assistance, Human Rights, Social Sciences or any other related field.
Over 6 years of progressively responsible experience in program management, leadership and design in countries of conflict or post-conflict.
At least 4 years of experience in managing large-scale complex emergency operations, including at least 2 years in Middle-East.
Demonstrated experience and skill in proposal development, budget development, program implementation, monitoring and evaluation.
Proven experience in effectively coordinating with National Governments, International and National NGO partners and a variety of working with and coordinating with a variety of donors including DFID, UNHCR, ECHO and OFDA.
We offer
DRC encourages all qualified candidates to apply regardless of their nationality, racial, ethnic, religious and cultural background, gender, sexual orientation or disabilities.
DRC will offer the successful applicant a 12 months contract, renewable dependent on both funding and performance. You must be available to start work as soon as possible and be willing and able to work in Damascus or in Beirut (will be defined later).
This position will be placed at level A11. Salary and conditions will be in accordance with Danish Refugee Council’s Terms of Employment for Expatriates (please refer to www.drc.ngo under Vacancies). Syrian nationals will be offered a national contract.
How to apply:
Application process
Interested? Then apply for this position by clicking on the apply button.
All applicants must send a cover letter and an updated CV (no longer than four pages). Both must be in the same language as this vacancy note.
If you have questions or are facing problems with the online application process, please contact job@drc.dk
Deadline to receive applications is the 30th of April 2016.
Need further information?
For further information about the Danish Refugee Council, please consult our website www.drc.ngo