Emergency Programs Director - DRC

Description

About Mercy Corps

The Program / Department / Team 

The Position

Essential Responsibilities 

STRATEGY & VISION

• Maintain and reinforce Mercy Corps’ primary position in humanitarian response in DRC, by ensuring alignment with DRC’s Humanitarian Response Plan and priorities and seeking opportunities for expansion of Mercy Corps humanitarian programming.
• With support from the Deputy Emergency Programs Director and Director of Programs, lead the implementation of the revised strategy for Mercy Corps Humanitarian Response in DRC.
• Set direction by prioritizing and organizing actions and resources to achieve Mercy Corps humanitarian programming objectives.
• Maintain strategic vision and provide operational leadership to the implementation of Mercy Corps humanitarian portfolio.
• Recognize opportunities for innovative action and explore implementation possibilities with Mercy Corps Emergency Managers, teams and partners.
• Maintain implementation momentum by consolidating implementation strategies and plans. 
• Improve and oversee a clear system for tracking and reporting against deliverables across Mercy Corps’ humanitarian portfolio. 
• Recognize and act on opportunities for innovative action and create an environment where alternative viewpoints are welcomed.

• Oversee project start-up and ongoing projects, ensuring mechanisms for effective learning and adaptive management are in place and utilized regularly.
• Provide guidance to the Deputy Emergency Programs Director in the development of detailed implementation plans, maintaining rapid response capacity, and ensure the delivery of the same.
• Ensure that Mercy Corps Emergency programs target beneficiaries effectively and according to established vulnerability criteria.
• Support technical teams to integrate community participation, Do No Harm, protection, gender sensitivity and capacity building approaches into all activities as appropriate.
• Ensure technical teams and grants team document processes and achievements to ensure best practices are captured.
• Ensure adaptive management processes are followed and approaches are continually re-evaluating  program activities and information, with resulting activity adjustments in keeping with new insights.
• Ensure production of written reports on program activities, capturing the impacts of activities are of high quality.
• Support compliance with PM@MC program management and documentation minimum standards, in collaboration with mission-level Program Performance and Quality (PaQ) team.
• Guide the Emergency M&E Manager in overseeing efforts to implement effective M&E systems for the program, and linkages with internal M&E systems.
• Ensure consistent and effective coordination between Emergency programs and support departments and with SAFER partners. Proactively troubleshoot operational and security issues in collaboration with other departments.

• Create, implement and follow effective stakeholder management plans, ensuring sound and proactive communications with Mercy Corps DRC, partner organizations, Mercy Corps headquarters, Mercy Corps’ donors, and Government of DRC authorities.
• Participate in external representation of Mercy Corps’ Humanitarian portfolio with various groups including donors, government and the Cluster system. Ensure the Emergency team has a consistent presence in/ regularly reports to relevant Clusters/ humanitarian coordination fora.
• Oversee all program partnerships to ensure sound coordination in the context of an overall strategic and triple nexus framework.
• Maintain strong and transparent communication with Mercy Corps’ donors and partners.
• Share learnings from Mercy Corps Humanitarian portfolio with the greater humanitarian community within DRC.

• Support and sustain a work environment of mutual respect where team members strive to achieve excellence.
• Set a team culture valuing learning and adaptive management in support of an ongoing resilience approach in programming.
• Promote accountability, communicate expectations and provide constructive feedback via regular performance reviews.
• Contribute to country team-building efforts, help team members identify problem solving options and ensure the integration of all team members into relevant decision-making processes.
• Supervise and manage Deputy Emergency Program Director and support project managers and technical leads to ensure day-to-day activities are implemented in a coordinated way according to schedule, budget and quality.
• Manage and help with the recruitment, orientation, professional development and ongoing training of Mercy Corps Emergency staff to ensure they are of the quality and technical capacity necessary to ensure the successful implementation of activities.

• In collaboration with the country program’s operations and finance departments, ensure proper financial management, procurement, administration, human resources and logistics (including transport, warehousing and asset management) needs of the program are conducted within Mercy Corps’ policy and with the maximum benefit to the program.
• Monitor adherence to grant agreement, Mercy Corps’ policies and procedures and relevant external rules and regulations, including those of the government of DRC.

• Ensure compliance with security procedures and policies as determined by country leadership.
• Proactively ensure that team members operate in a secure environment and are aware of policies.

Supervisory Responsibility

Accountability to Participants and Stakeholders

Minimum Qualification & Transferable Skills 

• MA/S  or equivalent experience in international development, management, humanitarian response or other relevant field; MA/S preferred.
• At least 7 to 10 years of international relief and development program management experience, in emergency and recovery program management, with progressively greater responsibility.
• At least 5 years in a senior management role is required with experience in managing humanitarian assistance projects of a similar size and scope in developing countries; experience managing multi-sectoral programs including MPCA, WASH, non-food items (NFI), and/or protection, preferably in insecure settings.
• Previous experience working in consortiums or with international sub-grantees preferred.
• Combination of direct and remote management experience preferred.
• Demonstrated ability to build and maintain relationships with host governments, donors, other donor-funded projects and stakeholders, local organizations, and partners.
• Experience managing programmatic and financial reporting requirements. Experience with BHA, FCDO and ECHO rules, regulations and requirements is preferred.
• Experience working in West or sub-Saharan Africa is preferred.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills in English and French required.
• Demonstrated flexibility and creativity in planning and problem solving.
• Effective verbal and written communication, multi-tasking, organizational and prioritization skills.
• Strong computer literacy with a full knowledge of office applications. 
• Ability to work effectively with an ethnically diverse team in a sensitive environment.

The successful Director will combine exceptional management skills and experience in building and maintaining donor and partner relationships. The successful candidate possesses a high level of adaptability and is able to adjust to the constantly changing working environment and has previous experience in implementing large scale emergency programs in insecure and conflict contexts.The lead candidates will have an ability to approach complex humanitarian challenges through a systems-thinking lens and have an ability to think creatively about humanitarian response across the Cash, WASH, NFI, Protection and Youth sectors. The Director will have proven experience with cross-cultural team and capacity building, individual staff development and strong mentoring skills. This profile  is passionate about learning and adaptive management techniques as fundamental strategies to improve program impact. Multi-tasking, prioritizing, problem solving and simultaneous attention to detail as well as strategic vision are essential. The most successful Mercy Corps staff members have a strong commitment to teamwork and accountability, thrive in evolving and changing environments and make effective written and verbal communication a priority in all situations. The successful Director must be comfortable operating and traveling in a sometimes volatile security environment and therefore, changing plans and program tactics accordingly.

Living Conditions / Environmental Conditions

Ongoing Learning

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

Equal Employment Opportunity

Safeguarding & Ethics