About Mercy Corps

Mercy Corps is a leading global organization powered by the belief that a better world is possible. In disaster, in hardship, in more than 40 countries around the world, we partner to put bold solutions into action helping people triumph over adversity and build stronger communities from within now, and for the future.

Mercy Corps has been operating in Ethiopia since 2004, working in rural, peri-urban, and urban areas in five regional states - Somali, Oromia, Afar, Southern Nations Nationalities and Peoples, Amhara - and the capital city of Addis Ababa. We engage in both development and humanitarian work, and seek to integrate approaches, programs, and geographies as much as possible. Our partners include government, academic institutions, development and private sector actors, civil societies, and communities.

Mercy Corps has been operating in the sectors of Emergency Response, Sustainable Peace and Development, and Economic and Markets Development. Mercy Corps currently has programs in the Regions of Afar, Somali, Oromia, Addis Ababa and SNNP, and works through the principles of Accountability, Participation and Peaceful Change. Mercy Corps employs a community-led, market-driven approach as it works with partners at the community, government, private, and research institution levels.

Essential Job Responsibilities

Strategy and vision

• Collaborate and work closely with all Mercy Corps team members to make sure effective integration of Multi sectoral approaches including cross cutting themes in all humanitarian programs
• Collaborate with relevant government and non-governmental actors to effectively identify humanitarian needs to inform project designs and contribute to humanitarian strategy.  
• Work closely with the Humanitarian Director and senior program team members to develop a vision and strategy for implementation and scale up of Humanitarian Programs.
• Recognize opportunities for innovative action and create an environment where alternative viewpoints are welcome.

Program management

• Lead Mercy Corps humanitarian response programs and provide support for the project coordinators, managers, and advisors
• Establish and maintain systems for work planning, implementation of activities, monitoring progress, reporting and capacity building. Designing systems to support high quality performance and results, efficient time and resource allocation, feasible workloads assignment among team members and setting timeframes, motivating team members, and ensuring accountability.
• Lead and manage humanitarian assessment teams, rationalizing inputs and decisions for the team, leading the representation and coordination with other actors and determining final assessment recommendations for Mercy Corps responses.
• Ensuring protection and GBV related services mainstreamed in all humanitarian responses and follow up with the humanitarian response team to make sure MC programs are providing gender sensitive humanitarian services and MC program participants are safe and protected in collaboration with country gender advisor
• Work closely with the humanitarian director and other technical advisors to ensure timely and high-quality humanitarian responses. Coaching humanitarian response teams to improve their technical and managerial skills for improved humanitarian response services quality.
• Design and implement context-specific capacity-strengthening for the local government in collaboration with regional authorities and other concerned agencies. Document and disseminate evidence on successes stories, performance, impact and lessons learned. Support mechanisms for continued sharing of information for local stakeholders at national level
• Support enforcement of guidelines for safety and security of staff and assets. Ensure a proper phase-out and plan for transition to full operations.
• Review written products prepared by program managers, and coordinators and other members of the cluster and provide comments, written input to improve the quality of the products.
• In collaboration with the humanitarian director, respond to requests from Donor for information on project progress, any changes from the plan, challenges and actions taken to make progress towards the goal of the project.

Proposal development

• Cultivate and nurture donor relationships and strategic partnerships that positively impact Mercy Corps ability to influence program strategies and proposal design, as well as strategic partnerships that result in stronger and impactful program development efforts.
• Help to identify new funding opportunities for humanitarian programs in all contexts.
• Support the design of new proposals working on multi sectoral humanitarian programs, including participating in design workshops.
• Support writing/review of concept notes and proposals.
• Work closely with field teams to influence their engagement and support of program pre-positioning, development, and implementation.

Team Building and Management

• Manage the flow of tasks and assigning responsibilities among program managers, coordinators, and technical advisors and harmonizing different programs to ensure successful integration of program activities and effective resource utilization.
• Preparing programs implementation plans together with the project coordinators, managers, technical advisors and MEL teams and follow up of the progress based on the agreed plan.
• Lead and liaise with Mercy corps operation team at head office for smooth coordination and facilitation of program material procurement, transportation, hiring staffs and other logistic support required at the field level.
• Provide technical guidance for field level humanitarian and durable solution program gender and protection team including on-job training.
• Promote accountability, communicate expectations, and provide constructive feedback formally and informally.
• Facilitate sharing of lessons and new approaches across different teams and strengthen the capacity of team members through ongoing feedbacks and inspiring for higher results.
• Create and sustain a work environment of mutual respect where team members strive to achieve excellence.
• Develop the capacity of the program team, deepen understanding of their roles and assist with career development.
• Promote accountability, communicate expectations and provide constructive feedback.
• Create and sustain a work environment of mutual respect where team members strive to achieve excellence.

Influence & Representation

• Strengthening government relationship and liaise with different sector bureaus directly involved in humanitarian response mainly with DRMC, FMOH at federal regional, for a better coordination and smooth partnership through joint planning, sharing progress updates and creating regular communications. 
• Establish effective collaboration with UN agencies and other cooperating partners to facilitate the exchange of humanitarian information and secure supplies from respective UN agencies by share the forecast and timely requesting.
• Conducting regular monitoring and technical support to ensure MC’s humanitarian responses are line with the international and national standards.
• Provide technical inputs and guidance to other technical advisors to make sure other sectors contributes for improving humanitarian responses.
• Work with the Humanitarian and PaQ Directors closely to ensure that learning and reflection from deployments are incorporated.
• Participate in meetings and workshops at national level with government, donors and other agencies and follow up on the field team to participate in all coordination forums at Zonal and woreda level and share MC’s achievements and approaches.
• Communicate regularly and collaborate with other MC development project teams to ensure successful integration of the humanitarian nexus development activities.

Finance and Operations

• Ensure compliance with donor and Mercy Corps’ regulations related to programming and operations.
• With support of the Operations Manager, ensure adequate operational systems are in place to provide for Humanitarian programs implementation.
• Ensure proper logistics, administration, human resources, and transport needs of the programs are conducted within Mercy Corps policy.
• Manage program budgets as the primary budget holder.
• Strictly follow Mercy Corps’ Fraud and Prevention guidelines.

Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning

• Ensure that program teams are continually gathering and digesting humanitarian contextual data and activity reports, and that teams are holding frequent activity review sessions to continually re-examine the relevance and impact of their programming.
• Coordinate and share information with the Humanitarian Director to ensure overall project targets and donor obligations are being achieved. Advise on suggested improvements, as required.
• Ensure program teams have community complaint and feedback mechanisms in place and that complaints and feedback being received are responded to within a timely manner.

Organizational Learning:  As part of our commitment to organizational learning and in support of our understanding that learning organizations are more effective, efficient, and relevant to the communities they serve - we expect all team members to commit 5% of their time to learning activities that benefit Mercy Corps as well as themselves.

Accountability to Beneficiaries

Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts towards accountability, specifically to our program participants, Donors and to international standards guiding relief and development work, while actively engaging program participants in the design, monitoring and evaluation of our programs.

Supervisory Responsibility:  MEL Manager, Humanitarian programs manager, Protection and GEDSI Advisor

Reports Directly to:   Director of Programs

Works Directly With:  All Humanitarian Response Program Staff and other Mercy Corps teams

Education:

1. Sc in developmental studies with more than 8 years’ experience in project management and leadership

Knowledge and Experience  

• More than eight year(s) of relevant experience on program management at least three years on humanitarian response programs 
• Experience in managing diverse program teams
• A very good understanding of the humanitarian system, principles and key relief sectors
• Experience in program management or provision of technical assistance to programs team with frequent field travel
• Knowledge and experience in humanitarian response
• Experience and capacity to work in harsh conditions and insecure environments.
• Experience in implementing diverse donor programs is preferred.
• Ability to manage and work in a team consisting of people with different technical backgrounds and varying levels of technical training.
• Ability to facilitate relationships and interact smoothly and effectively with clients, colleagues, and partners including donors, national governments, sub-recipients, and peer organizations.
• Ability to adopt materials into context specific and cultural friendly tools to use for MC’s program implementation.
• Ability to undertake problem analyses and organize diverse information in a systematic way while thinking creatively to propose approaches to improve program design, implementation, and results reporting.
• Strong analytical ability is essential.
• Superior writing skills and oral presentation skills.
• English fluency is essential.

Success Factors

The successful candidate will possess excellent leadership skills, with the ability to maintain a broad perspective. They will undertake innovative and creative approaches, be agile in the conceptualization of new program ideas, and will be well versed in strategic thinking and planning - including openness to test new ways to work with private sector actors. The ideal candidate will have a strong curiosity for understanding and working effectively within the complex cultural, political, security and social environment of Ethiopia. They will be an excellent communicator, multi-tasker, and able to work in ambiguous situations. They will be a tolerant and flexible individual able to work in difficult and stressful environments and follow procedures. The successful candidate will be focused on team building and capacity building of national staff team-members; be a strategic thinker, have strong skills in design monitoring and evaluation of development programs and maintain a sense of humor.