Who are we?
The Danish Refugee Council assists refugees and internally displaced persons across the globe: we provide emergency aid, fight for their rights, and strengthen their opportunities for a brighter future. We work in conflict-affected areas, along the displacement routes, and in the countries where refugees settle. In cooperation with local communities, we strive for responsible and sustainable solutions. We work toward successful integration and – whenever possible – for the fulfillment of the wish to return home.
The Danish Refugee Council was founded in Denmark in 1956 and has since grown to become an international humanitarian organization with more than 7,000 staff and 8,000 volunteers. Our vision is a dignified life for all displaced.
All of our efforts are based on our value compass: humanity, respect, independence and neutrality, participation, and honesty and transparency.
DRC Syria
DRC has been operating in Syria since 2008, initially responding to the Iraqi refugee crisis before pivoting to a full-scale response to the Syria crisis from 2011 onwards. Our work encompasses the full cycle of displacement—responding to life-saving humanitarian needs and supporting community recovery until durable solutions can be achieved. DRC Syria takes an area-based approach to supporting internally displaced persons (IDPs), returnees, and host communities across our key sectors: Economic Recovery and Resilience, Protection, WASH, Shelter and Infrastructure, and Humanitarian Disarmament and Peacebuilding (including Humanitarian Mine Action).
With an established rapid response mechanism, DRC can rapidly respond to emerging crises and shocks to meet acute emergency needs. Recognizing the significant need for early recovery and resilience programming to ensure dignified, sustainable, and cost-effective solutions for fragile communities, DRC’s programmes foster resilience for individuals and communities in situations of protracted displacement and during the initial stages of post-conflict recovery, towards a durable solution of their choice. With active portfolios in the neighboring countries of Jordan, Lebanon, Türkiye and Iraq, DRC offers a cross-border, regional response to the Syria crisis, through cross-border protection monitoring, advocacy, and trends analysis.
About the job:
The Partnership Coordinator is responsible for implementing a strategic framework and dedicated systems to strengthen DRC Syria’s partnerships with local actors, national authorities, civil society organisations, the private sector, research institutions, and others local stakeholders across Syria. This role develops and coordinates the DRC partnership approach in Syria, improving and adapting tools and practices to the local context. The Partnership Coordinator plays a lead role in framing DRC Syria's approaches to partnership and localisation, building on our global partnership principles and civil society engagement strategies, aligned with the Global Strategy and the Localisation Vision for 2030.
The Partnership Coordinator drives the strategic shift toward local leadership by fostering equitable, high-quality partnerships with local actors (civil society, duty bearers and private sector). The role ensures that DRC’s partnership portfolio is strategically aligned with community priorities and national frameworks, moving beyond transactional sub-granting toward transformative collaboration.
The post-holder works across departments to establish systems and approaches for identifying, pursuing, and maintaining effective partnerships that contribute to DRC’s strategic objectives. The Partnership Coordinator maps and identifies new partnership opportunities, assesses partner organisation capacities, facilitates relevant capacity-strengthening support, and provides ongoing support to partner organisations throughout and after program implementation.
The role is responsible for ensuring that all partnership activities meet high-quality standards for engagement, resource equitability, and institutional strengthening, ensuring that local actors are positioned as central leaders in the humanitarian response.
The Partnership Coordinator role has a country focus, ensuring that localization commitments are translated into day-to-day operations. The role provides technical guidance and coordination to field teams to ensure that partnership management is consistent, compliant, and contributes to the country’s strategic indicators for localization.
Duties and Responsibilities:
Responsibilities:
Strategic Leadership, Coordination and Liaison
• Lead in facilitating the development, implementation and continuous assessment of DRC Syria's localisation strategy and roadmap in line with DRC’s global strategy for 2030.
• Promote DRC Syria’s localization vision with DRC staff and partners and support staff with its implementation.
• Participate in relevant country-level and regionally relevant partnerships and localisation working groups and advocate for the inclusion and support of national organisations in these forums.
• Stay up to date on current trends in partnerships and localisation national and regional practices and share learning with the Country SMT and relevant programmes teams, as well as the DRC HQ Global Localisation Unit.
• Coordinate with external agencies working with the same partners or partners in the same sectors or locations, ensuring a partner-centred approach.
• Lead the DRC Syria Country Office in developing systematic approaches to identify and pursue strategic partnerships, including in coordination with other departments and Technical Coordinators.
• Work across departments to develop systems and policies that are supportive of the Localisation Strategy, ensuring periodic review and updating.
• Define a standard framework of roles and responsibilities across all DRC Syria’s departments, Country Office and Area Offices for partnership engagement, management and coordination.
• Input into strategy development of various sectors to include plans and targets on programme models that include local partners.
• Support Technical Coordinators to work with duty bearers and newly established coordination and government ministries in different governorates in Syria, to understand the role of local/national NGOs in humanitarian programming, and to strengthen their capacity to engage with L/NNGOs in programme design and implementation.
• Prepare high-quality portfolio reports and capacity statements that demonstrate the impact of local leadership to DRC stakeholders and donors.
• Act as the main liaison for partners on administrative and strategic issues, ensuring that all communication is equitable, respectful, and transparent.
• Establish and maintain a partnership database of the local actor landscape and potential partners, as well as of actual partner portfolio including partners’ capacity, influence, and strategic alignment with DRC programming.
Strategic Partnership Management and Portfolio Quality
• Facilitate the signing of Sub-Grant Agreements (SGAs) that incorporate equitable risk-sharing and use management "Tiers" to ensure compliance requirements are proportional to partner size and capacity.
• Assures that all partnership processes, from vetting to closure, are handled with professional excellence and in line with DRC’s core values and Code of Conduct.
• Establish and facilitate regular partnership review and feedback sessions, ensuring that local partners have a safe, formal mechanism to evaluate DRC’s performance as a partner and provide feedback on transparency and equity.
• Coordinate monitoring activities related to partners’ project implementation internally in DRC.
• Coordinate and maintain the partnership portfolio: including partnership tracker, coordination with other funding partners and donors, follow-up on findings and recommendations from reviews and audits, partnership review and responsible transition plans.
• Maintain high-quality data in DRC’s Dynamics and SharePoint systems, ensuring that partner vetting and assessments are completed promptly to avoid delays in local implementation.
• Ensure that DRC Dynamics is continually updated (reporting, instalments, start date, end date, total budget, and uploading of documents).
• Roll out and/or adapt global DRC partnership tools that support partnership management.
• Lead initiatives to improve partnership practices by periodically assessing DRC Syria's partnership management approach taking into account both DRC and partners’ perspectives, capture lessons learned and best practices, and make recommendations for improvement
Strength-Based Capacity Development
• Coordinate across teams to carry out partner organizational capacity assessments and analyse assessments jointly with partners to identify priority organizational development needs.
• Develop capacity development plans to support partners to address priority gaps identified – including through financial support, ensuring that DRC Syria’s support is focused on the partner’s long-term sustainability rather than just project-specific needs.
• Coordinate cross-departmental support (Finance, HR, Supply Chain) to provide mentoring, peer-to-peer exchange, and technical coaching that builds the long-term institutional resilience of local organizations.
• Review existing partnerships resources and identify additional needs to support capacity assessment, monitoring, compliance, project cycle management, etc. Roll out and/or adapt global DRC partnership tools that support partnership management.
• Track the progress of institutional strengthening initiatives to ensure they lead to increased independence and the ability of partners to access direct funding from donors.
• Promote relationships of mutual respect and mutual learning with partners, and provide guidance to relevant staff in supporting them.
• Support DRC Syria staff to establish and maintain a partnership database that maps out partner capacity, influence, and strategic alignment with DRC programming
Collaborative Program Design
• Liaise with Grants Management, Technical Coordinators and Support teams to support the design of partners’ programming in DRC Core sectors including Protection, Shelter, WASH, HMA, and Economic Recovery.
• Ensure partners involvement in strategic planning, programme design, and proposal/concept note development.
• Ensure that local partners are meaningfully included in the very first stages of the project cycle, including joint needs assessments and the definition of strategic priorities based on community priorities.
• Coordinate and facilitate participatory project design workshops, ensuring that partners have the space to lead on activity definition, logical frameworks, and outcome setting based on their contextual expertise.
Grants, Accountability, and Reporting
• Guided by the DRC PCM Handbook, continuously monitor and develop relevant accountability initiatives as well as strengthening the effort to document the impact and lessons learned of activities and project delivered in partnership with local actors.
• Ensure compliance with internal and external reporting requirements including procurement.
• Lead on proposal development for funding opportunities directly related to partnerships and localisation and actively support identification of and liaison with new and existing donors.
• Work with the Grants team to ensure that partnership tools and financial standards meet donor requirements and allow for adaptation and flexibility and advocate for these changes at country and donor level.
• Provide input for monthly, quarterly and annual donor reports as needed. Contribute to DRC proposals and reports, especially in relations to partnerships and localization.
• When requested, take responsibility for donor reporting deadlines (setting internal deadlines, providing clear guidance to relevant colleagues, and following-up on inputs), especially in relation to local and national partners.
• Support the coordination, compilation, and review of donor narrative reports, including submission via online portals, especially in relation to local and national partners.
• Coordinate with MEAL team reporting of indicator tracking table and MEAL related donor outputs, especially in relations to local and national partners.
• Facilitate the administration of grants management processes (reminders of deadlines; coordination of reports; submission of proposals and reports via online portals; coordination of comments/revisions), especially in relation to local and national partners.
• Promote quality information management by maintaining an up-to-date filing system on SharePoint, including careful version control of proposals, grant amendments, top-ups, donor reports, etc.
Other
• Accountable for achieving DRC’s strategic goals and objectives within the area of responsibility.
• Accountable for making significant decisions on what the unit does: its purpose, functions and role, and for making commitments and decisions that require the expenditure of significant unit resources.
• Perform other duties as directed by the HoP.
Experience and technical competencies:
• At least 5 years’ experience in relevant field in an INGO or other humanitarian actor
• At least 3 years’ experience with project or programme oversight and proven organizational skills
• Good knowledge of relevant donor compliance regulations
• Significant experience dealing with national partners and local/government authorities
• Professional background in working with internally displaced persons and/or refugees
• Significant experience in training and liaising with national NGOs
• Experience working in multicultural work settings
• Full professional proficiency in English and Arabic
• Willingness to embrace and further develop overall objectives such as gender equity, impact monitoring, and cross-sector cooperation
Education:
• Advanced degree in political science, international development, economics or other relevant field desirable.
Languages:
• Fluency in written and spoken English and Arabic
In this position, you are expected to demonstrate DRC’ five core competencies:
- Striving for excellence: You focus on reaching results while ensuring an efficient process.
- Collaborating: You involve relevant parties and encourage feedback.
- Taking the lead: You take ownership and initiative while aiming for innovation.
- Communicating: You listen and speak effectively and honestly.
- Demonstrating integrity: You act in line with our vision and values.
We offer:
Contract length: until June 2027 - extension based on performance and funds
Level: Non-Management- G
Location: Damascus
Expected Start date: As soon as possible.
Application process:
Interested? Then apply for this position Here
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. CV-only applications will not be considered.
Applications close: 04 September 2026
Need further information?
For further information about the Danish Refugee Council, please consult our website www.drc.org