Mercy Corps exists to alleviate suffering, poverty and oppression by
helping people build secure, productive and just communities.
Driven by local needs, our programs provide communities in the world’s
toughest places with the tools and support they need to turn the crises
they confront into the opportunities they deserve.
Mercy Corps is looking for committed and dynamic individuals to take up the following positions.
Gender Team Leader, PROGRESS Programme – Wajir
Programme / Department Summary:
The PROGRESS Team Leader will work in collaboration with the PROGRESS
Programme Director, Programme Managers and PROGRESS consortium members
in the implementation of a proposed multi-year project as part of DFID’s
BRACED initiative (Building Resilience and Adaptation to Climate
Extremes and Disasters).
Mercy Corps anticipates a programme award under BRACED to implement the “Programme for Resilient Systems” (PROGRESS).
PROGRESS will be comprised of a multi-partner consortium poised to
deliver a 36-month initiative designed to build absorptive, adaptive and
transformative capacity of more than 200,000 individual households in
northern Kenya (Wajir County) and northern Uganda (Karamoja). The
Wajir-based Gender Team Leader will play a key role in implementation.
General Position Summary: The PROGRESS Gender Team Leader will
work directly with the Programme Manager in Wajir and is responsible for
developing and implementing the PROGRESS gender strategy in Wajir.
The Gender Team Leader will provide a framework of activities to guide
gender integration throughout the life of PROGRESS and across all
technical sectors with the goal of enhancing absorptive, adaptive and
transformative capacity for resilience of girls and women and augmenting
access to assets, capital and decision-making processes.
The Gender Team Leader will provide direct support to the Wajir
Programme Manager of PROGRESS to develop work plans per sector/practice
area with clear targets and timeframes to ensure the greatest possible
gender integration into program planning, strategic prioritization and
sound implementation.
Programme emphasis will be on the role of girls and women in collective
decision making around community and natural resources, and the
individual capacity for entrepreneurship and active market engagement
including value chain activities around livestock products in the
pastoralist context.
The Gender Team Leader will also play a key role in advising around
advocacy, policy formulation and gender sensitive budgeting with local
and national government actors.
In addition the Gender Team Leader will ensure that PROGRESS team
members and consortium partners are actively programming and operating
to a high-standard for gender integration into projects for all sectors
and practice areas including governance, market systems, gender
empowerment, and natural resource management with a focus in water
resources management, livestock and rangeland management, climate smart
agriculture, and urban issues.
Essential Job Functions:
Technical Capacity
Coordinate closely, work with and the Wajir Programme
Manager, Wajir-based Practice-Area Team Leaders and partners to promote
gender integration in to the various sector-based activities of
PROGRESS.
Develop training series on leadership and negotiation for
girls and women, including for the VSLA groups, and facilitating
community-platform debates;
Develop tools as needed for cross-cutting, cross-cutting
integration of women in decision making around household governance,
community change, management of natural and community resources, and
advocacy for policy and budget formulation that is geared towards
innovative gendered approaches.
Promote women leadership skills through VSLA component, engaging men in decision making tools etc.
Work with practice area Team Leaders and partners to ensure
they have the female staff needed to interact with girls and women in
the community.
In collaboration with the Mercy Corps technical support units,
set up gender-focused elements of the PROGRESS monitoring system and
work closely with M&E team to ensure sex and age disaggregated data
is collected and that gender analysis is applied.
Conduct regular community consultations to ensure programming remains gender sensitive and on-track.
Provide technical support on gender integration in various
market facilitation activities in Wajir geared towards the augmentation
of value-addition for livestock products, small business development,
and general capacity building for females in pastoralist settings,
females in urbanizing contexts, and females who are transitioning
between the two.
Activity Design and Implementation
Take the lead in implementation and ensuring results in
PROGRESS Output 3: reduced inequality and increased empowerment of
women, men, boys, and girls.
Maximize program participation and increase empowerment opportunities for currently marginalized groups
Collect sex and age disaggregated data while performing proactive and recurrent gender analysis.
Develop curriculum for after school programs to address girls
and boys and men-focused group series to build these groups social
capital and ensure maximum participant engagement from the beginning of
the program while mitigating risk of exposure to gender based violence.
Seek community recommendations on how to best overcome
identified challenges in addressing gender norms and behaviors and
altering them.
Establish current awareness of the importance of
gender-sensitive programming among partners and target participant
groups including traditional leaders, government officials and youth
group participants.
Participate actively in the design of the value-chain and
small business development activities in rural Wajir County and Wajir
Town to ensure adequate gender integration.
Research & Learning Studies
Design qualitative gender research that address key questions Mercy Corps trying to understand
Work with the PROGRESS consortium partners focused on
Monitoring and Evaluation and learning and advocacy partners to support
and conduct studies as well as learning events.
Gender Mainstreaming
Support the development and dissemination of PROGRESS gender research and findings.
Develop/adapt gender mainstreaming training for Mercy Corps Wajir Field Office, partners and PROGRESS consortium members
Provide gender technical reviews to program proposals, program tools, internal and external communications as needed
Provide direct support for gender advocacy in policy
formulation at the county level, along with gender-sensitive budgeting
that considers opportunities and mitigates risks to females engaged in
pastoralism and those who are transitioning out of pastoralism.
Organizational Learning: As part of Mercy Corps’ agency-wide
Organizational Learning Initiative, all team members are responsible for
spending 5% of their work time in formal and/or non-formal professional
learning activities.
Supervisory Responsibility: Gender Officer
Accountability: Mercy Corps team members are expected to support
all efforts towards accountability, specifically to our beneficiaries
and to international standards guiding international relief and
development work while actively engaging beneficiary communities as
equal partners in the design, monitoring and evaluation of our field
projects.
Reports Directly To: Wajir- based Programme Manager
Works Directly With: Wajir Programme Manager and Team Leaders,
consortium partners and technical and support staff from Mercy Corps
office in Portland, Oregon and Edinburgh, Scotland.
Knowledge and Experience:
5 years of experience in design and implementation of development programs, preferably with a gender focus
Strong background in gender programming approaches
Bachelor’s degree in relevant subject, Master’s Degree preferred
Experience conducting research and analysis on gender issues, including leading focus groups or research on sensitive issues
Experience working in the sectors of sexual and gender based
violence, harmful traditional practices, the role of women in
community-led processes, especially around natural resource management
and other sensitive gender issues
Experience in the ASALs and working with pastoralist and Muslim-communities preferred
Experience designing and adapting programmatic tools to address gender issues or to promote positive gender outcomes
Experience working on project monitoring and evaluation
Experience with training and capacity building of team members and partners
Experience with the impact on women and girls of inter-community conflict a plus
Experience working in Kenya, especially Northern Kenya
Somali language skills are strongly preferred.
Success Factors:
The successful candidate will have the following characteristics:
A strong team player, with good communication and diplomatic skills.
Proven ability to work independently as part of a regional team and with international professionals.
Excellent analytical and information management skills.
Good organizational skills and ability to work under stress and in austere contexts of remote locations.
Flexible and creative in planning and problem solving.
Attention to detail, ability to follow procedures and meet
deadlines and work independently and cooperatively with team members.
Proven excellence maintaining professional internal and external relationships.
A focus on building staff capacity.
Willingness and ability to work in the Wajir context.
Somalis are encouraged to apply.
Interested candidates who meet the above required qualifications and experience should submit applications on or before 5th January 2015, by 4.00pm,
containing a cover letter, detailed Curriculum Vitae (CV) listing three
professional references (including a recent supervisor) to
hrkenya@ke.mercycorps.org
The email subject line must clearly quote the job title and location being applied for.
Applications without the right subject heading will be automatically disqualified.
Please do not attach any certificates.
(ONLY qualified candidates who meet all the essential required qualifications will be contacted for interviews)
NB: Mercy Corps does not charge any fee at any stage of the recruitment process.
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