Chief of Party Full-Time

Purpose of position:

The Food For Education Project, otherwise known as Educating Children Together 3 (ECT3) is a USDA-funded project with the aim of improving the literacy of school-age children in grades 1-7 and increasing the use of health and dietary practices, through interventions aimed at improving the quality of literacy instruction, student attentiveness, and student and teacher attendance. The project is a follow-on from an existing Food For Education Project, seeking to build on the successes of the current project. The project operates in Muecate and Nacaroa districts, in Nampula Province, north-eastern Mozambique.

The literacy components of the project will be implemented in partnership with Ministry of Education of Mozambique. The health and nutrition components of the project include health and nutrition education for school students, deworming and vaccination, and provision of a daily nutritious school meal.

The purpose of the Chief of Party position is to provide leadership to the overall implementation of the ECT3 project, ensuring that targets are achieved and organisational and donor standards are maintained. This includes effective team leadership; overseeing the project cycle through planning and budgeting, implementation, monitoring and reporting; and representing the project to local government, WVUS and USDA. This also includes oversight of any local sub-recipients to ensure that their components are effectively integrated into the overall project.

MAJOR RESPONSIBILITIES:

Team Leadership and Development

Develop a highly performing project team that is able to deliver on the requirements of the project:

• Lead the recruitment of project staff; ensure that all necessary paperwork is accurately completed;
• Ensure that all staff have clear Job Descriptions, Annual Performance Agreements, and that performance evaluations are conducted every 6 months;
• Hold regular staff meetings to review monthly work plans, verify that all staff have clear objectives, and ensure that issues impacting project implementation can be quickly raised and addressed;
• Identify capacity gaps among project staff; develop and implement capacity building approaches to address these gaps to ensure effective team competency, particularly focusing on donor and organisational standards;
• Facilitate a working environment of mutual trust, respect, and care among all staff. Encourage effective teamwork, with staff members supporting each other.

Programme Planning and DME

Lead the planning process for annual and monthly planning, to ensure that there are clear targets in line with project objectives, and that the necessary groundwork can be completed:

• Facilitate the completion of baseline measurement of the project;
• Prepare annual plans and budgets based on project progress, making revisions as needed to ensure project targets are achieved;
• Lead the project team in developing monthly activity plans, allocating clear responsibilities and objectives;
• Ensure that key issues such as gender and accountability are effectively built into project planning;
• Facilitate the completion of the mid-term and end of project evaluations.

Programme Implementation and Management

Oversee the implementation of the project by the project team, including the sub-recipients to ensure that project objectives are achieved in a timely manner:

• Provide direction to staff to ensure that all are clear on requirements to achieve project targets;
• Regularly visit project locations to ensure that planned activities are being completed on time and to the necessary quality, in compliance with donor and organisational standards;
• Provide feedback and coaching to staff to highlight areas for improvement and to constantly bring a focus on improved quality;
• Monitor progress against project targets on a monthly basis; identify risks to effective project implementation and develop effective risk management and risk mitigation plans;
• Monitor local context, including issues of security and disasters; modify and update implementation plans to accommodate these issues;
• Identify and pursue opportunities for synergy and integration with other World Vision Mozambique programmes and/or with other service providers to maximise impact for beneficiary households and communities.

Financial and Asset Management

Ensure that donor and WV resources are effectively used for project purposes:

• Ensure that annual budgets are prepared and submitted on time;
• Monitor funding commitments and spending against budget, ensuring that good stewardship of financial resources is being practiced and that spending is on target with project plans;
• Ensure programme expenses are reasonable, allocable, prudent and spent in accordance with donor rules and regulations to ensure clean A-133 audits;
• Oversee property and equipment acquisition, disposition, and management in compliance with WV internal and donor requirements;
• Review monthly financial reports and prepare monthly variance explanations to ensure variances from targets are understood;
• Ensure that WV financial policies are followed at all times, and that management action is taken when staff do not follow policies;
• Prepare management responses to audits and take follow up action to ensure audit issues are closed within the necessary deadlines.

Reporting

Ensure monitoring and reporting system is in place and being used to report on project progress:

• Ensure that monitoring and documentation forms and workflow processes are adapted for use in project and that these are understood by all project staff;
• Prepare and submit Monthly Management Report to National Office;
• Prepare Semi-Annual and Annual Programme Reports in compliance with donor requirements and WV standards;
• Prepare and submit reports to local government as requested or as needed by government offices;
• Ensure that there is a good flow of information between District, Province and National Office such that issues are identified and reported on before they become difficult to manage;
• Monitor local context and report on how changes in context may affect programme activities. This includes changes in the security environment;
• Provide coaching and feedback to staff to improve the quality of reports that are prepared.

External Relations

Represent the project to external stakeholders in order to build constructive working relationships:

• Liaise with WVUS, DMT or SARO staff as needed to ensure they are aware of project progress, issues and that necessary support can be provided;
• Represent the project to local government, USDA or other external stakeholders as needed; respond to queries and requests for information and present a professional image of the organisation;
• Host visits from WVUS, USDA, SARO and local government as needed; ensure they have a good understanding of WV’s work in the project, the challenges and the successes.

General:

• Communicate World Vision’s Christian ethos and demonstrate a quality of spiritual life that is an example to others;
• While this job description is intended to be an accurate reflection of the duties involved in this position, World Vision reserves the right to add, remove or alter duties when necessary;
• Attend and lead weekly devotions.

Knowledge, skills and abilities:

• Bachelor’s Degree in relevant subject e.g. Management, Development, Education, Health;
• Thorough knowledge of the project cycle;
• Knowledge of US government grant regulations preferred;
• Minimum of 7 years in project management in an international context, including at least 3 years in food aid programmes;
• Experience with USDA commodities grants is preferred;
• Excellent written and oral communication skills in English, Portuguese is an advantage;
• Strong planning, budgeting and organisational skills;
• Strong knowledge of financial management and accounting principles;
• Strong analytical and problem solving skills, with a detail orientation;
• Ability to build and develop a project;
• Ability to relate well with a diverse group of stakeholders including local government, staff, community members and donors;
• Strong computer skills, particularly in Microsoft Word and Excel, or other similar software.

Work Environment/Travel:

• Based in the Provincial Office in Nampula Province, north-eastern Mozambique, with travel to the communities up to 50% of the time.