District Programme Manager Full-Time

World Vision is hiring a District Programme Manager.

Purpose and Job Context

The majority of World Vision’s work is implemented at the community level, seeking to build local community understanding and capacity such that they can take leadership in their own development. In this approach, World Vision’s role is as a facilitator, building linkages between community and government, and bringing in additional resources, both financial and technical, to assist in this work. A thorough understanding of local community context and dynamics is essential to the success of World Vision’s work as this enables us to work effectively in the right way with the right people. World Vision’s core approach is an integrated area approach, in which a number of projects are implemented in a defined area, with the aim that community members participate in, and benefit from, all projects in a holistic manner.

In each District there is a team of staff to implement the projects in partnership with local government and local communities. Development Officers take the lead in community relationships, Field Co-ordinators provide overall direction to planning and implementation in specific Administrative Posts, and Technical Co-ordinators provide direct technical input to community groups working on specific sector projects.

The role of the District Programme Manager/Field Coordinator is to provide overall leadership and management for the District Programme, in accordance with relevant strategies (including national strategy and technical approaches), policies (including DME Policy, Child Protection Policy, Sponsorship Policy, HEA Policy and standards (including DPA, LEAP). This includes managing a team of up to 40 staff (with usually 6-8 as direct reports) and a budget of up to $4,000,000, and overseeing the sector projects that have been selected for that particular District. This also involves external relationships with local government, communities and funding offices.

Major Responsibilities

Team Leadership

• Facilitate a working environment of mutual trust, respect, and care among all staff. Encourage effective teamwork, with staff members supporting each other;
• Conduct monthly staff meetings to ensure issues are raised and addressed and to encourage reflection on ADP progress and learning for improvement;
• Ensure that Development Officers have clear monthly and weekly plans, and that these also reflect the requirements to engage with Technical Co-ordinators;
• Facilitate effective relationships between Development Officers and Technical Co-ordinators such that both groups are working towards common goals as identified in project designs and plans;
• Ensure P+C documentation is completed to a high standard including PRFs, PAFs, Annual Performance Plans, Mid-Year Performance Reviews, Annual Performance Reviews, and Learning and Development plans;
• Take responsible for building the capacity of programme staff, enhancing their commitment, character, competence, and critical thinking; work with direct reports to develop and implement personal capacity building plans, identifying specific capacity gaps and appropriate development opportunities; provide coaching to direct reports to enhance their capacity.

Local Relationships and Local Level Advocacy

• Build and maintain relationships with key stakeholders at the district level, community groups within the Administrative Post; together with Development Officers, visit children, families, communities and community groups frequently to encourage, advise, and build relationships. including government, other NGOs and churches;
• Act as the primary focal point for government relations in the District, and Administrative Post, with the District Administrator and other key government agencies. Maintain strong and open relationships with government entities to ensure their support for WV’s projects;
• Lead the development and implementation of a plan to form, facilitate and manage effective relationships and networks with various community partners, including local government, community-based organisations, other NGOs, local businesses, churches, other faith-based organisations. These networks and relationships provide the basis for local level advocacy;
• Develop a good understanding of district development plans to ensure that WV’s plans are aligned with, and complementing, government plans;
• Communicate WV’s approaches to government and other stakeholders such that they can become a partner with WV rather than viewing WV as a donor;
• Prepare and submit key information and reports to government to ensure they are kept up to date with WV’s project works;
• Build alliances with other organisations who have a focus on the well-being of children, which can then work together with WV to increase impact. Ensure these retain a focus on the most vulnerable children;
• Develop advocacy partnerships with other like minded organisations, seeking to influence policy development and application in the best interests of children

Programme DME and Planning

• Ensure that necessary DME processes are completed on time and to a high quality;
• Lead in the writing of District design documents, delegating relevant sections to appropriate staff, and ensuring that these are in line with LEAP standards and requirements;
• Ensure that project approaches find a balance between community needs and capacity, national strategy, and global models of good practice;
• Lead the overall development of annual plans and budgets, based on Programme design and NO strategy;
• Ensure that disaster management and advocacy approaches are effectively built in to all project and programme designs;
• Ensure key cross-cutting themes such as gender, faith and vulnerability are integrated into project designs;
• Ensure monitoring reports are prepared and are used as a basis for revising and improving on project implementation;
• Facilitate the conducting of baselines and evaluations, which will be led by the DME team;
• Contribute to the preparation of annual project plans, detailing targets to be achieved in the designated Administrative Posts, providing accurate information regarding local costs, and ensuring resources are allocated based on field realities;
• Ensure that in design and planning processes, contributions and responsibilities of both government and communities are identified and agreed, such that projects become jointly owned;
• Provide leadership in the development of community disaster preparedness plans and local level advocacy plans, and ensuring that local advocacy and disaster risk reduction are effectively incorporated into designs and plans.

Programme Implementation and Management

• Ensure that WV’s approach to Development as detailed in DPA is applied throughout the District Programme; facilitate discussion around DPA principles and make plans for necessary changes in programming approaches based on the learning from DPA;
• Ensure that throughout implementation, key standards in Child Protection, DME and Sponsorship are adhered to;
• Develop plans for how to improve integration and mutual support between different projects in the ADP, including those funded by sponsorship and those funded by grants or private donors;
• Lead the development of monthly staff plans to ensure that planned activities are conducted at the correct time;
• Ensure annual procurement plan is developed; ensure project processes such as procurement and contracts are initiated with sufficient time to be ready for implementation deadlines; monitor the progress of these processes and follow-up to ensure they are completed on time;
• Monitor progress against project targets on a monthly basis; identify risks to effective project implementation and develop effective risk management and risk mitigation plans;
• Facilitate visits from Provincial Office and National Office teams for quality assurance; develop and implement plans for improving implementation based on the results of these visits; request assistance where needed;
• Ensure the preparation of mid-year revisions to annual plans, to accommodate results from first 6 months of the year;
• During times of disasters, provide leadership for all aspects of disaster response as needed and manage necessary adjustments in programme/project activities;
• Conduct monitoring visits to project activities to assess progress against targets and to provide coaching and direction to activities in areas where improvements are needed;
• Make adjustments to project plans where necessary to incorporate learnings from experience;
• Take the lead in any activities related to local government (Administrative post) and local advocacy;
• Where follow up plans have been made following a technical monitoring visit, ensure that these are built into Development Officer weekly plans and that action is taken to implement necessary actions.

Sponsorship Management and Child Protection

• Ensure compliance with sponsorship standards and integration of child sponsorship with development programming in accordance with sponsorship and programming guidelines. This will include achieving targets in SOIs, RC Monitoring, GNs and new sponsorship initiatives;
• Ensure government and local communities understand WV’s approach to sponsorship;
• Ensure that staff understand and follow the WV Child Protection Policy;
• Ensure that efforts are taken to respond promptly and appropriately to child protection incidents (for both sponsored children and non-sponsored children), and that awareness raising for prevention and reporting of child protection incidents occurs within the ADP area;
• Ensure sponsorship programming targets are built into weekly and monthly plans of Development Officers;
• Take responsibility for ensuring that key sponsorship activities including correspondence, GNs ande RC monitoring are completed according to standards within the assigned Administrative Posts;
• Facilitate co-ordination between Development Officers, Sponsorship Officers and Sponsorship Co-ordinator to ensure that necessary technical support is provided to Development Officers in the area of Sponsorship.

Financial Management

• 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;
• Review monthly financial reports and prepare monthly variance explanations to ensure variances from targets are understood;
• Lead the preparation of mid-year budget revisions to adjust for learnings in the first half of the year;
• 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

• Prepare and submit regular reports to the National Operations Mananger, compiling reports from other departments of the District team. Specifically these include Monthly Management Report, 6-monthly Programme Report, Annual Programme Report;
• 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.
• During emergency responses, prepare and submit the response situation report.

Support Office Relationships

• Build effective relationships with Support Offices. Respond to queries and requests for information and stories in a timely manner. Ensure a good flow of information between District projects and Support Offices such that they continue to see WV Mozambique as an effective partner;
• Host visits from Support Office staff and Sponsors; ensure they have a good understanding of WV’s work in the ADP, 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.

Person Specification

Education and Knowledge

• Bachelor’s Degree in relevant subject (Development, Management, Social Sciences);
• Conceptual understanding of, and commitment to, development work among the poor;
• Thorough working knowledge of programme/project cycle management;
• Basic knowledge of aspects of development work including health, education, food security, child protection, disaster management and advocacy.

Experience

• Minimum of 5 years in managerial and/or leadership positions;
• Experience of Project/Programme Management throughout the whole project cycle.

Skills/ Abilities

• Excellent written and oral communication skills in both English and Portuguese;
• Strong planning, budgeting and organisational skills;
• Strong knowledge of financial management and accounting principles;
• Ability to facilitate development processes, bringing in diverse organisations and building plans to work towards a common goal;
• Ability to build and lead a team with diverse roles;
• Strong computer skills, particularly in Microsoft Word and Excel, or other similar software.

Work Environment

• Based in the District Office, with travel to the communities up to 50% of the time
• Travel to Provincial Office once a quarter

How to apply

Email: applications_hrd@wvi.org

Valid: 12/03/2021

Local: Mucuba