Mercy Corps Field Project Manager Jobs in Kisumu and Kakamega

3 Positions

Mercy Corps works amid disasters, conflicts, chronic poverty and instability to unleash the potential of people who can win against impossible odds. Since 1979, Mercy Corps has provided $1 billion in assistance to people in 82 nations.

Supported by headquarters offices in North America, Europe, and Asia, the agency's unified global programs employ 3,500 staff worldwide and reach 9 million people in more than 40 countries. Over the last five years, more than 90 percent of the agency's resources have been allocated directly to programs that help people in need.

Mercy Corps has recently been awarded a 3-year program under USAID’s Yes Youth Can initiative, covering six regions in Kenya; Western, Nyanza, Rift Valley, Central, Nairobi and Coast.

The core of this program is a Youth Innovate for Change Fund (YICF), which will be a youth-owned, youth-led and youth-managed financial facility to support local solutions for community economic development as it grows in value.

This program aims to appropriately empower Kenyan youth (15-30yrs) to strengthen their socio-economic and political stakes through youth-led and managed initiatives and institutions.

The YICF will in the first three years provide sustainable financial and skills development assistance to approximately 200,000 youth through a variety of youth-identified social and economic community development projects.

We are currently recruiting for qualified internal and external candidates to fill the following positions which will be based in Kisumu, Mombasa and Kakamega.

General Position Summary

Working under the direction of the Deputy Chief of Party (DCoP), the Project Manager is responsible for the overall coordination of field office program operations in a way that contributes to the overall objective of the YICF.

The Project Manager also plays a head of office role for the field office, ensuring adequate and decent representation of the agency.

The Field Project Manager plays a key functional lead in youth mobilization at County level and maintaining a database of detail geographical location of YICF youth clients.

This position will be instrumental in ensuring YICF overall program target (at-risk youth) is objectively met at County level. The Field Project Manager ensures that only genuine youth are recruited into the program and will manage any manipulation attempts.

Essential Job Functions

• Build and maintain close relations with identified youth networks for the YICF program
• Overall coordination of continuous youth mobilization exercises
• Participate in County level youth forum with identified youth network(s) for YICF
• Manage County-level politics that may impede the process of realizing YICF objectives
• Lead Mercy Corps field program team in undertaking synchronized community mapping exercises for youth networks and socio-economic resources
• Lead Mercy Corps field program team in participating in synchronized community economic strategic visioning and planning exercises
• Participate effectively in identification and constitution of Youth Economic Committees (YEC) at County level
• Train field officers in effective youth mobilization strategies
• Overall coordination of field office team members; logistics assistants, field officers, investment officers, grant officers and drivers
• Lead the field office team program team in developing field level integrated, practical and executable weekly or monthly work plans.
• Drive functional team work and ensure an exciting working environment for all field office team members.
• Effective representation of Mercy Corps in stakeholder forum within geographic region; clients, government, NGO partners and friends and private sector. Liaise with project stakeholders at field office level on an on-going basis
• Communicate to all stakeholders at field level the overall objective of the YICF program
• Oversight on all field office operational expenses with a view to maintain a reasonable monthly expenditure scale on utilities like communication, electricity, water, printing etc.
• Identify and resolve issues and conflicts within the field office team.
• Ensure proper documentation and filing of all program activities at field office level
• Present monthly updates of field office program operations to Deputy Chief of Party.

Supervisory Responsibility: Field Officers, Logistics/Admin Officer

Accountability Reports Directly To: Deputy Chief of Party

Works Directly With: Field Finance Officer

Knowledge and Experience:

• Two or more years of progressive project coordination, particularly with a youth program
• Previous experience facilitation large community mobilization exercises is essential
• BA/BS or equivalent from a recognized college or university in project management business administration. Each additional year of approved formal education may be substituted for one year of required work experience.
• Demonstrated experience in personnel management
• Previous experience training project staff
• Experience working both independently and in a team-oriented, collaborative environment
• Advanced computer skills in MS Office programs, particularly Excel, PowerPoint and Word
• Excellent oral and written English skills

Success Factors

• Persuasive, encouraging and motivating
• Demonstrated experience in successful community mobilization
• Ability to elicit cooperation from a wide variety of sources; management, clients, partners, friends.
• Ability to defuse tension among project team, should it arise.
• Strong interpersonal skills, good sense of humor and even temperament
• Good oral and written communication skills
• Ability to learn fast and share learning with team
• Demonstrated ability to train, coach and build capacity of staff
• Any other duties as assigned by supervisor and characteristic to this position

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.

Accountability to Beneficiaries

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.

Interested candidates who meet the above required qualifications and experience should submit a cover letter, a four (4) pager detailed Curriculum Vitae (CV) listing three professional references (including a current or/and previous supervisor) to hr@ke.mercycorps.org on or before August 1, 2011 4.00 p.m.

Applicants must clearly indicate on the email subject the specific region that she/he is applying for i.e. “Application for the position of Field Project Manager Kisumu, Mombasa or Kakamega”.

Applications without a subject heading will be disqualified.

Please do not attach any certificates.

Only qualified short-listed candidates will be contacted

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