Mercy Corps PROGRESS Programme Gender Team Leader Job in Wajir Kenya

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.