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.
SACCO / Youth Enterprise Development Specialist - Eldoret
Program / Department Summary: Mercy
Corps’ goal in Kenya is to strengthen and sustain capabilities of Kenyan
society and stakeholders to be agents of positive change in their
communities.
It achieves this goal through three
objectives:
1) Strengthened ability of local,
district, and regional structures to manage conflict and become managers of
democracy;
2) Empowered Kenyan youth to achieve
a greater voice in national reform and create new livelihood opportunities
and
3) More resilient drought affected
populations in Northeastern Kenya.
The Yes Youth Can (YYC) program is a
multi-year USAID-funded program that focuses on building youth-owned, youth-led
and youth-managed institutional arrangements and capabilities at both national
and county levels.
Mercy Corps implements two of USAID’s
regional YYC programs—one in the Rift Valley and one in Central region.
In partnership with the County Bungee
Forums and SACCOs, Mercy Corps works to achieve the following four
objectives:
1) Mobilize youth and form youth
representation structures at the village and county level;
2) Support youth to exercise a
greater voice in local and national affairs;
3) Increase youth productivity,
employment opportunities, and income; and
4) Increase young women’s access to
social, political, and economic opportunities.
Entering its fourth and final year of
implementation, Mercy Corps has reached 1.9 million youth in Rift and Central
regions and supported the development of over 11,000 bunges (youth
parliaments).
General Position Summary: The Youth Enterprise Program Specialist is a senior
level position with Mercy Corps Kenya. It will be primarily responsible for
providing leadership under objective #3 listed above—increase youth
productivity, employment opportunities and income—and specifically
strengthening the seven County SACCOs that we work with in Rift Valley.
Activities with the SACCO include
professionalizing the SACCOs, strategizing about how to build their membership,
SACCO sustainability planning, exploring the development of specific SACCO
products, ensuring they hit their targets under YYC, and educating them on
compliance for the CMC & SC committees.
Other activities include:
entrepreneurship training for youth starting businesses after acquiring loans
from the SACCOs, developing youth’s job-skills, linking youth to different
value-chains and markets.
The Youth Enterprise Program
Specialist will be responsible for designing and delivery of livelihoods
training, SACCO supervision and management, ensuring timely repayment
mechanisms to the SACCOs, and managing consultants.
Essential Job Functions:
- Oversee and monitor activities of the seven
county SACCOs that we work with in the Rif Valley.
- Work with each SACCO to strategize how to
build their membership, increase their sustainability and develop products
that meet their members’ needs.
- Work with and mentor SACCO leadership to
ensure that they meet their YYC targets and ensure they are complying with
all SACCO requirements.
- Provide technical insight and advice for economic
empowerment programming especially on SACCO components regarding committee
meetings, compliance and employment activities, combining experience with
practical on-the-ground identification of opportunities and constraints;
- Provide technical leadership in value
chain/market analysis to identify business opportunities youth
participants. Facilitate or provide business training to YYC youth.
- Under the leadership of the CoP, facilitate
linkages to respective County ministries and complementary projects to ensure
sustainability and ownership
- Contribute to YYC’s planning and reporting
processes as requested by the Chief of Party
- Provide training and mentorship to MC staff on
Enterprise Development and SACCO strengthening.
- Represent Mercy Corps in related thematic
working groups within the counties.
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.
Supervisory Responsibility: No supervisory responsibilities
Accountability:
- Reports Directly To: Chief of Party, Yes Youth
Can
- Works Directly With: Country Director, Program
Managers, other YYC technical specialists, M&E staff,
Operations/Finance Staff, other MC Kenya staff.
Knowledge and Experience:
- MA/S or BA/S and work experience in
Cooperative Development and Management, business administration,
economics/economic development, or international development;
- Minimum of 10 years of experience in the
fields of economic development, SACCO strengthening, or business
development and planning.
- Demonstrated technical expertise in SACCO
strengthening and youth economic empowerment.
- Proven ability to work as part of a team and
achieve project deliverables.
- Demonstrated ability to write compelling
reports and communicate clearly in English.
- Ability to effectively convey programmatic
goals, enlist partnerships, and work with a range of program and external
stakeholders;
- Fluency in Kiswahili
Success Factors:
- Innovative, decisive and inclusive leadership
approach
- Creative and insightful as regards development
programming including the relationships between youth development,
economic empowerment, peace-building and reconciliation
- Excellent communication and team-building
techniques
- Proven experience managing and building
capacity of diverse teams (expatriate and national)
- Cultural knowledge, sensitivity and respect
- Commitment to oversee projects for their
duration
- Ability to engage with strategic institutional
partners as well as current and potential donors
Regional Manager East Southern Africa - Nairobi
Program / Department Summary: Mercy Corps’ operations in East & Southern
Africa serve populations in Zimbabwe, Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia,
Kenya, and Uganda.
Fragility and
volatility sum up the context within which Mercy Corps East & Southern
Africa is working, compounded by very low levels of capacity, endemic
corruption and continued rapid population growth.
While in some countries progress
towards greater economic prosperity is certainly being made (Kenya, Uganda,
Ethiopia), others are plagued by chronic conflict and stagnant, if not
declining, economies.
These are countries undergoing
dramatic transitions that have the potential to create significant opportunity
for development and change. Mercy Corps is well placed to play a meaningful
role in supporting forces for positive change in these countries.
Our path to being relevant and having
significant impact will be through the clear identification of high leverage
strategies and related resource mobilization, learning about what works in the
current context and leveraging regional initiatives.
General Position Summary: Reporting to the Regional Program Director (RPD),
the Regional Manager will support strategic, impactful, high-quality
programming in the Region.
The position is a key point of
contact for field management including, Country Directors and Mercy Corps
country teams as well as headquarter support.
Playing a key role in ensuring
effective communication between the regional office and the field, the Regional
Manager links the country programs to a range of resources and represents the
region to relevant stakeholders and other organizations/institutions in the
Region.
S/he effectively supports and
occasionally leads new program development; assists with recruitment of field
teams when required; supports a broad range of initiatives; and assist in the
response to all public relations and information-flow needs.
S/he works with the RPD to provide
the secondary check and support the RPD to ensure all regional initiatives are
adequately supported, addressed and executed.
The Regional Manager will be tasked
with identifying and supporting new strategic partnerships with key peer
organizations, government and donor agencies, private sector actors and
academic institutions; supporting and assisting in the design of regional
(multi-country) programming; supporting key office support functions
(recruitment, administration, and logistics); and leading the coordination of
regional workshops/conferences.
Essential Job Functions:
- Backstop and ensures high level of support to
Regional Support staff (Resilience, IT, Recruitment, Security, SV), Mercy
Corps visitors, and Consultants. This will include obtaining visas,
facilitating travel, and ensuring all needs are met.
- Help ensure that new staffs transiting through
the Region (Nairobi) are welcomed and properly oriented in Mercy Corps’
systems, procedures and protocols.
- Understand donor and Mercy Corps policies,
procedures, rules and regulations to assist in monitoring and ensuring
compliance. Support in all aspects of administration, HR and logistics
across the Region. Assist Country Directors in the recruitment, selection,
orientation and training of Mercy Corps’ program teams upon request.
- Liaises with regional stakeholders as
required. Regional Manager represents regional interests and programs to
external actors in the absence of the RPD. This will include attending
workshops, briefings, meetings, working groups, and other outside events.
- Assists in the identification of partners in
research and the private sector for country/regional programs to team with
and stimulate innovative programming and improved research and learning.
Includes new corporate donor prospects to expand the corporate portfolio
in the East & Southern Africa region.
- Provide support to all proposal development
efforts and assist the RPD to develop, expand and diversity fundraising
tactics and sources in support of regional and country strategies. Will
often acts as focal point for new regional initiatives through
coordination of proposal development - monitoring the timeline,
communicating to the relevant parties as appropriate. This may also
include conducting assessments and partner negotiations.
- Work with RPD to assist country teams to
develop powerful Annual Plans and country level strategies that capitalize
on the potential of Mercy Corps’ innovation platform to have impact at
scale. Mercy Corps should become the acknowledged leader in advancing
solutions on a particular development challenge in every country in the
region.
- Work with country teams to ensure that we
learn from experience, assist with learning exchanges, develop interest
stories and feed into program development. S/he will be a skilled writer
and synthesizer of diverse and complex information helping country teams
generate new insights into their work and improve cross-fertilization of
skills, concepts and experience within the Mercy Corps world.
- Work closely with the Organizational Learning
TSU to ensure the region is plugged into larger organizational learning
initiatives, and that regional efforts are harmonized with the larger
organization.
- Coordinate and successfully organize regional
workshops and conferences.
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.
Organizational Learning: As part of our commitment to organizational
learning and in support of our understanding that learning organizations are
more effective, efficient and relevant to the communities they serve - we
expect all team members to commit 5% of their time to learning activities that
benefit Mercy Corps as well as themselves.
Supervisory Responsibility:
- Accountability: Reports Directly To: Regional
Program Director (RPD)
- Works Directly With: Mercy Corps Kenya Team,
Mercy Corps country offices, regional desks, HQ Program and Technical
Support units and departments, Mercy Corps Counterparts at MC HQ offices
in Europe and partners.
Knowledge and Experience:
- BA/S in relevant international development
field required; MA/S or equivalent preferred.
- 3-5 years of international relief and
development program management experience outside Kenya preferred;
demonstrated knowledge of relevant sectorial and/or operational areas
(agriculture, relief to recovery, access to financial services,
health/nutrition, economic development, IDP).
- Skilled writer and synthesizer of diverse and
complex information.
- Experience managing the development,
implementation, administration and compliance of US Government, EC/ECHO,
UN, private foundation and corporate grants, and related programs.
- Experience representing the organization and
its interests to a diverse range of local and international government
officials, local civil society organizations, other international
organizations, the media and the public preferred.
- Proficiency with MS Office software required
(Outlook, Word, Excel, Power Point).
- Experience with monitoring and evaluation and
other learning efforts.
- Experience with proposal development including
support and writing with various donors.
Success Factors:
S/he is a skilled communicator, able
to develop and utilize strong relationships with staff, partners and
donors.
S/he will coordinate with his/her
supervisor, the Regional Program Director, and be skilled at building highly
effective working relationships with Country Directors and their teams.
S/he will harness the expertise,
experience and ideas of Mercy Corps’ diverse program support teams.
A robust sense of humor is greatly
appreciated.
Interested candidates who meet the above required qualifications and experience should submit on or before September 10, 2014 at 4.00 p.m. a cover letter, detailed Curriculum Vitae (CV) listing three professional references (including a recent supervisor) to hr@ke.mercycorps.org.
The email subject Line must clearly
show the job title and location they are applying for.
Applications without the right
subject heading will be automatically disqualified.
Please do not attach any
certificates.
(ONLY Qualified and selected candidates for the interview will be contacted)
NB: Mercy Corps does not charge any fee at any stage of the recruitment process.