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.
Gender Officer, PROGRESS Programme – Wajir
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Programme / Department Summary: The PROGRESS Gender Officer will work in
collaboration with the PROGRESS Gender Team Leader, 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 is 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 Officer will
play a key role in project implementation.
General Position Summary: The PROGRESS Gender Officer will work
directly with the Gender Team Leader in Wajir and will be responsible for
helping to design and implement the PROGRESS gender strategy in Wajir.
The Gender Officer will help
operationalize 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 Officer will support the
Gender Team Leader and Wajir Programme Manager to support to the Wajir
Programme Manager of PROGRESS to develop and implement 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..
In addition the Gender Officer will
work with the Gender Team Leader to 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
- Work with the Gender Team Leader to promote
gender integration in to the various sector based activities of PROGRESS.
- When requested by the Gender Team Leader,
provide training in leadership and negotiation for girls and women,
including for the VSLA groups, and facilitating community-platform
debates;
- Promote female leadership skills through VSLA
component, engaging men in decision making tools etc.
- Conduct regular community consultations to
ensure programming remains gender sensitive and on-track.
Activity Design and Implementation
- Assist the Gender Team Leader in
implementation and ensuring results in PROGRESS Output 3: reduced
inequality and increased empowerment of women, men, boys, and girls.
- Conduct field visits to ensure PROGRESS is
reaching marginalized groups. Make recommendations and advise field staff
in ways they can improve their targeting of key populations segments
outlined in the PROGRESS agreement.
- Collect sex and age disaggregated data while
performing proactive and recurrent gender analysis. Analyze information
and advise which groups are being missed (by linking sex and age).
- Work with the Gender Advisor to develop
curriculum for after school programs to address girls and boys and
men-focused group series to build these groups social capital.
- Help train group facilitators to deliver and
practice delivering the curriculum.
- 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.
Research & Learning Studies
- 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 in collaboration
with the Gender Team Leader.
Gender Mainstreaming
- Led by the Gender Team Leader, support the
development and dissemination of PROGRESS gender research and findings.
- Work with the Gender Team Leader to adapt and
deliver gender mainstreaming training for Mercy Corps Wajir Field Office,
partners and PROGRESS consortium members.
- Work with the Gender Team Leader to provide
gender technical reviews to program proposals, program tools, internal and
external communications as needed
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: None
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 Gender Team Leader
Works Directly With: Gender Team Leader, Wajir-based task teams,
consortium partners and technical and support staff from Mercy Corps office in
Portland, Oregon and Edinburgh, Scotland.
Knowledge and Experience:
- 2 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
- Experience conducting research and analysis on
gender issues, including involvement with 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 adapting and implementing
programmatic tools to address gender issues or to promote positive gender
outcomes
- Experience working on project monitoring and
evaluation is preferred
- Experience with training and capacity building
of team members and partners is preferred
- 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.
- Proven 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.
- Willingness and ability to work in the Wajir
context.
Male Somali candidates are encouraged
to apply.
Interested candidates who meet the
above required qualifications and experience should submit applications on or
before 20th April 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.