NGO Jobs in Nairobi, Kenya - SUNY AHADI

SUNY RF | AHADI

Background Information: The Agile and Harmonized Assistance for Devolved Institutions (AHADI) is a five year USAID program implemented by the State University of New York’s (SUNY) Center for International Development (CID).
AHADI is funded by both USAID and DFID. The program is designed to support Kenya’s vision and agenda for achieving the promise of devolution. The program’s interventions aim to promote governance systems that are transparent, accountable, effective in service delivery, and responsive to empowered citizens by working at both the National and County Government levels.
AHADI has three main objectives:
1. Targeted counties provide higher quality services through improved governance.
2. Improved representation of citizen interests and oversight of targeted County Government performance.
3. Functionality and effectiveness of the devolved system increased through intra-government engagement and cooperation.
AHADI is primarily a Democracy Rights and Governance (DRG) program focused on improving the governance of Kenya’s new decentralized system. It is an integrated governance program that uses sector entry points to achieve both governance and sector outcomes. These sectors include but are not limited to good governance, resilience and economic growth, education, climate change and disaster risk reduction.
The program is currently seeking a skilled, diplomatic, effective, and highly motivated:
Position Title: Grants Support 
(2 Positions)
Location: Nairobi
Duration of Assignment: 6 Months
Position Summary: This position provides grants management and administration services to the portfolio of grants and contracts that are implemented by the SUNY AHADI. The incumbent reports directly to Senior Grants Manager and assist in ensuring effective and timely administration of donor agreements and sub-agreements through the award life cycle; developing an understanding of donor requirements and expectations for the agreement; ensuring compliance; and coordinating with country offices, program staff, and others throughout SUNY AHADI and within partner organizations as appropriate.
These activities include coordinating meetings, raising PRs on behalf of the program team, updating the Grants tracker, the Grants calendar and travel arrangements; and drafting and consolidating correspondence, notes, reports and summaries and other administrative tasks such as consultant payments and others deemed necessary.
A key responsibility will be to serve as the liaison and manage the flow of information between the Senior Grants Manager, the Grants/Program Teams.
Reports to: Senior Grants Manager
Key Responsibilities
·         Co-ordinate the project’s grants accounting, compliance and risk management whilst ensuring that the grantees submit monthly work plans and reports; closely monitor and ensure that the grantees follow their work plans, submit and report the deliverables in time
·         Review sub grantee budgets and prepare contracts/agreements and follow up on compliance
·         Manage correspondences and matters in regard to grant management in consultation with the Grants Manager
·         Support in overseeing grant management policies, and developing and enforcing procedures that assure transparency in the grants processes.
·         In liaison with the Grants Manager ensure proper grants management (effective use of the grant management system) for the project and ensure it is fully operating, providing the relevant grantee reports and regularly updated
·         Provide technical support and supervise the NSA’s to ensure full compliance with the donor requirements
·         Co-ordinate the VAT claiming process for respective grantees and ensure that timely DA1 processing and reimbursements are made
·         Provide continuous feedback to all NSA grantee organizations on grants performance
·         In liaison with the Grants Manager, receive and review periodic grants reports for all grantees, liquidate the eligible costs and take relevant action on the expenses rendered ineligible and ensure proper allocation of expenses, reasonability of expenses and allow ability as per donor guidelines.
·         Periodic review of grantee’s internal controls and policies for advice on strengthening and transaction verification through monitoring reports
·         Partner monitoring and management reports against key indicators taking appropriate action where necessary including flagging risk and aiding appropriate and timely management action
·         Coordinate with the programs team to ensure that the grantees receive backstopping support from AHADI programs team as well as provide the necessary guidelines and tools as required
·         Coordinate with MERL to ensure the grantees track and document the indicators appropriately; gather and compile the monthly reports covering progress on the status of the grantee’s implementation;
·         Make regular visits to the grantees and coordinate with the AHADI respective MERL and Program Officer.
·         Maintaining and updating individual grantee files with the required information such as the fully executed grant agreements, budgets and proposals, cash requests, implementation progress reports, modifications, pre-award assessments, negotiation memos amongst others
Qualifications:
Education
·         Bachelor’s Degree or higher in accounting, business administration in accounting, related field;
Work Experience
·         At least 1-3 years’ experience grant management and administrative services;
·         Experience managing US Government/DFID grants/contracts administration desired;
·         Budget development/planning, data consolidation, and budget monitoring;
·         Ability to manage budgets and review financial reports;
·         Preparation and review of agreements and contracts, and their administration;
·         Flexible, creative and solution-orientated approach;
·         Ability to work independently
·         Ability to work effectively with others on a team and proven team skills;
·         Strong analytical skills;
·         Basic skills in accounting;
·         Strong skills in financial analysis and reporting;
·         Good interpersonal, organizational, and communications skills;
·         Effective inter-personnel and communications skills,
·         Fluent in English required, fluency in additional languages (French or Spanish) a plus
·         Carries out other duties as directed by the Senior Grants Manager
Languages: English language fluency required.
Skills and Abilities
·         Attention to detail and accuracy
·         Planning and organizing
·         Ability to take initiative
·         Ability to work in a team.
Location: Nairobi

Position Title: Program Officer
(2 Position) 
Location: Nairobi
Position Summary: The Program Officer – DFID for AHADI conceptualizes, designs, and coordinates a range of interventions to build the capacity of Kenyan institutions at the county and national level, including but not limited to: The Council of Governors; the County Executives; the County Assemblies, the County Assemblies Forum and diverse governmental and non-state actors.
Since many of AHADI’s interventions will be implemented through its grants facility, the Program Officer – DFID will contribute to the drafting and design of grant proposals and contribute to in-kind grants and other supports to governmental and quasi-governmental organizations, developing synergies and constructive engagement between AHADI and Kenya’s devolved institutions. She/he will report directly to the DFID Team Lead and work closely with the Programs, Grants and Monitoring and Evaluation and Learning teams.
She/he will support the Chief of Party and the respective members of the Senior Management Team and Program Team Leads in the timely, quality performance and delivery of the overall AHADI Program.
Reports to: Program Lead – DFID
Key Responsibilities
The incumbent will report to the AHADI Program Lead.
S/he will:
·         Assist the DFID Program Team Lead and team members to initiate and build relationships with government officials (National, Intergovernmental and County entities).
·         Ensure that the Team Lead is well apprised on changes in the operating context so that in turn, the TL can consider adjustment to programming and in turn can appraise the SMT for the necessary appraisal of the project donor’s changes to respond.
·         Collaborate with senior staff of AHADI and implementing partners, to coordinate activities and to identify appropriate interventions. This includes ensuring that AHADI is aware of all devolution activities that the partners are implementing,
·         Contributes to the development of grants strategies and negotiates technical scopes of work for grants; and coordinates support to governmental and other partners.
·         Prepare regular brief activity reports and updates, and contribute to activities under his/her purview to AHADI progress reporting and activity/M&E

·         Support the preparation and implementation of the AHADI DFID (and USAID) work plan, monitoring and evaluation and reporting against the DFID results framework and preparing consolidating for submissions for briefing and reporting to DFID (and USAID as necessary) as well as to beneficiaries.
·         Maintain and ensure the ongoing development of an appropriate framework for partner activity coordination
·         Maintaining regular communication with AHADI Partners
·         Maintain regular communication with other development partners, Government entities (National, Non-State Actors, and County).
·         Coordinate with the M&E team to report on activities, track results and harvest outcomes; and prepare reports, document and ensure that lessons learned are used to adjust activity implementation.
·         Monitor and advise on the program learning tools and websites, internally for AHADI team, for collaboration with DFID, USAID and other development partners, for Inter-Governmental sharing, and for collaboration with other civil society.
·         Monitor the Program Management System and Database to ensure that all information is being captured and that the M&E team and communications team are accessing the information.
·         Any other task as assigned by COP or DCOP
Personal Specifications:
Essential
·         Advanced degree (Masters,) in a governance-related field,
·         At least 5 – 7 years of experience in progressively responsible experience in designing, implementing and managing governance programs in Kenya
·         Demonstrated experience managing successful teams comprised of experienced professionals
·         Demonstrated results based program management, strategic planning, and problem solving skills working on complex projects in a highly sensitive environment are required.
·         Experience with DFID and USAID-funded programs (preferably governance programs)
·         Ability to work effectively with a broad range of Kenyan elected officials, technocrats and leaders from civil society.
·         Ability to work both independently and in a team environment to achieve consensus on strategies, activities and administrative matters is a must.
·         Demonstrated outstanding oral communication skills, tact and diplomacy in establishing and sustaining working relationships with high-level Government of Kenya officials and building a high level of trust with public/private organizations.
·         Demonstrated oral communication skills in negotiating activity plans and resolving activity implementation issues with AHADI partners, government counterparts, and team members
·         Excellent written communication skills are required to contribute to consultants’ Terms of Reference, regular and ad hoc project reports, snapshots, lessons learned and briefing notes.
·         Excellent computer skills (MS Word, Excel, Power Point, and Outlook)
·         Training and or experience in an education-related field is an added advantage.
Languages: English language fluency required.
Skills and Abilities
·         Diplomacy and negotiation when working with community and Government representatives.
·         Ability to work in a multi-cultural environment.
·         Ability to identify institutional needs e.g. capacity gaps and design appropriate interventions
·         Project cycle management.
·         Strong interpersonal communication skills i.e. ability to build strong relationships with partner counties.
·         Good management skills.
Location: Nairobi
Travel: Regular

Position Title: Monitoring and Evaluation Assistant
 (1 Position)
Location: Nairobi
Key Responsibilities
·         Attend the NSA activities and give feedback on data collection in the ground.
·         Collate data on a monthly basis from the NSA’s and report any correction/reviews with the NSA’s.
·         Report on the gaps in the data received from the NSA’s and share with M&E focal point at AHADI.
·         Review and analyze the data from the NSA’s to assess for quality reporting, targets vs achieved and against the narrative report.
·         Conduct spot checks and data quality assessments at the NSA’s institutions in collaboration with the M&E focal point at AHADI.
·         Collate and analyze the data from the NSA’s into the AHADI indicator data template and GIS template as described in the M&E plan.
·         Store the data received from the NSA’s in soft (excel, reports, Activity database) and hard (List of Participants, Post Evaluation Questionnaires, Reports, Laws, Guidelines, and Training materials) copies.
·         Support the MERLA Officer in coordinating and facilitating learning between AHADI and the NSA’s
·         Undertake any other responsibility assigned by the supervisor
Qualifications
·         University degree in social sciences, monitoring and evaluation, statistics or other relevant field
·         At least 2 years of working experience in a similar position with local or international NGO
·         Able to manage multiple tasks and responsibilities
·         Experience in using either SPSS and/or Stata among other data analysis package with experience in using GIS an added advantage
Preferred Skills
·         Competency in Microsoft Excel, word, Access and PowerPoint
·         Good communication skills
·         Good at writing reports
·         Keen on detail
·         Team player and ability to multi-task
·         Team player and ability to multi-task;
·         Ability to meet deadlines and cope with pressing timelines;
·         Problem solving and basic counselling skills
Languages: English language fluency required.
Skills and Abilities
·         Diplomacy and negotiation when working with community and Government representatives.
·         Ability to work in a multi-cultural environment.
·         Ability to identify institutional needs e.g. capacity gaps and design appropriate interventions
·         Project cycle management.
·         Strong interpersonal communication skills i.e. ability to build strong relationships with partner counties.
·         Good management skills.
Location: Nairobi
Travel: Regular
How to Apply
If you possess the skills and qualifications as contained in the position’s description, please send to
Hr@ahadi-devolution.org
(1) a Cover letter
(2) CV and
(3) References from three Professional Referees, one referee should be a previous or current supervisor.
Closing date: September 07, 2018.
Please note that only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.
Kindly put the position you are applying for as the subject line.
Applications without the position as the subject line will not be evaluated.
SUNY-AHADI is an equal opportunities employer.