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 has three main objectives:
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.
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.