Project Manager at Diakonie Katastrophenhilfe

Roles and responsibilities

Project Coordination and reporting

• Ensure proper and timely implementation of the project according to the approved proposal and log frame and agreed policies and donor requirements.
• Monitor the overall project progress against the master log frame and proposal and ensure, together with the Finance Officer AA, compliance with donor and DKH regulations and standards.
• Generate on a half-yearly basis a high-quality interim narrative and oversee the interim financial reports and submit both timely to the Head Office in Berlin for an extension to the donor.
• Produce monthly-consolidated reports on the same by using the partner’s/country narrative reports to generate a combined monthly report and disseminate these consolidated reports to the country offices.
• Validate the content of reports received by implementing partners through the country offices
• Promote harmonization of approaches and methodologies across countries, where applicable and possible (f.i. in Cash for Assets activities, WASH), by implementing common tools
• Coordinate with other relevant projects such as the AA-funded ToGether consortium and others for synergies and complementarity.
• Stay informed about the localization agenda and initiatives in ETH, SSD, and SOM and identify ways of creating linkages/synergies.
• Responsible for keeping the Regional Director and Heads of Mission in South Sudan and Somalia updated on the overall project progress, challenges, and planned mitigation measures in addition to the monthly reports.

Compliance

• Ensure, by supervising the Finance Officer AA, overall budget monitoring, financial management, and expense control for the project in line with donor rules and guidelines
• In collaboration with Finance Officer AA, train partner staff on the detailed AA financial guidelines and requirements to implement activities and execute budgets accordingly with full compliance.
• Oversee preparation for external audits.

Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning Framework (MEAL)

• Oversee the comprehensive MEAL framework for the project, which outlines the monitoring components for each country program and assists implementing partners in defining which data is adequate and needs to be collected, enabling measuring project progress and informing project decisions.
• Guide country offices on the use of monitoring tools for implementing partners which include cross-cutting outputs on protection mainstreaming and gender-based actions.
• Monitor project progress against the master log frame and er work plan and share continuous learning from the implementation. Ensure that technical quality and standards are considered and respected during project implementation.
• Conduct, in collaboration with the country offices, monitoring visits and preparing, together with the Finance Officer for on-the-spot checks.
• Together wit
• h the Finance Officer AA, review and identify discrepancies between financial and program progress and provide mitigation measures to implementing partners through the country offices.
• Create opportunities for experience-sharing and learning
• Engage, guide, and supervise consultants for capacity building, training, quality assurance, end-line study, etc.
• Organize in collaboration with the DKH Capacity Building Coordinator learning and training events under outcome 5, identify and engage facilitators (where needed and in line with the budget) and ensure smooth implementation of the events and that results inform project implementation.
• Organize and facilitate any other meeting (project partners, stakeholders, etc.) which has significance for the overall progress of the project.

Project Quality Assurance

• Enhance the quality of programming throughout the project cycle through project review meetings, program quality initiatives (such as gender analysis, stakeholder mapping exercise, etc.), close-out meetings, and program quality checks.
• Ensure the implementation of accountability mechanisms (participation and effective communication of beneficiaries at all stages of the project cycle
• Quality checks and monitoring in line with the commonly agreed MEAL framework (standards and designs, monitoring tools, beneficiary selection criteria): review all project-related documents prepared by the country offices and implementing partners e.g. ToRs, and MoU among other project documents.
• Advise implementing project partners on the implementation process and work on standardization of project-related processes and development of SOPs

Communication

• Making use of the resources of the offices to deliver different communication products on the project such as technical papers and presentations about approaches and technical setup to be used f.i. for clusters in the respective countries and communication to donors in the region
• Ensure regular and open/transparent communication between the 3 country offices, the Regional Offices, and their implementing partners to share best practices and learnings.

Other Functions

• To attend RO and any other meeting related to his/her areas of responsibility.

Minimum Qualifications and competencies

Education

• BA Degree in political or social science, agriculture, or a related field
• Post-graduate qualification in project management or experience in the management of large-scale programs

Working experience

• Minimum 5 years of field experience in Project coordination/management positions in INGOs managing complex humanitarian projects
• Significant exposure and experience in successfully managing and leading consortia or multi-sectoral, complex projects with several partners
• Relevant working experience in at least 2 of the project sectors such as Protection, Food/Livelihood through CVA, WASH, Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR)
• Knowledge of cash transfer programming including practical experiences in the implementation or management of CVA activities is a strong advantage
• Broad working knowledge and experience working with German donors (AA, BMZ)