Gender, Youth and Social Inclusion Coordinator – Samburu at Mercy Corps

The Position Summary

The Gender, Youth and Social Inclusion Coordinator will be responsible for providing leadership and technical oversight to ensure the gender issues, adolescents, youth voices and social dimensions (inclusive of such issues as age, disability, ethnicity, and relationships) of malnutrition, food security, and resilience are effectively integrated across all programming. Under the technical guidance, mentorship support and supervision by the Gender, Youth and Social Dynamics Lead, S/he will lead county specific implementation of strategies (gender strategy, adolescents & youth, social and behavior change -and other thematic strategies), develop and lead operational planning and implementation roll-out. She/he will work within tested frameworks including a systems approach, gender lens, adolescent and youth responsiveness, social accountability and evidence-informed frameworks.

The Gender, Youth and Social Inclusion Coordinator continues to lead active learning and shaping Nawiri’s contextual understanding of the complex causality of persistent acute malnutrition as it relates to the varied needs of children, women, men, girls, and boys. He/she ensures that gender and social dimensions of food security, health and resilience are effectively addressed across all activities and components and therefore coordinate closely with partners to fulfill the goals of the program.

Essential Job Responsibilities

VISION AND STRATEGY & ITS IMPLEMENTATION

• Supports the Gender, Youth and Social Dynamics Lead, SSBC Advisor and ILSS leads in creating and evolving a strong vision for Nawiri’’s approach for supporting gender, adolescent, youth responsive programming that addresses social dynamics and demonstrates evidence of progress improvements along the gender continuum and sustaining gender transformative practice.
• Socialize within Nawiri and county stakeholders Nawiri’s evidence informed Gender, Adolescents, Youth and Social Dynamics, Structural and Social Behaviour Change Strategies and related program strategies, and guiding effective integration and implementation uptake in key sectors (such as nutrition, health, water systems, and governance) and lead their implementation within Nawiri program areas.
• Forge strong, institutional linkages and maintain a productive working relationship with, Government of Kenya, the NAWIRI consortium, PREG Partners, Local Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and other relevant partners in the adolescents, children, youth & gender field; develop relationships and linkages with organizations implementing other donor-funded programs focused within the county/Country and in this thematic scope.
• Recognize and drive opportunities for innovative action and create an environment where alternative viewpoints are welcomed; promoted and model a culture of learning and adaptive management.
• Ensure that cross-cutting aspects of gender equality, child protection, social inclusion, and youth responsiveness are included and well integrated into NAWIRI approach and activities.
• Contribute technical expertise that feeds into a dynamic community of practice of Nawiri staff and partners; sharing best practices across all Nawiri areas and work streams, while seeking opportunities to build Nawiri staff’s motivation and capabilities in GYSD.
• Collaborate with different program components to drive overall effectiveness and coherence of the Nawiri County operational program strategy.
• Represent Nawiri at all relevant thematic related meetings/workshops and other stakeholder meetings as requested.

TECHNICAL LEADERSHIP AND & ITS IMPLEMENTATION

• With technical leadership support of the GSYD, take the lead in designing implementation modalities and roll out of Nawiri’s Gender Strategy at the County Level ensuring the development of an operational work plan and its implementation in line with overall Nawiri Operational Program Strategy.
• Leads the management and implementation of specific scope under Mercy Corps within the consortium implementation modalities including supporting contextual design and roll-out. These include and not limited to cross-cutting gender mainstreaming, social accountability, systems strengthening support, SSBC, youth responsive programming and integration in market systems development; use of evidence to drive family and community dynamics and social change efforts, women and girl’s empowerment including adapted MC corporate models (i.e. BRIGE and GIRL-H), Resilience programming, among others.
• Periodically reviews and updates the Gender and Social Inclusion Evidence Database and collaborates with County Actors in conducting strategic gender analysis from emerging learning to inform adaptations with a view to increase impact.
• Support review and updating strategies, plans and working with county stakeholders to support systems strengthening alongside other Nawiri program teams for the Gender, Children, Adolescents, Youth, Social Inclusion, systems strengthening and social accountability scope.
• Provide co-leadership support for the management of an integrated social accountability approach, providing technical guidance and support to local indigenous organizations/CSOs to develop evidence informed program approaches/strategies and offer technical guidance, mentorship and coaching through implementation and reporting.
• Provide support towards mainstreaming youth vulnerability analysis (includes adolescents), to increase their voice/agency and leadership in supporting to break the cycle of intergenerational poverty, vulnerability and malnutrition through transformational and sustainable approaches and systems.
• Lead gender responsive and socially inclusive community engagement including supporting design and roll-out of SSBC and robust male engagement approaches/strategies in a systematic manner and in alignments to Nawiri’s ToC and program strategies; working closely with GYSD Lead and SSBC Advisor.
• Leads County Human Centered Design approaches and other participatory approaches for engaging communities working under the technical direction of the SSBC advisor
• Lead the Integration of findings into the project’s work-plan and implementation approaches .
• Conducts GBV risk analysis (ongoing) and ensures that recommendations for mitigation are integrated in the GYSD strategy and the project’s work-plan.
• Ensure that all staff and partners are trained on safeguarding and understand their roles in protecting program participants from sexual exploitation and abuse.
• Takes a leading role in Nawiri County specific GYSD integration including conducting capacity building activities such as training, learning-by-doing, reflection process and field monitoring support.
• Support in monitoring the implementation of the Nawiri’s GYSD strategy and other gender related commitments in the project’s design and ensure that the project activities align with USAID’s gender equity and female empowerment policy.
• Ensure the integration of Positive Youth Development principles within Nawiri.
• As part of the Nawiri county program team, collaborate to conduct regular community consultations to ensure programming remains gender and age responsive and on-track. provide continuous technical capacity building support to the County program team and partners to ensure that gender diversity principles inform processes of community consultations.
• Provide leadership and technical support to local partners in developing effective gender, adolescent and youth-focused project action plans that are in line with Nawiri’s GYSD strategy.
• Assist partner staff to communicate information from the field to the appropriate decision-making forum on the gender integration in activities undertaken in all components, processes and impacts.
• Provides leadership in shaping the learning agenda for the County GYSD agenda and supports evolving learning processes, routinely collects and shares learnings and best practices on gender,adolescents, youth and social inclusion with diverse project stakeholders.
• Share learning and best practices on gender, adolescents, youth and social inclusion among Mercy Corps’ global DFSA teams.
• Identify relevant training and learning opportunities for Mercy Corps and partner staff to advance knowledge and skills in gender mainstreaming and youth responsive programming; manage a gender and youth capacity building in alignment with NAWIRI Learning Agenda.

MANAGEMENT & COORDINATION

• Directly supervise and mentor Gender, Social Inclusion officers through technical visits, mentorship and coaching sessions.
• With support of GYSD Lead, coordinate, collaborate with county GSWG and conduct rapid gender capacity assessments/gender audits within a systems approach of county mechanisms, support development and implementation of a county capacity strengthening plan.
• Lead Nawiri GESI initiatives in the County Nawiri program including mentoring and training Nawiri team and collaborating actors on gender responsive, adolescents, positive youth development programing.
• Co-lead Social Accountability and supervise for timely implementation of CSOs scope of work for quality implementation, adoption of a learning culture and to inform adaptations
• Ensure that program and country staff understand and adhere to Mercy Corps’ Gender Minimum Standards.
• Liaise with key external stakeholders to provide guidance on gender and youth perspectives in all aspects of NAWIRI program activities.
• Ensure that NAWIRI and partners are in compliance with gender and youth related USAID/FFP requirements.
• Support programming team to integrate gender and youth into programming and assist in gender responsive participatory planning, resource allocation and support implementation.

INFORMATION MANAGEMENT & REPORTING

• Coordinate and work closely with the M&E team on GYSD integration and provide technical backstopping in the collection and use of sex and age disaggregated data, gender indicators and gender sensitive data collection processes across sectors. Make recommendations based on regular monitoring to inform program strategies to better meet the needs of the program participants.
• Ensure Nawiri is capturing the required level of gender, adolescents, children, youth disaggregated data, system strengthening data, and specific success stories on gender transformation and youth empowerment.
• Generate Implementation reports on the scope of gender, social inclusion and social accountability, while also supporting drafting of issues-papers and case studies on gender, adolescents, youth perspectives and social accountability to promote integration.
• Supporting the review of program reports and documents for gender and youth sensitive communication.
• Support in the setting of indicators for assessing progress with gender and youth integration, adapted to specific contexts of Samburu and Turkana.
• Work with the County Strategic Learning Lead to disseminate information regarding gender and youth achievements and impact.
• Represent the program’s gender strategy with external stakeholders at workshops, conferences and annual learning events. Speak thoughtfully to the evidence to action products and learn that Nawiri is continuously using to inform programmatic strategy.
• Support GYSD and work closely with the Human Resources team to ensure accountability for gender mainstreaming is incorporated into the position descriptions and recruitment processes of all program team members. Monitor the gender, diversity and inclusion focus of the program to ensure internal accountability.
• Support the management of the institutional knowledge within the Nawiri program and contribute to wider knowledge management.
• With support of the GYSD lead and collaborating with the Citizen Engagement and Social Accountability and Systems Strengthening managers, Lead the County Specific generation of reporting, planning and budgeting of gender, youth and social dynamics activities under the guidance of the DCoP.

SECURITY

• Work closely with the country team’s security focal point to promote and maintain systems that promote the safety and security of all team members. Ensure that gender specific needs and interests of program staff in relation to safety and security are identified and responded to appropriately.

Supervisory Responsibility

• Directly supervises the Gender and Social Inclusion Officers (2). Also directly supports Nawiri based thematic officers to strengthen their growth in gender responsive programming, adolescent and positive youth development and participates in the hiring and supervision either directly or indirectly of future gender inclusion and social accountability staff. Additionally, s/he will provide support in mentoring all gender-focused staff across the consortium.

Accountability

• Reports Directly To: Gender, Youth and Social Dynamics Lead (GYSD Lead)  Management and operational reporting and dotted line to Nawiri Field Director  on a day to day basis 
• Works Directly With: County Systems Strengthening Manager, Citizen Engagement and Social Accountability Manager, County Learning Coordinator, Government Engagement Manager, County M&E coordinator, partner agencies, local government, USAID and support departments (Finance, HR and Operations).

Accountability to Participants and Stakeholders

• Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts toward accountability, specifically to our program participants, community partners, other stakeholders, and to international standards guiding international relief and development work. We are committed to actively engaging communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring and evaluation of our field projects.

Minimum Qualification & Transferable Skills

• Degree in a relevant academic area with specific training on gender responsive programming – e.g., a social science discipline, gender and development.
• Minimum of five years of experience working with devolved governance levels (the County or community level), program management and implementation is required.
• Minimum of 3 years of progressive management and technical responsibility, including supervising and mentoring multi-sectoral teams, for humanitarian and development assistance, preferably with an international NGO; preferred experience in gender mainstreaming, adolescent programing, gender in emergencies, governance and social accountability, youth workforce development, youth entrepreneurship, or youth peacebuilding; USAID experience preferred.
• Must have experience in leading gender responsive interventions, advocacy and youth integration into food security programming. In-depth understanding of gender, age, and other locally significant socio-cultural factors in the context of food security programming preferred.
• Must have experience supporting or leading work that supports systems strengthening of devolved systems (county, wards, sector working groups, local actors).
• In Depth capacity in policy advocacy engagement and influencing
• Experience in development work in Arid and Semi-Arid regions in Kenya is required.
• Capacity to lead the collection, analysis, and utilization of information from a broad range of sources.
• Experience working with major donors, USAID/FFP preferred.
• In-depth understanding of gender, age and other locally significant socio-cultural factors in food security context, and demonstrated capacity to lead the collection, analysis and utilization of information from a broad range of sources in order to ensure effective integration of innovative and context specific gender and youth concepts.
• Demonstrated ability to foster commitment and build capacity among activity staff and in-country stakeholders (including government) to gender and youth integration and empowerment.
• Demonstrated capacity to understand and advise on critical technical and operational issues related to gender transformative and youth responsive programming: education, job skills, employment creation, social cohesion, health, psycho-social wellbeing.
• Ability to self-manage and succeed in an integrated management model, with demonstrated proactive and flexible nature in resolving problems and finding innovative solutions.
• Demonstrated attention to detail, ability to follow procedures, meet deadlines and work independently and cooperatively with team members. Strong interpersonal and communication skills and the ability to work effectively with groups to produce high quality results.
• Cultural sensitivity, patience, flexibility and ability to work well in a multi-sectoral and multi-cultural team and to work closely, understand and support the private sector, government and civil society.
• Ability to work in a fluid and sometimes-stressful environment with unexpected challenges.
• Skills in participatory learning and action and facilitating collaborative problem solving.
• Demonstrated ability to foster commitment and build capacity among program staff and in-country actors to ensure gender and youth integration and empowerment.
• Excellent written and persuasive oral communication skills in English required.
• Ability to travel to any program location for 50% level of effort or more as needed.