Regional Partnership Advisor at International Rescue Committee

Scope of work

• The Asia Regional Partnerships Advisor (RPA) will provide intensive operational and strategic support to Asia country programs and the regional team to accelerate progress towards achieving country and organizational partnership ambitions. The role of the RPA is to both support country offices to deliver on the partnership commitments of their Strategy Action Plans and to equip the regional team to effectively fulfil their roles in PEERs in a manner that creates a culture of partnership across Asia. S/he will provide critical partnership change management support to Country office SMTs, Technical Coordinators, Partnership Coordinators and others as needed to establish the core building blocks for partnership success. This will involve working closely with country offices, regional project teams, and regional functional and technical leads to enact or strengthen appropriate management routines and personnel structures and competencies across all departments, to effectively promote the IRC’s partnership principles in practice. The RPA will work across departments to enable effective use of PEERS to apply a ‘why not partner’ approach to strategy, program and project design, and to establish and develop strategic partnerships with local actors.

Specific Responsibilities

• Ensure country offices and regional programs have the right structures and processes in place to deliver on partnership commitments and Strategy Action Plan targets.
• Support country offices to design and develop management structures and tools to facilitate country offices to implement a one-IRC approach to partnership through supporting partnership working group, SMT-level decision-making, and integrating PEERS and Project Cycle Meeting (PCM) routines.
• Support country offices to develop and/or refine partnership strategies to align and guide progress towards partnership goals, and to leverage adequate support from across the organization for successful implementation of these strategies.
• Design, develop and guide country office adoption of models for meaningful partner participation in key decision-making processes, including strategy development, program design and management, collaborative project budget development and feedback management, etc.
• Work with country offices to establish effective feedback mechanisms for understanding partner perspectives, and ensuring accountability to that feedback
• Serve as a resource for country and regional teams to support optimizing operational or finance business processes to reduce blockers to achieving the IRC’s partnership ambitions
• Actively engage with country office and regional management to foster the collaborative and open culture necessary to partner as equals, including through the direction and tone the SMT and modeling of partnership principles.
• Build capacity of country and regional teams in administering effective partnerships and for strengthening approaches to capacity sharing with local partners
• Strengthen the capacity of country teams and regional technical and functional leads in the use of PEERs for developing and managing principled collaboratie partnerships, including conducting PEERs trainings and coaching, guiding and mentoring partnership leads and partnership-facing staff in each country program.
• Provide partnership support to country office in development business development strategies, teaming approaches, and collaborative program design with partners for specific opportunities.
• Lead cross-country learning and sharing of best practices around partnerships and develop a regional partnership Community of Practice, and contribute experiences from Asia into the IRC organizational evolution of our partnership approaches, strategy and PEERs.
• Foster and promote effective capacity sharing approaches across CPs, including effective project support across all organizational functions, and ensuring that we are understanding and leveraging opportunities to learn from partners
• Collaborate with relevant technical advisors, regional and country colleagues as needed to assure guidance and capacity building support is available to partners for technical implementation and program quality.
• Strengthen, and where needed, define processes for how the regional level support functions contribute to CP level application of PEERs and to the partnership processes at country level
• Grow the number and quality of strategic partnerships across the region by guiding country offices on strategic partnership engagement and through building strong networks among partners at the regional level
• Support CPs to analyze the roles, capacities and strategies of local civil society, government and private sector actors, to define IRC’s role based on its added value to local actors and systems (asking ‘why not partner’) and guide country teams in fostering long-term relationships with key strategic partners
• Guide technical and partnership leads to identify and establish strategic partnership relationships with civil society organizations, government entities and private sector actors, as well as with networks, based on the stakeholder analysis
• Grow the IRC’s regional partnership network to leverage for impact at country level and to align proactive partnering with program development priorities across the region.
• Collaborate across functional areas, in particular with Regional Emergencies Director and Regional GEDI Director to promote greater partnership readiness at the country and regional levels for both emergency response as well as to identify and promote greater partnerships with feminist and women-led organizations.

Key Working Relationships

• Reports to the Deputy Regional Director and the CRRD Partnerships Director in a Management-in-Partnership matrix arrangement; Significant engagement with: CDs, DDP, Partnership leads in each country, DDOs and DDFs, TAs, DAM and RVP, and regional functional Directors

Professional qualifications and requirements

• Minimum of five years’ experience in partnership, capacity sharing, organizational learning and/or related work required, and progressive managerial and/or advisory experience strongly preferred. Strong familiarity, working experience and lived experience in Asia strongly preferred.
• Degrees in non-profit management, business management, organizational development, international development or another related field, an asset.
• Thorough knowledge of best practices in partnership and capacity sharing, with demonstrated experience in integrating this theme into programming.
• Familiarity with key institutions and donor agencies in capacity sharing.
• Experienced in setting up and using monitoring and evaluation systems for partnerships.
• Demonstrated ability to transfer knowledge to diverse audiences through participatory adult training, mentoring, distance learning, and other formal and non-formal methods. Strong workshop design and facilitation skills.
• Collaborative, team management style; ability to work well in diverse, multi-cultural team settings.
• Exceptional interpersonal and communications skills.
• Skilled at persuading and leading through influence, negotiation and coaching.
• Significant capacity for strategic thinking and systems development.
• Fluency in English required.
• Must be willing to travel throughout the region approximately one-third of the time, occasionally at short notice and sometimes under strenuous conditions.