School Feeding Managers - 2 Positions at Mary’s Meals International

We are delighted to be recruiting for a talented School Feeding Manager (SFM) to join our team in Lodwar, Turkana county. Reporting to the Programme Delivery Manager, the SFM will support the Mary’s Meals Kenya country leadership in providing effective and inspirational leadership and programme management.

In close collaboration with other senior members of staff, and in assigned area of jurisdiction, the post holder will lead overall programme excellence through exceptional programme planning, collaboration, monitoring, evaluation, and continuous development. This role shall be responsible for leading engagements, collaboration, and feedback across stakeholders at grassroots, schools, communities, sub-county, and county level.

While leading a programme delivery team, the role holder shall steer staff performance and be responsible for living and promoting key competencies and Mary’s Meals vision, mission, values, principles, and standards. You shall be expected to support in development, implementation and evaluation of strategic plans and approaches on programme implementation and programme development in areas of jurisdiction.

Key Activities

Leadership and Governance

• Provide leadership and guidance to School Feeding Officers and other members of staff on all aspects of the school feeding programme in assigned operational areas.
• In area of jurisdiction, ensure self and teams’ compliance with Mary’s Meals Policies, protocols, principles, and procedures.
• Continuously assess and seek effective approaches to build capacity of teams, volunteers, and other supporters to the School Feeding Programme.
• Supporting the Country programme leadership in developing an annual/long-term strategic plan, proposals, budgets and workplans.
• Provide timely high-level reports and programme information to the country programme leadership, partners, donors, and other functions/bodies/individuals as required.
• In consultation with the Programme Delivery Manager and other functional managers, assess and determine training and development needs of your team and implement capacity building plans which will include training, coaching to staff, volunteers, teachers, and stakeholders in all key components of the programme.
• Support other core functions including Human Resource, Operations and Finance in all aspects for effective programme delivery.

Quality Management / Control

• In areas of jurisdiction, take full responsibility for all programme data management and quality processes and procedures.
• Perform high level data analyses to track trends in key performance indicators of the programme and put in place effective development approaches and innovations.
• Prepare and present high value timely reports.
• In accordance with MMK protocols, ensure timely development and validation of all food orders, dispatches, and food quality in schools.
• Lead in review, validation and resolution of all data quality queries from School Feeding Officers and communicate/escalate these appropriately to MEL and Programme Manager.
• Support in all programme expansions including development of concepts, mapping, scoping and stakeholder engagements.

Stakeholder Engagement

• Build, strengthen and continuously engage key stakeholders supporting the School Feeding
  Programme and ensure they all understand the MM Model, Vision, Mission, core values and principles.
• Ensure sustainable community and volunteer engagement including capacity building and feedback in all the schools we support.
• As guided by the programme implementation strategies and as requested, represent Mary’s Meals in various meetings forums with collaborating partners.

Strategy and Innovation

• Be a strategic thinker
• Continuously challenge the way of working and consistently seek opportunities to develop and
  apply innovative, sustainable, and cost-effective approaches in programme delivery.

Qualifications, Skills, and Experience

Essential

• A Degree in the fields of statistics, Education, Development Studies, Nursing, Public Health, Human Nutrition, Agriculture, Community Development, or any other relevant field with demonstrable significant experience in a similar role.
• Value driven
  Minimum three (3) years practical project/programme experience two of which should be at leadership level in an NGO environment with responsibility for managing programmes, staff, financial resources, assets, and external relationships.
• Experience of developing high level programme reports, conduct programme evaluations and development plans against agreed strategy.
• Experience in quality control/quality assurance
  Advanced and well-developed inter-personal skills, with solid track record in persuading and influencing others.
• Exceptional and proven community engagement skills
• Strong leadership skills including the ability to build, including leading, engaging, motivating and managing team performance.
• Fluent written and spoken English and Swahili.
• Able to work well with people of different cultures and nationalities.
• Excellent Microsoft Office skills, particularly Word, Excel and open-source data processing tools and systems
• Experience in programme monitoring and evaluation
• Experience of a flexible approach to managing and prioritising a high workload and multiple tasks in a fast-paced environment with tight deadlines.
• Experience of managing logistics in any areas of stock management, warehousing, procurement, and fleet management.
• Team management experience, including leading, engaging and motivating a team of staff

Desirable

• An excellent team player able to work with senior and junior members of staff.
• Ability to communicate well across all levels
• Preference will be given to candidates who have experience of working in school-based programmes, particularly on school feeding.
• Experience of working with Government structures, NGOs, and community-based groups.
• Experience of revenue generation or fundraising.
• Experience in training and coaching others