Dan Church Aid (DCA) DCA is a Danish Humanitarian and Development organization working to assist and empower people affected by poverty and disasters to live a life of dignity. In Ethiopia, DCA’s area of works includes humanitarian response, food security, Resilience building of vulnerable community members, and Gender and capacity building of civil society organizations.

Currently, DCA Ethiopia Office is looking for a competent Program Area Manager for its Field Office- Gambella. The Program Area Manager will contribute to the successful management and lead the implementation of DCA Objective.

Over all responsibilities of the Job

The overall objective of the post is to play a leading role in refugee and host communities’ project development, planning, implementation, monitoring, evaluation and reporting of DCA Projects under Gambella Coordination office. The Area Manager provide the required technical and management support for successful implementation of the projects with the required quality standards. The Area Manager ensure the donor and project signatories requirement is meet in terms of implementation standards, reporting and visibilities. The manager also expected to demonstrate prominent level of team leadership to motivate, build trust among the team and ensure team effectiveness. The manager will also work in collaboration with the country office program, M&E, prolog, and finance teams to support achieving the organizational and project implementation objectives.

Main Tasks

Project Development

• Take a lead in Proposal development for refugee and hosting communities Gambella Projects and actively take part in write up of proposal

• Ensure that need assessment is conducted for proposal involving key stakeholders in the target locations

Coordination Office Management

• Lead DCA Gambella management team and ensure that the team address the project implementation challenges timely

• Liaison with DCA country office technical team to ensure the projects receive the required technical support timely

• Facilitate monthly Gambella management meeting and quarterly general staff meeting and other ad hoc meeting to ensure the coordination office make an informed decision and provide leadership appropriately.

Project Implementation

• Facilitate project launch both internally and externally involving relevant stakeholders and ensure documentation of the process.

• Engage with the project stakeholders to ensure that DCA projects are planned and implemented with the full involvement of stakeholders at various levels

• Lead implementation and procurement planning process for each project in Gambella and ensure realistic detailed implementation plan (DIP) and procurement plan are in place.

• Strictly follow the implementation of the DIP and the procurement plan concerning the budget versus actual (BVA) analysis

• Conduct monthly joint BVA review with Gambella project coordinators and Admin and finance coordinator and participate on the country office level both review with the relevant program team, finance for all projects implemented in Gambella

• Ensure all project activities in Gambella are implemented by donor requirements and as per the quality standard and agreed on a detailed implementation plan.

• Regularly monitor potential risks, and implementation challenges and work towards seeking solutions together with project staff and stakeholders

• Ensure strict adherence to international standards such as CHS, LEGS, UNHCR and SPHERE minimum standard across all project activities.

• Ensure the security management plan is in place and strictly followed

Monitoring and evaluation, reporting and documentation and accountability

• In collaboration with the M&E staff and other technical staff put in place a realistic and actionable M&E plan for each project in Gambella and ensure the plans are implemented

• Ensure that quality data showing project progress are collected, recorded and reported on a timely basis

• Lead project review meetings (quarter and monthly reviews) and ensure action points agreed are implemented in subsequent months

• Closely follow the projects to ensure that they achieve their results

•  Conduct regular field visits to the project location and provide technical support for the team and ensure the quality of project outputs

• Compile timely and high-quality project progress reports as per DCA and Donor requirement

• Make sure proper documentation and handling of project-related documents (plans, reports, minutes, monitoring, and evaluation reports etc.) are in place

• Support the project team to collect lessons learned, and best practices sharing with the relevant bodies

• Support the project team to prepare case studies and human stories for reporting and promotional purposes

Partnership and Representation

• Duly represent DCA in Gambella as per the authority delegation to be given by Senior Management

• Maintain good partnerships with stakeholders (target communities, government, ARRA, UNHCR, and other humanitarian actors) in the spirit of equity, transparency, result-oriented, responsibility and complementarity.

• Maintain regular contact with other international, UN, local non-governmental organizations (NGOs), Gambella regional state government officials, and RRA both at the camp and zone level working to serve as a network for obtaining and coordinating information regarding current and future work in the country

• Facilitate and plan for joint monitoring visits with government offices, ARRA and UNHCR.

• Ensure project plans and reports are timely shared with relevant government, ARRA and UNHCR offices.

• Participate in GO-NGO forums; UNHCR/ARRA task force meetings; sectoral coordination meetings; and other relevant forums and share outcomes with the rest of the team.

Budget Financial Management

• Manage   and regularly monitor budget utilization for each project and provide regular feedback to project staff for any require adjustment

• Ensure that DCA financial policies and procedures are duly respected at field office levels

• Responsible for ensuring donor rules, regulations and compliance related to budgets are maintained and respected

• Oversee the budget utilization of other consortium members as appropriate to avoid the risk of the project over/ under spent

• Facilitate collaboration and interaction between the field-level finance staff and the programme staff to ensure valuable information follow between these functions

• Take part in budget preparation and budget revision

Administrative and logistics management

• Ensure sure that necessary administrative and logistics supports are provided to field staff based on intervention requirements

• Regularly undertake security assessment of the project targeted areas and update DCA HO

• Facilitate required logistic arrangements for DCA’s project visitors as appropriate

Human Resource Management

• Develop Human resource requirements for all projects and communicate with appropriate people

• Supervise, coordinate and train DCA Gambella staff, and ensure that they conduct their functions in a timely, coordinated, and participatory manner.

• Facilitate the recruitment of Gambella project staff in the timely development of Job descriptions

• Manage and supervise the works of all DCA Gambella project staff in the field offices

• Ensure performance review is conducted for all DCA Gambella staff 

• Regularly assess the capacity gap of the staff in line with the Employment development review (EDR) and recommend capacity-building interventions

• Ensure that DCA’s human resources policies and procedures are fully implemented and respected at field offices

Others

• Perform other duties as delegated by line manager

• The Area Manager must abide by the DCA Code of Conduct and shall not undertake any other direct or indirect business and work, honorary or remunerative in addition to the work performed for DCA, except with the written permission of the DCA Ethiopia Country Director.

Vacancy Number: DCA-ET/VA- 020/2022

Type of Contract: Two years Contract with possibility of extension

Reporting to: Humanitarian Program Manager

Expected Start Date:  As soon as possible

Job Requirements

Required Qualifications / Experience:

• MSC/First degree in a relevant discipline (Development Studies, DRR Management, food security, Agriculture, and related field) from a recognized university.

• 6/8 years practical experience in MSC/BSC respectively at the field and country office level in designing humanitarian projects proposal and reporting writing capacity building and implementation of key donors BPRM, ECHO etc. specifically in the refugee context.

• Technical Training qualifications required:  relief, disaster management, environmental sciences, and related field.

• Experience working in refugee context in Gambella, or other refugee set up in Ethiopia is with international NGOs, UN agencies like UNHCR is mandatory.

• Understanding of the humanitarian system and refugee crisis in Ethiopia.

• Knowledge of humanitarian standards and principles and cross-cutting issues

• Experience in management and knowledge of basic accounting methods and procedures

• Ability to train and supervise a multi-cultural staff

• Good cross-cultural Communication skills

• Excellent communication, networking and persuasion skills, particularly good mentoring, and capacity-building experience.

• An openness to learning about and understanding the culture, political, social, and economic situation of the country

• Experience in project design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation

• Good public relations and public speaking skills

• fluent in spoken and written English, proficient writing skills

Other Competencies/Attributes:

• Elevated level of diplomacy skills for relationship building

• High degree of negotiation and persuasion skills to seek funding commitments from donors,

• Excellent time management

• Ability to work in high tension and high-security risk situations.

• Ability to work in and contribute to the team-building environment.

• Must be a committed Christian, able to stand above denominational diversities.

• Attend and participate in daily devotions and weekly Chapel services.

• Perform other duties as required

How to Apply

Interested and qualified applicants should apply for the post via the below link: Program Area Manager - Intranet DCA (emply.com)

DCA is an equal opportunity employer and all interested candidates are encouraged to apply regardless of age, race, gender, marital status and religious, political or ethnic affiliation. Please don’t mention your religious or ethnic affiliation in your application.  

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.