The International Rescue Committee (IRC) responds to the world's worst humanitarian crises, helping to restore health, safety, education, economic wellbeing, and power to people devastated by conflict and disaster. Founded in 1933 at the call of Albert Einstein, the IRC is one of the world's largest international humanitarian non-governmental organizations (INGO), at work in more than 40 countries and 29 U.S. cities helping people to survive, reclaim control of their future and strengthen their communities. A force for humanity, IRC employees deliver lasting impact by restoring safety, dignity and hope to millions. If you're a solutions-driven, passionate change-maker, come join us in positively impacting the lives of millions of people world-wide for a better future.
As the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela continues, the risk of hyperinflation and mobility restrictions severely constrain access to basic goods and services. To date, around 8 million Venezuelans have left the country. IRC has responded to the crisis by supporting Venezuelans within Venezuela and across the larger diaspora, providing health, nutrition, WASH, economic recovery, protection, and education services. Simultaneously, escalating violence and armed conflict have created severe protection risks in Colombia and Ecuador. This escalation of violence compounds existing pressures in both countries from hosting 2.8M and 441,000 Venezualan migrants, respectively. Across the region, the escalation in violence and conflict is now driving new waves of internal displacement or confinement, directly disrupting access to services, deteriorating health and protective systems and increasing gaps in care provision. In this context, the IRC works, together with local organizations, to support conflict affected communities in both Colombia and Ecuador to access basic goods and services including education, health and protection.
Purpose of the role
The position of Deputy Director of Programs (DDP) is a member of the Senior Management team and is integral to the successful implementation of IRC's programs in South America. Working under the direction of the Country Director (CD), the DDP is responsible for leading program strategy in alignment with local government policies and strategies; guiding strong project management following industry best practices; supporting business development efforts; and ensuring compliance with donor regulations. The Deputy Director of Programs for Colombia and Venezuela, will manage all programming in Colombia and Venezuela, as well as outreach programs led by partners in Ecuador, and will provide leadership to all programs staff based in and traveling to these countries.
The responsibilities of this position are aligned with the global IRC strategy and reinforce program excellence, gender equality, and increased client voice and choice. This role requires an innovative and pragmatic thinker who is willing to take smart risks within contexts constrained by security considerations. The DDP must be able to adapt and adjust programming to new scenarios as the context evolves, to ensure both the safety and security of staff and effective program delivery. The role must adhere to IRC security protocols, which are designed to protect staff, partner organizations, and clients and foster a culture of safety and security among program staff.
The DDP will spearhead the development and execution of the Country Strategic Plan and be responsible for supervising technical coordinators and project leads based in Colombia and Venzuela. The position will report to the Country Director of Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Perú and will coordinate closely with the Operations and Security Coordinator and the Finance Coordinator – both based in Bogotá; Regional and Global Technical Advisors in health, protection, economic recovery and development, education, and MEAL; and the IRC Emergency Unit.
The DDP will be based in Colombia, and will be required to travel up to 50%.
Specific Responsibilities
Program Strategy, Design and Fundraising
•Lead efforts for sustainable program growth, proactively identifying opportunities for new programming initiatives and prioritizing opportunities for multi-year funding to support them.
•Implement IRC´s business development strategy in Colombia and Venezuela – identify donors and funding opportunities, widening and strengthening IRC’s donor base.
•Coordinate with the regional team, technical advisors, Colombia and Venezuela staff and partners for submission of innovative and high-quality proposals; take a lead role writing technical proposals and budgets.
•Collaborate with Comms, MEAL and Grants to implement IRC´s positioning strategy – sharing the impact of IRC´s work on clients in Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela.
•Ensure, with Technical Unit staff, that project design reflects IRC program quality standards and industry best practices.
•Provide guidance, strategies and tools to ensure that program choices are based on needs assessment findings (primary & secondary data) and analysis, input from communities and clients, and a thorough understanding of context, technical best practices, and operational viability.
•Formulate integrated program initiatives so that technical sectors complement each other and promote mainstreaming of protection principles and gender-responsive approaches.
Program Management - Implementation, Monitoring and Evaluation
•Provide overall leadership and management of IRC Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela´s program portfolio, ensuring strategically coherent program direction, well-managed growth, and compliance with IRC and donor regulations.
•Support the Country Director to design, implement and update the Strategic Action Plan (SAP) for Colombia and Venezuela to guide decision-making and frame our value add, based on updated context analysis and needs assessments.
•Continually seek out ways to build the capacities of the program team members, individually and collectively.
•Ensure that detailed, realistic and feasible project implementation plans are developed and adapted as needed to better address evolving contextual needs, in collaboration with program and operations teams.
•Coordinate with other members of the Senior Management Team on appropriate management, compliance and performance standards, as well as effective systems for budget management, knowledge management and risk management.
•Collaborate with the Safety and Security Coordinator to ensure appropriate security protocols are developed for effective but security-conscious program implementation.
•Support programming staff to collect, document and disseminate lessons learned and best practices, incorporating these into new project designs.
•With program staff, develop effective and outcome-oriented MEAL plans that accurately reflect the impact of our work on the lives of our clients, including methodologies and tools to strengthen the quality of data collection, analysis and reporting.
•Review M&E and accountability data with program staff to identify and address areas for operational improvement. Ensure feedback channels are responsive to client profiles and that client feedback is addressed and incorporated into adaptive management processes.
•Work through the IRC’s Partnership Excellence for Equality and Results System (PEERS), a comprehensive set of compliance tools to set up, manage, and close out partnerships and sub-awards.
•Liaise with partner organizations and support partnership staff to ensure that all partners understand their role and responsibilities and feel they can share feedback with the IRC.
•With support from partnership staff, lead the country program´s localization strategy, developing relationships with local actors and supporting operational and technical capacity sharing with strategic local partners with the aim to support their transition to receiving funds directly.
Grants Management
•Ensure quality grants management, compliance with donor requirements, and quality information management related to programs/ grants.
•Supervise all internal and external reporting with programs and finance, ensuring high-quality, well-written and timely reports meeting donor, IRC and partner requirements; conduct thorough reviews and/or revisions of all external reports compiled by the programs, grants and BD teams.
•Ensure that program and grants teams conduct routine monitoring visits to implementation sites to ensure donor compliance and quality program implementation.
•Coordinate with the program, grants and finance teams to ensure sound budget management, expense control and timely contractual documentation, including the submission of timely and complete financial reports.
•Ensure all program leads and grants staff adhere to IRC´s program management cycle and that programming staff are well trained to properly manage project budgets.
•Ensure that program coordinators and project leads review budget-vs-actuals reports on a regular basis; provide leadership and management support to ensure effective monthly grant review meetings.
•Mitigate any potential risk by collaborating with the finance and operations departments to ensure that programming staff fully understand financial and administrative processes involved in project budget cycles.
•Ensure the timely, complete and compliant close out of all grants.
External Representation and Advocacy
•Develop a sound understanding of the IRC's programs to be able to professionally represent the IRC to implementing partners, the government and donors;
•Assist the Country Director developing strong relationships with donors, assisting with visits and in the development of appropriate advocacy actions;
•Forge and maintain solid cooperation with partner organizations through regular communication, cooperation and, where appropriate, joint decision-making;
•Act as the focal point for program-related communication between IRC country programs in the region and worldwide offices;
•Oversee programmatic inputs to advocacy efforts both in-country and globally.
Staff Management and Development
•Identify, recruit, and orient new staff to the IRC, including operations (HR, admin, security, and supply chain), programs, compliance, finance, and partnership management. Orientation will be supported by focal points within the IRC.
•Lead or support the recruitment of key program positions including the development of terms of reference and technical tests and participation in interview panels.
•Create a supervisory environment that places clients at the center of our work; focuses on both team and individual results; sees mistakes as an opportunity to learn; and emphasizes the importance of collaboration, accountability and recognition as key elements of a successful work environment.
•Adhere to IRC's performance management system, providing regular, timely and thoughtful coaching, feedback, performance assessment, and professional development for all direct reports, while making sure that they do the same for their direct reports.
•Build capacities of programming staff in key project management principles, tools and approaches and ensure that these new skills are utilized on the job.
•Support high-performing staff to assume greater levels of responsibility.
•Provide leadership support for the successful implementation of and adherence to the IRC Global HR Operating Policies and Procedures.
Key Working Relationships
•Country Director, Operations, Finance and People and Culture Coordinators and all members of the SMT and Extended SMT across Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador.
•Other Colombia and Venezuela-based staff, including operations, finance, and grants.
•Technical Advisors (based globally) and any roster staff required to support program staff in Venezuela, Colombia or Ecuador.
•Awards Management Unit to support all compliance and reporting for partners, as well as proposal development.
•Global Supply Chain to procure goods and support partners to procure.
•Communications and Advocacy units to support any key messages at external meetings.
•Global Security to support any risk analysis and mitigation.
•Emergency Unit.
•Humanitarian organizations, including INGOs, IGOs (e.g. Red Cross), UN, and local organizations.
Requirements
•Master's degree in Development Studies, International Relations, Social Sciences or a similar field;
•Minimum of 5 years managing teams in Latin America;
•Minimum eight years of management experience working in a humanitarian or development setting with a minimum of five years of INGO program management experience.
•Demonstrated successful leadership experience with a multi-disciplinary team in a cross-cultural setting, including active mentoring and coaching. Strong leadership, motivational and team-building skills;
•Experience managing security in a complex and rapidly changing security context.
•Established capacity to handle stressful situations in a healthy, constructive manner.
•Experience in managing protection, ERD and/or health programming, a plus.
•Confirmed ability to negotiate and work with partner organizations. Experience with organizational capacity strengthening and partnership building is helpful.
•Proven ability to develop winning proposals to public and private-sector donors.
Previous experience managing programs financed by US government agencies, DFID, EU, foundations and private donors a must, with previous experience in competitive environments a plus.
•Proven ability to manage projects to completion on time, within budget, and with the anticipated results.
•Ability to respond to multiple priorities in a timely manner, producing high-quality outcomes.
•Strong budget and fiscal oversight capacities.
•Proven oral and written fluency in English and Spanish a must.
•Proficiency with the Microsoft Office Suite, especially Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook.
PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS
All International Rescue Committee workers must adhere to the core values and principles outlined in IRC Way - Standards for Professional Conduct. Our Standards are Integrity, Service, Equality and Accountability. In accordance with these values, the IRC operates and enforces policies on Safeguarding, Conflicts of Interest, Fiscal Integrity, and Reporting Wrongdoing and Protection from Retaliation. IRC is committed to take all necessary preventive measures and create an environment where people feel safe, and to take all necessary actions and corrective measures when harm occurs. IRC builds teams of professionals who promote critical reflection, power sharing, debate, and objectivity to deliver the best possible services to our clients.
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