Afghanistan: Drought Project Coordinator

Nov 19, 2018 | Relief International
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Relief International is a leading nonprofit organization working in 16 countries countries to relieve poverty, ensure well-being and advance dignity. We specialize in fragile settings, responding to natural disasters, humanitarian crises and chronic poverty.

Relief International combines humanitarian and development approaches to provide immediate services while laying the groundwork for long-term impact. Our signature approach — which we call the RI Way—emphasizes local participation, an integration of services, strategic partnerships and a focus on civic skills. In this way, we empower communities to find, design and implement the solutions that work best for them.

Position Summary: 

Part of a comprehensive approach featuring short- and longer-term multi-sector response to the drought in the South Western Region of Afghanistan, ECHO drought response project will address the critical, urgent needs of drought affected communities through a WASH and Food Security response. The project will prevent loss of life and preserve dignity by addressing immediate, life-saving emergency needs. Under Result 1, RI will provide affected individuals with clean water for drinking and domestic use. In the first phase of the action, RI will be delivering water through water trucking and while refurbishing wells (Build Back Better - BBB) in order to enable safe access to water in the medium term. Under this result, the Action will also build capacity of affected populations to handle water safely and treat it for drinking, thus preserving and ensuring the wellbeing of all the members of the household. Emergency safe sanitation will be put in place in order to preserve and improve health status and prevent outbreaks connected to dangerous sanitation practices in a situation of water scarcity. Under Result 2, the Action will ensure food security through distribution of food parcels targeting remote communities in Nimroz and Farah. The intervention is meant as a short-term surge response, intended to scale up quickly to meet the urgent needs triggered by the drought. The Action will contribute to improving the Food Consumption Score of vulnerable families affected by the drought and prevent malnutrition triggered by nutrients deficit. The Action will also tackle some of the underlying causes resulting in negative coping mechanisms which would compromise the safety and security of the most vulnerable members of society.

Overall management of the ECHO project in Nimroz and Farah provinces. Ultimately responsible for the timely, effective and on budget implementation of the project, the position directly supervises the project team and works in close coordination with the PPC at Provincial level. He/she will represent the ECHO project in relevant meetings at Local, Regional and Kabul level, in coordination with their line manager .

Position Responsibilities and Duties:

Overview and Management of Humanitarian Programs:

  • Manage quality project implementation, including allocation of resources and ensuring appropriate controls are maintained at all levels
  • Ensure quality project implementation through coordination and direct monitoring of project activities to ensure all projects are completed on time, within budget, and achieve their objectives
  • Ensure that donor rules and regulations and humanitarian standards including relevant guidelines and compliance rules are known and followed by RI teams.
  • Ensure project implementation reaches the required quality and follows RI policy and best practices, especially for community participation and Do NO Harm
  • Mentor the two project leads for food distributions and water supplies in how to implement ECHO projects
  • Ensure lessons learnt and best practices are documented and disseminated across RI Afghanistan and where relevant RI Global
  • Provide technical support to projects where relevant
  • Ensure proper budget follow up, projections and budget re-alignments where needed
  • Ensure quality and timely reports to the donors are prepared and submitted  

Personnel Management and Capacity Building:

  • Oversee the recruitment, management and training of the national program staff in each field site
  • Responsible for the quality performance of field staff, including staff with technical reporting lines to positions in Kabul;
  • Lead capacity building for the local team through on the job training particularly in areas related to project planning, financial planning and monitoring, procurement, record keeping, data analysis and reporting 

External Representation, Coordination, Policy and Advocacy

  • Establish and consolidate relationships with partners, including national and international NGOs, UN, donors and relevant government representatives for improved project implementation and to position Relief International as a credible, effective humanitarian organization
  • Ensure the Country Director has all the latest information to be able to liaise with donors and other agency representatives related to emergency response programming
  • Represent RI at field and regional (Herat and Kandahar coordination hubs), level humanitarian meetings, including donor and inter-agency coordination meetings, including relevant cluster meetings at the regional level.
  • Support on humanitarian policy and advocacy issues, in coordination with the CD; maintaining timely and accurate information on humanitarian issues such as access, inclusion etc. 
  • Work in strong collaboration with the Communication Focal Point for visibility, branding, web stories, photos and other visibility items. Involve the Security Manager for sensitive visibility issues.

Project Planning and Development

  • Support the Grants and Programme Management team in securing new funding for humanitarian projects, including technical input and proposal and budget development 
  • Ensure the national staff have a good understanding of the steps to take to develop new projects

Other

  • Provide technical input to RI emergency and disaster preparedness planning
  • Undertake additional activities as required by CD.

Qualifications & requirements:

This position demands a dynamic individual with a demonstrated ability to achieve results in a demanding and fast paced environment.

  • Full scale expertise in ECHO rules and regulations;
  • Experience of managing projects funded by ECHO;
  • Ability to mentor and guide national staff;
  • Experience in designing and delivery of cash programs;
  • Degree in relevant discipline;
  • Minimum of five years’ field project delivery experience including at least 3 years of project management;
  • Experienced living overseas and ability to adapt and work comfortably in culturally unfamiliar environments;
  • Strong verbal and written skills as well as ability to multi-task effectively;
  • Experience working in a complex humanitarian context;
  • Outstanding interpersonal skills, particularly when dealing with national staff and multi-cultural teams;
  • Solid project, financial, and organizational planning skill;
  • Excellent oral communication skills and writing ability in English;
  • Familiarity with key international standards for humanitarian work (e.g. CP Minimum Standards, SPHERE, HAP Principles).