Save the Children recrute un directeur de la conception et de la qualité des programmes, Dakar, Sénégal

Save the Children recrute un directeur de la conception et de la qualité des programmes, Dakar, Sénégal

Role purpose :

The Program Design and Quality Director shares in the overall responsibility for the direction and coordination of the Country Office programing with a focus on strategic planning, new program development, quality assurance of existing programs and MEAL. As a member of the Senior Management Team (SMT) in Senegal, s/he is responsible for overseeing the MEAL team and the New Business team and plays a significant role in supporting the program team (quality assurance, reporting) and the new business/program development team (quality assurance). Collaborates with Program Director to coach and improve the technical and management skills of the Sector Managers (who report to the Program Director and who are the technical face for the Country Office of each of the program focus areas) – Child Protection, Child Rights and Governance, Education and Health,

Key areas of accountability :

As a member of the Senior Management Team, contribute to :

• Support the development of an organisational culture that reflects our dual mandate values, promotes accountability and high performance, encourages a team culture of learning, creativity and innovation, and frees up our people to deliver outstanding results for children and excellent customer service for our members and donors ;
• Help establish, maintain, and improve active and regular working relationships with: host government authorities, partner agencies including humanitarian and development donors, local and international NGOs and internal stakeholders within the Save the Children network ;
• Ensure Senegal Country Office complies with all Save the Children Essential Standards and the Save the Children Quality Framework.

Program Design :

• Take a lead role in developing 3 year’s program strategy that is linked to Save the Children Global breakthroughs while responding to local realities ;
• Ensure that the Senegal Country Office has a first class, multi-sectoral program that builds on technical strengths of Save the Children and addresses the contextualized challenges for child rights based programming in Senegal ;
• Develop, working closely with the Country Director a fundraising and donor engagement strategy for Senegal Country Office ;
• Identify and nurture possible funding sources, including current and potential traditional and private donors ;
• Identify and nurture strategic relationships with key donors working closely with the Program Director and Thematic Program Managers for all current and potential thematic areas of Save the Children in Senegal ;
• Ensure engagement strategy for key donors that is linked to quality implementation, quality reporting and strong communications strategy ;
• Oversees Partnership specialist and ensures that every partnership is formed, designed and managed so that the partnership furthers achievement of Save the Children’s global strategy and strengthens local and national capacity to deliver for children ;
• Oversees new Business specialist and supports production of competitive and non-competitive proposal responses assuring quality of technical proposal ensuring that learning and evidence produced by MEAL team is harvested for proposal design ;
• Plays role as technical lead on specific proposals and participating in or leading project design sessions ;
• Oversee MEAL team, ensures that each proposal or project design process produces coherent and measurable conceptual frameworks and MEAL plans ;
• Participates in program design sessions and development of logical frameworks ;
  Ensure that program designs are informed by gender, child safeguarding, safe programming, state of the art behaviour change, conflict sensitive and other approaches used by Save the Children and informed by innovative approaches piloted by the Senegal country office ;
• Support capacity development of MEAL staff, maximizing their role as trainers and facilitators of quality standards in project design, monitoring and evaluation for country office and hold team accountable for development and use of quality benchmarks ;
• Coordinate quality assurance review process for each proposal.

Program Quality :

• Coordinates with the Program Direction an ongoing process of quality improvement for project implementation that closely links program, MEAL and advocacy and communications teams in collaborative work including but not limited to joint trip planning, ongoing coaching and work in teams ;
• Support Program Director and Sector Program Managers in annual work planning process and co leads (with Program Director and MEAL Team) quarterly program quality review meetings that reviews progress markers (using SPEL and other methods) on road to achieving project outcomes and impact ;
• Works with Program Director and MEAL Team to ensure that project teams (SC and Partner field staff) use digital monitoring tools (such as SPEL tools, fidelity of implementation tools, observation protocols etc) that provide SC and Partner field staff) with data to improve project implementation (working with Project Coordinators and Partner staff to use data for management and continuous improvement of program implementation) ;
• Ensures MEAL team is compliant with Save the Children’s Essential Standards for MEAL ;
• Oversees use implementation of robust technology plan for MEAL team – ensuring that all data collection will be done on tablets or smart phones and that state of the art software programs will be used to process and analyse data on education, health and child protection programs ;
• Work with MEAL team on internal and external program/project evaluations as necessary and ensure the execution of baseline, periodic, and final evaluations as necessary in coordination with Program Director ;
• Works with Program Director and Award Manager to ensure quality, timely, complete and compliant donor reports submissions (includes capacity building for SC and partner personnel, improving format and preparation approaches and reviewing reports for quality prior to submission) ;
• Ensure appropriate levels of technical assistance and capacity building is provided to partners ;
• Works closely with regional PDQ to seek the involvement of member technical assistance ;
• Participates in project kick offs for significant awards to ensure effective strategic direction and project closeouts to guide learning and share results ;
• Ensure that the branding and communication guidelines of Save the Children and donor awards are uniformly and consistently followed across the Senegal country office ;
• Ensure the design and development of child focused emergency preparedness plan and if appropriate emergency response activities ;
• Works closely with MEAL Manager to lead SC Senegal’s operational research programs, delivering high quality existing research and developing new ones.

Innovation :

• Works with MEAL team to develop a research agenda and coordinate with regional PDQ and MEAL on cross country studies to build evidence for SC innovative approaches ;
• Oversee Save the Children Senegal’s operational research programs, deliver existing projects and develop new ones. Ensure the publication of results ;
• Spread information relating to the outcome of research projects widely and – in particular – to the Government and to other humanitarian and development actors.

Knowledge Management :

• Ensure learning by the country program from relevant best practice internally and externally both nationally and globally and make learning from Senegal available for other programs ;
• Engage in relevant national and global networks ;
• Ensure establishment and operation of an online system that will enable SC staff to access a centralized data and information system and ensure the setting up and maintenance of a resource library.

Child Safeguarding and accountability :

• Contribute to ensure compliance of the program and organization to the essential standards on accountability and child safeguarding as set in the Quality Framework ;
• Integrate Child Safeguarding in professional objectives and performance reviews of the line managed team ;
• Respect and Promote the Child Safeguarding Policy and local procedures and enable environment for reporting on cases ;
• Ensure CS and accountability related activities (awareness, capacity building and communication material, set up of reporting systems) are accounted for in project activities and budget while reviewing proposals ;
• Support in collaboration with the MEAL team the set-up of complaint management system in participation with the affected communities.

Qualifications and experience :

• Very solid experience with at least five to seven years management experience in an NGO environment as well as experience directing and implementing programs for children in development contexts. Preferably solid experience in more than one of the Save the Children priority sectors: education, child protection, child rights governance, health and nutrition ;
• The candidate should have experience either overseeing or managing MEAL staff, or projects with MEAL components including research studies and have experience overseeing or implementing Advocacy and Institutional and Social and Behaviour Change Communications)strategies ;
• Recognized leadership role in relevant technical areas at both field and country level ;
• Masters degree in Social Sciences, International Development, in an area of social development ;
• A general appreciation of the issues concerning the NGO sector, both development and humanitarian issues ;
• Solid experience of developing and managing monitoring and learning systems ;
• Excellent analytical skills ;
• Effective negotiator, with the ability to positively influence cross departmental and cross sector working ;
  Credibility to lobby, influence and represent Save the Children at all levels. Very strong communicator ;
• Excellent resource management, training , capacity building, coaching, and mentoring skills ;
• Ability and willingness to dramatically change work practices and hours, and work with incoming teams, in emergencies ;
• Commitment to and understanding of Save the Children’s aims, values and principles including rights-based approaches ;
• Excellent levels of written and spoken French and English.

The Organisation :

We employ approximately 25,000 people across the globe and work on the ground in over 100 countries to help children affected by crises, or those that need better healthcare, education and child protection. We also campaign and advocate at the highest levels to realise the right of children and to ensure their voices are heard.

We are working towards three breakthroughs in how the world treats children by 2030 : No child dies from preventable causes before their 5th birthday.

All children learn from a quality basic education and that, Violence against children is no longer tolerated.

We know that great people make a great organization, and that our employees play a crucial role in helping us achieve our ambitions for children. We value our people and offer a meaningful and rewarding career, along with a collaborative and inclusive workplace where ambition, creativity, and integrity are highly valued.

Application Information :

Please apply using a cover letter and up-to-date Curriculum Vitae as a single document. Please also include details of your current remuneration and salary expectations.

We need to keep children safe so our selection process reflects our commitment to the protection of children from abuse.

Female candidates are strongly encouraged to apply.

Applicants are advised that Save the Children International does not require any payment or expense during the entire recruitment process. Any request in this direction should be immediately reported as contrary to the values and practices of our organization.

Apply here