Senior Programme Approaches and Learning Adviser

Reports to: Head of Technical Assistance, Strategy, Advocacy & Learning Department.

Direct Reports: Small team of five, comprising technical advisers and support officers. Occasional postgraduate interns and volunteers

Liaises with: Relevant colleagues in Strategy, Advocacy and Learning, International Programmes, Emergency, HR & Public Affairs directorates as well as colleagues in Concern UK and US and in Concern’s fields of operation.

Job location: Dublin based, with substantial overseas travel (30%)

Pay Band: 6 (€49,174 - €57,852)

Contract: 7 month Fixed Term Contract (Maternity Cover)

Job Purpose:

To facilitate the improvement of programme quality and organisational learning by leading a team of advisers to support and facilitate improvements in holistic programming, M&E and knowledge management.

Key to this will be embedding programme approaches, Concern’s Understanding of Extreme Poverty (especially equality) and results based management (including working on innovative technical solutions for this) into the day-to-day work of Concern. The role includes a major focus on supporting high-quality research with leading institutions in this field.

Key Responsibilities:

· Programme Quality

o To develop high quality guidance for programme planning, monitoring and evaluation (PM&E) in Concern’s Humanitarian and Development work, including overseeing the continuous upgrading of the online Programme Quality Guide.

o Manage the head office based M&E team responsible for providing support to country teams and designing and building tools (survey and observational tools) on Concern’s Digital Data Gathering (DDG) system, in a way that contributes to improved data collection, analysis and use.

o Support the implementation of Concern’s strategy to meet its commitment under the GDPR regulations, particularly as it relates to the DDG system.

o Supporting and identifying practical solutions to identified shortcomings in the area of results based management at an organisational and country office level.

o Providing support to contextual analysis, programme design and M&E based on the policy document How Concern Understands Extreme Poverty. To facilitate, where requested, Country Strategic Planning and Contextual Analysis processes.

o To support our initiatives around monitoring and evaluation within our humanitarian programmes, within the framework of our Approaches to Emergency paper.

· Partnership

o To oversee the updating of Concern’s partnership guidelines and approaches

o To source or directly provide support to country programmes in their move to a more partnership based model.

· Research

o Engage with the International Programmes Directorate, sectoral advisers, Advocacy Unit, and country programmes to align information collection and sharing needs particularly around high quality research.

o Provide guidance to country teams on the most appropriate research methods (both quantitative and qualitative) for identified research questions.

Skills and Experience Required:

Essential:

1. At least 5 years’ experience leading and managing long-term development programmes in developing countries
2. At least two years provision of technical support to development programmes, preferably on or including the integration of development approaches.
3. A strong understanding of the management of knowledge within NGOs or development organisations and an ability to link this to system development.
4. Specific experience in either (a) monitoring or evaluation of development and humanitarian programmes or (b) working with or providing support to partners and/or a partnership model of working.
5. Demonstrable commitment to and understanding of equality, gender and risk and vulnerability as key cross-cutting issues.
6. Demonstrable experience in the nurturing of organisational learning in programmes.
7. A commitment to the vision, mission and values of Concern Worldwide.

h. Strong understanding of global poverty and development issues.

i. Excellent people management and interpersonal skills, with an ability to effectively manage cross-departmental and functional teams.

1. A post-graduate qualification in a relevant discipline

k. Proven communication skills, both written and verbal.

1. Proven high quality analytical skills.

Desirable:

· Knowledge management as a key part of a previous job.

· Demonstrable experience in the nurturing of innovation in programmes.

· Ability to work through French.

CVs should be submitted through our website at https://jobs.concern.net