Program and Award Officer, Latin America

IRC (International Rescue Committee) Germany is looking for a*n

Program and Award Officer, Latin America

Berlin | As soon as possible

full-time | 2 years

About Us

Over the past 80 years, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) has developed unparalleled expertise in responding to emergencies and helping uprooted communities to rebuild. Founded in 1933 at the request of Albert Einstein, the IRC offers lifesaving care and life-changing assistance to refugees forced to flee from war or disaster. The International Rescue Committee is a global network with its headquarters in New York. The IRC is on the ground in more than 40 countries, providing emergency relief, relocating refugees, and rebuilding lives in the wake of disaster.

IRC DE was established in 2016 to further enhance the profile of the German humanitarian and development sector and to provide further opportunities for advocacy on behalf of the people we serve. Since its establishment, IRC DE has grown rapidly and has representations in Bonn and Berlin. It is working with major German statutory donors, like the German Federal Foreign Office, KfW, and GIZ. IRC DE is also cooperating with German civil society organizations. In Europe, the IRC also has offices in Brussels, Geneva, Stockholm, and London.

The Awards Management Unit (AMU)

Established in January 2016, the Awards Management Unit (AMU) is a global department with the responsibility for identifying, securing, and managing all funding from statutory/government donors.

The AMU is a bridge between donors and country programs: providing expert technical advice to the country teams, while maintaining portfolio-level visibility to ensure consistency and compliance and manage risk. This unit ensures that donor compliance policies and procedures are implemented consistently.

The Program and Award Officer is responsible for providing awards and partnerships management and operational support to the IRC Latin America Region. This includes work in Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico. This role supports the country programs in their efforts to ensure successful implementation of IRC donor award requirements and reporting, ensuring basic compliance, accurate financial information, and good quality narratives on program outputs.

Major Responsibilities

•  Support the Program and Awards Advisors and country programs in the management of the award portfolio for the region.
• Review, edit, and provide substantive feedback on donor narrative and financial reports, coordinating with and ensuring input from relevant staff prior to donor submission and submitting reports in a timely manner.
• Assist Program and Award Advisors to provide key programmatic and awards-related communications to donors.
• Assist the Program and Award Advisor in the preparation, review, and submission of award modifications, including liaising with various departments to obtain signed approvals and helping to complete modification packages.
• Support budget realignments and award amendments/modifications, where necessary.
• Collaborate with Program and Award Advisor in the review of sub-award and partnership packages, including sub-award proposals, sub-award agreements, and modifications, as well as collaboration agreements and MOUs, ensuring compliance with donor requirements and IRC’s Partnership Excellence for Equality and Results System (PEERS).
• Support monitoring projects to ensure progress against objectives and compliance with donor guidelines.
•  Assist country offices with ad-hoc queries on donor compliance issues.
•  In collaboration with Program and Award Support colleagues, track and document lessons learned from finalized projects and ensure they are fed into the program development team.
• Inform and refer high-level compliance matters to Program and Award Advisors and Director, Awards Management for consultation with the Compliance and Policy team.
• Stay informed about programmatic issues and security and political developments in the region and how they might affect program implementation.
• Maintain and communicate an accurate record of award deliverables to country program grants teams on a regular basis.
• Maintain the region’s award filing system at HQ and update it on a regular basis regional tracker, including awards trackers – as specified by region. 
• Work with the Program and Award Advisor and country office grants staff to ensure that award opportunities on OTIS (internal web-based grants management system) are up to date.
• Provide ad-hoc training and technical assistance to grants and partnerships staff on IRC systems, awards management processes, and donor compliance, as necessary. This includes assisting country offices with the use of IRC’s Partnership Excellence for Equality and Results System (PEERS).
• Keep IATI data up to date on a quarterly basis for relevant donors, as required.

Your Profile

• Understanding of institutional donors and their requirements; experience working with DG-ECHO and German donors preferred
• Good understanding of humanitarian aid and development programming
• Ability to work collaboratively as part of a diverse team and manage a varied workload.
• Ability to multi-task and work to tight deadlines
• You have Spanish and English language skills at [C1] according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CERF). German working knowledge is required (B1).
• Solid organizational skills, detail-oriented, ability to multi-task and prioritize tasks, and to learn quickly.
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills, the ability to liaise with people successfully and effectively within and across departments in a multicultural environment.
• Both a team player and independent performer in a very fast-paced environment

What We Offer

•      Meaningful work in a multicultural team
•      Attractive benefits for employees such as gym membership, company pension plan, job bike leasing, job ticket subsidy, and special leave days
•      30 days of annual leave
•      A starting salary between 49,000- and 53,000-Euro gross per year as well as an annual salary increase.
•      Flexible hybrid-work options (working hours, office/home-based)
•      Training and development opportunities

As an organization committed to an empowering and inclusive work environment, we avoid any form of discrimination. We welcome applications from people regardless of their national origin, gender, sexual orientation, disability status, or age and strongly encourage applications from candidates with a history of migration and resettlement. We believe in fair and equal treatment of all applicants and therefore kindly ask you to refrain from including photos in your application documents.

Please submit your complete application documents:

·       Letter of motivation stating your possible start date and salary expectations (max.    1 page),

·       curriculum vitae (max. 2 pages),

·       at least three references

via our application portal. Unfortunately, we cannot consider applications submitted by e-mail.

If you have any questions, also on the topic of inclusion, please do not hesitate to contact Domtillah Herbrand (HR.Deutschland@rescue.org).

Please submit your application by 15.06.2023

#IRC-Europe