Driven
by local needs, our programs provide communities in the world’s
toughest places with the tools and support they need to turn the crises
they confront into the opportunities they deserve.
Mercy Corps is looking for a committed and dynamic individual to take up the following position:
Gender Specialist, Progress Programme – Wajir
Programme / Department Summary: The PROGRESS Gender Specialist will work in collaboration with the PROGRESS Programme Director, Programme Managers and PROGRESS Consortium members in the implementation of a proposed multi-year project as part of DFID’s BRACED initiative (Building Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Extremes and Disasters).
Mercy Corps anticipates a programme award under BRACED to implement the “Programme for Resilient Systems” (PROGRESS).
The Wajir-based Gender Specialist will play a key role in implementation.
General Position Summary: The PROGRESS Gender Specialist will work directly with the Programme Manager in Wajir and is responsible for the PROGRESS gender strategy in the context of Wajir and Garissa.
The Gender Specialist will work toward providing a framework of activities to guide gender integration throughout the life of PROGRESS and across all technical sectors with the goal of enhancing absorptive, adaptive and transformative capacity for resilience of women and augmenting access to assets, capital and decision-making processes.
The Gender Specialist will provide direct support to the Wajir Programme Manager of PROGRESS to develop work plans per sector/practice area with clear targets and timeframe to ensure a the greatest possible gender integration into program planning, strategic prioritization and sound implementation.
Programme emphasis will be on the role of women in collective decision making around community and natural resources, and the individual capacity for entrepreneurship and active market engagement including value chain activities around livestock products in the pastoralist context.
The Gender Specialist will also play a key role in advising around advocacy, policy formulation and gender sensitive budgeting with local and national government actors.
In addition the Gender Specialist will ensure that PROGRESS team members and consortium partners are actively programming and operating to a high-standard for gender integration into projects for all sectors and practice areas including governance, market systems, gender empowerment, and natural resource management with a focus in water resources management, livestock and rangeland management, climate smart agriculture, and urban issues.
Essential Job Functions:
Technical Capacity
- Coordinate closely, work with and the Wajir Programme Manager, Wajir-based Practice-Area Team Leaders and partners to promote gender integration in to the various sector-based activities of PROGRESS.
- Develop training series on women leadership and negotiation, including for the VSLA groups, and facilitating community-platform debates;
- Development of tools as needed for cross-cutting, cross-cutting integration of women in decision making around household governance, community change, management of natural and community resources, and advocacy for policy and budget formulation that is geared towards innovative gendered approaches.
- Promote women leadership skills through VSLA component, engaging men in decision making tools etc.
- In collaboration with the Mercy Corps technical support units, set up gender-focused elements of the PROGRESS monitoring system and work closely with M&E team to ensure sex and age disaggregated data is collected and that gender analysis is applied.
- Conduct regular community consultations to ensure programming remains gender sensitive and on-track.
- Provide technical support on gender integration in various market facilitation activities in Wajir and Garissa geared towards the augmentation of value-addition for livestock products, small business development, and general capacity building for women in pastoralist settings, women in urbanizing contexts, and women who are transitioning between the two.
Activity Design
- Maximize program participation and increase empowerment opportunities for currently marginalized groups
- Collect sex and age disaggregated data while performing proactive and recurrent gender analysis.
- • Curriculum development for after school programs to address girls and boys and women-focused group series to ensure maximum participant engagement from the beginning of the program while mitigating risk of exposure to gender based violence.
- Seek community recommendations on how to best overcome identified challenges like engaging men in nutrition programming to finding meaningful methods to include women in conflict management interventions.
- Establish current awareness of the importance of gender-sensitive programming among target participant groups including traditional leaders, government officials, health workers and youth group participants.
- Participate actively in the design of the value-chain and small business development activities in rural Wajir County, Wajir Town and Garissa town to ensure adequate gender integration components.
Research & Learning Studies
- Design qualitative research from the Gender Empowerment and Decision-making learning study.
- Work with the PROGRESS Consortium partners focused on Monitoring and Evaluation and learning and advocacy partners to support and conduct studies as well as learning events.
Gender Mainstreaming
- Support development and dissemination gender research
- Develop/adapt gender mainstreaming training for Mercy Corps Wajir Field Office, partners and PROGRESS consortium members
- Provide gender technical reviews to program proposals, program tools, internal and external communications as needed
- Provide direct support for gender advocacy in policy formulation at the county and national levels, along with gender-sensitive budgeting that considers opportunities and mitigates risks to women in pastoralism and those who are transitioning out of pastoralism.
Organizational Learning: As part of Mercy Corps’ agency-wide Organizational Learning Initiative, all team members are responsible for spending 5% of their work time in formal and/or non-formal professional learning activities.
Supervisory Responsibility: Gender Officers / Community Mobilizers
Accountability: Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts towards accountability, specifically to our beneficiaries and to international standards guiding international relief and development work while actively engaging beneficiary communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring and evaluation of our field projects.
Reports Directly To: Programme Manager
Works Directly With: Wajir Programme Manager and Team Leaders, Consortium partners and technical and support staff from Mercy Corps office in Portland, Oregon and Edinburgh, Scotland.
Knowledge and Experience:
- 5 years of experience in design and implementation of development programs, preferably with a gender focus
- Strong background in gender programming approaches
- Bachelor’s degree in relevant subject, Masters Degree preferred
- Experience conducting research and analysis on gender issues, including leading focus groups or research on sensitive issues
- Experience working in the sectors of sexual and gender based violence, harmful traditional practices, the role of women in community-led processes, especially around natural resource management and other sensitive gender issues
- Experience in the ASALs and working with pastoralist and Muslim-communities preferred
- Experience designing and adapting programmatic tools to address gender issues or to promote positive gender outcomes
- Experience working on project monitoring and evaluation
- Experience with training and capacity building of team members and partners
- Experience with the impact on women and girls of inter-community conflict a plus
- Experience working in Kenya, especially Northern Kenya
Success Factors:
The successful candidate will have the following characteristics:
- A strong team player, with good communication and diplomatic skills.
- Proven ability to work independently as part of a regional team and with international professionals.
- Excellent analytical and information management skills.
- Good organizational skills and ability to work under stress and in austere contexts of remote locations.
- Flexible and creative in planning and problem solving.
- Attention to detail, ability to follow procedures and meet deadlines and work independently and cooperatively with team members.
- Proven excellence maintaining professional internal and external relationships.
- A focus on building staff capacity.
NB: All the positions are pending approval of our PROGRESS program by the donor.
How to Apply
Interested candidates who meet the above required qualifications and experience should submit on or before October 27th, 2014 containing a cover letter, detailed Curriculum Vitae (CV) listing three professional references (including a recent supervisor) to hrkenya@ke.mercycorps.org.
How to Apply
Interested candidates who meet the above required qualifications and experience should submit on or before October 27th, 2014 containing a cover letter, detailed Curriculum Vitae (CV) listing three professional references (including a recent supervisor) to hrkenya@ke.mercycorps.org.
The email subject line must clearly show the job title and location they are applying for.
Applications without the right subject heading will be automatically disqualified.
Please do not attach any certificates.
(ONLY Qualified and selected candidates for the interview will be contacted)
NB: Mercy Corps does not charge any fee at any stage of the recruitment process.