Back 01 Director of Program Design and Quality (PDQ)

Save the Children International Senegal Office is recruiting:

01 Director of Program Design and Quality (PDQ)

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

  • Strategy, Planning and Reprting
• Lead the development/updating of the Child Rights Situation Analysis, including analysis of country context and taking into account child rights principles, ensuring participation and buy-in from all relevant staff, partners and other stakeholders as necessary
• Contribute to develop/update and drive forward the Country Strategy Plan (CSP) that is in line with the global strategy, Ambition 2030, with child rights at the core of all programming and advocacy work.
• Provide leadership on development of the Country Annual Plan, monitoring of progress against the plan, and completion of accurate, on-time Country Annual Report of outcomes and impact for children, aligned with the Global Results Framework.
• Facilitate the development and pursuit of thematic and cross-cutting strategic priorities in line with the CSP, including gender equality, Climate change and non-discrimination to guide current and future SC programming and Humanitarian Strategies.
• Support ownership and commitment to the Country Office strategy by all staff and departments through clear communication, regular feedback on progress and engagement of all functions in updates.
• Participate in global discussions and working groups to represent country office, and the voice of children, in strategy design and policy development.
• Support change processes and roll-out new ways of working to improve achievement of the CSP.

Program Design and development

• 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.
• Based on tracking provided by the Awards Management team, review and position for opportunities that will drive the CSP including funding strategy.
• 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 TAs 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.

• Play a leading role in designing proposals, including:

  • Engaging with technical experts as needed to ensure high quality, evidence-based designs that draw on needs assessments, learning from past programs and child safeguarding principles;
  • Ensuring partners are identified and appropriately engaged in program design, linking with Operations and Awards teams as need be for assessments, especially to strengthen gender sensitivity at design stage;
  • Ensuring proposal designs and their budgets include robust MEAL plans that are aligned with the Global Results Framework (and therefore advance towards our Breakthroughs), incorporate Common Approaches as relevant, and build in critical learning questions.
  • Ensuring the project budget will enable the project to be delivered as designed.
  • Incorporating child and community participation into design, as relevant.

Program Quality:

• Ensure the country program delivers high quality, multi-sectoral programming in both development and humanitarian contexts (as appropriate).

  • Monitor and advance technical and operational quality of programmes, including conducting regular field visits to provide feedback on quality benchmarks, soliciting inputs for design of new programs and collecting ideas for innovation.
  • Monitor program Key Performance Indicators and, in partnership with other functions, take steps to improve the quality programming platform to meet agreed upon standards.
  • Work closely with the Director of Operations to ensure Quality Framework standards are met and procedures are followed throughout the project cycle and across the portfolio.
  • Ensure technical experts proactively and regularly communicate planned requirements for program design, learning and implementation to relevant CO departments/functions.

• Build and lead a team of program technical experts needed to successfully deliver against the CSP. Ensure effective working relationships with SC global, Member and regional technical advisors, procuring technical support as needed to support program and advocacy efforts, including during Emergencies.

  • Ensure that program technical experts engage in larger communities of practice within and external to Save the Children, to link with the most relevant and evidence-based approaches and conduct timely and useful review of project reports to support quality reporting for Members and donors
  • Ensure that the different technical sectors of the Country Office are coordinated, integrated and support each other to optimize programs and projects.
  • Ensure that child safeguarding and safe programming is embedded in program design and considered throughout implementation to ensure that we do all we can to ensure children in our programs are safe, in line with our child safeguarding policy.
• 1. Evaluation, Accountability, Learning (MEAL) and Knowledge management

• Oversee a monitoring system that provides timely and accurate project results by embedding MEAL across program implementation. This requires ensuring effective collaboration across MEAL staff, Technical Specialists, Technical Advisors and program implementation teams to develop logframes, indicators, implementation plans, quality benchmarks, monitoring and evaluation frameworks and related tools.

• Lead programme quality improvements by monitoring and improving Programme KPI performance, including resourcing and conducting high-quality evaluations to demonstrate outcomes and impact and ensuring that accountability mechanisms are in place for all projects so that identified actions are resolved, with critical issues escalated to senior management.

  📚 𝗗𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗼 𝗚𝗲𝘁 𝗮 𝗝𝗼𝗯 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗨𝗡 𝗶𝗻 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟯! 🌍🤝 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗡𝗘𝗪 𝗥𝗲𝗰𝗿𝘂𝗶𝘁𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗚𝘂𝗶𝗱𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗨𝗡 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟯 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝘀𝗮𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗨𝗡𝗛𝗖𝗥, 𝗪𝗙𝗣, 𝗨𝗡𝗜𝗖𝗘𝗙, 𝗨𝗡𝗗𝗦𝗦, 𝗨𝗡𝗙𝗣𝗔, 𝗜𝗢𝗠 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿𝘀! 🌐

  ⚠️ 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐋𝐢𝐟𝐞 𝐍𝐨𝐰: 𝐏𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐮𝐥 𝐓𝐞𝐜𝐡𝐧𝐢𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐬 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐨 𝐠𝐞𝐭 𝐚 𝐣𝐨𝐛 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐔𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐍𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐍𝐎𝐖!

• Ensure the research, evaluation and policy work of the Country Office contributes to generation of evidence for development and improvement of Common Approaches, sound decision making and policy influencing internally and externally.

• Establish effective program learning and knowledge management systems to support adaptive programming and innovation that improves outcomes for children.

Staff Management, Mentorship, and Development

• Ensure appropriate staffing of Program Development and Quality team, and engagement of additional technical support when needed to deliver quality project design and delivery.
• Ensure that all PDQ staff understand and are able to perform their role in delivering first-class, quality programs for children in both development and emergency contexts through effective on boarding and clear workplans and are trained in CRP in their induction phase.
• Manage individual and team performance using principles of leadership agility, and Save the Children's performance management system.

Ensure that staff proactively build and maintain technical, managerial and leadership skills, including competencies in child rights programming, child safeguarding and Common Approaches, providing coaching opportunities when needed

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 systemsExcellent 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.