Position: Health & Nutrition Program Manager
Location: Cox's Bazaar, Bangladesh
Duration: 12 months
Reports to: Program Director/ HPM
About RI: Relief International, headquartered in the USA, is a leading international non-government organization working in 16 countries to relieve poverty, ensure well-being and advance dignity. We specialize in fragile settings, responding to natural disasters, humanitarian crises, and chronic poverty.
Relief International combines humanitarian and development approaches to provide immediate services while laying the groundwork for long-term impact.
Our signature approach which we call the RI Way emphasizes local participation, an integration of services, strategic partnerships, and a focus on civic skills. In this way, we empower communities to find, design, and implement the solutions that work best for them.
Relief International has been working in Bangladesh since 2004. The Bangladesh portfolio of Relief International has strong focus on emergency response, economic opportunity and livelihoods rebuilding, trafficking in persons, sustainable tourism, human rights and protection, refugee crisis response, and public health. RI maintains a country office in Dhaka with multiple field offices in Coxs Bazar.
Relief International is currently implementing a large-scale refugee response program in Coxs Bazar in Bangladesh in collaboration with multiple partners including UNHCR, WFP, USAID, BHA, IOM.
Position Summary: The Health & Nutrition Program Manager is responsible for overseeing all of RI’s health and nutrition programs for the Rohingya refugee response. The Health & Nutrition PM will lead the design of all health and nutrition programs, negotiate with donors throughout the program development process, oversee implementation, ensure timely reporting. He/she will be key in driving the growth and expansion of RI’s health and nutrition portfolio. This position requires an individual who is accustomed to the pace of emergency response programming, has experience in successfully leading a diverse team, does not require close supervision or direction, is flexible and highly responsive, and excels at building and strengthening relations with donors.
Position Responsibilities and Duties:
Program Management:
- Overall supervision and successful implementation of the health and nutrition portfolio.
- Overall supervision and successful operation of SARI ITC (COVID Hospital)
- Development of work plans and budget management according to program outputs and results.
- Development of procurement plans and successful carrying out of operations ensuring the implementation of the program.
- Ensure program targets are met using indicator/activity tracking tables.
- Monitor program expenditures and regularly liaise with finance staff to address any spending issues
- Directly manage program budgets, forecast procurements, and human resource needs, and work with finance, HR, and operations to prevent gaps in services.
- Manage his or her teams to complete program goals on time and on budget
- Capacity building of his or her team members
- Evaluate activity progress and determine necessary actions to course correct in collaboration with the programs team and M&E.
- Provide program reports that are timely and meet institutional and donor requirements. The PM is ultimately responsible for all relevant donor reporting for the health program.
- Represent RI at relevant stakeholder or coordination meetings, as needed, and maintain a positive, continuous, and visible presence for RI
- Manage donor requirements for data collection.
- Develop and maintain strategic relationships with local partners, donors, and vendors
- Spend significant time at field sites to ensure quality
- Work constructively with support teams to ensure sound administrative practices with regards to record-keeping, compliance with donor regulations, communications, etc.
- Participate in program kick-off meetings, grant review meetings, and grant closeout meetings.
- Work closely with the Senior Program Manager to ensure compliance with donor requirements at all stages of the Program lifecycle
Program Development:
- Lead needs assessments in populations affected by the Rohingya Response to identify new program opportunities
- Stay up to date with all regional and country-specific response plans by the U.N., donors active in the relevant clusters, and other key actors
- Interface with the GSO Health Team and donors in Dhaka and Cox’s Bazar on all aspects of the health portfolio
- Share methods, approaches, and tools with RI colleagues across the region, and contribute toward RI’s regional response strategy by ensuring programmatic coherence, innovation, and responsiveness.
- Participate in the proposal development/budget modification process, in consultation with the programs unit and other technical leads.
- Act as a focal point for RSO and GSO on the proposal process and to answer any questions arising, including issues letters for health and nutrition-related activities. Writing proposals is an essential requirement of this position.
Program Quality:
- Ensure program quality is in line with the essential package of health services in Bangladesh, by establishing a system of regular supervision, feedback, and improvement for staff delivering clinical care and community services.
- Identify gaps and make adjustments to programming to ensure RI is meeting targets and being responsive to new health and nutrition needs in the area.
- Build staff quality and competencies through on-the-job coaching, mentoring and setting up regular learning opportunities such as Continuing Medical Education (CME).
- Establish strong links with community leaders and local authorities
- Ensure the quality of data through the proper entry, cleaning and regular checking, and use of the data for actionable improvements at the site
- Ensure the diagnosis and treatment of patients are based on standard procedures (national and international guidelines)
- Ensure that community-based activities, such as EPI, nutrition screening, health education, and case tracking are properly conducted
- Provide guidance and expertise in the strategic expansion of health programming
- Share health technical expertise with the program development team to create strong proposal submissions
Gender Mainstreaming and Gender Transformative Approach:
- Ensure our organization and programs are not reinforcing gender discrimination and gender stereotypes and are committed to protecting clients from harm.
- Design and implement a gender-sensitive approach in program functions (if/where applicable).
Safeguarding
- Be part of an embedding organizational culture that ensures that the team understand and abide by the organization culture of safeguarding
Required skills and competencies:
- Masters of Public Health or equivalent degree. A clinical degree (Medical doctor, Nurse, Midwife) preferred,
- Minimum 5 years of experience in international l health program management. At least 2 years of experience implementing primary health care programs in humanitarian contexts. Experience working in similar refugee contexts is desirable.
- Strong grant management experience, familiarity with multiple donors (ECHO, UNICEF, UNHCR).
- Previous experience representing organizations at cluster and donor meetings.
- Excellent interpersonal skill
- Cultural competency and the ability to motivate through a variety of management approaches.
- A dynamic individual with a demonstrated ability to perform in a demanding, fast-paced environment.
- Experience and ability to implement full project management cycle (proposal and logical framework, work plans, budget management, reporting)
- Substantive experience managing, supervising, and mentoring clinical staff.
- Ability to creatively solve complex and sudden clinical and medical logistics challenges with limited support.
- Takes initiative and ability to multi-task.
RI Values:
We uphold the Humanitarian Principles: humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and operational independence. We affirmatively engage the most vulnerable communities. We value:
- Inclusiveness
- Transparency and Accountability
- Agility and Innovation
- Collaboration
- Sustainability
RI Bangladesh has a non-negotiable policy of ZERO TOLERANCE towards Safeguarding. All employees are expected to abide by the Code of Conduct, Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (SEA), Child Protection Policy, and Human Trafficking Policy of Relief International.