Program Manager

About CRS

Catholic Relief Services is the official international humanitarian agency of the Catholic community in the United States. CRS works to save, protect, and transform lives in need in more than 100 countries, without regard to race, religion or nationality. CRS’ relief and development work is accomplished through programs of emergency response, HIV, health, agriculture, education, microfinance and peacebuilding.

Job Summary:

As a member of the Humanitarian Response team, you will be supporting the unit to effectively and timely respond to cash programming response related to the emergencies arising due to Cyclone Freddy and El Nino seasons. You will play a leading role in our current Cyclone Freddy food security restoration project with a current focus in Mulanje, Chikwawa and Zomba districts. You will monitor and report on all project activities in support of Catholic Relief Services’ (CRS) work of serving the poor and vulnerable. Your thorough and service-oriented approach will ensure that our emergency and recovery projects consistently apply best practices and ensure overall quality of our programming across all aspects of the project management cycle.

This position is contingent upon grant approval

Roles and Key Responsibilities:

• Manage and implement all activities throughout relevant project cycles – project design, start-up, implementation and close-out – to ensure efficient and effective implementation in line with CRS program quality principles and standards, donor requirements, and good practices. Ensure project team and partner staff use the appropriate systems and tools.
• Effectively manage talent and supervise. Manage team dynamics and staff well-being. Provide coaching, strategically tailor individual development plans, contribute to the recruitment process of project staff, and complete performance management for direct reports.
• Champion learning with project staff and partner teams. Analyze and evaluate project performance data following MEAL policy. Proactively identify issues and concerns and use participatory processes to overcome implementation obstacles.
• Act as a key resource person in project design and proposal development in respective programming area, gap-filling and taking on growth responsibilities, as needed.
• Coordinate the identification of staff capacity and technical assistance needs of partner organizations and capacity strengthening and required interventions to support quality project implementation.
• Help identify, assess and strengthen partnerships relevant to , applying appropriate application of partnership concepts, tools and approaches.
• Coordinate and monitor financial and material resources relevant to project needs. Through planning and oversight ensure efficient use of project resources

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

• Strong critical thinking and creative problem-solving skills with ability to make sound judgment.
• Strong relationship management skills and the ability to work effectively with culturally diverse groups.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills with ability to write reports
• Proactive, results-oriented, and service-oriented

Preferred Qualifications

• Master’s Degree in International Development, International Relations or in the field of Food Security required. Additional experience may substitute for some education.
• Minimum of 2 years of relevant field-based experience in coordinating or managing light to moderately complex projects required, preferably with an international NGO.
• Project management experience in food security and cash programming is highly desirable.
• Experience engaging with partner organizations.
• Experience contributing to the development of technical proposals.
• MEAL skills and experience preferred.
• Experience using MS Windows and MS Office packages (Excel, Word, PowerPoint), Web Conferencing Applications, information management systems.

Required Languages – English and Chichewa language abilities desirable.

Travel – Position is based in Blantyre. Must be willing and able to travel up to 50% to other districts such as Mulanje, Chikwawa and Zomba as well as to Lilongwe for coordination meetings

Supervisory Responsibilities:  Project Officers

 Key Working Relationships:

Internal: Head of Programming, Emergency Program Manager, in-country technical staff, MEAL Technical Advisor, Head of Operations, Finance Manager, Procurement Manager, Human Resources Manager, HRD and regional technical advisors.

External: Local NGOs, Key coordination forums.

Basic Qualifications

• Master’s Degree in International Development, International Relations or in the field of required. Additional experience may substitute for some education.
• Minimum of 2 years of relevant field-based experience in coordinating or managing light to moderately complex projects required, preferably with an international NGO.
• Additional experience may substitute for some education.

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