Director of Programme Development and Quality (PDQ)- Damascus at Save the Children

JOB TITLE: Director of Programme Development and Quality (PDQ)

TEAM/PROGRAMME:

Senior Management Team

LOCATION:

Damascus, Syria with frequent travel

GRADE: 3

CONTRACT LENGTH: N/A

CHILD SAFEGUARDING:

Level 3: the role holder will have contact with children and/or young people either frequently (e.g. once a week or more) or intensively (e.g. four days in one month or more or overnight) because they work in country programs; or are visiting country programs.

ROLE PURPOSE: As a member of the Senior Management Team (SMT) in the SRO, the Director of Program Development and Quality (PDQ) is responsible for driving cross-functional engagement in the development and delivery of Country Strategy Plans (CSPs), developing annual plans and reporting on results. S/he is responsible for ensuring development and delivery of high quality, evidence-based, innovative programs for children, in all contexts, that contribute to Save the Children’s global Breakthroughs: Learn, Survive, Be Protected.

The Director of PDQ ensures that a robust monitoring, evaluation, accountability and learning (MEAL) system is in place, that the country office engages in the collection and use of evidence and that this is shared across the global organization, and that reliable data is used for decision-making.

The Director of PDQ supports strategic positioning with donors and partners and leads on programme and project design to ensure that the country office strategy can be delivered in line with child rights programming principles and support a gender transformational approach.

As a senior leader in the country office s/he plays a representational role with the government/authorities, donors, partners, peer agencies, Save the Children members and others.

SCOPE OF ROLE:

Reports to: Country Director

Staff directly reporting to this post: 8

• Technical unit: 1) Education TA; 2) CP TA; 3) WASH TA; 4) Cash/FSL TA; 5) Health/Nutrition TA
• MEAL Manager
• Cluster Co-Lead Education (1) and Cluster Co-Lead Nutrition (1)

Role Dimensions: As one of the most senior staff in the Country Office, the Director of Program Development and Quality (PDQ) must demonstrate the qualities of agile leadership. S/he plays a key role in defining and pursuing the strategic direction for Save the Children’s programs in Syria Response Office, ensuring the relevance, coherence, safety and impact of our programs for children in all contexts. This is a challenging role requiring an individual who can work with complexity and multiple tasks at one time. It demands dedication to demonstrating outcomes for children, experience in integrated child rights programming and a highly motivated leader. S/he has specific oversight for ensuring that programs demonstrate thematic excellence in contributing to Save the Children’s three priority Breakthroughs for children: no child dies from preventable causes before their fifth birthday; all children learn from a quality basic education; and violence against children is no longer tolerated.

KEY AREAS OF ACCOUNTABILITY:

Strategy, Planning and Reporting

• Lead on 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
• Lead the SMT to develop/update and drive forward the Country Strategy Plan (CSP) that is in line with the global strategy, Ambition 2030, with child rights and gender equality 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 and Save the Children’s Common Approaches.
• 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 the Syria Response Office, and the voice of children, in strategy design and technical leadership.
• Support change processes and roll-out new ways of working to improve achievement of the CSP.
• Drive strategic thinking that is underpinned by thought leadership and Innovation.
• Support CD to provide leadership and direction for the response office to become a Learning Organization.
• Proactively participate in the identification of risks for the organization, its beneficiaries and its staff including reputational, physical and monetary risks with a specific focus on the area of Program Development and Quality.

Program Design and Development

• Lead strategic resource mobilization in close consultation with the CD.
• Review and position for opportunities that will drive the CSP (e.g. GPE, ECW).
• Play a critical role in identifying nurturing and strengthening strategic partnerships, including development of consortium with local and international civil society organizations, NGOs, governments etc., in advancing the country and global strategy.
• In consultation with the Country Director and Members, ensure technical engagement with donors to pre-position and prepare for opportunities, and engage in strategic positioning work directly as appropriate.
• Play a leading role in designing innovative and high impact programmes/projects and 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 partnership as need be for assessments at design stage;
  • Ensure new programmes and projects are built on a strong evidence base resulting from learning, drawing on needs assessments and situational analyses that include participation of children and other stakeholders
  • 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 evidence (specifically, 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.
  • Introduce innovative approaches to secure flexible funding to invest in quality, evidence and learning

Programme Quality and Programme technical excellence

· Ensure that the Response office delivers high quality, multi-sectoral programming in a context sensitive way recognising the diverse contextual realities (humanitarian/nexus/early recovery) of Syria:

• Monitor and advance technical and operational quality of programmes, including conducting 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 (PMM).
• Ensure technical experts proactively and regularly communicate planned requirements for program design, learning and implementation to relevant 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 programme efforts:
  • Ensure that programme 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 programmes 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.
  • Maintain oversight of the country office technical capacity and development (with HR), ensure that positions are adequately funded (with Finance), and secure specialised expertise to fill gaps, when needed.

Research, Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability, Learning – 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 log frames, 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.
• Ensure the research and evaluation work of the Response Office contributes to generation of evidence for development and improvement of Common Approaches, sound decision making and policy influencing internally and externally.
• Accountable for the establishment of effective programme learning and knowledge management systems to support adaptive programming and innovation that improves outcomes for both boys and girls.

Representation, Networking and External Engagement

• Support in establishing, maintaining, and improving active and regular working relationships with: partner agencies including humanitarian and development donors, and local and international NGOs
• Conduct briefings at external events on priority issues for the SRO as required

Partnerships

· Lead on ensuring sufficient TA support to the partner organizations across access points

· Support partnership modality by ensuring their participation in the design and implementation of area and sector-based plans for SRO

· Conduct periodic review of annual plans in PDQ area with partner organizations to ensure common vision in technical areas

· Ensure PDQ Team is adapted to the partnership modality and their service to the modality is done so, it strengthens the model further

Emergency preparedness and response

· Lead on developing programmes that are adaptive and can respond to spikes in the humanitarian crisis as and when necessary

· Ensure excellent coordination and cooperation with incoming technical advisors as well as surge teams during emergencies

· Lead on ensuring the appropriate level of technical input into any new emergency response

Staff Management, Mentorship, and Development

• Ensure appropriate staffing of Programme 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 work plans.
• 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, gender equality and Common Approaches, providing coaching opportunities when needed.

SKILLS AND BEHAVIOURS

Accountability:

• Holds self-accountable for making decisions, managing resources efficiently, achieving and role modelling Save the Children values
• Holds the team and partners accountable to deliver on their responsibilities – giving them the freedom to deliver in the best way they see fit, providing the necessary development to improve performance and applying appropriate consequences when results are not achieved

Ambition:

• Sets ambitious and challenging goals for themselves (and their team), takes responsibility for their own personal development and encourages others to do the same
• Widely shares their personal vision for Save the Children, engages and motivates others
• Future orientated, thinks strategically

Collaboration:

• Builds and maintains effective relationships, with their team, colleagues, members and external partners and supporters
• Values diversity, sees it as a source of competitive strength
• Approachable, good listener, easy to talk to

Creativity:

• Develops and encourages new and innovative solutions
• Willing to take disciplined risks

Integrity:

• Honest, encourages openness and transparency

QUALIFICATIONS AND EXPERIENCE

• At least 10 years’ experience in an NGO environment, including experience developing and leading programs for children in both emergency and development contexts, preferably with solid experience in more than one of the Save the Children priority sectors: nutrition-health, education, protection, emergencies
• Recognized leadership role in relevant technical areas at both field and country level
• Master’s degree in Social Sciences, in an area of social development or equivalent field
• Very good understanding of Syria context
• Experience in working with partner organizations in humanitarian or development settings
• A general appreciation of the issues concerning the NGO sector, both development and humanitarian issues
• Solid experience of developing and managing monitoring and learning systems
• Good 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
• 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
• Fluency in written and spoken English
• Ability to work within a team

How to apply

Apply here: