GRADE: 2

TEAM/PROGRAM: Program Operation

LOCATION: Surkhet, M&FWFO

CONTRACT LENGTH: Fixed term until December 2018 with possible extension until April 2020

CHILD SAFEGUARDING:  Level 3: the post 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 country programs; or are visiting country programs; or because they are responsible for implementing the police checking/vetting process staff.

ROLE PURPOSE: 

Save the Children is the leading independent organization for children. We save children’s lives; we fight for their rights; we help them fulfill their potential. We work together, with our partners from civil societies and government, to inspire breakthroughs in the way the world treats children and to achieve immediate and lasting change in their lives. We reached approximately two million populations and invests over 40 million US dollars annually to reach more children than ever before, through programs in Health, Nutrition, Education, Protection and Child Rights and Governance, Livelihood, HIV and AIDS, and Humanitarian crises.

The Healthy Transitions for Nepali Youth is a project which will be implemented in Province 6. The overall outcome of Healthy Transitions is to improve the Reproductive, Maternal and New-born Health (RMNH) and well-being of young women (aged 15-24) throughout their transition to marriage and parenthood in four districts of Nepal. Save the Children will accomplish this through the achievement of four objectives over a three-year period in four districts in Nepal:

1. Young women have improved knowledge and capabilities to delay and space pregnancies, care for themselves and their new-born during pregnancy and after childbirth, and participate in household financial management within three years.

2. Husbands of young women have more gender-equitable attitudes and support RMNH care-seeking behaviours among young women within three years.

3. Families and community members are supportive of more equitable household gender norms and of RMNH care-seeking behaviours among young women within three years.

4. High-quality RMNH services are available and responsive to the needs of youth within three years.

The Project Manager - Healthy Transitions for Nepali Youth Program (HTNYP) will be responsible for providing strategic, technical and managerial leadership for the project. This position will ensure integration of programs and multiple partnership (Government and PNGOs) under Mid & far west program area. This position is responsible for project level strategic, technical and managerial leadership for the implementation of the project activities, in close coordination with the Associate Director-Field program operations, thematic staff and various departments (including Finance, Logistic and MEAL) in the field office. The incumbent will be responsible for overall planning, coordination, implementation, monitoring, and reporting of the Healthy Transitions project and ensure a high quality and results oriented program that includes innovations development and application of strong monitoring systems at all levels. The Manager will be responsible to ensure high quality implementation by local partners. In addition, the Manager will be responsible to submit high quality program plan, progress reports as well as quality review reports and associated action plans to SC member and other stakeholders as required. The position requires ensuring compliance on project management at various stages of implementation as guided by the donor policy and as advised by Save the Children counterpart. 

S/He will be the contact person with SC member/ donor Desk in consultation with Award department at CO. S/he will also extend support and work closely with all stakeholders including provincial government, palika officials of project area, backstopping support to SC staff and partners on monitoring and MEAL action response including evaluations and associated action plan. Partnership management for the Healthy Transitions Project funded project is one of the key role for this position.

KEY AREAS OF ACCOUNTABILITY: 

Planning & Budgeting

• Leads the development of the Healthy Transitions project plan and program implementation strategies including Detailed Implementation Plan (DIP) phase budget 
  
• Ensures partners have annual detailed implementation plan including realistic phased budget outlining major activities and timeline for the funds allocated in required planning templates provided by the organization.
  
• Leads implementation of project activities and ensures appropriate fund allocation and expenditure on a monthly basis and take corrective measures by revisiting plans and communicating timely with Thematic Coordinators/Managers/ project team, finance and Award department. 
  
• Reviews the project’s BVAs and report on any glitches identified in comparison to the Finance sent Program BVA monthly basis.
  
• Coordinates with Field office and District teams including thematic focal person to design a robust field visit plan, self-assessments and monitoring systems including follow up on recommendations with relevant department and impact areas. 
  
• Leads the revision of budgets during budget forecast and on exchange rate fluctuations as per organizational procedures. 
  
• Coordinates with Thematic Specialists and SCUS for technical assistance as required.

Programme Quality

• Supervises and provides guidance to the focal persons in different themes in the planning, implementation and monitoring of programs and project plan as per the given guidelines.
  
• Ensures that the programs have minimum quality benchmarks/standards in place and is exclusively followed at all levels. 
  
• Ensures the M & E plans, log-frame of the project and themes is well familiar and understood by staff and partner staff of related themes, is exclusively used and reported.
  
• Ensures that all action plans developed after project reviews, monitoring visits, evaluations and assessments are followed up and completed by respective themes on time. 
  
• Identifies strengths and improvement areas of staff members and partners for quality delivery of the projects and comes up with plans to improve such gaps via coaching, mentoring, on the spot support etc.
  
• Ensures that OPMIS is well understood, optimized for all themes at all levels - by partners, project team in the clusters and regular update is done
  
• Is responsible to coordinate with MEAL for analysing data from OPMIS, identifying concerns or learnings and scaling up to Field thematic coordinators/Managers/MEAL or to partners as relevant that data from including development of Quality Benchmarks.

Programme Operations & Management

• Ensures programmatic and financial accountability including tracking of program progress and budget expense in the use of funds and achievement of all related projects in alignment with Annual Plan and CSP.
  
• Ensure the POM- program operations manual and its components are prepared, understood by relevant staff, and kept in place for monitoring. 
  
• Ensure and collect the information about project progress from field staff, analyse the expenses Vs activity delivery and submit to Supervisor in a monthly basis. 
  
• Ensures that programs meet KPIs and /or excels Minimum Operating Standards of key programmatic interventions including Gender and Social Inclusion principles.

Innovation and Scale

• Identifies best practices, problems and issues around program implementation and works toward finding solutions for improvements, documenting, disseminating and in consultation with relevant departments, themes, and SCUS.
  
• Coordinates with Thematic coordinators/ managers/Specialists, TA providers to advance quality programming in line with program design, including the introduction of innovative approaches
  
• Works with individuals and teams at all levels to encourage and facilitate operational research and materialize findings of all research and evaluations including OPMIS information during program design/planning.
  
• Engages with government line agencies and profile programs for influencing future scale up, including advocacy for adolescent sexual and reproductive health related policy and procedures at local level/provincial level.
  
• Contributes towards developing and implementation of new ideas/innovations and its documentation of processes and its results, based on learning from Nepal’s experience. 
  
• Ensures effective monitoring and evaluations are carried out for deriving lessons learned, best practices and that monitoring is effective in terms of deriving quick analysis of progresses for immediate corrective actions and measurement of results.

Documentation & Reporting

• Responsible for timely and quality reports preparation and submission to Save the Children international and SC member country.
  
• Coordinates with Thematic coordinators/Managers and project focal points including MEAL, and Documentation Officer to ensure effective monitoring, evaluation and documentation of program activities and best practices.
  
• Work closely with international evaluation partner to ensure evaluation assesses relevant and high-priority outcomes, and that evaluation learning is shared widely. 
  
• Develops a sharing and learning culture within organization for promoting best practices from related programs to other programs.
  
• In close consultation with Technical Advisor/Manager, take initiatives in generating information that are required to add values in on-going programmes or for the programmes visualized for future 
  
• Ensure proper documentation of the project including and not limited to learning, lessons learned, best practices, case studies. In this context coordinate with Media and Communication, Program Planning and Documentation unit to develop the documentation plan and dissemination at various levels.

Partner’s Management

• Supports and is responsible for the partnership in terms of compliance, zero tolerance, audits and management response, identification of capacity gaps and recommends for improvements.
  
• Ensures strong linkages and coordination among provincial Network Partnerships including those with line government agencies and offices
  
• Ensure the partners have understood, fulfilled all the clauses mentioned in the agreement and aware about SC partnership essence and policies for better implementation of the projects.

Representation and Networking

• Collaboration and coordination with government counterparts, external development partners and donors at field and provincial level
  
• Is part of relevant provincial (regional) networks and coalitions and ensures field/district/local level networks is well represented as necessary
  
• Supports program areas to build strong networks with other NGOs, CSOs, UN agencies and Government line agencies working on children’s issues to promote coordination and resource sharing at the local level.

Other

• Supports Save the Children’s dual mandate of development programmes as well as being the leader in emergency preparedness and response for children.
  
• Support field office on the tasks/ responsibility given by Supervisor in adhoc/need basis as and when required. 

SKILLS AND BEHAVIOURS (our Values in Practice)

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

• Master’s degrees or equivalent in Public Health, Management or other relevant discipline
  
• At least 7 years of job experience in related field especially in a managerial role including grants management (preferably under Health/ Nutrition, MNCH related projects)
  
• A minimum of 3 years of working on adolescent health, particularly adolescent sexual and reproductive health related projects
  
• Demonstrated experience working with projects that focus on strengthening the quality of clinical family planning, reproductive health, and MNCH services in Nepal
  
• Demonstrated experience with social and behavior change programming, particularly in the area of family planning, gender, and adolescent health
  
• Understanding of both qualitative and quantitative research methodologies, and experience working with research partners
  
• Demonstrated use of monitoring and evaluation data for decision making
  
• Demonstrated significant experience in managing projects funded by multiple donors including networks. 
  
• Prior experience in working with NGOs/civil societies and government counterparts
  
• Proven sound strategic thinking and planning skills, including ability to think creatively and be innovative, set priorities, manage work plans and evaluate progress. 
  
• Good report writing skill.
  
• Good interpersonal skills including verbal and written communication skills 
  
• Written and verbal fluency in English