Christian Aid Programme officer, Livelihoods, East Africa

The role of Programme officer works within the International programmes role family and the wider programme funding remit. In this role you will be responsible for supporting and managing Christian Aid partnerships and programmes, as well as the effective disbursement of funds to East Africa Country programmes, including recommending grants to partners. The post holder will also contribute to the development of Christian Aid policy and strategy and engage with and promote communications and fundraising, including institutional donors. The role will be based in Nairobi. Occasional travel is required.

The role holder will have strong background knowledge of institutional donors, particularly the EU, ECHO, DFID policies funding modalities and rules. He/she will have a good understanding of international development issues, governance, power and rights, financial controls and procedures and familiarity with programme cycle management, approaches and tools, including participatory planning, monitoring and evaluation. You will need to demonstrate your ability toidentify key policy agenda on livelihoods and integrating these into the programme. Able to work independently, you will have strong communication and relationship building skills to ensure you are able to contribute to the delivery of information, ideas and opinions within a workgroup. You will engage in strategic livelihoods forums including the UN, Government and other NGO forums. You will also need to have good understanding of conflict transformation work, livelihoods programmes management, good understanding of issues of climate change and adaptation to climate change, solid experience in policy influencing and advocacy relating to agriculture policy, mobilizing farmer groups, linking farmers to metrological data , market access for pastoralists, climate change, livelihoods work, and managing humanitarian emergency interventions.You will be a motivated, dynamic and innovative individual, able to deliver results from a wide spectrum of projects. Team working and coordination skills will therefore be pertinent to this position. You will demonstrate high levels of reliability and ability to deliver programme reports on time. Ability to monitor budget implementation and ensuring programme-budget compliance is paramount to this role.

This role requires a university degree in development studies or similar; direct experience of programme appraisal, monitoring and evaluation, and developing partners’ capacity, experience in designing, managing, delivering and evaluating emergency and development projects; knowledge of humanitarian standards and policies; strong communication, training and workshop facilitation, and representation skills. Fluency in English language is mandatory.

Please show your suitability for this post by giving answers to the following questions: Using the guidance notes may help you formulate your answers.

Change initiatives

Describe a time when it was necessary to change the way a particular task was carried out within a work group.

How did you introduce this change?
What was the change?
In what way(s) did the change affect the group?
What was the reaction to the change?
What actions did you take to help ensure success?

Delivering goals and objectives

Describe a project you supervised that required detailed planning and organization.

What were the goals and deliverables?
What was the outcome?
What benchmarks did you use to monitor the progress of the project?
How did you ensure that proper quality of work was maintained?

Communication and interaction

Give us an example of a time when establishing two-way communication with an individual or group was especially challenging.

What was the situation?
What made it challenging to establish two-way communication?
What did you do to help ensure that communion was two-way vs one-way?
To what extent were you successful in communication efforts?
What leads you to say that? (ie on what evidence do you base that evaluation?)

You will require current and valid permit to work in Kenya.

We value the contribution each person makes to the success of our organisation, so you can expect a range of rewards and benefits that will ensure you enjoy a good work/life balance.

Download the role profile (73 KB pdf)

To apply for this post, please download an application pack and email your completed International application form to: nairobi@christian-aid.org (quoting the reference number).

Please note that CVs will not be accepted and that only short-listed candidates will be contacted.

Job reference: EAP/053/JG

Closing date: Friday 16 March 2012

Interview date: Week commencing 26 March 2012

Christian Aid values diversity and aspires to reflect this in our workforce. We welcome applications from people from all sections of the community, irrespective of race, colour, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation, religion or belief.