Program / Department Summary

Mercy Corps works in Dollo Ado and Gode field offices in the Somali region to improve the livelihoods, economic opportunities and food security for refugees and host communities through this WFP-funded award. Mercy Corps engages people in socio-economic activities through user groups acknowledging their capacities and improving the quality of their lives and building their resilience for possible shocks in the future, while contributing to self-reliance in the long term. Mercy Corps interventions focus on strengthening market systems, diversifying livelihoods and income, and improving resilience capacities by promoting financial, livestock and crop market activities.

General Position Summary

The position holder shall oversee technical quality implementation and delivery of the standalone GEDSI related activities and GEDSI mainstreaming across different projects and focuses.  The position holder will mainly be responsible to identify GEDSI related concerns in different project areas in line with market system development lenses and other focuses to develop possible strategies to work around identified GEDSI concerns to promote gender equality and social inclusion. In addition, the position holder is also responsible to provide capacity building trainings on different GEDSI and GBV related topics to government line bureaus, community representatives, market actors and other development and humanitarian actors. S/He will be also responsible to lead organization transformation on Gender, Diversity, and inclusion (GDI); as well as leading staff transformation through facilitating reflections and promoting inclusion workplace environment.  S/He will also be responsible for day-to-day documentation of GEDSI related activities, compile reports (weekly, and monthly); as well as represent Mercy Corps gender, GBV, protection and other related forums or network and so on.

Essential Job Responsibilities

Strategy & Vision

·         Collaborate and work closely with projects team members to make sure effective integration of gender concerns and social inclusion

·         Collaborate with local authorities and other actors in the project areas including the market actors to effectively identify gender and social norm issues to inform project designs and activities

·         Able to learn and update his/ her information or knowledge to adapt the changing situation and context in promotion gender equality and social inclusion

Program Management

·         Lead or support gender and social inclusion analysis process as needed to inform program design and activity revision

·         Make sure gender and social inclusion concerns to be integrated in all programs related assessments to better understand the concern and to inform program design and strategy development across various sectors including market system development

·         Lead implementation of women, youth and other unrepresented groups empowerment strategies and activities

·         Ensure projects to have gender sensitive and gender equality indicators has put properly which focus on access to and control over resource, leadership, and participation and so on.

·         Coordinative with monitoring and evaluation team to do regular monitoring and evaluation

·         Lead/oversee the process of gender and social norm reflections at the community and organizational levels

·         Make sure to provide appropriate support to the FO in implementation of gender equality, diversity, and equality (GDI) priorities

·         Provides training to Mercy Corps staff, community representative, government stakeholder and market actors on various topics of gender, social inclusion and GBV

·          Work with local government and strengthen the system in a way to mainstream GEDSI issues

·         Coordinate and prepare weekly and monthly reports on GEDSI related activities and submit to area program manager, and other responsible team in the FO as well as Mercy Corps country office

Team Management

• Supports and liaise with all project team and provide a capacity building including training and coaching on gender mainstreaming, social inclusion and other related on the job training and capacity building.

Finance & Compliance Management

N/A

Influence & Representation

·         Make sure to coordinate with other development and humanitarian actors in the areas to promote gender equality and social inclusion

·         Represent Mercy Corps in various platforms, networks and coordination forums that focuses on gender, social inclusion, and protection

·         Provide timely training and orientation to community volunteers and make sure that they transmit/convey messages clearly to the community on GEDSI related topics

·         Coordinate with community volunteers and other community structures in the area to provide information to community member on GEDSI related issues

·         Always upholds the image and values of Mercy Corps

Security

·         Ensure compliance with security procedures and policies as determined by country leadership.

·         Proactively ensure that team members operate in a secure environment and are aware of policies.

Organizational Learning  

·         As part of our commitment to organizational learning and in support of our understanding that learning organizations are more effective, efficient, and relevant to the communities they serve, we expect all team members to commit 5% of their time to learning activities that benefit Mercy Corps as well as themselves.

Accountability to Beneficiaries

·         Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts toward accountability, specifically
to our program participants and to international standards guiding international relief and development work, while actively engaging beneficiary communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring and evaluation of our field projects.

·         Mercy Corps team members are expected to implement community accountability reporting Mechanism (CARM) effectively

·         Team members are expected to conduct themselves in a professional manner and respect local laws, customs and MC’s policies, procedures, and values always and in all in-country venues.

Supervisory Responsibility

The GEDSI adviser is responsible to provide technical support to all project team members to be able to properly integrate GEDSI concerns during day-to-day activity implementation; as well as responsible to provide a capacity building training.

Knowledge and Experience

·         BA degree in Gender and social development, Sociology, Psychology, Social work, or other similar social science field of studies; and minimum three years’ work experience in NGOs in gender and GBV related roles.

Success Factors

• Ability and willingness to frequently travel to villages and willingness to reside in rural areas
• Good training facilitation skill
• Willingness and capacity to be flexible and accommodating when faced with difficult and frustrating working conditions like long distance walking to reach the community
• Good interpersonal and communication skills
• Experience in closely working with regional and Woreda government offices
• Excellent coordination skill
• Communication skill, good human relations
• Firm belief in teamwork, gender equality and social inclusion
• Computer literate especially in Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook)