Emergency Strategic Support Director - Sudan

Programs Port Sudan, Sudan

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Description

*This role is contingent upon funding approval
Position Description
Location Port Sudan with travels to field locations
Position Status Full-time
About Mercy Corps
Mercy Corps is powered by the belief that a better world is possible. To do this, we know our teams do their best work when they are diverse, and every team member feels that they belong. We welcome diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and skills so that we can be stronger and have long term impact.  

Program Summary

Mercy Corps Europe, formerly known as Mercy Corps Sudan, has been operational in Sudan since 2004 and currently leads humanitarian assistance and longer-term development efforts in conflict-affected South Darfur, South Kordofan, North Kordofan, Gedaref, and Khartoum States, supporting host communities, IDPs, returnees and refugees. Mercy Corps’ current areas of programming include food security and livelihoods, WASH, health, nutrition, peace building and protection, resilience, and Market Systems Development
Mercy Corps’ Sudan crisis response seeks to meet the humanitarian needs of vulnerable Sudanese and other conflict-affected people across the country. Mercy Corps Sudan is recognized as a leader in market systems, agricultural, and food security and building on this experience, the MC Sudan humanitarian program will layer in resilience and other program activities where appropriate and feasible to do so.  Mercy Corps is scaling up to reach upwards of 200,000 conflict affected people with multi-purpose cash assistance, targeted voucher programs, in-kind and services provision across the country. Our impact will be delivered with a focus on needs, in partnership with local actors and civil society, and embrace the safe, appropriate, and accountable use of digital systems and technologies to support the response.
 
Mercy Corps Sudan leads the Cash Consortium of Sudan (CCS), a collaborative platform to advance a progressive vision of the potential of cash assistance to transform humanitarian response and recovery in partnership with vulnerable conflict-affected populations in Sudan. International partners include Acted, CARE, Concern, GOAL, the International Rescue Committee (IRC), and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC). The CCS will work closely with other consortia and actors in Sudan to deliver an effective CVA response for communities affected by the crisis.
 
General Position Summary
 
As a member of the Senior Management Team, the Strategic Support Director, will provide leadership and strategic direction to Mercy Corps Sudan’s humanitarian and development initiatives. S/he will strengthen and guide a cohesive portfolio that capitalizes on Mercy Corps’ approach to humanitarian response, spearheading efforts to build reinforcing technical strategies and improved systems for joint context analysis and adaptive implementation across humanitarian and recovery-focused programming, and proactively link to other development-focused initiatives. The role elevates and connects strategic approaches for strengthening market systems in crisis and ensuring integration of conflict prevention/mitigation and gender and social inclusion across the portfolio in Sudan. The role will champion the use of crisis analytics to generate and apply continued and ongoing insights of the operational context that looks at the security and evolving context alongside other key risk factors such as climate events, political or economic disruptions, or disease outbreaks that exacerbate fragility.
 
The Strategic Support Director will be a strong communicator, solution holder and proven negotiator able to appropriately manage and enhance essential relationships with key external stakeholders, including donors and host Government representatives. The Strategic Support Director will be sharing in the overall responsibility for the effective and efficient delivery of Mercy Corps’ Sudan current and future humanitarian programs and/or ensure the preparedness of current development programs to pivot to humanitarian contexts when and if context changes. S/he will provide senior leadership, support, and oversight for/of all field teams, country wide context and risk analysis, contingency planning, mitigation measures, preparedness activities, emergency response(s), and recovery activities either as lead, coordinator, or active support as situation and context require it.
 
Essential Job Responsibilities 
STRATEGY AND VISION:
  • Ensure MC Sudan’s humanitarian relief and development portfolio is aligned with the overall country strategy and reflective of Mercy Corps global objectives as defined in the Pathway To Possibilities (P2P) vision.  
  • In partnership with the Country Director, Director of Programs and Cash Consortium of Sudan Lead, set the direction of the humanitarian relief to resilience portfolio by developing an overarching strategy for humanitarian to sustainable solutions strategies in Sudan.
  • Ensure programs are implemented in ways responsive to the communities, and in line with Mercy Corps principles, values, strategic plan, and compliance procedures.
  • Proactively keep abreast of humanitarian issues and priorities in Sudan and ensure Mercy Corps is well positioned and prepared to respond.
  • Identify suitable opportunities to develop new and innovative programming and to secure the necessary funding to drive this forward. 
  • Regular travel to program implementation sites across the country to support program delivery.
  • Develop and promote systems for enhanced cross-program integration and joint analysis, learning and adaptive management, promoting and leveraging Mercy Corps’ signature technical approaches in protracted and active crises, such as markets in crisis and crisis analytics.
  • Lead and leverage the crisis analytics team to generate critical analysis of the situation in Sudan that leads to actionable forward-thinking initiatives that address key drivers of instability and ongoing fragility.  
 
PROGRAM MANAGEMENT
  • Manage and oversee the implementation of humanitarian relief and recovery programming targeting vulnerable populations in Sudan and ensure programs are on time, on scope and on budget.
  • Ensure all MC administration, logistical, human resources and financial procedures are followed in relation to implementation of humanitarian grants. 
  • Work closely with the Finance team to review monthly budget versus actual financial management information to ensure that all program expenditure is on track and does not exceed approved budget variance limits.
  • Work closely with the MEL team to ensure that all essential program, organizational metrics, and lessons learned are being adequately captured.
  • Facilitate synthesis of best practices and lessons learned and promote an overall culture of adaptive learning through systematic analysis and reflection on program data.
  • Ensure that all donor reports are submitted on time and to the highest possible standards.
  • Foster a collaborative team atmosphere which engages and supports all team members and supports a culture of adaptive management.
  • Provide support and identifying opportunities for mentoring and training for the team members to deliver impactful humanitarian and sustainable solutions programming.
 
PROGRAMMATIC DEVELOPMENT
  • Work closely with Country Leadership and team to identify new program opportunities, and develop concept notes in partnership with team to share with potential donors.
  • In partnership with the Area Managers and Team Leads oversee the design of new emergency relief and resilient recovery programs based on needs analysis, assessments and sectoral information.
  • Engage team in adaptive management practices to influence the design of new innovative and sustainable approaches to programming in humanitarian contexts 
  • Coordinate with program leadership (including DoP and other program leaders) of development and peacebuilding focused programming to proactively develop concept notes to strategically integrate, sequence and layer programming.
  • Proactively seek potential funding sources among traditional as well as non-traditional donors, in line with MC’s overall strategy in Sudan.
 
REPRESENTATION & COORDINATION
  • Serve as a thought leader in MC Sudan’s humanitarian, development, and resilience community and ensure full coordination and communication across the sectors.
  • Represent MC Sudan with relevant INGO/UN agencies and within humanitarian cluster coordination structures 
  • Represent MC Nigeria with relevant national, local government officials and other national and local agencies.
  • Work collaboratively to build a range of mutually beneficial partnerships with other stakeholders both national and international.
  • Identify, build, and manage collaborative partnerships with consortium partners, sub-grantees, donors, government, and other stakeholders.
  • Communicate effectively to ensure overall project targets and donor obligations are met.
 
ADDITIONAL DUTIES
  • Other duties as reasonably requested.
  
Supervisory Responsibility
Sudan Crisis Analysis Team
Accountability
Reports Directly To: Country Director
Works Directly With: Director of programs, Cash Consortium of Sudan Director, Area Managers, Director of Operations, Security and Access Advisor, Program Managers, PAQ and MEL, Liaison/Security, Operations, Finance and HR departments.
 
Accountability to Participants and Stakeholders
 
Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts towards accountability, specifically to our program participants, community partners, other stakeholders, and to international standard guiding international relief and development work. We are committed to actively engaging communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring, and evaluation of our field projects.
 
Knowledge and Experience
  • MA/S or equivalent in international Humanitarian and development or related field preferred.
  • 8+ years of combined experience in humanitarian response and international development preferred.
  • Comprehensive understanding of humanitarian donor ways of working and funding mechanisms required.
  • Previous experience in writing humanitarian response proposals and rapidly designing emergency response programs
  • Demonstrated success in programs related to emergency response required, with preference for experience in humanitarian cash and voucher assistance, markets in crisis, WASH, Nutrition, etc
  • Thorough understanding of the context and current environment in Sudan preferred
  • Proven managerial skills required
  • Demonstrated ability to function as a solution-seeker and proven success with building, managing and leading a team of professionals and the ability to function as a team player among peers.
  • Effective verbal and written communication, multi-tasking, organizational, prioritization skills are necessary.
  • History of working effectively and respectfully with host country government, private sector, INGO, and NGO partners in complex conflict environments.
  • Prior work experience in Africa strongly preferred; an ability to work comfortably, effectively and creatively within the cultural environment of Sudan and areas of poor security required.
  • Fluency in English written, and oral communication required.
  • Fluency and Arabic written, and oral communication strongly preferred.
 
Success Factors
The successful candidate should have the ability to apply high quality standards of programming in our teams, partners, and facilities in remote and challenging environments. This requires, patience, good humor while holding stead-fast to international standards in all activities. S/he must be able to work closely with a diverse team to adapt materials and methodologies to best meet the circumstances in targeted communities. S/he must work well across Mercy Corps teams who are not technical experts and are also critical to the success of these programs
 
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
Achieving our mission begins with how we build our team and work together. Through our commitment to enriching our organization with people of different origins, beliefs, backgrounds, and ways of thinking, we are better able to leverage the collective power of our teams and solve the world’s most complex challenges. We strive for a culture of trust and respect, where everyone contributes their perspectives and authentic selves, reach their potential as individuals and teams, and collaborate to do the best work of their lives.
We recognize that diversity is a journey, and we are committed to learning, listening and evolving to become more diverse, equitable and inclusive than we are today.
Equal Employment Opportunity
Mercy Corps is an equal opportunity employer that does not tolerate discrimination on any basis. We actively seek out diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and skills so that we can be collectively stronger and have sustained global impact.
We are committed to providing an environment of respect and psychological safety where equal employment opportunities are available to all. We do not engage in or tolerate discrimination based on race, color, gender identity, gender expression, religion, age, sexual orientation, national or ethnic origin, disability (including HIV/AIDS status), marital status, military veteran status or any other protected group in the locations where we work.
Safeguarding & Ethics
Mercy Corps is committed to ensuring that all individuals we come into contact with through our work, whether team members, community members, program participants or others, are treated with respect and dignity. We are committed to the core principles regarding prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse laid out by the UN Secretary General and IASC.
We will not tolerate child abuse, sexual exploitation, abuse or harassment by or of our team members. As part of our commitment to a safe and inclusive work environment, team members are expected to conduct themselves in a professional manner, respect local laws and customs, and to adhere to Mercy Corps Code of Conduct Policies and values at all times.
Team members are required to complete mandatory Code of Conduct e-learning courses upon hire and on an annual basis. 

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