CFYE – Deputy Country Relationship Manager

You are eligible for this position if you have demonstrated experience in project management and private sector development. Please note that Only applicants who are residents in Egypt will be considered.

Company Overview:

About Palladium – Palladium is a global leader in the design, development and delivery of Positive Impact – the intentional creation of enduring social and economic value. We work with governments, businesses, and investors to solve the world’s most pressing challenges. With a team of more than 3,000 employees operating in 90 plus countries and a global network of over 35,000 experts, we help improve economies, societies and, most importantly, people’s lives.

Project Overview and Role:

The Challenge Fund for Youth Employment (CFYE) is a 6-year and €114 million programme funded by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, that aims to create a prosperous future for 200,000 young women and men in the Middle East, North Africa, Sahel & West Africa and Horn of Africa regions. The Fund will be supporting initiatives in 23 focus countries that will offer youth, in particular young women, opportunities for work that is demand-driven and productive, offering a stable income and safe working conditions, and that is contributing to their personal development and social protection.
Private sector, civil society and knowledge institutions will be invited to submit proposals geared to scalable solutions for creating more and better jobs and income generating opportunities for youth. Solutions will in particular focus on an integrated approach that addresses the shortcomings on the demand side (jobs) and supply side (skills) and bridging the mismatch between these two in the labour market.

The Deputy Relationship Manager will be responsible for supporting CFYE’s Implementing Partners (IPs) in Egypt. In this role, you will closely work with the existing Relationship Manager for Egypt.
The Deputy Relationship Manager will work directly with a selection of IPs on project management, Technical Assistance and Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) related activities, ensuring that IPs receive target technical support in their impact monitoring efforts and data analytics. This includes monitoring progress of the IPs’ projects, and supporting them with technical and financial reporting, mobilizing (additional) technical assistance, and any other needs that may arise. Although the Relationship Manager has final responsibility for the portfolio’s performance, the Deputy Relationship Manager will play a crucial supporting role to this end.
Although most communications with CFYE headquarters will go through the Relationship Manager, the deputy Relationship Manager will also – where required and advised by the Relationship Manager- directly liaise with the Central Team (including Fund Management, Technical Assistance, Monitoring Evaluation and Learning, Financial Management, Communications, and Project Delivery).

Primary Duties and Responsibilities:

The responsibilities and duties of the Deputy Relationship Manager include the following:
Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) (40%)

• Support Implementing Partners to monitor and evaluate the impact of their projects in accordance with the CFYE MEL system, and validate documentation tied to Outputs and Outcomes achieved.
• Provide ongoing support to IPs on CFYE MEL systems and procedures.
• Act as a MEL advisor during inception phase for new portfolio IPs. This includes but us not limited to; Conduct 1:1 MEL strategy workshops with all IPs, co-defining the logical causal pathways to the job outcomes, finalize results chain and accompany partners in putting their MEL Templates and Milestone structures.
• Support the quarterly progress review meetings with each Implementing Partner, and document minutes, observations, and reflections, including external conditions and local external factors relevant to project implementation.
• Support Implementing Partners to prepare knowledge and communications material and present learnings during learning events or other Learning and Innovation events, where relevant.
• Provide more in-depth technical assistance to Implementing Partners on a needs-basis, to improve their MEL capacity and realize strong and relevant impact data for CFYE. Implementing Partners are in Egypt, but potentially also other IPs in the region such as Jordan and Sudan.
• Analyse portfolio-level data to draw key insights, emerging trends, and lessons, and communicate these in a clear and relevant way internally and externally.

Supporting IPs in their projects implementation (40%)

• Support the periodic review and provide guidance to individual Implementing Partners on their progress against non-MEL related topics including due diligence improvement plan and Results Planning (mostly activities – outputs).
• Ensure the documentation of Implementing Partners’ key project documents (workplan, budget, reports etc.) is complete, meets the CFYE requirements and has been uploaded in the CFYE IT system.
• Support the Implementing Partners on any queries related to invoicing and contractual payment processes.
• Any other duties as may be assigned from time to time.

Technical Assistance Management (10%)

• Support the TA provision to Implementing Partners: assist in drafting the TA assignment (Scope of Work), launching tenders in compliance with Palladium policies.
• Support recruitment and on-boarding of the TA provider.
• Support daily management of TA implementation (receipts, transport, Q&A, Sorting out travel arrangements in Egencia) as well as – TA service provider management (Timesheets & invoice management for TA).

Communications, marketing and outreach (10%)

• In case of any in-country events, support the Relationship Manager and Delivery team in their organisation; and support the Communications and MEL teams to ensure generation of relevant content and stories to be disseminated to share learning or raise the profile of the CFYE.
• Identify and support the production of impact and human-interest stories from Egypt portfolio of projects and IPs with special focus on youth and women.
• Contribute to CFYE social media feed by providing inputs on Egypt projects progress and updates.

Level of Effort and Reporting:
The Deputy Relationship Manager will report to CFYE’s Relationship Manager for Egypt. However, they will need to work and coordinate closely with other members of the Challenge Fund Team, as and when demanded by assigned tasks. The level of effort for this role will be full-time fixed employment, initially for 1 year, with possibility for extension.

Core Competencies:

**- Strong business acumen, and understanding of business support.

• Demonstrated experience with Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL).
• Strong Project Management skills.
• Strong affinity with youth empowerment, gender and social inclusion, and decent work.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English.
• Good organisational and planning skills.
• Sound problem-solving and decision-making skills.
• Comfortable to work with Microsoft Office, experience working with Salesforce is considered a pre.
• Ability to work successfully as part of a team.
• Familiarity with social enterprises work and/or impactful private business practices will be highly regarded.

Minimum Requirements:

• Based in Egypt.
• Relevant academic qualifications in a related field such as business administration, economics, HRM or finance.
• Proven experience with project management and/or Monitoring & Evaluation and performing related administrative tasks.
• Relevant technical work experience in one of the following areas; Monitoring and Evaluation, youth employment and/or private sector development.