DIRECTOR FOR GLOBAL VSLA

JOB SUMMARY:

CARE is a leading humanitarian and development organization dedicated to fighting poverty and addressing social injustice, with a particular focus on upholding human rights, promoting gender equality and empowering women and girls. CARE works in diverse contexts, encompassing both protracted crises to stable development settings. CARE recognizes the fundamental importance of equality and acknowledges that such equality cannot be attained as longer as women have fewer economic rights, limited control over economic resources, and restricted access to economic opportunities compared to men. One of the approaches that CARE uses as a platform to drive women’s socio-economic empowerment is its flagship model, Village Savings and Loans Associations. CARE developed a scale-up strategy for it in 2018 and recently reviewed it based on the lessons learned from the four years of its implementation. The strategy goal is to ensure that by 2030, 62 million people (of which 50 million women and girls) are economically and socially empowered through savings groups, thus reducing poverty and increasing gender equality. This scaling strategy set the ambition for how to reach the set target, not just through CARE’s program integration and layering, but rather by influencing 3rd party scalers to take up the approach in their programs, primarily government and agribusinesses, adapting the model in crisis settings (VSLAiE), and leveraging digital technology to drive efficiencies across all the work-streams. Although the strategy focuses on scale, it has become clear that it is critical for CARE to focus on both scale and impact. This is partly based on emerging evidence that participation in a VSLA not only increases members’ average incomes and household assets, but it also provides non-economic benefits such as increased voice, self-esteem and confidence among members, the majority of whom are women. Due to their effectiveness and versatility, VSLAs are increasingly being promoted as part of multi-component projects in combination with other interventions such as health services, food and nutrition security, local value chain development, climate justice, agricultural training, advocacy campaigns, gender and social norm dialogues, and access to formal financial services.

Over the next 7 years, CARE’s direct implementation of VSLAs contributes to 9 million of the overall target. Direct implementation through CARE is critical to VSLA scaling efforts as CARE’s programs are the test bed for innovating with and adapting the VSLA model to influence replication and scale through strategic partnerships. Integrating VSLA as the foundation of CARE programming in Food and Water Systems, Education, and Health Programs. This requires a senior leader to ensure VSLAs are consistently integrated across our portfolio and through multi-year programs that build on VSLAs as a platform for resilience and other services

As part of the dynamic VSLA team, the Deputy Director-VSLA Programs Integration will oversee the CARE Direct Sub-strategy of the Global VSLA. This will include supporting country office and regional scale-up strategy development; co-creating programs and project designs; contributing to and/or leading proposal and fundraising efforts; providing technical support to project start-up and implementation; and supporting CARE’s efforts to continually learn from and improve our initiatives. He will advocate for the transformative work and incremental impacts of our VSLA to both internal and external audiences and serve as a team’s point of contact for VSLA integration, layering, and sequencing. In addition, the position is expected to collaborate closely with other CARE USA departments (such as PPL and FWS) to ensure that the work aligns with the organization’s larger objectives and takes into consideration the humanitarian-development nexus as well as managing major initiatives as required. In a nutshell, the position affords its occupant unparallel opportunities to influence the work of CARE and deepen impact that specifically contributes to women’s financial autonomy and economic independence.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

Strategy and Programme Quality for Greater VSLA Scale and Impact

• The Deputy Director supports the Director in development and review of CARE Direct sub-strategy, including the expansion of our work in other sectoral global programs that integrate VSLA.
• Primary contributor in the area of village savings and loan associations (VSLA) and financial inclusion within CARE’s program integration and layering efforts. Specifically, he or she will focus on enhancing food and nutrition security through the incorporation of VSLA as a fundamental component of FWS programming
• Support the quality implementation of VSLA linkages to formal financial services while contributing towards quality digital solution integration.
• Develop or adapt technical resources, including guides, case studies, and other learning tools, to build capacity for financial inclusion and collective investment, particularly contributing to the overall socio-economic empowerment of women and driving food and nutrition security.
• Build and maintain close relationships with FWS colleagues within and outside CARE and across and between teams to facilitate a constant flow of information and learning.
• Contribute to private sector engagement for increased access and usage of financial support as well as agribusiness in order to support the development of win-win solutions that have the potential to transform

Fundraising and Resource mobilization

• Work closely with the Director of the team to coordinate and spearhead fundraising and resource mobilization efforts that seek to increase funding for programs. The incumbent will;
• Contribute to the resource mobilization efforts to expand CARE VSLA programming and overall livelihoods programming along the VSLA scale up strategy
• Participate in proposal development, working across units with the Strategic Partnerships and the FSW to pursue proposals, and with headquarters and country offices to bring in new funding opportunities to advance CARE’s work streams.
• Support the food Security and Resilience team on RFSA bids.
• Work with other STAs and the Director to provide quick high quality and robust inputs and responses to bids, proposals and other opportunities that support the team to raise resources for programming.
• Work primarily with the Institutional Fundraising Team ) to support resource mobilization efforts to advance CARE’s work in the area of VSLA and Food and Nutritional Security.

Drive learning and program quality throughout program integration and layering of VSLA

• As part of our increasing need to multiply impact through knowledge management, partnerships and learning, the incumbent will;
• Support Documentation and development of publications that demonstrate impact and systems development of program integration and layering of VSLA. These will include peer reviewed Journal articles, short human interest stories, Blog articles and other documentation that shows Cares work in market systems development.
• Support Country offices and program teams to develop and write thought pieces, experience sharing and other publications showing CARE VSLA plus work in the field.
• Develop power-points and other pieces that aim to publicize and bring awareness of the major work in CARE VSLA program integration and layering including VSLA members’ graduation models.
• Contribute to cross sectoral learning and innovation with other PSI programs and initiatives. Identify and capture and share innovations, best or promising practices, and lessons learned to increase technical excellence especially in conjunction with FSW.
• Share opportunities for internal and external knowledge sharing and collaborate on communications/learning/advocacy materials (webinars, briefs, etc.)

Staff Management and Leadership

This responsibility requires excellent competency and skills in areas of team building, coordination, delegation with support and accountability, problem solving, and strategic decision-making. The incumbent is responsible for:

• Potentially serve as project director/ CoP on select grants, coordinating planning and implementation of project activities and overseeing all aspects of program quality (programmatic, financial, administrative, personnel).
• Supporting the team in recruiting and retaining staff on the integration, layering, and sequencing of VSLAs within and outside CARE
• Providing leadership, coaching, and supervision of VSLA-FSW and scaling VSLAs through corporates’ staff and continuous quality improvement in the context of integration and layering of the VSLA programming framework.
• Support recruitment and staffing for positions for other teams, including the markets and business approaches team, supporting identification of the right caliber of people, reviewing and developing appropriate job descriptions, and ensuring that country teams and programs are able to recruit and retain high quality.

Alliances, Partnerships and Representation

• Global VSLA scale-up efforts ensures effective partnership that scale and multiply the impact of CARES work. The incumbent will;
• Support the formulation and development of various partnerships that enable implementation of VSLA/ WS work. These will include partnerships that aim to multiply the impact of VSLA programming particularly around VSLA-FWS integration and layering. This will include working closely in partnership with the FWS team.
• Increase private sector engagements and partnerships that increase women an youth access to financial services and markets.
• Collaborate with the FWS and other relevant technical teams (f, women economic empowerment, SRHR, Gender, etc.) and business units across CARE Global to design innovative and evidence based integrated programs to achieve the VSLA scale up strategy goals
• Represent the VSLA team with various donors, partners and peers and contribute to the other functions and technical areas of the FWS Unit.

QUALIFICATIONS:

• MA in development studies/economics/social science/microfinance or related subject, or equivalent expertise and additional enterprise and private sector engagement training
• Deep, practical understanding of villages savings and loan associations or similar savings group modalities
• 10+ years in program management, Technical assistance and program design
• Demonstrated capacity to utilize and support others in utilizing a range of learning tools and approaches, both virtual and in-person years of senior management/leadership experience with international agencies
• 10 years of experience in international programming in economic development or food and nutrition security
• Experience in GED and geographically disbursed and multidisciplinary team management
• Successful fundraising experience
• Planning for and oversight of large budgets
• Experience in research design and monitoring and evaluation