Head of Pogramme Quality

“ensuring alignment with sector best practices, quality standards and learning across the organization at regional & country levels”

Your Challenge

As Head of Programme Quality (PQ) you will oversee a team of technical experts working to ensure alignment with sector best practices, quality standards and learning across the organization at regional and country levels.

You will manage a team of thematic experts in Child Protection, Psychosocial Support, Education, and Youth Empowerment, plus also a MEAL Specialist and Officer, Programme Accountability & Participation Adviser, Learning Organisation Manager, and a Gender Specialist. You will be responsible for defining and ensuring delivery on core & strategic processes, and participation in the development & maintenance of War Child’s global thematic teams and sector-wide networks.

As Head of PQ you will further oversee the implementation and revision of War Child’s Global Monitoring Framework, MEAL framework, Learning Strategy, Gender Mainstreaming Strategy and Thematic Sector Strategies, ensuring revision and operationalization of programme guidelines and establishing a programme quality framework.

You will also be part of the roll out of the Care System Portfolio in close collaboration with Research & Development and Advocacy teams to ensure continuation of our scaling and advocacy ambitions, and lead the PQ components of transitioning to a new shared strategy in collaboration with Country and Regional offices.

Your Responsibilities

Team Management and Collaboration:

• Lead and manage the PQ team by guiding, coaching, instructing and motivating. Facilitate team building and wellbeing through an organisational change process and build a strong team culture.
• Ensure all team members have clear activity plans and performance targets.
• Coordinate the Programme Quality budget, annual planning and reporting processes.
• Drive excellent cross-team working and with other leaders in the Programmes Team.
• Identify, prioritise and participate in relevant thematic fora, platforms and networks for sector coordination, expertise exchange, learning and policy influencing.
• Contribute to organisational processes, such as localisation, longer-term nexus programming and sustainability, as well as contribute to organisational change process.

Thematic Technical Capacity and Support:

• Lead the implementation of the programme quality strategy in line with Scaling, Programme, Humanitarian Response and Advocacy ambitions.
• Align with other organisational units to ensure sustainable and scalable technical capacity is available.
• Ensure implementation and review of thematic sector strategies in close collaboration with R&D and regional thematic experts.
• Implement support and strengthening capabilities in rolling out the Care System Portfolio, including guidance to support country offices and partner organisations.
• Deliver technical support to the Programme Partnership and Grants team (2PG) /Institutional Funding and Country Offices in programme design/proposal writing to ensure that programme quality is fully embedded.
• Coordinate alignment and support to the Advocacy agenda from technical advisers where necessary.
• Provide input into R&D processes to identify research needs and opportunities within War Child which contribute to our programme priorities.

Quality Assurance and Learning:

• Support the Learning Organisation Manager in the implementation of the Learning Strategy and ensuring technical capacity and resources are available.
• Ensure a shared MEAL Policy, Global Monitoring Framework and operational guidance is developed and rolled out together with regional and country-based MEAL capacity.
• Support the Programme Accountability and Participation specialist in ensuring independent verification, adherence to and learnings about Core Humanitarian Standard requirements.

Your Profile

• University degree in general (NGO) management, development studies or related fields.
• Minimum of 5-7 years management experience in INGOs and including several years working experience directly in conflict/ humanitarian contexts
• Extensive experience in international aid and development – developing and implementing a programme quality agenda at an institutional level.
• Proven leader with excellent people management skills: Able to lead and inspire a team to manage multiple priorities and develop new approaches, maintain a critical outlook and promote a culture of constructive criticism.
• Knowledgeable about the realities and challenges of humanitarian work in conflict settings.
• Passionate about achieving programme quality with a verifiable record of building continual improvement.
• Knowledgeable about War Child’s priority thematic areas of Psychosocial Support, Child Protection, Education, Youth Empowerment, including understanding of the concepts related to cash-based programming applied to War Child thematic areas, as well as familiar with cross-cutting themes such as Gender Mainstreaming, Participation and Accountability.
• Experience in scaling methodologies, organisational change processes and complex M&E systems.
• Strong strategic and analytical skills for effective policy development and risk management.
• Result-based management approach: demonstrated capacity to plan and deliver results in a structured manner.
• Experience in the field of advocacy and/or scaling of evidence-based methods would be an advantage
• Fluent in English and preferably also French, Spanish (Arabic and/or Dutch would be helpful as well).

Location

Any country where War Child has its offices. The successful candidate must be eligible to work in that country. Preference will be given to local candidates.

The Organisation

War Child is a young and dynamic organisation. We try to keep an informal ambiance within our office, with a lot of room for creativity, inspiration and self-initiative from employees. We practice what we preach: dynamic, innovative, integrity focused and a drive to reach the highest possible results against the lowest possible costs. War Child offers a challenging job in an inspiring workplace in Amsterdam.

Our Offer

Depending on the duty station, local contract with salary and secondary labour conditions based on the country’s salary scale and T&C’s will apply.