Program Director

Terms of Reference (TOR)

Position: Program Director

Location: Juba, South Sudan

Duration: 12 Months

Reports To: Country Director – South Sudan

About RI:

Relief International is a leading nonprofit organization working in 20 countries to relieve poverty, ensure well-being and advance dignity. We specialize in fragile settings, responding to natural disasters, humanitarian crises and chronic poverty.

Relief International combines humanitarian and development approaches to provide immediate services while laying the groundwork for long-term impact. Our signature approach — which we call the RI Way—emphasizes local participation, an integration of services, strategic partnerships, and a focus on civic skills. In this way, we empower communities to find, design and implement the solutions that work best for them.

RI believes that gender equality is a basic right for all people, and it is critical to directly address gender-based discrimination and promote gender equality in order to ensure sustainable development.

Position Summary:

The Program Director will oversee program operations and coordination of all aspects of Relief International’s health, nutrition, WASH, and livelihoods programming in South Sudan. He/she will collaborate with the South Sudan Country Director in the ongoing implementation of projects. He/she will also lead on all new business/program development, manage the technical sector leads and grants and MEAL team and track spending and implementation to ensure quality program management. This position is based in Juba and will require regular trips to field locations.

Position Responsibilities and Duties:

Program Implementation

• Collaborate with the Country Director and technical sector leads to provide strategic vision and leadership for RI’s portfolio in South Sudan
• Meet with donors and potential new partners at the field and national level identify potential funding opportunities in collaboration with senior management
• Manage and supervise technical sector leads to ensure timely and quality implementation
• Oversee reporting and communications, directly supervising the grants and MEAL team, providing final review and quality assurance before submission of external reports, updates, and other publications for external audiences
• In collaboration with technical program managers, lead start-up/mobilization process with field and technical teams upon receiving a new award, and ensure spending projections and forecasts, procurement and recruitment plans, and work plans, are all developed at the offset.
• Monitor/track spending across projects, reviewing projections compiled by program managers and area managers at the field level.
• Maintain, update, and regularly review RI’s master country operational analysis, consolidating inputs from programs and finance
• Organize periodic project review meetings (mid and final) following initial mobilization meeting to ensure progress is on-track.
• Serve as the focal point throughout the program modification/budget realignment process, liaising with the donor, country office staff, regional teams, and RI global support office (GSO)
• Responsible for ensuring all costs charged to the project are allowable, reasonable and correctly allocated, providing oversight and quality assurance on technical program managers
• Ensure effective and coordinated budget monitoring/spending reviews occur on a regular basis, coordinating with finance and program teams
• Assist programs and operations teams in monitoring and tracking burn rate to ensure proper management
• Represent RI at the national and field level and serve as primary organizational focal point for program-related issues both internally and externally

Capture Management and Project Design

• Pro-actively seek and identify new funding opportunities, initiate and lead donor negotiations, and act as country representative during discussions both internally and externally on strategic opportunities

• Ensure that proposals are evidence-based and supported by needs assessments. Lead and/or support design workshops for all proposals.

• Develop and review program budgets, compile proposal inputs from technical leads, and assemble final proposal documents prior to donor submission

• Ensure compliance with proposal requirements, RI Sector Technical Design Standards, and donor policies and regulations

• Strengthen current donor relations and build partnerships with new donors to support continued donor/portfolio diversification

• Develop and maintain effective working relationships with stakeholders in South Sudan, including NGOs, ministries/local authorities, and UN agencies including representation in coordination bodies.

Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning

• Supervise all MEAL activities within the country program, providing support and oversight of the country M&E Manager.
• Lead the country program in ensuring consistent reflection of assessment and programmatic data for decision-making, using RI-required tools such as IPTTs.
• Ensure the country program is complying with RI-required accountability standards.
• Champion learning across the project cycle, ensuring that regular learning events are conducted and documented.

Human Resource Management

• In collaboration with HR, ensure adherence to and enforcement of HR policies including punctuality, productivity and principles of a professional work environment within the program team with high consistency.
• Lead and provide supportive supervision to a multi-disciplinary team of program managers and coordinators in charge of specific projects, providing guidance and direction on work planning, priority setting, task management, performance, growth and learning, etc.
• Provide capacity building and day-to-day coaching on program management to program staff.

Safeguarding

• Champion safeguarding practices across the country program.
• Provide ongoing coaching and mentoring of program teams on safeguarding.
• Lead integration of safeguarding in program design, accountability, and reporting.

Qualifications & requirements:

This position demands a dynamic individual with a demonstrated ability to achieve results in a demanding and fast paced environment.

• Master’s degree in International Development, Community Development or related discipline; in addition to professional background & expertise in Health, Nutrition and Food Security is strongly preferred.
• 10 years demonstrated management experience in development and implementation of emergency Relief programming, in multiple fragile contexts
• Previous experience of managing a country-portfolio of 25 million USD or more.
• Previous experience of project managing multi-sector projects for the full project cycle.
• Previous experience of establishing country MEAL systems
• Demonstrable experience in grant writing and fund raising, experience working with the major donors: BHA, FFP, ECHO, FCDO, and UN Agencies etc.
• Demonstratable ability to create and maintain effective working relations with host country government personnel, stakeholders, NGO partners, and international donor agencies, local and international staff.
• Demonstratable experience of designing and managing conflict-sensitive programming; ability to understand complex security situation and advise program design accordingly
• Excellent written and spoken English; ability to draft high quality proposals as well as donor reports
• Willingness to travel in and out of field at short notice.
• Proven experience of recruiting and managing national and international staff from a variety of backgrounds and disciplines,
• Team player, committed to motivating and leading staff
• Strong organizational and time management skills.
• Able to work and manage effectively in a hardship post

RI Values

We uphold the Humanitarian Principles: humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and operational independence. We affirmatively engage the most vulnerable communities. We value:

• Inclusiveness
• Transparency and Accountability
• Agility and Innovation
• Collaboration
• Sustainability