Regional Partnerships and Local Humanitarian Leadership Coordinator

**Annual Salary and Benefits -**Competitive

Internal Job Grade – C1, national

Contract type – Fixed term 2 year with possible extension dependent on funds available

Reporting to – MENA Regional Head of Programmes

Matrix Line management: Regional Humanitarian Coordinator

Staff reporting directly to this post : None

**Key relationships/interactions -**RP colleagues. CO partnership colleagues. Oxfam GB Partnership department

Location: Preferably any of the following: Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq.

Other options in the North of Africa and Middle East could be explored as long as there is an Oxfam registered entity in country. Candidates need to be legally entitled to work and reside in the country where they are based.

Budget responsibility: none

Shaping a stronger Oxfam for people living in poverty.

Department Purpose:

The Regional Platform (RP) of Oxfam in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has a mandate to:

• Provide strategic leadership, management & accountability of and to Oxfam country programmes in MENA.
• Deliver regional impact, developing partner relationships, brand, and impact in the region through relevant influencing and advocacy work, public engagement, and programming.
• Connect, coordinate, convene – Connect practitioners to sources of expertise, convene people to share knowledge and learnings, and coordinate capacity building initiatives.
• Enable operational agility and efficiency – Provide support to Oxfam country offices.

In MENA, Oxfam works in development, humanitarian, and campaigning, with a large part of the current transformation focused on becoming a major influencing & advocacy, knowledge-for-impact global reach organization.

Job Purpose:

To work with country offices (CO’s) to facilitate shared understanding, joint learning, and co-creation of approaches to partnership and local humanitarian leadership, and relationships adapted to their country contexts.

Job Responsibilities

• Map and analyse the current approaches of Oxfam in MENA (CO’s and RP) regarding partnerships and LHL considering Oxfam’s LHL strategy, charter for change commitments, principles of partnership, and best partnership practices and provide specific recommendations.
• Support CO’s in their efforts to roll out their LHL and partnership country strategies and plans.
• Support the development and the socialisation of the OI partnership approach and strategies in partnership with countries, regional platform and affiliates – and in line with existing & emerging learning from feminist and youth-led collaborations and social solidarity initiatives, cooperatives and social entrepreneurship, about the politics and practices required to support effective, trusting partnerships
• Promote learning across countries in the MENA region, creating a space for sharing, innovation, and peer-to-peer learning from experiences across the confederation and from within the region that are adaptable to the MENA context, both for CO’s and for partners.
• Work with country offices and partners towards meeting Oxfam’s Local Humanitarian Leadership (LHL) commitments, including the Charter 4 Change commitments.
• Work with the affiliates (including EAs), region and country offices to identify current operational and programmatic challenges to implement and improve Oxfam partnership processes and the application of the partnership principles.
• While the incumbent will not have a role in specific country partnership assessments, s/he will act as the regional focal point for countries to have an overview of the strengths and weaknesses of the partnerships assessments processes of OI and respective EAs. The post holder should be well placed to advocate on improving those processes based on experience and learning from the country level.
• participate in specific confederation forums on partnership and LHL with the main aim to facilitate learning and knowledge from and to the MENA region.
• Provide advice to and work closely with CO’s to facilitate entry points to diversify partnership portfolio including: . how to improve engagement with governments / local / regional authorities; private sector (chambers of commerce, associations of employers, MFIs, etc.);academia, research, think tanks and knowledge institutions; exploring ways to extending partnership relations to unusual suspects, including non-registered and non-funded groups
• Work closely with the other advisors and coordinators in the regional team (programme, policy, humanitarian, funding) to ensure joined up approach in regards to country support
• In coordination with regional policy and programme staff, support Oxfam’s influencing work on LHL .
• Support Resource mobilization for LHL at country level.

Under OGB’s:

• To coordinate learning and sharing of best practices of initiatives supported by Oxfam GB’s Partnership Investment Fund (PIF).
• As described in bullet points above much of the post-holder’s responsibilities lie in Oxfam’s Rights, Resilience and Response (RRR) space. The postholder is to work in close collaboration with RRR colleagues in OGB and there is an expectation that some of this will be in the global space in addition to the clearly defined regional spaces mentioned above.

Job Requirements

Essential

• Proven experience of facilitating partnerships and LHL ideally in the MENA region.
• Experience in applying principles of partnerships and Charter for Change commitments.
• Proven experience of working with international organizations in conflict or crisis contexts, supporting local or national CSOs/NGOs
• Experience in partner led approaches and providing specialist advice in this area
• Experience of working with and supporting youth groups and organisations, and feminist organizations
• Experience working with cooperatives and social solidarity initiatives and social entrepreneurship
• Experience in collaborating and partnering with national, regional and local authorities
• Experience in private sector engagement an asset
• Experience in collective action and community mobilization
• A good grasp of the policy and donor funding arena around supporting national CSOs including in fragile contexts
• Good communications skills and ability to capture and disseminate learning
• Fluency in English.

Note: This role does require some travel (approx. 7-10 weeks a year).

Desirable

• Ability to work and communicate in Arabic and / or French highly desirable.
• Experience in the Middle East and North Africa
• Ability to contribute to wider strategic programme development
• Lived experiences with intersecting systems of oppression, with knowledge and experience of how power and privilege play out in the countries we work with, including the UK