Director of Program Development and Quality (PDQ)

Role Title: Director of Program Development and Quality (PDQ)

Team/Programme: Senior Management Team, Kenya & Madagascar

Location: Nairobi with regular travel to field sites

Grade: 1

Contract Length: 2 years

Child Safeguarding: 

Level 3: The role holder will have contact with children and/or young people either frequently (e.g., once a week or more) or intensively (e.g., four days in one month or more or overnight) because they work in country programs; or are visiting country programs; or because they are responsible for implementing the police checking/vetting process staff.

Role Purpose:

As a member of the Senior Leadership Team (SLT) in Kenya & Madagascar, the Director of Program Development and Quality (PDQ) is responsible for driving cross-functional engagement in the development and delivery of Country Strategy Plans (CSPs), developing annual plans, and reporting on results. S/he is responsible for ensuring the development and delivery of high-quality, evidence-based, innovative programs for children, in all contexts, that contribute to Save the Children’s global Breakthroughs: Learn, Survive, Be Protected. The Director of PDQ ensures that a robust monitoring, evaluation, accountability, and learning (MEAL) system is in place, that the country office engages in the collection and use of evidence that this is shared across the global organization, and that reliable data is used for decision-making. One key aspect of the role is ensuring capability building, mentoring, and coaching of technical specialists to support program quality in line with global standards and key performance indicators. As a senior leader in the country office, s/he plays a representational role with the government, donors, partners, peer agencies, SC Members, and others. The Director of PDQ supports strategic positioning with donors and partners and leads in project design to ensure that the country office strategy can be delivered in line with child rights programming principles.

Scope of role:

Reports to: Country Director

Staff directly reporting to this post: Head of MEAL, Technical Specialists (Health and Nutrition, Child Protection, Child Rights Governance, Child Poverty, and cross-cutting areas such as gender equality, migration, and displacement, TDD etc.), Advocacy and Campaigns Manager, and Business Development Manager.

Role Dimensions: As one of the most senior staff in the Country Office, the Director of Program Development and Quality (PDQ) must demonstrate the qualities of agile leadership. S/he plays a key role in defining and pursuing the strategic direction for Save the Children’s programs in Kenya & Madagascar, ensuring the relevance, coherence, safety, and impact of our programs for children in all contexts. This is a challenging role requiring an individual who can work with complexity and multiple tasks at one time. It is essential that the Director of Program Development and Quality builds and maintains strong relationships across functions within the CO, including with team members from Operations, Awards Management, Human Resources and Finance, and s/he should lead by example in demonstrating this cross-functional collaboration. This role demands dedication to demonstrating outcomes for children, experience in integrated child rights programming and a highly motivated leader. S/he has specific oversight for ensuring that programs demonstrate thematic excellence in contributing to Save the Children’s three breakthroughs for children, especially for the most deprived and marginalized: no child dies from preventable causes before their fifth birthday; all children learn from a quality basic education; and violence against children is no longer tolerated.

Key areas of accountability:

Strategy, Planning and Reporting

• Lead the development/updating of the Child Rights Situation Analysis, including analysis of country context, and taking into account child rights principles, ensuring participation and buy-in from all relevant staff, partners and other stakeholders as necessary.
• Lead the SLT to develop/update and drive forward the Country Strategy Plan (CSP) that is in line with the global strategy, Ambition 2030, with child rights at the core of all programming and advocacy work.
• Provide leadership on the development of the Country Annual Plan, monitoring of progress against the plan, and completion of accurate, on-time Country Annual Report of outcomes and impact for children, aligned with the Global Results Framework.
• Facilitate the development and pursuit of thematic and cross-cutting strategic priorities in line with the CSP, including gender equality, to guide current and future SC programming and Humanitarian Strategies.
• Support ownership and commitment to the Country Office strategy by all staff and departments through clear communication, regular feedback on progress and engagement of all functions in updates.
• Participate in global discussions and working groups to represent the country office, and the voice of children, in strategy design and policy development.
• Support change processes and roll out new ways of working to improve the achievement of the CSP.

Program Design & Development

• Based on tracking provided by the Awards Management team, review and position for opportunities that will drive the CSP.
• In consultation with the Country Director and Members, ensure technical engagement with donors to pre-position and prepare for opportunities, and engage in strategic positioning work directly as appropriate.
• Plag a leading role in designing proposals, including ;

1. Engaging with technical experts as needed to ensure high quality, evidence-based designs that draw on needs assessments, learning from past programs and child safeguarding principles.
2. Ensuring partners are identified and appropriately engaged in program design, linl‹ing with Operations and Awards teams as need be for assessments, especially to strengthen gender sensitivity at the design stage.
3. Ensuring proposal designs and their budgets include robust MEAL plans that are aligned with the Global Results Framework (and therefore advance towards our Breakthroughs), incorporate Common Approaches as relevant, and build in critical learning questions.
4. Ensuring the project budget will enable the project to be delivered as designed.
5. Incorporating child and community participation into design, as relevant.

Program Quality and Program Technical Excellence

Ensure the country program delivers high-quality, multi-sectoral programming in both development and humanitarian contexts (as appropriate);

• Monitor and advance the technical and operational quality of programmes, including conducting regular field visits to provide feedback on quality benchmarks, soliciting inputs for the design of new programs and collecting ideas for innovation.
• Monitor program Key Performance Indicators and, in partnership with other functions, take steps to improve the quality programming platform to meet agreed-upon standards.
• Work closely with the Director of Operations to ensure Quality Framework standards are met and procedures are followed throughout the project cycle and across the portfolio.
• Ensure technical experts proactively and regularly communicate planned requirements for program design, learning and implementation to relevant CO departments/functions.

Build and lead a team of program technical experts needed to successfully deliver against the CSP. Ensure effective working relationships with SC global, Member and regional technical advisors, procuring technical support as needed to support program and advocacy efforts, including during Emergencies;

• Ensure that program technical experts engage in larger communities of practice within and external to Save the Children, to link with the most relevant and evidence-based approaches and conduct timely and useful reviews of project reports to support quality reporting for Members and donors.
• Ensure that the different technical sectors of the Country Office are coordinated and integrated, and support each other to optimize programs and projects.
• Ensure that child safeguarding and safe programming is embedded in program design and considered throughout implementation to ensure that we do all we can to ensure children in our programs are safe and in line with our child safeguarding policy.

Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability, Learning (MEAL) and Knowledge management 

• Oversee a monitoring system that provides timely and accurate project results by embedding MEAL across program implementation. This requires ensuring effective collaboration across MEAL staff, Technical Specialists, Technical Advisors, and program implementation teams to develop log frames, indicators, implementation plans, quality benchmarks, monitoring and evaluation frameworks and related tools.
• Lead programme quality improvements by monitoring and improving Programme KPI performance, including resourcing and conducting high-quality evaluations to demonstrate outcomes and impact and ensuring that accountability mechanisms are in place for all projects so that identified actions are resolved, with critical issues escalated to senior management.
• Ensure the research, evaluation and policy work of the Country Office contributes to the generation of evidence for the development and improvement of Common Approaches, sound decision making and policy influencing internally and externally.
• Establish effective program learning and knowledge management systems to support adaptive programming and innovation that improves outcomes for children.

Advocacy and Campaigns

• Ensure the development of an advocacy strategy and annual plans linked to the CSP, with clear campaign deliverables, for the Country Office.
• Represent Save the Children as part of advocacy and networking with government authorities, donors, partners, civil society actors, children, and other stakeholders to build relationships to facilitate the achievement of CSP strategic goals and the success of our projects for children.

Partnership

• Play a key role in identifying nurturing and strengthening strategic partnerships with local and international civil society organizations, NGOs, governments, etc., in advancing the country and global strategy to inspire our three breakthroughs for the most deprived and marginalised children.
• As appropriate to the country context, provide technical support and capability building to implementing and strategic partners.

Staff Management, Mentorship and Development

• Ensure appropriate staffing of the Program Development and Quality team and engagement of additional technical support when needed to deliver quality project design and delivery.
• Oversee that all technical sector staff proactively build and maintain technical skills and competencies required for leading and/or advising first-class programs — both development and emergency programs.
• Ensure that all PDQ staff understand and are able to perform their role in delivering first-class, quality programs for children in both development and emergency contexts through effective onboarding and clear work plans. 
• Manage individual and team performance using principles of leadership agility and Save the Children’s performance management system. 
• Ensure that staff proactively build and maintain technical, managerial and leadership skills, including competencies in child rights programming, child safeguarding and Common Approaches, providing coaching opportunities when needed. 
• Ensure the recruitment, training, and promotion of staff as appropriate and ensure the availability of appropriate professional development opportunities for staff. 
• Support capacity development of thematic advisors, maximizing their role as technical support providers to field teams and local project partners.

Skills and behaviors (our Values in Practice)

Accountability:

• Holds self-accountable for making decisions, managing resources efficiently, achieving and role modelling Save the Children values.
• Holds the team and partners accountable to deliver on their responsibilities - giving them the freedom to deliver in the best way they see fit, providing the necessary development to improve performance and applying appropriate consequences when results are not achieved.

Ambition:

• Sets ambitious and challenging goals for themselves and their team, takes responsibility for their own personal development and encourages their team to do the same.
• Widely shares their personal vision for Save the Children, and engages and motivates others.
• Future-orientated, thinks strategically and on a global scale.

Collaboration:

• Approachable, good listener, easy to talk to.
• Builds and maintains effective relationships with colleagues, Members, external partners and supporters.
• Values diversity and different people’s perspectives, able to work cross-culturally.

Creativity:

• Develops and encourages new and innovative solutions.
• Cuts away bureaucracy and encourages an entrepreneurial approach.

Integrity:

• Honest, encourages openness and transparency and builds trust and confidence.
• Displays consistent excellent judgment.

Qualifications and Experience

• Master's Degree, and experience in relevant fields e.g., Public Health, Human RightsLaw, Development, Studies, NGO Management, or equivalent fields.
• A minimum of ten years of progressive senior management and/ or development experience, including experience designing and implementing programs for children.
• Experience in one or more of Save the Children's thematic sectors: education, child protection, child rights governance, health and nutrition, child poverty, and emergencies is a plus.
• Understanding of advocacy, policy, and government systems in the host country, and particular experience with child rights programming, including UNCRC.
• Strong skills and proven experience in leading strategic planning, change management and program management processes; also, from the knowledge and learning perspective.
• Strong skills and proven experience in new program development, project design and proposal writing with corporate, foundations and/or institutional donors
• Credibility to lobby, influence and represent Save the Children at all levels
• Experience in developing and managing, monitoring, evaluation, accountability and learning systems.
• Excellent listening, interpersonal, communication and networking skills; proven experience and effectiveness working across functional teams and in a matrixed structure and an ability to work with diverse populations.
• Skills in training, capacity building, coaching, mentorship, problem-solving and project cycle management.
• High level of self-awareness and willingness to take feedback for growth and self-development
• Proven experience as a team player and leader in an international organization.

Additional job responsibilities
The duties and responsibilities as set out above are not exhaustive and the role holder may be required to carry out additional duties within reasonableness of their level of skills and experience.
Equal Opportunities
The role holder is required to carry out the duties in accordance with the SCI Equal Opportunities and Diversity policies and procedures.
Child Safeguarding:
We need to keep children safe so our selection process, which includes rigorous background checks, reflects our commitment to the protection of children from abuse.
Safeguarding our Staff:
The post holder is required to carry out the duties in accordance with the SCI anti-harassment policy
Health and Safety
The role holder is required to carry out the duties in accordance with SCI Health and Safety policies and procedures.

Save the Children is an equal-opportunity employer and seeks to employ and assign the best-qualified talent.

Female Candidates are encouraged to apply.

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Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.