job Description
ABOUT MERCY CORPS
Mercy Corps is a leading global organization powered by the belief that a better world is possible.
In disaster, in hardship, in more than 40 countries around the world, we partner to put bold solutions
into action — helping people triumph over adversity and build stronger communities from within.
Now, and for the future.
PROGRAM/ DEPARTMENT SUMMARY
Mercy Corps exists to alleviate suffering, poverty, oppression by building secure, productive, and just communities. Mercy Corps has been present in Zimbabwe since 2002 focusing its interventions on a multi sectoral market systems development portfolio mobilizing communities to promote small-scale agriculture and revive local economies. Its current operations focus on helping smallholder farmers increase their incomes and harvests through the power of technology and increasing urban household access to quality, reliable water, sanitation and hygiene services. Zimbabwe continues to experience recurrent environmental, economic and social shocks affecting the wellbeing of its communities and undermining development investments. Mercy Corps puts resilience at core of its strategy to contribute to the wellbeing of Zimbabweans by building communities’ capacities and strengthening systems and institutions.
GENERAL POSITION SUMMARY
One of the key objectives of this Resilience Knowledge Hub (RKH) under the Zimbabwe Resilience Building Fund (ZRBF) is to strengthen the capacity of ZRBF partners (i.e. government and ZRBF consortia partner) in understanding and applying resilience and landscape concepts, tools, approaches and methodologies in their work to drive the resilience agenda as outlined in the Zimbabwe Resilience Strategic Framework. The Capacity Building and Training Specialist for the Resilience Knowledge Hub will be a key member of the RKH team responsible for a variety of technical aspects with the objective of strengthening organisations, government and civil society partners’ resilience approaches and methodologies, resilience analysis, resilience thinking and operationalization. This individual will be responsible for capacity building, designing training programmes, course content, developing manuals, learning methods and delivering all the required trainings and workshops.
The position will also support ZRBF consortia partners to conduct context, gender and resilience analyses and ; reporting; improve scenario planning, early warning systems and anticipatory action mechanism to inform ZRBF planning and implementation processes. By doing so, RKH will inform decisions on the Crisis Modifier funding system to strategically sequence, layer, and coordinate ZRBF investments and adapt them to the rapidly changing environment. For the system to function, RKH must serve as a catalyst for generating evidence through strategic resilience measurement and translating it into actionable programme recommendations. The position will also play a leading role in the development of strategic policies that support the building of absorptive, adaptive and transformative capacities that enable communities to deal with shocks and stresses. This stream of work also entails leading the development of scopes of work, recruiting and supervising policy consultants and certifying the work done.
The Capacity Building and Training Specialist is integral to achieving the objectives outlined above. Specifically, s/he will support the identification of capacity strengthening needs related to resilience and landscape management among ZBRF stakeholders and will support them to co-create and implement a plan to address those gaps showing measurable improvement. S/he will build on what is working within stakeholder organizations and share experiences across multiple stakeholders to facilitate cross-learning. In addition, this position will support the development of a resilience training curriculum to be cascaded through a training-of-trainers approach. All of these activities and interventions must be evidence-based and be able to demonstrate measurable effectiveness and value for money.
ESSENTIAL JOB RESPONSIBILITIES
RESILIENCE CAPACITY BUILDING
In collaboration with other Resilience Knowledge Hub members, lead the development of a capacity building plan for ZBRF stakeholders and implement that plan.
Identify technical gaps in integrating resilience and landscape thinking into program design and implementation among ZBRF partners.
Lead the documentation, measurement of progress and sharing of best practices of the resilience and landscape capacity building initiatives to ensure quality program and knowledge sharing.
Lead the development, refinement and contextualization of resilience and landscape training curriculum targeting ZBRF partners to improve both technical and operational quality of resilience programming
Collaborate with other Resilience Knowledge Hub members on developing innovative mechanisms to collect and share program learnings in various forums.
RESILIENCE AND TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE
Provide technical guidance to partners to ensure methodological soundness of resilience approaches for operational strategies, interventions, tool development, advocacy or any other needed context.
STRATEGIC POLICY PLANNING, DEVELOPMENT AND DISSEMINATION
In collaboration with the government and ZRBFPMU, lead in identifying specific, impactful, and achievable policy themes/ opportunities that support resilience building.
Lead in drafting terms of reference/ Scope of Work for policy consultants.
Lead the recruitment process for policy consultants.
Supervise the work done by policy consultants.
Support policy launching events as required by the government, donors and ZRBF-PMU.
Act as the central focal point linking the government, ZRBF-PMU, RKH team members, consultants and other stakeholders in building supportive relationships around the policy development and dissemination process.
ETHICS AND COMPLIANCE FOCAL POINT
Support RKH team members and the entire Mercy Corps Zimbabwe portfolio in nurturing ethical behaviours, promoting the culture of reporting unethical behavior and policy violations and assist with investigations.
ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING
As part of our commitment to organizational learning and in support of our understanding that learning organizations are more effective, efficient and relevant to the communities they serve, we expect all team members to commit 5% of their time to learning activities that benefit Mercy Corps as well as themselves.
ACCOUNTABILITY TO PARTICIPANTS
Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts towards accountability, specifically to our participants and to international standards guiding international relief and development work, while actively engaging participant communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring and evaluation of our field projects.
