Area Accountability Assistant / Suran At Agency for Technical Cooperation and Development

About ACTED

ACTED is committed to immediate humanitarian relief to support those in urgent need and protect people’s dignity, while co-creating longer term opportunities for sustainable growth and fulfilling people’s potential. ACTED endeavours to respond to humanitarian crises and build resilience; promote inclusive and sustainable growth; co-construct effective governance and support the building of civil society worldwide by investing in people and their potential. The commitment of ACTED and that if our teams is guided by 4 core values: (1) Responsibility: we ensure the efficient and responsible delivery of humanitarian aid with the means and the resources that have been entrusted to us. (2) Impact: we are committed to having the most sustainable impact for the communities and the people with whom we engage. (3) Enterprising-spirit: we are enterprising and engage in our work with a spirit that creates value and overcomes challenges. (4) Inspiration: we strive to inspire all those around us through our vision, values, approaches, choices, practice, actions, and advocacy.

Greening strategy:

Acted’s greening strategy aims to tackle environmental degradation and climate change while meeting the needs of the most vulnerable who are often those most affected by the deepening environmental crisis. Each Acted employee will adhere to these principles through key green programming responsibilities:

• Contribute towards the adherence and development of the greening strategy plan.

• Explore innovative green programming opportunities and/or solutions within your realm of responsibilities and roles

• Encouraging and promoting environmental safeguarding processes and environmental programming standards in accordance with SOPs and technical guideline notes

Acted PSEAH Policy:

The Accountability Assistant has the responsibility to adhere to the PSEAH Policy (Protection against Sexual Exploitation, Abuse and Harassment). Accountability Assistant has the obligation to complete all mandatory trainings related to the Code of Conduct and the PSEA policy and report any safeguarding concern such as breaches of organisational policies or codes of conduct according to Acted’s procedures. Accountability Assistant carries out work duties in a way that does not harm children, vulnerable adults or other staff or volunteers.

Location: Suran

Job Purpose

The Accountability Assistant will be the primary support person for implementing Acted’s Complaint and Response Mechanisms (CRM) process, as the first point of contact for receiving, reviewing, addressing, and responding to beneficiary feedback and complaints. S/he will coordinate closely with the MEAL, program, and senior management staff to ensure that beneficiary complaints and feedback are properly addressed.

Accountability Assistant is the first point of contact for beneficiaries who need to raise complaints. As such, the Accountability Assistant will need to be neutral.

Chain of Command

Under the authority of:

• Line Manager:Base Senior MEAL officer
• Functional Manager: Aleppo Accountability Officer

Line Management:

Enumerators (if any)

Working Relations

Internal:

• MEAL team.
• Project team.
• Project implementation teams

External:

• Beneficiaries
• Communities

Implementing Partners/ Partner Organizations

Objectives

Collect feedback (compliments and complaints) continuously and efficiently from the field and report on it in a timely manner, enhance the trust and confidence of beneficiaries, identify areas of work which need to be improved to ensure that Acted learns from the feedback provided through this process.

Duties and Responsibilities

Beneficiary Complaints and Response Mechanism (CRM)

1. Promotion of the CRM

• Monitor the beneficiary Complaints and Response Mechanism (CRM) for the country mission in line with Acted standard beneficiary CRM procedures.
• Conduct field visits throughout the project to spread information / awareness about the CRM to beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries, as well as local authorities and stakeholders in Acted’s areas of implementation.
• Distribute CRM materials widely (including for people with low levels of literacy).
• Maintain records of CRM awareness raising and promotion activities (including approximate numbers of participants) and submit, after validation from line manager, to Project Managers as required.

2. Complaints handling

• Ensure the effective functioning of the beneficiary CRM and that beneficiary complaints/feedback are adequately captured and reported.
• Receive complaints and ensure to register them all in Complaint follow up (COMPFU) database.
• Respond to complaints objectively, accurately, and in line with Acted guidelines, using information provided by Project Managers, MEAL Officers/enumerators, Area Coordinators, Technical Coordinators, project documents, FLAT documents and procedures, etc.
• Treat urgent and/or sensitive complaints with the immediate attention they require and ensure a fast resolution.
• Write down the observations and answers in an ordinate and clear way, recording responses accurately.
• Forward all sensitive complaints and suggestions received to field Accountability Officer.

3. Reporting

• Report frequently to the Accountability Officer about the progress or major problems and challenges which could happen with field staff.
• Integrate any accountability-related lessons learned and/or recommendations to the MEAL-managed country learning database, and contribute to their diffusion with coordination / MEAL/ project staff.

Key Performance Indicators

• Number of field visits conducted during the past 6 months
• Number of feedbacks reported on time to the line manager
• Number of practical lessons learned suggested
• 1 consistent, password-protected, up-to-date and comprehensive COMPFU platform maintained

QUALIFICATIONS

Essential Qualifications

• Diploma degree in a related field.
• Min 1 year of total experience with NGOs and/or International Institutions
• Min 1 year of experience in the field of data collection

Preferred Qualifications

• Intermediate English level Good command of using computer programs (excel and word programs).
• Understands rights and protection issues of IDPs, children and women.
• Attention to detail and commitment to producing high-quality work.
• Strong communication skills.
• Good experience in giving awareness about the CRM or similar mechanism.