‘An experienced, strategic leader with a humanitarian background and people skills*’*
About us
War Child: the charity for children affected by war. We are a specialist charity for children in conflict, delivering high-impact programs that are rebuilding lives across Afghanistan, Iraq, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the Central African Republic, Colombia, Ukraine, Uganda, Burundi, South Sudan, Jordan, oPt, Syria and Yemen. We understand children’s needs, respect their rights, and support their efforts to find lasting solutions to address the underlying causes of their specific vulnerabilities.
We look forward to a world in which the lives of children are no longer torn apart by war. This is a vision that can only be realized through the collective actions of children themselves, communities and their leaders, organizations like War Child, governments, and key decision-makers.
Your Challenge
Your role as regional operations support manager is to lead and support a team of functional experts to deliver a high-quality Program in all African Country Offices, the Colombia country office as well as the Africa Regional Hub itself, including a humanitarian response. The position enables others to deliver through providing oversight and risk-management of systems and processes to ensure the proper utilization of income from grants; effective human resource management and development; cost effective administration and logistics, provision of ICT, risk management, and compliance.
The role is also to facilitate all global projects, change initiatives and systems in the region with implications for support functions and contribute to an effective implementation by all offices with the overall aim of supporting WCA to be an agile and effective organization.
Your Responsibilities
Strategic Planning and Delivery of Programs
- Support CO’s to ensure the development of adequate control mechanisms in compliance with WCA policies to enable smooth operations in the region.
- Draft all reports needed for the region in a timely manner as needed.
- Lead and oversee the annual budgeting and planning process of all regional projects in close cooperation with the relevant CD’s/CMT’s while reviewing plans and budgets and providing constructive analysis according to WCA and donor requirements.
- Contribute to the development of the regional strategy and the production of the annual plan.
Policy and Legal Compliance
- Ensure that country offices are fully compliant with local statutory / registration requirements, global policies and procedures, and the minimum standards associated with their implementation.
- Report regularly to the Regional Director after consultation with the relevant Country Directors (CDs) and Country Management Teams (CMTs) on the management of all risks associated with Program delivery including income, procurement, people management, legal and compliance.
- Provide input to changes to policies and procedures on own initiative and on demand.
- Draft and make periodic updates to existing procedures as per WCA policies.
- Ensure accountability to global policies, procedures and initiatives.
- Support regional offices in the preparation for external or internal audits and in year-end closure.
Risk Assessment and Management
- Identify and address financial and internal control risks in the region, including risks of financial performance and funding, HR&OD, ICT, Operations and Logistics risks.
- Advise on the improvement of internal controls that ought to be in place across the region by contributing to the development and improvement of policies, processes and procedures.
- Take lead in the preparation for both internal and external audits, including grant audits in a timely manner.
- All offices in the region must be fully compliant with WCA strategic goals, values and policies and procedures, ensuring organizational standards are understood and met and risks are identified and mitigated.
- Ensure that WCA risk management systems and policies are clearly stated and followed by all staff.
Team Support & Development
- Ensure the development of senior operations and support managers/coordinators in the areas of finance, HR&OD, ICT, operations and logistics to maximize support to regional country offices.
- Develop & review contractual agreements with partners and stakeholders on behalf of WCA.
- Establish comprehensive technical development/strengthening plans to provide an excellent service to the Country Programs.
- Develop training manuals (with support as needed) and carry out training of Programme staff and local partners; Prepares terms of references and support recruitment of staff for the Program unit;
Regional Hub Service Support
- Oversee the general administrative functions in line with WCA polices, procedures and guidelines.
- Build and develop a strong regional support system to enable effective and efficient delivery of quality programs across the region.
- Manage and support the administrative team and provide leadership and direction to the team.
- Represent War Child Alliance at relevant regional donor meetings as required and at the international level when appropriate and in consultation with line manager.
These duties provide a framework for the role and should not be regarded as a definitive list. Other reasonable duties may be required consistent with the grade of the post.
Your Profile
- Master’s degree in Business administration, Finance & Accounting, Economics or any other relevant qualifications.
- Minimum of 7 years of relevant leadership/management experience in humanitarian programs in the Africa region;
- Knowledge in handling grants from European Commission, ECHO, DFID, USG (including USAID) and UN agencies; SIDA, SDC and GAC is desirable;
- Familiarity with key actors in the Africa Region and demonstrated experience in developing, building and maintain strategic partnerships with these actors;
- Knowledge in proposal writing of winning grants; experience with technical programs in child protection, education and or MHPSS an advantage;
- Understanding of humanitarian principles and established international standards in humanitarian settings for refugees and other marginalized populations, especially children and youth;
- Excellent ICT and statistics skills, experience with UNIT4 Business World, SPSS and Salesforce an advantage.
- Experienced in working with broader systems development including procurement, logistics, HR and IT.
- Strong budgeting and strategic planning abilities.
- Experience of working/living in insecure and sensitive environments
- Ability to work under pressure to meet tight deadlines
- Ability to build productive working relationships within a multicultural and multidisciplinary team
- Experience of proactively identifying and addressing issues
- Ability to work with a high degree of professionalism.
- Strong advisory skills to deliver clear and well augmented advice.
- “Convincing skills” to persuade and convince others to follow his/ her advice.
- Social and communicative skills for coaching and managing of staff and frequent internal and external contacts.
- Good analytical and problem-solving skills.
Our offer
- An expat or national staff package depending on where the candidate is based and based on a 40 hour work week.
- Excellent secondary benefits.
- The possibility for development.
- A range of well- being activities.
- The role can be based in any country War Child has a presence in Africa or Colombia.
Our Organisation
War Child is a dynamic organization. We try to keep an informal ambiance within our offices, with a lot of room for creativity, inspiration and self-initiative from employees. We practice what we preach: dynamic, innovative, integrity focused, and a drive to reach the highest possible results against the lowest possible costs. War Child Alliance offers a challenging job in an inspiring workplace.
Child safeguarding
Our work with children to keep them safe is the most important thing we do. We are committed to the safeguarding of children in all areas of our work. Successful applicants will be expected to be compliant and sign up to our Child Safeguarding policy, which you can read here: How War Child upholds Integrity | War Child
How to apply
Interested and qualified candidates are invited to apply before May 22nd 2024. Make sure to upload your English CV (maximum of two pages) and cover letter by using this link:
https://www.warchild.net/jobs/regional-operations-support-manager-africa-and-colombia-region
Please mention where you found this vacancy.
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By submitting your application you certify that all of the statements made in your application are true, complete, and correct and are made in good faith. You understand that falsifying, misrepresenting or intentionally withholding information will be grounds for rejection of your application or withdrawal of any offer of appointment or, if an appointment offer has been accepted, this will be ground for employment sanctions, such as, but not limited to, instant dismissal. In addition, you understand that you need to submit a Criminal Record Certificate and that, if you fail to submit it, no employment relationship can be established.
War Child is an international organisation, and we are committed to be a diverse and inclusive employer, placing human and child rights at the centre of our existence and work. We hire our new colleagues based on their talents, competences and shared values; we do not distinguish them based on their age, gender and gender identity, race, color, ethnicity, religion, culture, sexual orientation, disability etc.
The safety of children and youth is a paramount and essential to War Child’s work. War Child has a zero tolerance policy towards any form of abuse. To prevent placing children and youth at any risk this subject is addressed in our recruitment and selection procedures. Moreover, the accepted candidates will be required to state their commitment/ intent to be aware, consider and adhere to the minimum standards applicable in development and humanitarian settings, such as humanitarian values and principles, Sphere Humanitarian Charter, Standards in the Humanitarian Standards Partnership, Core Humanitarian Standard, International Humanitarian Law, Code of Conduct for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in Disaster Relief and IASC Six Core Principles Relating to Sexual Exploitation and Abuse.
Disclaimer
• Only applications received via our website are processed.
• If we appoint a suitable candidate before the given closing date, we reserve the right to remove the vacancy from our website before that date. In such a case, any responses received after that time are not processed.
• It could be that during our selection process the closing date for the vacancy is extended. If so, and you have not yet heard from us, your application will remain active.