The International Rescue Committee, one of the world’s largest humanitarian international NGOs, provides relief, rehabilitation and development support to vulnerable people and communities over 30 countries. We began work in Ethiopia in 2000 in response to severe drought in Ethiopia’s Somali region and are currently providing assistance to Ethiopians and refugees in six regions in Ethiopia, implementing emergency and development programs in health, water and sanitation, economic recovery, and development (ERD), women’s protection and empowerment, education, child protection, and multi-sectoral emergency response.

Position overview 

PlayMatters is a consortium project, led by the IRC and includes Plan International, War Child Holland, Behavioral Insights Team, and Innovations for Poverty Action in partnership with the LEGO Foundation. PlayMatters promotes an active teaching method that capitalizes on a child’s natural desire to engage in play, focusing on building skills so that teachers and communities to intentionally plan to deliver contextually and age-appropriate guided play experiences to achieve specific learning objectives. PlayMatters promotes LtP experiences that promotes child-centered learning, allowing peer interactions that provides children aged 3-12+ with the platform to question, experiment, practice, and discover, developing critical skills that they need to thrive today and in future.

PlayMatters have four main objectives.

• Outcome 1: Integrate Learning through Play into Teaching & Learning
• Outcome 2: Increase Community Engagement in Learning through Play
• Outcome 3: Strengthen & Integrate Learning through Play in Policy & Systems
• Outcome 4: Increase Access to Quality Education in Emerging Crises

The Senior Project Manager leads the programmatic and operational tasks related to the workplan, maintaining an updated version of the workplan and documenting decision-making, facilitating key management tasks, routine monitoring of technical progress and financial performance, workplan/budget realignments, etc. The role will support all project management and administrative elements of the by leading the design and implementation of the PlayMatters in Ethiopia’s online project management system, as well as designing tools and templates to improve, optimize and streamline all areas of implementation, learning, and coordination, while ensuring materials risks are proactively identified and escalated to relevant persons for mitigation and decision-making. The Senior Project Manager will work very closely with the grants, finance and technical units, as well as the Kampala-based Regional Project Team to achieve consistent, effective, and efficient programming under PlayMatters.

The Senior Project Manager will report to the country-level Project Coordinator for PlayMatters.

Major Responsibilities:

• Lead the design, roll-out, and implementation of the PlayMatters in Ethiopia’s online project management system. Collaboratively develop a system approval and escalation flow process and monitor implementation.
• Lead the PlayMatters Ethiopia consortium project management capacity building initiatives to ensure full utilization of the project management tools and systems in close collaboration and leadership of the RPT. This will include conducting project management trainings, refresher trainings, on-boarding new staff, and developing trainings for project management aspect as needed.
• Increase efficiency and quality of project implementation by analyzing gaps and barriers, identify optimization opportunities, and troubleshoot, issues in processes and workflows
• Play an active role in Project Cycle Meetings (PCMs), according to the PCM guidelines during the course of the project e.g. update the dashboard timely and follow up on action points agreed upon during the PCMs.
• Leading the coordination of  PlayMatters annual work planning and reporting process working in close collaboration with consortium members.
• Initiate realignments in close communication with the Grants Focal Point. The Grants Focal is leading the process but the PM provides the technical inputs.
• Conduct evolving assessments and analyses of processes and workflows and flag key risks and issues to senior management.
• Generate templates and tools to optimize work processes for the PlayMatters team
• Produce and oversee the finalization of internal and external products for teams, such as fact sheets, webpages and model guides in close collaboration with the IRC communication team.
• Support the team on maintaining project momentum or organization via trackers and agendas and other project management tools.
• Oversee knowledge management maintenance, including the creation of comprehensive resource and material maps for relevant content, documents, and templates.
• Provide adequate technical support to Sr. Strategic Partnership and Community Engagement Manager, Sr. Play Content and adaptation Manager and Sr. Communication and Multimedia officer
• Lead quality and on time content development, adaptation, and approval processes for educators and community in collaboration with the Regional TA- Implementation.
• Conduct regular supportive supervision to project locations to ensure project activities are being delivered timely and with the required quality.
• Hold regular and frequent meetings with the field-level project team virtually or in-person to monitor progress and identify strengths and challenges in the implementation of partnership and community engagement components of the project.

Qualifications

Educational Requirements:

• MA/BA degree from an accredited university in Project Management, Education, Sociology, Public Administration, Finance, Business Administration, or related fields of study.

• Project Management Professional (PMP) certification a major

Preferred Experience & Skills:

• 3-5 years of experience in providing leadership in areas of strategic partnership, community engagement, education     project management, and similar roles.
• Positive, helpful attitude and willingness to learn new skills is essential. Must be excellent coordinator and great teammate; this role collaborates across department and ability to influence colleagues, often without line management.
• Experience successfully executing training and presenting, with the ability to develop, implement, facilitate, and impart learning to a wide range of audiences in a creative/interactive manner.
• Demonstrated ability to successfully work in a fast-paced environment, within and across departments/functions, and develop positive relationships with locally and remote-based staff
• Excellent computer skills: MS Word, Excel, file sharing, and database software.
• Experience working in conflict and crisis settings and knowledge of humanitarian programming is preferred.
• Strong supervision, coaching, and mentoring skills.
• Ability to effectively plan and execute large events, including managing logistical arrangements and communications.
• Excellent organizational, interpersonal, oral, and written communication skills. Experience managing communications and documenting decision-making processes for large projects/organizations is desirable.
• Exceptional ability to track and manage work planning for large, multi-faceted projects and deliverable timelines. Demonstrated competence to quickly problem-solve work planning issues to mitigate delays and support timely delivery.
• Solutions-oriented individual; eager to proactively problem solve by defining and executing solutions.
• Strong organizational, analytical, and prioritization skills; excellent time-management abilities and ability to work independently and at multiple levels simultaneously.

Language Skills: 

• Excellent verbal and written communication skills in English and Amharic as well as, an overall ability to be clear and concise in all communications.