Gender Advisor – Mercy Corps

  NGO - Non-Government Organisations Jobs in Uganda, Social Sciences Jobs in Uganda, Uncategorized
Program/ Department Summary: Mercy Corps has significantly increased its emphasis on gender integration in programs over the last three years. Recent activities have included conducting an agency-wide gender assessment, developing a global gender policy and disseminating procedures to guide country teams in applying the gender policy in their contexts. This year, Mercy Corps is piloting a gender capacity building initiative which is expected to reach all country teams by 2014. These efforts are supported by Mercy Corps’ Global Gender Advisor who also provides technical support to field programs. In Uganda, Mercy Corps has been in operation since 2006 and directly implements programs in the northern Districts of Pader, Agago, Kitgum, Lamwo, Abim, Kaabong and Kotido with funding from USAID/Food for Peace (FFP), United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), European Commission (EC), as well as Private Donations. Over the past few years Mercy Corps Uganda has experienced significant growth that has resulted in the expansion into new districts and the development of more strategic partnerships and alliances under a much stronger development initiative. Working in transitional environments, Mercy Corps is moving from well-targeted short-term humanitarian assistance to a much larger program strategy of market facilitation. By addressing a number of overlapping and associated needs within a wide range of activities (livelihoods, peace building, agriculture, water and sanitation, health and nutrition, and economic development) Mercy Corps is taking a very integrated approach to ensure the greatest possible impact. The Districts in which Mercy Corps works are generally the most marginalized, poverty stricken, and conflict prone.
General Position Summary: The Gender Advisor is responsible Mercy Corps’ gender strategy and will work toward providing a framework to guide gender integration throughout the life of the SUSTAIN program and across all technical sectors. This strategy defines expected roles, responsibilities and deliverables related to gender integration. Specifically, Mercy Corps and its partners will use a three-prong approach to achieve gender integration: (1) team trained and accessing quality gender technical support to integrate gender throughout all program interventions, (2) program activities designed and implemented to ensure maximum participation and empowerment of female and male participants across age ranges, and (3) gender is a key component of program research; baselines, mid-terms, evaluation; and is integrated in all routine monitoring activities. In addition the Gender Advisor will be tasked with increasing awareness among Mercy Corps team members of the importance of gender integration into projects as well as identifying and promoting two to three areas where Mercy Corps has the potential to excel in gender integrated programming.
The Gender Advisor will have a strong background in research, gender-based violence programs and gender training in addition to contextual experience working in the region. These skills will allow him/her to build the capacity of SUSTAIN team members to effectively integrate gender into their daily work.
Essential Job Functions:
Technical Capacity
  • Work with Feinstein International Center (FIC) to include a comprehensive gender assessment in its baseline assessment (FIC’s SOW is included as a separate Appendix) during program start-up.
  • Lead basic gender training for all program team members.
  • Coordinate closely with FIC on research inquiries to ensure gender integration
  • Develop/adapt basic introduction to gender modules to be used with program participants such as health workers, government representatives, traditional leaders and youth groups.
  • Work closely with M&E team to ensure sex and age disaggregated data is collected and that gender analysis is applied.
  • Conduct regular community consultations to ensure programming remains gender sensitive and on-track.
Activity Design
  • Maximize program participation and increase empowerment opportunities for currently marginalized groups
  • Collect sex and age disaggregated data while performing proactive and recurrent gender analysis.
  • Work with its primary research partner, FIC, to conduct a gender assessment to ensure that activity design maximizes participant engagement from the beginning of the program while mitigating risk of exposure to gender based violence.
  • Seek community recommendations on how to best overcome identified challenges like engaging men in nutrition programming to finding meaningful methods to include women in conflict management interventions.
  • Establish current awareness of the importance of gender-sensitive programming among target participant groups including traditional leaders, government officials, health workers and youth group participants.
  • Build on the valuable information available from the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index Uganda pilot.
Research & Learning Studies
  • Work with FIC on Wealth Distribution and Livelihood Resilience Learning Study and gender assessment.
  • Contribute to the use and further refinement of WEIA in close consultation with IFPRI and USAID, by adopting portions of the index as part of its evaluation activities, and/or by designing qualitative research from the Gender Empowerment and Decision-making learning study.
Gender Mainstreaming
  • Support and help disseminate gender disaggregated data research
  • Develop/adapt gender mainstreaming training for Mercy Corps Team members
  • Identify and pursue two potential areas of excellence relating to gender and another agency technical competency
  • Provide gender technical reviews to program proposals, program tools, internal and external communications as needed
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 Beneficiaries
Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts towards accountability, specifically to our beneficiaries and to international standards guiding international relief and development work, while actively engaging beneficiary communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring and evaluation of our field projects.
Supervisory Responsibility: Gender Staff in the field
Accountability:
Reports Directly To: DCoP
Works Directly With: CoP. MC Uganda Team, Field Teams and Gender Working Group
Knowledge and Experience:
  • MA in international development, women’s studies, gender or a comparable area of study
  • At least five years of experience in international development work, with a minimum of three years in field postings
  • Substantial background in gender and development work including experience conducting gender training, gender mainstreaming and engaging in gender advocacy
  • Strong writing skills required
  • Strong public speaking skills required
  • Proficiency in a second language preferred
  • Proficiency with Microsoft Office
  • Willingness to travel domestically and internationally as required, no more than 30% of time
Success factors:
  • Exceptional verbal and written communication skills
  • Strong facilitation skills
  • Ability and willingness to both lead and follow as appropriate
  • Has an internal and external network of experts to draw upon as needed
Living /Environmental Conditions:
  • This position will be based in Karamoja.
  • Potentially harsh environment with insecurity.
  • Housing will also vary depending on the situation, but expect basic, communal accommodations.
  • This position will be eligible for Hardship and R&R.
Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts towards accountability, specifically to our beneficiaries and to international standards guiding international relief and development work while actively engaging beneficiary communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring and evaluation of our field projects.
Mercy Corps is an AA/EOE
How to apply: 

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