Overview
The Regional Programme Specialist manages a portfolio of grants across Africa, contributing to the implementation of grant-making, accompaniment, monitoring, capacity development, learning, and partnership functions for the UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women and Girls.
Key Responsibilities
- Provide tailored technical accompaniment and advisory support to grantee partners on the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of EVAW/G programmes.
- Identify programme design, implementation and institutional capacity gaps and provide tailored technical guidance.
- Strengthen grantee institutional capacity and organizational resilience.
- Promote feminist learning, partner-centred accompaniment and adaptive management.
- Develop and disseminate technical guidance, tools, templates, learning resources and practice-based knowledge products.
- Manage a portfolio of grants across the full grant lifecycle.
- Monitor and assess grantee performance.
- Ensure grant implementation complies with UN Trust Fund policies, UN Women procedures, safeguarding and accountability standards.
- Coordinate with Programme and Finance Associates, UN Women Regional and Country Offices, and other relevant stakeholders.
- Support grantee partners in identifying, managing and mitigating operational, fiduciary, contextual and programmatic risks.
- Identify and escalate significant risks or issues.
- Maintain accurate and up-to-date records of active and closed grants.
- Contribute to portfolio-level analysis and oversight.
- Contribute to the development and refinement of Calls for Proposals, assessment frameworks, guidance documents and related tools.
- Conduct technical appraisal and analysis of applicant proposals.
- Provide technical review and partner accompaniment throughout grant appraisal, project inception and early implementation.
- Undertake or review implementing partner assessments and contribute to risk analyses.
- Support coordination and engagement with Regional Programme Advisory Committees (RPACs), UN Women Regional and Country Offices, civil society partners and inter-agency stakeholders.
- Design, facilitate and contribute to regional and global capacity development initiatives.
- Analyze grantee reports, monitoring mission findings and portfolio data to identify emerging EVAW/G trends, lessons learned, promising practices, operational risks and evidence gaps.
- Contribute to regional and thematic analyses, portfolio reviews, strategic reporting, donor reporting, briefing notes, communications materials and knowledge products.
- Undertake monitoring and support missions and engage with CSOs, UN Women Regional and Country Offices and regional stakeholders.
- Support the documentation and dissemination of grantee experiences, innovations and practice-based knowledge.
Required Experience
- At least 5 years of progressively responsible experience in programme management, including programme design, coordination, monitoring and evaluation, donor reporting and capacity building in the area of ending violence against women is required.
- Experience in working directly with civil society and women’s organizations, in the area of ending violence against women and girls is required.
- Experience setting priorities, budgets, work plans, participating in programme development and programme monitoring is required.
- Experience in programme design, monitoring, reporting, and results-based management is required.
- Experience managing complex multi-country portfolios and working across diverse operational contexts, including crisis-affected or fragile settings, is desirable.
- Experience providing technical assistance and institutional strengthening support to civil society organizations is highly desirable.
- Experience in grant-making, proposal appraisal, due diligence, and risk management processes is desirable.
- Experience coordinating with UN Women offices, UN agencies, donors, and inter-agency stakeholders is desirable.
- Experience contributing to knowledge generation, evaluation, learning, or evidence synthesis processes is desirable.
- International experience is desirable.
Qualifications
- Master’s degree or equivalent in Social Sciences, Political Science, Development, Public Administration, Gender Studies or related field is required.
- A first-level university degree in combination with two additional years of qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree.
- A project/programme management certification would be an added advantage.
