Project Lead (Women Peace Security)

Overview

The position serves as the primary focal point for programme coordination in Ethiopia, responsible for building and maintaining strong relationships with stakeholders and promoting the participation of women and young women in peacebuilding and governance processes.

Key Responsibilities

• Provide overall management and support for project implementation, including planning, budgeting, and forecasting.
• Ensure effective delivery of project outcomes, outputs, and key performance indicators.
• Guide adaptive programming in response to changing contexts.
• Ensure alignment of country-level implementation with regional programme objectives.
• Provide leadership to project staff and implementing partners.
• Ensure timely and high-quality submission of programmatic reports.
• Oversee project and partner financial management.
• Support the integration of gender equality, disability inclusion, safeguarding, and conflict-sensitive approaches.
• Lead programme risk identification, assessment, monitoring, and mitigation efforts.
• Lead programme reviews, reflection meetings, learning events, and adaptive management processes.
• Ensure systematic documentation of evidence, best practices, success stories, case studies, and lessons learned.
• Lead the end-to-end grant-making process.
• Foster equitable and strong coordination and collaboration with women’s led organizations.
• Oversee partner due diligence, organizational and participatory capacity assessments, learning needs analyses, partner development plans, and regular performance reviews.
• Facilitate joint planning, review meetings, and collaborative decision-making processes with partners.
• Support partners to strengthen organizational sustainability, governance, safeguarding, financial management, and resource mobilization capacities.
• Work with Finance to ensure grant management, disbursement and reporting processes are responsive to partner needs.
• Provide technical support to partners on advocacy, peacebuilding, gender-transformative programming, and survivor-centered approaches.
• Ensure quality delivery of training, mentoring, coaching, peer learning, and Training of Trainers (ToT) initiatives.
• Support the functioning of regional governance structures, steering committees, and technical working groups.
• Establish and maintain strategic relationships with government ministries, regional authorities, women affairs institutions, peacebuilding platforms, and relevant national actors.
• Represent the programme in national and regional coordination forums, technical working groups, and policy dialogue platforms.
• Strengthen collaboration with IGAD, African Union platforms, UN agencies, development partners, and civil society networks.
• Contribute to national Women, Peace and Security policy discussions and implementation processes.
• Lead and support evidence-based advocacy initiatives related to Women, Peace and Security.
• Strengthen national and regional advocacy efforts through strategic partnerships and coalition-building.
• Facilitate sharing of lessons learned, good practices, innovations, and evidence across partners.
• Contribute to regional reporting, planning, and donor engagement processes.
• Uphold Safeguarding and GEI policies and Plan International’s Code of Conduct (CoC).
• Ensure staff are inducted on and understand their role in upholding safeguarding and GEI policies.
• Ensure safeguarding and GEI policies are embedded in day-to-day work.
• Ensure contributions to global efforts to ensure safeguarding and GEI.

Required Experience

• Minimum of seven years of progressive professional experience in program management.
• Demonstrated experience leading complex, multi-stakeholder, multi-regional programs/projects, including coordination of a pool of Women Led Organizations.
• Strong experience in partnership management and aptitude for cultivating strong relationships with multiple stakeholders including grass root women’s led organizations, government, and donors.
• Demonstrated experience in grant management, including partner selection, due diligence, capacity strengthening, budget management, grant monitoring, and partner performance management.
• Experience working on gender-based violence (GBV), protection, survivor-centered approaches, or gender-transformative programming.
• Experience leading cross-functional and remote teams to deliver results.
• Strong technical understanding of peace and security issues affecting women and girls, particularly in conflict and fragile contexts.
• Demonstrated experience in facilitating different sessions or delivering TOT for different stakeholders.
• Experience in managing institutional donor-funded grants, including compliance with diverse donor requirements (e.g. Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs).

Qualifications

• Master’s degree or Bachelor’s degree in Peace and Conflict Studies, International Development, Political Science, Gender studies Project Management, or any relevant field

Other Details