ORGANISATION BACKGROUND:
Street Child believes that every child deserves the chance to go to school and learn. Our projects focus on a combination of education, child protection and livelihood support to address the social, economic and structural issues that underpin today’s education crisis. We partner with local organisations and communities to deliver our locally rooted programmes, using evidence to drive learning and the refinement and scale up of programmes to create maximum impact for the most children at the lowest cost. We pride ourselves on being willing to go to the world’s toughest places where others won’t, including remote, hard-to-reach areas and fragile, disaster-affected states across sub-Saharan, South America, Middle East, Africa and South Asia. Since 2008 we have helped over 1,600,000 children to go to school and learn and supported over 222,000 adults set up businesses so they can afford the cost of educating their children.
Our work as Street Child in the aforementioned domains is deliberate and intentional and we aim to scale up our operations in the field by ensuring that more and more children return to normal lives by living in a safe environment, reunited with their families, attending school and protected against violence, sexual exploitations and other societal vices.
ROLE PURPOSE
Cameroon has now been reported as the most neglected and least funding crisis in the world (The world's most neglected displacement crises in 2024 | NRC), making an already bad situation worse. In the midst of this dire situation, Street Child is resolved to continue to do what it exists to do best – working in hard to reach and resource limited environments to bring the much-needed education and protection interventions needed to reach the 3.3 million people in need in Cameroon.
Within this context, Street Child UK in Cameroon is looking for a Programme Manager to manage it's education and child protection programmes. Under the direct supervision of the Country Director, the post holder shall be expected to lead on overall programme design, resources mobilisation, programme delivery, budget management, staff and team management, partnership management, inter-agency and local government representation at the field level. The Programme Manager will play a leading role in proposal development and will ensure that Education and Child Protection programming are implemented in a timely manner within the project period, with a focus on quality and value for money.
RESPONSIBILITIES
Programme Design and Resource Mobilisation
- Work closely with partners in the identification of gaps in child protection and education services and lead in fundraising for child protection and education
- Lead in the development and implementation of resource mobilization strategies to secure funding from various sources including private foundations and corporate sponsorships.
- Identify and cultivate relationships with potential donors and partners, ensuring alignment with the organization’s mission and objectives.
- Prepare high-quality proposals, grant applications, and presentations to communicate Street Child’s impact and needs effectively.
- Monitor and evaluate fundraising activities, providing regular reports to management on progress and challenges.
- Collaborate with program teams to align fundraising efforts and project needs.
- Stay informed about trends in resource mobilization to identify new opportunities for Street Child
- Facilitate and monitor the submission of high-quality and timely reports to donors and ensuring Street Child’s compliance with commitments made with donors
Programme Implementation
- Ensure the implementation of Education and Child Protection interventions within the project period, with a focus on quality programming while ensuring that targets are met.
- Ensure effective management of the Child Protection and Education programmes, including budget management, developing and monitoring programme work plans, and overall management of Child Protection and Education teams.
- Oversee the implementation of quality child protection and education activities across multiple locations, including the implementation of approaches and tools.
- Ensure a safe programming approach and ensure risk assessments and mitigation plans are in place for child safeguarding.
- Ensure quality programme and donor reports on child protection and education project activities in compliance with relevant external donor requirements.
- Ensure integration of child protection and education with other core sectors, ensuring close collaboration particularly with Shelter, WASH, Food Security and Livelihoods.
- Ensure that minimum standards are maintained in accordance with the Minimum Standards for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action, the Inter-Agency Case Management Guidelines, the Sphere Charter and Inter-agency Network for Education in Emergencies Minimum Standards.
- Work closely with the MEAL team to ensure the effective monitoring and evaluation of programmes.
- Work closely with the MEAL team to put in place accountability measures, ensuring that feedback from all relevant stakeholders is considered in programme design.
Team Management and Capacity Building
- Supervise the MEAL Programme Officer, the Child Protection Officer, overall guidance over the Child Protection Case Workers, Data Clerks, etc
- Assess training needs within the child protection and education teams and develop an overall capacity building plan.
- Provide regular constructive feedback to direct reports, following Street Child’s Performance management procedures, and support direct reports in performance management of their team members
Partnership Management
- Ensure capacity building of local partners implementing child protection and education interventions.
- Identify local partners for the implementing of education and child protection interventions and be responsible for partnership management to ensure programme delivery.
- In collaboration with the finance team, support the completion of partner assessments and work closely with partners on development of proposals and budgets for their sub-award agreements.
- Provide continuous programme management and facilitate technical support to partners to ensure timely quality programming.
- Ensure the maintenance of constructive partnerships with financial, technical, implementing and policy influencing partners.
- Work with HR/Finance/Logs teams to ensure partners are receiving adequate support from support sections.
Coordination and Representation
- Ensure that Street Child’s work is coordinated with efforts of other agencies, ensuring the specific needs of children are being addressed.
- Represent Street Child in the Education in Emergencies and Child Protection in Emergencies working groups and sectoral clusters.
- Ensure community acceptance and maintain engagement with local government (municipalities and relevant local representatives of ministries).
Requirements
Qualifications
- A master’s degree in education, Social Work, International Relations, Project Management, Development Studies, or other relevant field.
- Fluency in English and French both written and verbal.
Experience
- Atleast 5 years of project management experience.
- Demonstrated experience in successful delivery of large-scale programmes in humanitarian or development contexts.
- Ability to identify the main gaps in education and child protection services in the given context to inform a holistic response for children.
- Knowledge of established inter-agency standards and guidelines in education and child protection.
- Experience in coordination with local and international NGOs, representation with donors and humanitarian actors.
- Previous experience managing teams, including staff training and capacity building of organisational staff and partner staff.
- Excellent interpersonal, communication and presentation skills.
Additional job responsibilities:
The duties and responsibilities as set out above are not exhaustive and the role holder may be required to carry out additional duties within reasonableness of their level of skills and experience.
Street Child’s commitment to Safeguarding
Street Child is committed to the safeguarding and protection of the communities we serve, our partners, our volunteers, and our staff
As part of this commitment to safeguarding, all offers of employment will be subject to satisfactory references and appropriate background checks, including a Criminal Records check. Street Child also participates in the Inter Agency Misconduct Disclosure Scheme. In line with this Scheme, we will request information from job applicants’ previous employers about any findings of sexual exploitation, sexual abuse and/or sexual harassment during employment, or incidents under investigation when the applicant left employment.
Street Child of Cameroon is committed to the safeguarding and protection of the communities we serve, our partners, our volunteers, and our staff.
As part of this commitment to safeguarding, all offers of employment will be subject to satisfactory references and appropriate background checks, including a Criminal Records check. Street Child of Cameroon also participates in the Inter Agency Misconduct Disclosure Scheme. In line with this Scheme, we will request information from job applicants’ previous employers about any findings of sexual exploitation, sexual abuse and/or sexual harassment during employment, or incidents under investigation when the applicant left employment.
To apply:
Street Child welcomes applications through its jobs portal from all suitably qualified persons regardless of their race, sex, disability, religion/belief, sexual orientation or age.
If you do not hear from us one month after applying to this position, consider that your application has been unsuccessful.
