Senior Gender Advisor, CRS – Burkina Faso

CRS/Burkina Faso seeks qualified candidates for the position of Senior Gender Advisor. This position will lead gender integration into all activities and throughout the entire award period.

The purpose of this position is to design, manage, strengthen, and provide strategic direction to Burkina Faso’s DFSA Gender strategy, ensuring a holistic and robust approach to address the needs of men, women, boys and girls in CRS’ food security and nutrition interventions in the Centre-Nord region. S/he will work across CRS and consortium staff to build capacity of all project staff in gender sensitive programming. S/he will contribute to the Country Program’s (CP) efforts toward quality design and implementation of gender initiatives to ‘promote the right relationships’ among targeted ‘families and communities’. The Senior Gender Advisor will take primary responsibility to advocate for greater attention to gender perspectives, by providing the necessary technical support and leadership to gender mainstreaming throughout CRS’ programs and operations. The DFSA Senior Gender Advisor will be responsible for supervising Gender staff and for coordinating and supervising the integration of gender across all activities, particularly during times of emergency, and assessments required for learning and adaptive management to address the changing and unique needs of men, women, boys and girls. The DFSA Gender Advisor will work closely with CRS program teams and partner staff to develop high quality contextually appropriate gender approaches. S/he will also take learning needs into account, and develop and conduct capacity building for all program staff, with support of the Chief of Party (COP), DCOP/Food Security Technical Coordinator (DCOP/FSTC) and Senior Technical Advisors (STA) for Gender.

Specific Job Responsibilities

Coordination

• Lead, in collaboration with the COP and the DCOP/FSTC, the DFSA Gender strategy engagement of men, women, boys and girls to promote female empowerment and access to economic opportunities.
• Lead the DFSA Gender Analysis Plan roll out as set forth in the program design documents, approved by USAID/FFP, in Year 1 of the intervention.
• Act as a contact person for gender integration with other stakeholders and provide guidance on gender perspectives in all aspects of the CRS DFSA award.
• Support preparation of reports, issues-papers and case studies on gender perspectives with the help of other CRS colleagues in the substantive work of the DFSA that would help ensure synergies as the basis for efforts to promote gender integration and achievement of common goals.
• Assist technical staff in setting indicators for assessing progress with gender integration, adapted to the various DFSA interventions across the interventions zone.
• Assist the DFSA team in ensuring that CRS and partners are in compliance with gender related USAID/FFP requirements.

Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL)

• Lead detailed gender analysis at the inception of new programming.
• Ensure gender based indicators are covered in the DFSA MEAL system.
• Review DFSA reports and ensure they capture required level of gender disaggregated data and gender specific success stories.
• Support programming staff in incorporating gender issues in project MEAL systems (performance questions, indicators, sampling methods, procedures, etc.). Assist in gender sensitive participatory planning and support implementation.
• Arrange for the dissemination of information from MEAL data on the degree to which gender related objectives are being achieved and on the gender differentiated impact of the CRS Burkina Faso’s projects.

Partnership

• Take lead in providing technical support to local partners in developing effective gender-focused project strategies.
• Assist partner staff to communicate information from the field to the appropriate decision-making forum on the level of gender integration in activities undertaken in all components, processes and impacts.
• Provide support, coaching, mentoring and technical guidance to partner gender officers.

Capacity Building and Supervision

• Identify relevant training and learning opportunities for CRS and partner staff to advance knowledge and skills in gender, and manage a gender DFSA learning agenda for staff to follow in alignment with CRS Learning policies and procedures.
• Coordinate with the COP and the DCOP/FSTC on the inclusion of gender learning agenda as part of CRS Burkina Faso staff annual learning and development plans.
• Supervise and mentor DFSA project specific Gender and Youth Officers through shared project and partner visits, coaching sessions, and coordination with the Gender and Youth Officers’ direct line supervisors.
• Develop capacity building plans and strategies.
• Roll out agency-wide gender policies.

Representation

• Attend important and relevant events on gender and the substantive areas covered by CRS to disseminate information on progress made in gender mainstreaming as necessary.
• Represent CRS at workshops and events where information on gender integration is requested.

Program Manager Competencies

These are rooted in the mission, values and principles of CRS and used by each program manager to fulfill his or her responsibilities and to achieve the desired results.

1. Sets clear goals and manages toward them
2. Collaborates effectively with staff and stakeholders
3. Manages financial resources with integrity
4. Applies program quality standards to project design and organizational learning

Agency-wide Competencies (for all CRS staff)

These are rooted in the mission, values, and guiding principles of CRS and used by each staff member to fulfill his or her responsibilities and achieve the desired results.

1. Serves with Integrity
2. Models Stewardship
3. Cultivates Constructive Relationships
4. Promotes Learning

Key Gender Competencies (specific for this position)

• Gender concepts:
  • Demonstrate an understanding of gender equality and equity, gender integration, and engaging men as agents of change and women’s empowerment.
  • Know the Domains of Analysis and be able to explain them to program stakeholders (e.g. laws, policies, regulations, and institutional practices; cultural norms and beliefs; gender roles, responsibilities, and time used; access to and control over assets and resources; and patterns of power and decision-making).
  • Demonstrate a knowledge of gender integration in one or more of the key areas of food assistance programming, including agriculture, natural resource management, nutrition, water and sanitation, and disaster risk reduction.
• Gender training:
  • Desiring and deliver context-specific trainings on organizational gender policies and relevance of gender to programmatic components.
  • Work with sector-specific technical staff (e.g. agriculture, nutrition, disaster risk reduction) to develop formal trainings and informal sessions with a gender lens utilizing new or existing resources.
  • Train staff on the delivery of gender-specific topics with particular emphasis on addressing sensitive issued (i.e., gender-based violence); identify and train a cadre of staff to serve as trainers on gender integration.
• Gender analysis:
  • Serve as the key point of contact for the person or team conducting the formal gender analysis.
• Implementation of gender strategies and activities:
  • Advise on and revise proposed strategies and activities during program start-up, including budget implications.
  • Actively engage in developing an action plan to incorporate recommendations from the gender analysis.
  • Update strategies to address key gender targets based on formal and informal feedback; identify and adapt to the local context existing gender resources and tools to support gender integration within the program and activities.
  • Coordinate with key program staff, including manages and technical specialists, to ensure implementation of gender strategies and gender integration into program activities.
  • Foster internal and external relationships for coordination and collaboration, which includes, but is not limited to, program partners and organizations doing similar work, including governmental entities.
• Monitoring, evaluation, accountability, and learning:
  • Actively support the design of monitoring and evaluation tools for gender indicators and for monitoring for negative impacts.
  • Guide the collection of monitoring and evaluation data.
  • Interpret results and present findings, recommendations, lessons learned, and promising practices to colleagues to further learning through communities of practice, online communities, webinars, conference presentations, training sessions, and other knowledge sharing mechanisms.
  • Use data to modify activities or mitigate negative impacts; review reports to the donor, and provide gendered data and language where needed.

Key Working Relationships

Internal- CRS/Burkina Faso

Country Representative, Head of Programs, Chief of Party, Head of Operations, DCOP/Food Security Technical Coordinator, Project Technical Leads (e.g. Health and Nutrition, Agriculture, etc.), Project Managers, Project Gender Officers, Senior SBC Advisor, Senior M&E Manager

Internal-CRS/HQ/Region

WARO Regional Staff (Regional Technical Advisors/Deputy Regional Directors) and CRS/HQ departments including HQ-based Gender Advisor and CRS Gender Community of Practice

External

USAID, government officials, international and local partners, implementing partner staff, other Burkina Faso RISE Initiative implementers.

Qualifications and Skills

• A master’s degree in a relevant academic area plus five years of field experience at the community level is required.
• Minimum five years of progressive management and technical responsibility, including supervising and mentoring team members, preferably with an international NGO; USAID experience preferred. The candidate must have experience in leading the Gender Strategy of a large project.
• Experience working with large donors, USAID/FFP and/or USAID/FTF preferred.
• In-depth understanding of gender, age and other socio-cultural factors in the context of food security programming.
• Demonstrated capacity to lead the collection, analysis and utilization of data and information from a broad range of sources in order to ensure effective integration of gender concerns throughout the project’s duration. Demonstrated experience in leading participatory analytical processes and learning required.
• Ability to foster commitment and build capacity among activity staff and in-country actors to gender integration and empowerment.
• Demonstrated capacity to understand and advise on critical technical and operational issues related to gender: education, job skills, employment creation, social cohesion, health, psycho-social wellbeing, prevention of adolescent marriage and/or pregnancy.
• Prior experience working with MEAL development and integration in programming to capture gender project-specific information to monitor change and outcomes, with experience in quantitative and qualitative data analysis highly desirable.
• Ability to self-manage and succeed in matrix management model, with demonstrated proactive and flexible nature in resolving problems and leading a productive, committed team.
• Strong interpersonal and communication skills and the ability to work effectively with groups.
• Knowledge of program quality standards, MEAL standards, Catholic Social Teaching and the justice lens preferred.
• Experience with facilitation, capacity strengthening and partnership building through formal and informal training, with the capacity to empower staff through opportunities for professional growth and development.
• Detail-oriented and excellent time management skills with the ability to meet deadlines and deliver required results in a timely and quality manner.
• Flexibility to work both in a team and independently.
• Demonstrated personal accountability and driven to serve others.
• Cultural sensitivity, patience, flexibility and ability to work well in a multi-sectoral and multi-cultural team and to work closely, understand and support local Church partners.
• Ability to work in a challenging and stressful environment with unexpected challenges.
• Ability to travel for field missions for 30-50% level of effort as needed.
• Excellent English and French language oral and written communication skills required.
• Experience working in a variety of developing environments required; knowledge of the Sahel context desired.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office suite, including Word, Excel and Outlook required.

Disclaimer

This job description is not an exhaustive list of the skill, effort, duties, and responsibilities associated with the position.

CRS’ talent acquisition procedures reflect our commitment to protecting children and vulnerable adults from abuse and exploitation.

This position is conditional upon award of funding for the DFSA.

Applications will be received until this position has been filled.