Save the Children is the world’s leading independent organisation for children. We work in 120 countries. We save children’s lives; we fight for their rights; we help them fulfil their potential.We work together, with our partners, to inspire breakthroughs in the way the world treats children and to achieve immediate and lasting change in their lives. We have over two million supporters worldwide and raised $2 billion dollars last year to reach more children than ever before, ensuring that they are able to survive, learn and be protected whatever their circumstances, including in times of humanitarian crisis.

As part of our strategic plan to reach ‘Every Last Child’, we have made it a global priority to build humanitarian, advocacy and campaigning capability, to become truly global – driving stronger and more diversified funding, and to maximise the use of our knowledge, systems, capacity and culture. We are doing whatever it takes to reach the world’s most excluded children. With your help we can ensure the world puts children first, and that we can tackle the barriers that prevent them from surviving and thriving. We won’t stop until every last child survives and fulfils their potential.

CHILD SAFEGUARDING:

Level 3:  the role holder will have contact with children and/or young people either frequently (e.g. once a week or more) or intensively (e.g. four days in one month or more or overnight) because they work in country programs; or are visiting country programs; ore because they are responsible for implementing the police checking/vetting process staff.

ROLE PURPOSE:

As a member of the Senior Leadership Team (SLT) in Country, the Program Development and Quality (PDQ) Manager is responsible for driving cross-functional engagement in the development and delivery of Country Strategy Plans (CSPs), developing annual plans and reporting on results. S/he is responsible for ensuring development and delivery of high quality, evidence-based, innovative programs for children, in all contexts, that contribute to Save the Children’s global Breakthroughs: Learn, Survive, Be Protected. The PDQ Manager ensures that a robust monitoring, evaluation, accountability and learning (MEAL) system is in place, that the country office engages in the collection and use of evidence and that this is shared across the global organization, and that reliable data is used for decision-making.  One key aspect of the role is ensuring capability building, mentoring and coaching of technical specialists in order to support program quality in line with global standards and key performance indicators. As a senior leader in the country office s/he plays a representational role with the government, donors, partners, peer agencies, SC Members and others.  The PDQ Manager supports strategic positioning with donors and partners and leads on project design to ensure that the country office strategy can be delivered in line with child rights programming principles.

SCOPE OF ROLE:

Reports to: Country Director 

Staff directly reporting to this post: MEAL Coordinator Technical Specialists (may include education, health and nutrition, child protection, child rights governance, child poverty and cross-cutting areas such as gender equality, migration and displacement, etc.) and Accountability Officer

Role Dimensions: As member of the SMT in the Country Office, the Program Development and Quality (PDQ) Manager must demonstrate the qualities of agile leadership.  S/he plays a key role in defining and pursuing the strategic direction for Save the Children’s programs in Country, ensuring the relevance, coherence, safety and impact of our programs for children in all contexts. This is a challenging role requiring an individual who can work with complexity and multiple tasks at one time.   It is essential that the Program Development and Quality Manager builds and maintains strong relationships across functions within the CO, including with team members from Operations, Award Management, Humanitarian, Advocacy and Finance, and s/he should lead by example in demonstrating this cross-functional collaboration. This role demands dedication to demonstrating outcomes for children, experience in integrated child rights programming and a highly motivated leader. S/he has specific oversight for ensuring that programs demonstrate thematic excellence in contributing to Save the Children’s three Breakthroughs for children, especially for the most deprived and marginalized: no child dies from preventable causes before their fifth birthday; all children learn from a quality basic education; and violence against children is no longer tolerated.

Location: Istanbul with frequent visits to Hatay and Ankara

KEY AREAS OF ACCOUNTABILITY:

Strategy, Planning and Reporting (15%)

• Lead the development/updating of the Child Rights Situation Analysis, including analysis of country context and taking into account child rights principles, ensuring participation and buy-in from all relevant staff, partners and other stakeholders as necessary
• Lead the SLT to develop/update and drive forward the Country Strategy Plan (CSP) that is in line with the global strategy, Ambition 2030, with child rights at the core of all programming and advocacy work.
• Provide leadership on development of the Country Annual Plan, monitoring of progress against the plan, and completion of accurate, on-time Country Annual Report of outcomes and impact for children, aligned with the Global Results Framework.
• Facilitate the development and pursuit of thematic and cross-cutting strategic priorities in line with the CSP, including gender equality, to guide current and future SC programming and Humanitarian Strategies.
• Support ownership and commitment to the Country Office strategy by all staff and departments through clear communication, regular feedback on progress and engagement of all functions in updates.
• Participate in global discussions and working groups to represent country office, and the voice of children, in strategy design and policy development.
• Support change processes and roll-out new ways of working to improve achievement of the CSP.

Program Design & Development (30%)

• Based on tracking provided by the Awards Management team, review and position for opportunities that will drive the CSP.
• In consultation with the Country Director and Members, ensure technical engagement with donors to pre-position and prepare for opportunities, and engage in strategic positioning work directly as appropriate.
• Play a leading role in designing proposals, including:
  • Engaging with technical experts as needed to ensure high quality, evidence-based designs that draw on needs assessments, learning from past programs and child safeguarding principles;
  • Ensuring partners are identified and appropriately engaged in program design, linking with Operations and Awards teams as need be for assessments, especially to strengthen gender sensitivity at design stage;
  • Ensuring proposal designs and their budgets include robust MEAL plans that are aligned with the Global Results Framework (and therefore advance towards our Breakthroughs), incorporate Common Approaches as relevant, and build in critical learning questions.
  • Ensuring the project budget will enable the project to be delivered as designed.
  • Incorporating child and community participation into design, as relevant.

Program Quality and Program Technical Excellence (20%)

• Ensure the country program delivers high quality, multi-sectoral programming in both development and humanitarian contexts (as appropriate). 
  • Monitor and advance technical and operational quality of programmes, including conducting regular field visits to provide feedback on quality benchmarks, soliciting inputs for design of new programs and collecting ideas for innovation.
  • Monitor program Key Performance Indicators and, in partnership with other functions, take steps to improve the quality programming platform to meet agreed upon standards.
  • Work closely with the Director of Operations to ensure Quality Framework standards are met and procedures are followed throughout the project cycle and across the portfolio.  
  • Ensure technical experts proactively and regularly communicate planned requirements for program design, learning and implementation to relevant CO departments/functions.
• Build and lead a team of program technical experts needed to successfully deliver against the CSP. Ensure effective working relationships with SC global, Member and regional technical advisors, procuring technical support as needed to support program and advocacy efforts, including during Emergencies.
  • Ensure that program technical experts engage in larger communities of practice within and external to Save the Children, to link with the most relevant and evidence-based approaches and conduct timely and useful review of project reports to support quality reporting for Members and donors
  • Ensure that the different technical sectors of the Country Office are coordinated, integrated and support each other to optimize programs and projects.
  • Ensure that child safeguarding and safe programming is embedded in program design and considered throughout implementation to ensure that we do all we can to ensure children in our programs are safe, in line with our child safeguarding policy.

Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability, Learning (MEAL) and Knowledge management (15%):

• Oversee a monitoring system that provides timely and accurate project results by embedding MEAL across program implementation. This requires ensuring effective collaboration across MEAL staff, Technical Specialists, Technical Advisors and program implementation teams to develop logframes, indicators, implementation plans, quality benchmarks, monitoring and evaluation frameworks and related tools.
• Lead programme quality improvements by monitoring and improving Programme KPI performance, including resourcing and conducting high-quality evaluations to demonstrate outcomes and impact and ensuring that accountability mechanisms are in place for all projects so that identified actions are resolved, with critical issues escalated to senior management.
• Ensure the research, evaluation and policy work of the Country Office contributes to generation of evidence for development and improvement of Common Approaches, sound decision making and policy influencing internally and externally.
• Establish effective program learning and knowledge management systems to support adaptive programming and innovation that improves outcomes for children.

Emergency preparedness and response (5%)

• Lead on developing programmes that are adaptive and can respond to humanitarian crisis as and when necessary
• Ensure excellent coordination and cooperation with incoming technical advisors as well as surge teams during emergencies
• Lead on ensuring the appropriate level of technical input into any emergency response

Staff Management, Mentorship, and Development (10%)

• Ensure appropriate staffing of Program Development and Quality team, and engagement of additional technical support when needed to deliver quality project design and delivery.
• Ensure that all PDQ staff understand and are able to perform their role in delivering first-class, quality programs for children in both development and emergency contexts through effective onboarding and clear workplans.
• Manage individual and team performance using principles of leadership agility, and Save the Children’s performance management system.
• Ensure that staff proactively build and maintain technical, managerial and leadership skills, including competencies in child rights programming, child safeguarding and Common Approaches, providing coaching opportunities when needed.

QUALIFICATIONS AND EXPERIENCE

• At least 4-5 years’ experience at similar are equal levels in an NGO environment, including experience directing and implementing programs for children in both emergency and development contexts, preferably with solid experience in more than one of the Save the Children priority sectors such as education, protection and livelihoods;
• University degree in Social Sciences, in an area of social development;
• Experience in one or more of Save the Children's thematic sectors: education, child protection, child rights governance, health and nutrition, child poverty, emergencies;
• Understanding ofpolicy, and government systems in the host country, and particular experience with child rights programming, including UNCRC;
• Strong skills and proven experience in leading strategic planning, change management and program management processes; also from the knowledge and learning perspective;
• Strong skills and proven experience in new program development, project design and proposal writing with corporate, foundations and/or institutional donors;
• Credibility to lobby, influence and represent Save the Children at all levels and commitment to and understanding of Save the Children’s aims, values and principles including rights-based approaches
• Experience in developing and managing monitoring, evaluation, accountability and learning systems;
• Excellent listening, inter-personal, communication and networking skills; proven experience and effectiveness working across functional teams and in a matrixed structure; and an ability to work with diverse populations.
• Skills in training, capability building, coaching, mentorship, problem solving, and project cycle management;
• High level of self-awareness and willingness to take feedback for growth and self-development;
• Proven experience as a team player and leader in an international organisation;
• Fluency in written and spoken English and Turkish.

Desirable:

• Master degree in relevant field is strongly preferred.
• Knowledge of Arabic will be an asset.

CHILD SAFEGUARDING POLICY:

Any employee, consultant, contractor or the supplier undertaking an activity on behalf of SCI must sign the Child Safeguarding – Declaration of Acceptance Form and comply with the SCIs Child Safeguarding Policy which is a statement of SCI’s commitment to preventing abuse and protecting children with whom it comes into contact.

This extends not only to children with whom SCI and its partners work directly, but also includes children whom staff are responsible for. SCI believes that the situation of children must be improved through the promotion of their rights supported and demonstrated by all members of staff. Save the Children International’s Code of Conduct sets out the standards which all staff members must adhere to.

Benefits Package provided to National Staff:

• Salary commensurate with the pay-grade of the position.
• Transportation allowance
• Annual leave
• Private Medical Facility, Accidental and Life insurance.

We need to keep children safe so our selection process reflects our commitment to the protection of children from abuse.

Please apply in English by sending your up to date CV with a cover letter as a single document explaining your salary expectations. The advertisement will be closed on February 13th, 2019 at 5:30 PM (Turkey local time).

Please kindly be informed that only short-listed candidates will be contacted.