Location: ARK's Office in Amman, Jordan, or Aden, Yemen
Reporting to: Chief Operations Officer
Contract type: 1-year fixed term renewable
Hours: Full time
Closing date: Thursday 27th June 2024
About ARK
ARK is a social enterprise, empowering local communities through the provision of agile and sustainable interventions to create greater stability, opportunity, and hope for the future.
We believe that resilient communities are the foundation of local, national, regional and international development and stability – and ultimately a safer, peaceful and more prosperous world. At ARK, we have delivered research and programmatic interventions validating this approach in over twenty countries since 2008. As a social enterprise we work in partnership with communities, our donors, and other implementers to build local capacities, generate opportunity and bring about sustainable change.
About the Role
Building on two years of successful delivery, ARK is recruiting an experienced Chief of Party to lead on a 3-year USAID-funded portfolio in Yemen, comprising two programs. The first, the Yemen Community Resilience program, partners with local civil society and community-based organizations, especially those led by women, to strengthen community cohesion and child protection through direct support and health and social service referrals. The second, Building Peace in Yemen, encourages people to build mutual understanding, trust, and empathy in order to heal divisions, including those rooted in religious, ethnic, or political differences. The program promotes climate resilience and helps reduce violent conflict stemming from scarce resources.
As Chief of Party you will have responsibility for all aspects of the programs, including managing and engaging with partners, clients, and other stakeholders. You will oversee regular reporting to USAID and be expected to maintain strong working relationships with other donor-funded peacebuilding and development programmes in Yemen.
What you'll be doing
Relationship Management
- Serve as principal liaison with USAID, maintaining direct and regular communication.
- Manage relationships with stakeholders within government/s, other agencies, project partners and stakeholders.
- Develop strong working relationships with other peacebuilding and development programmes, particularly those funded by USAID, to leverage complementarities and synergies.
- Coordinate and communicate regularly with ARK’s wider delivery and support team, including the Project Director, on shared challenges requiring collective solutions.
Technical Leadership and Planning:
- Provide overall strategic vision, managerial and technical leadership, and administrative oversight to achieve program outcomes.
- Lead the preparation of work plans and budgets; staffing plans; performance monitoring plans and other agreement deliverables.
- Analyse project impact and challenges to adaptively manage the project to meet or exceed expected results.
Project Management and Reporting:
- Oversee all program activities, budgets, and timelines to ensure efficient and effective execution.
- Coordinate with communications staff on the delivery of internal and external communications activities and outputs.
- Manage financial and administrative aspects of the program, including budget and subawards management, ensuring compliance with USAID regulations.
- Direct the core program team on all processes, including performance and risk management, coordination, collaborative learning and adaptation, gender integration and social inclusion, monitoring and evaluation, work planning, and reporting.
- Support the Deputy Chief of Party in the implementation of program activities to ensure alignment with strategic objectives.
- Prepare and submit weekly updates, quarterly reports, and annual reports on the progress of activities and achievement of program results to USAID.
Mentoring:
- In line with the program’s strong localization focus, support the professional development of all Yemeni program staff, with a particular focus on the Deputy Chief of Party.
Requirements
Essential
- A Masters degree in a relevant discipline and a minimum of 8 years professional experience or a Bachelor’s degree in relevant discipline and a minimum of 10 years professional experience.
- At least 3 years of experience in a senior leadership position such as Chief of Party, or Programme Director.
- Experience managing a USAID programme of similar size (above $10m) and scope in an insecure environment.
- Previous USAID experience and extensive experience with USAID rules and regulations.
- Strong expertise in Collaborating, Learning and Adaptation (CLA).
- Experience in subaward management and capacity development of local organizations and government entities.
- Excellent oral and written English skills required.
Desirable
- Good understanding of current dynamics in Yemen and the broader MENA region.
- Experience of working on/leading peacebuilding and development initiatives in Yemen.
- Oral and written Arabic skills.
Benefits
What Makes Us Different
We pride ourselves on being the first people able to access and operate in challenging fragile and conflict-affected environments. We are expeditionary by design and our systems and structures enable flexible and agile responses while ensuring safe, effective and compliant delivery.
Working with and through teams drawn from the communities in which we operate enables us to deliver impactful interventions built on intimate local understanding. In collaboration with our global network of international and local experts, we integrate nuanced understanding of the challenges we aim to solve with best practice and field-leading innovation to deliver programming that meets short-term stabilisation objectives and builds the evidence base and knowledge needed to lay the groundwork for long-term peacebuilding and development programming.
What We Do
We enjoy sectoral experience in civil society development, good governance, protection and human rights, refugees and migration, stabilisation, gender, security and justice, as well as cross-cutting experience in programme design and learning, organisational development and management, research and analysis, needs assessments, monitoring and evaluation, communications and capacity building.
Our People
Today, our team covers a diverse range of professional backgrounds; from diplomacy, humanitarian, development and the military, to the UN, civil society groups, multilateral organisations, journalism and the private sector.
They bring sectoral expertise in civil society development, good governance, protection and human rights, refugees and migration, gender and security and justice, as well as practical experience in programme design and learning, organisational development and management, research and analysis, needs assessments, monitoring and evaluation, communications and capacity building. The multi-disciplinary and multi-national nature of our team means the research we undertake and the programmes we deliver are grounded in empirical need and deliver measurable and sustainable impact.
ARK Group is an equal opportunity employer. We actively seek a diverse applicant pool and encourage candidates of all backgrounds to apply. ARK Group does not discriminate on the basis of ability, age, gender identity and expression, national origin, race and ethnicity, religious beliefs, or sexual orientation. We welcome all kinds of diversity. ARK Group places human dignity at the centre of its development and stabilisation work and is thus committed to the protection from sexual exploitation and abuse of children and adults. All ARK Group employees and related-personnel are expected to share this commitment, and only those who also uphold these values will be recruited as part of our team. This vacancy is therefore subject to a range of due diligence checks.