Senior Peace Advisor

The DPNA Senior Peace Advisor will be working for an European Commission project in partnership with MCC (Mennonite Central Committee). The project aims to combat religious intolerance and discrimination in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Iraq through enhancing mutual understanding and respect between different faiths, sects or none. The project will accomplish this aim through supporting local CSOs with sub-grant projects, peacebuilding and project management capacity-building, and promoting inclusive and strategic partnerships with religious leaders and civil society leaders.

The Senior Peace Advisor based at DPNA (Saida Lebanon), will facilitate the various peacebuilding trainings and provide project-specific direct mentorship to each CSO throughout the project period. They will be required to travel to each country and visit each project once during the project period.

There will be regional workshops, bi-national peacebuilding trainings, on-site CSO-based staff trainings and video conference calls with the Senior Peace Advisor, to increase their ability to implement initiatives fostering mutual understanding and religious tolerance in their communities.

The DPNA senior peace advisor will be in charge of gathering and compiling the information, and will take the lead in writing the publication. The peace coordinator will gather the CSOs’ success stories, lessons learned, monitoring and evaluation data and suggestions for other organisations. 

Qualifications:

Education/certification

• Bachelor’s degree in humanitarian assistance, international development, social work, economics, finance, or a related field.
• Master’s degree in a related field, preferred

Experience

• Essential:
  • Strong capacity in project management including planning, monitoring, evaluation, and reporting
  • Experience with peacebuilding projects and delivering trainings
  • Experience in initiatives planning and implementation
• Desirable:
  • Experience of working for an NGO, CSO
  • Experience with print, electronic and social media communications

Skills/abilities

• Essential:
  • Strong writing, communication, and organizational skills
  • Strong relational skills to interact with CSO sub-grant organizations in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, & Jordan
  • Ability to provide capacity building of small NGOs/CSOs including identifying needs and providing support
  • Proven ability to understand and advise on the challenges that local partners (NGOs, CSOs, etc.) might encounter in project implementation
  • Proven abilities in the analysis of narrative and financial documents in order to monitor and evaluate projects success
  • Fluency in Arabic and English (written and spoken)
  • Computer literate in Word, Excel and Outlook
• Desirable
  • Experience with remote management
  • Ability to think strategically about projects and program
  • Awareness of protection issues and best practices
  • Ability to plan and carry out training sessions for adults
  • Knowledge about GBV

Personal qualities

• Essential:
  • Self-disciplined with ability to work proactively, using own initiative
  • Willingness and ability to travel to Syria, Iraq, & Jordan
  • Ability to respectfully interact with people
  • Ability to work as part of a team, to focus under pressure, and to work on tight timelines in support of DPNA
  • Understanding of the complexity of religious conflicts in the region, openness to listen to all perspectives without judgment, and ability to focus on a politically neutral humanitarian and peacebuilding response
  • Friendly and respectful of confidential information
• Desirable:
  • Creative and innovative approach to work
  • Highly reflective and committed to developing themselves and others through reflective ongoing learning.

There are three main goals of the project:

1. Support local civil society organisations (CSOs), including local NGOs and community-based organisations (CBOs), through sub-grant funds for projects to engage religious leaders and laypeople, including women and youth, to understand, respect and promote religious tolerance within communities.

2. Increase the ability of CSOs to cultivate religious tolerance and mutual understanding among the target beneficiaries via peacebuilding training, networking, capacity-building, and mentoring for sub-grantee CSO’s.

3. Promote inclusive and strategic partnerships, networking and cooperation between religious and civil society leaders of different religious groups

Duties (specific tasks & responsibilities):

• Supervise the monitoring, evaluation, and reporting for 18-21 total CSO sub-grantee organizations who will implement peacebuilding projects and report to DPNA
• Conduct field visits to partners in different locations in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, & Iraq to monitor projects, strengthen programming and build the reporting capacity of the CSOs
• The Senior Peace Advisor will be responsible to deliver a total of six training workshops with CSOs in areas such as M&E, financial reporting, grant writing, and general project management. These trainings will be led jointly with the MCC Project Coordinator
• Coordinate and provide program management assistance to CSO organizations, together with the four country-based field monitors in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, & Jordan.
• Work closely with the MCC Project Coordinator and DPNA Project Manager
• Provide mentoring sessions to CSOs (video online sessions)
• The peace advisor will gather the CSOs’ success stories, lessons learned, monitoring and evaluation data and suggestions for other organisations to draft and take the lead on the publication
• Assist in the assessment of initial CSO sub-grant project proposals
• Collect stories, photos, and videos from CSO projects for communications and fulfill European Commission visibility requirements
• Implementation for six partner workshops (four in Lebanon and two in Jordan)
• If possible, attend coordination meetings to coordinate, become aware of external grants, and build relationships with other INGOs/NGOs.
• Develop contacts and relationships with relevant external agencies (local government, national government, community based and NGO entities) to enhance program implementation and sustainability.
• Submit weekly activity reports to DPNA
• Attend DPNA weekly program meetings.
• A willingness to help with various tasks to support DPNA mission.
• A willingness to work extra hours when necessary (i.e., reporting periods).
• Communicate regularly with the DPNA Project Manager
• Model non-violent peacemaking in the workplace and community through respectful interactions with others.