Empowerment Officer

The Empowerment Officer is a crucial member of the Women Now for Development team in Lebanon.  She/he will manage the implementation of Empowerment activities for women and adolescent girls across two Women and Girls Safe Spaces in Bekaa.  The Empowerment Officer will work closely with colleagues to enhance the quality of our programming and reporting.  She/he will have broad knowledge of project cycle management and the confidence and experience to apply that knowledge in a challenging context.   The successful candidate will have the interpersonal skills to coordinate a small team, and build professional and positive relations with other local CSOs, INGO and governmental donors, as well as the women and girls who benefit from our services.  This position would suit someone who is looking to gain experience with a leading women’s rights organisation.

BACKGROUND:

Women Now for Development is a feminist, women-lead non-governmental organization dedicated to deepening and strengthening women’s role in Syrian and Lebanese communities by enhancing their social, economic and cultural participation. Women Now was established in June 2012 by in response to the conflict in Syria and ensuing humanitarian crisis.  Today, we implement programmes in four Women and Girls Safe Spaces (WGSS): two in Idlib, Syria and two in Bekaa, Lebanon, reaching thousands of beneficiaries annually.  We work in four integrated programmatic areas: 

• Protection - Psychosocial support,
• Empowerment - Education and Vocational Skills training,
• Participation - Leadership training and Rights Awareness
• Advocacy and Campaigning - at the local and international level. 

At Women Now we work from the ground up, to empower ourselves, and the community around us in order to bring about significant, long-term change.

ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:

Under the direction of Program Manager, Empowerment Officer will work to complete the following tasks:

• Coordinating trainers to ensure that programmes are implemented according to the workplan and targets set in logframe.
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• Identifying and reporting any issues that arise to the Programme Director.  These may include for example, changes in need or context, challenges to implementation, or budgetry issues, or barriers to access to our services.
• Working in collaboration with the Programme Director and other members of the team, to generate creative strategies to improve the quality of our programming and to pre-empt or respond to any issues as they arise.
• Leading on the implementation of agreed strategies, in coordination with the Centre Managers, M&E Officer and trainers. 
• May be requested to deliver limited number of trainings to beneficiaries as part of Empowerment programme
• Supporting the drafting of proposals, logframes and M&E plans
• Supporting Finance team with budget planning and monitoring spending within programme area
• Assisting with M&E planning and procedures and ensuring that sufficient data is collected in order to report on set outputs and outcomes.
• Assisting with narrative report writing.  This includes written analysis of the impact of programmes, challenges faced, solutions implemented, lessons learnt etc, as well as updating numerical data on outputs and outcomes.
• Conducting research and delivering presentations as required.
• Presenting the Empowerment programmes to donors in professional and positive manner
• Facilitating relationships with other partners.
• Attending trainings and ensuring that knowledge is shared with members of the team who may find it useful
• Other ad hoc tasks as required

PERSONAL SPECIFICATIONS:

Qualifications, Knowledge and Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in project management, gender studies, education, development or another relevant subject
• 2+ years’ experience working in either Rights-based NGOs, or Humanitarian NGOs
• Experience of working on programmes specifically for women and/or adolescent girls
• Knowledge/experience of programme area: in adult education and vocational skills training
• Experience of project cycle management:
  • needs assessment and needs monitoring,
  • project planning and development including target setting
  • budget planning
  • managing implementation according to targets and the workplan,
  • spending monitoring
  • drafting narrative reports,
  • monitoring and evaluation
• Understanding of safeguarding and child protection, accountability to affected populations, donor requirements, budgeting and financial constraints, due diligence
• Experience of coordinating a small team and ability to foster a sense of community amongst team members
• Experience of delivering trainings to a group
• Experience in working on programmes specifically for women and girls and sophisticated understanding of gender mainstreaming
• Excellent understanding of Lebanese context, specifically issues facing Syrian refugees
• Experience in activism particularly related to women’s rights and/or issues affecting Syrian refugees (desirable)
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Skills

• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills: ability to build and maintain good relations with: colleagues, beneficiaries, partners and donors
• Excellent problem-solving skills: the ability to anticipate, pre-empt and solve problems
• Excellent organizational skills and good follow-through

Language Skills:

• Excellent knowledge of Arabic is required
• Excellent knowledge written and spoken English is a strong advantage

Personal Qualities

• Keen interest in Women now’s values and strong motivation in putting them into practice.
• Team spirit. – cooperative, professional and committed
• Shows initiative and the desire to learn and grow
• Analytical, thorough and attentive to detail

• Please send a CV of 2 pages, a 1-2 page cover letter explaining how you fulfill each point in the person specification, and contact details for two referees to: [email protected]  Deadline for applications is 8 February however please send as soon as possible as we are looking to recruit quickly.
• We appreciate the time it takes to write an application, however, due to the volume of applications we may not be able to respond to all applications individually.  If you have not received a response by 11^th February, unfortunately you have not been successful this time.  We thank you for application and encourage you to apply for other opportunities with us in the future.