Humanitarian Response Manager at Oxfam Nigeria

Oxfam is an international confederation of 17 organizations (affiliates) committed to creating a just world without poverty. In Nigeria Oxfam works in the areas of Economic Justice/Sustainable Livelihoods, Humanitarian Programming to save lives, Advancing Gender Justice and Good Governance, adopting a right based approach.

We are recruiting to fill the position below:

Job Title: Humanitarian Response Manager

Location: Abuja, Nigeria
Internal Grade: C1
Contract type: Fixed term
Reporting to: The Country Director
Staff reporting to this post: Protection Coordinator, EFSVL Coordinator, WASH Coordinator
Hours of work: 39.2 per week. This is a full-time role

Job Purpose

• The Humanitarian Response Manager ensures the development, coordination, and implementation of the humanitarian strategy and priority frameworks at the country level; ensures that Oxfam and partners have the capacity to prevent, mitigate and respond rapidly and proportionately to humanitarian emergencies with a focus on Protection and EFS-VL, and in the event of an emergency, to Coordinate Oxfam's humanitarian responses and manage our humanitarian response delivery with partners within the frameworks as agreed in Oxfam and under the guidance of the Country Director..

Key Responsibilities
Programme Development and Resource Mobilization (30%):

• Lead the development and delivery of the humanitarian preparedness programme in Nigeria liaising across the Oxfam confederation, ensuring, as required, tactical and effective engagement from programme staff within connectors, advisors and knowledge hubs.
• Lead and coordinate programme teams, based on the one programme approach, by integrating Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and Climatic Change (CC) with all Programme Pillars; fostering collaborative, coordinated and close working relations with all Programme and Support Team Managers
• Ensure that the programme frameworks, while embracing humanitarian principles, are aligned towards working more with others and in partnerships and networks
• Provide and share regular analysis on political and programme developments from a variety of sources as they relate to humanitarian preparedness
• Provide leadership to the overall Oxfam humanitarian preparedness in-country, including coordinating capacity development, design, testing and regular updating of the Oxfam contingency plan in-country and ensuring timely decision-making by the country leadership team at the onset of an emergency.
• Provide leadership and coordination of the entire Oxfam response (e.g. strategy, fundraising, information management, management of Real Time Evaluations), in co-ordination with the country leadership team
• Ensure up to date and quality documentation of hazard and conflict mapping linked with contingency and activity plans to reduce impact and increase capacity of partners and Oxfam to respond to the different hazards
• Ensure timely programme/project development that reflects the scale of needs/crisis
• Analyse the gaps at Oxfam and partners level and identify inputs and learning to decrease the gaps and increase Oxfam aspiration to manage Category 2 disaster at country level.
• Support the team to ensure programme learning and innovation are documented and shared at appropriate national, regional and international l level
• At times of crisis, coordinate timely engagement of the country programme in participatory needs assessment with Partners, OI Affiliates, INGO/NGO Forums, UN-led Cluster and/or Government representatives, as the crisis dictates/allows.
• Identify and foster potential partnership and consortium building essential for joint responses to calls for proposals and influencing work
• Working closely with the Country Director, Programmes Director and Business Support Manager,
• Business Development Manager to support in the development of donor engagement plans, meetings with donors and business operations
• Lead in programme design workshops and processes
• Support in strategic donor intelligence gathering, trends analysis and generation of information needed for effective engagement with and influencing of global, regional and country level donors.
• In close collaboration with the Business Development Manager, actively support the identification of funding opportunities and facilitating/leading proposal development and writing with programmes teams
• Develop and maintain a strong working relationship with Oxfam affiliates leading to joint identification of funding opportunities and development of proposals for respective home donors.

Advocacy and Influencing (35%):

• Establish and maintain functional relationships with policy makers, government officials, political parties, civil society, development partners and other interest groups who can either be targets or alliance partners of humanitarian response related advocacy and influencing work
• Regularly liaise with humanitarian preparedness advisers and focal points in other agencies and organizations (including UN Agencies, Government MDAs, INGOs, local NGOs and community groups), and within Oxfam globally
• Establish and support existing humanitarian preparedness and alliance forums useful for formulation of common actions to tackle policies, attitudes and practices associated with poverty
• Facilitate development of common humanitarian preparedness positions and policy products (policy papers, position papers etc) necessary for lobbying for changes in policies, institutions and attitudes.
• Actively participate in and lead where appropriate civil society humanitarian preparedness advocacy and networking platforms and initiatives as is relevant for advocacy on poverty reduction and improvement of the welfare of marginalized and poor communities in Nigeria.
• Develop strategic partnerships with interest groups engaged in the humanitarian sector to develop sound humanitarian multi-country programming and influencing work at the local, national and regional level.
• Working with the Programmes Director, Gender Justice Manager, and the programme teams, and relevant civil society consortiums, proactively lobby policymakers for changes in policies, systems, attitudes, and cultures that effectively undermine the full enjoyment of rights by women and marginalized groups in Nigeria.
• Ensure the development and implementation of campaigns on humanitarian preparedness and women’s right.
• Convene appropriate campaign decision –making fora, working closely with appropriate policy and media colleagues in the country, region and globally in relation to campaigns with relevance to the Nigeria Humanitarian Preparedness programme
• Work closely with the Programmes Director and Programme staff to recommend approaches around high-level public policy decisions, drawing on information from within and outside the organization, considering sensitivities within the political context, and implications for public perception of Oxfam and its programming.
• Lead and coordinate Humanitarian Preparedness programme teams, creating necessary condition for them to take an active role in influencing through greater networking, alliance building and encouraging collaborative planning and implementation of project activities
• Actively engage with the OI Rights in Crisis (RiC) and Economic Justice campaigns
• In collaboration with the Gender Justice team, ensure the rights of women, men and those most vulnerable are upheld; and that international commitments and agreed principles, standards and codes are understood, promoted and complied to. (These include: The Code of Conduct for the International Red Cross Movement and NGOs in Disaster Relief, the SPHERE Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards, the Human Accountability Partnership (HAP) Principles of Accountability, the Guiding Principles for Working with Internally Displaced Persons (OCHA)).

Security Management (15%):

• Work closely with the Country Director and the Security Coordinator to inform, manage and strengthen personal, team and partner security, through effective situation and risk analysis and Standard Operating Plans.
• Ensure effective and appropriate security acceptance and protection measures are introduced to all Field and Partner operations
• Assess and develop team and Partner security management capacity and manage the impact security can have on programming, particularly its influence on programme cycle management processes in areas of limited access.

Capacity Building of Partners and People Movements (10%):

• Develop humanitarian baseline analysis across the programme, where it is missing, and support staff to develop skills to be able to conduct high quality governance analysis.
• Lead in development of strategies to strengthen staff and partners capabilities in humanitarian preparedness related matters
• Advise HR on recruitment and capacity building needs for the Humanitarian Preparedness programme team to ensure appropriate human resourcing and capacity levels of the team
• Develop and implement a detailed plan for building the capacity of partner organizations, especially in advocacy and lobbying and organization development. This will include needs assessment, capacity building approach and delivery plan including tools and methodologies, performance standards, and evaluation approach
• Provide specialist humanitarian and advocacy advice or specific skills to the country programme staff and its partners

People Management (10%):

• Line manages the Humanitarian Preparedness Team ensuring that its operations is in accordance with Oxfam’s policies and procedures, including but not limited to the Code of Conduct, Performance Management, Security, Health and Safety and local
• Provide technical and budgetary oversight for projects within the Humanitarian Response specifically
• Ensuring that donor contracts are effectively managed, including regular communication with donors and programmes compliance with donor’s requirements (alignment with procurements guidelines as per funding agreements).
• Participate in Country Leadership Team (CLT) processes, contributing to the overall management and leadership of the country programme. Create and support an environment which results in strong partnerships, influence, knowledge sharing and innovation.
• Ensure logistics and general administrative management in compliance with Oxfam policies, procedures, and guidelines and in consultation and coordination with the Logistics and Administration team who will ensure that sufficient technical, legal and advisory support is provided as required.
• Ensure contract management in compliance with Oxfam and Donor policies, procedures and guidelines; in consultation and coordination with the Business Support Team who will ensure that sufficient technical, legal and advisory support is provided as required.
• Ensuring management and coordination of the different projects implemented by the programmes team.
• Ensure effective budget management, including monitoring and review of operational budgets covering all aspects of the project on a monthly basis and delivering high quality and timely donor’s
• reports.
• Create and support an environment which results in strong partnerships, influence, knowledge sharing and innovation.
• Lead on emergency and non-emergency finance resource management in compliance with Oxfam policies, procedures, and guidelines and in consultation and coordination with the Finance team who will ensure that sufficient technical, legal and advisory support is provided as required.
• Lead talent management and development of Humanitarian Preparedness staff

Miscellaneous:

• Be prepared to undertake other duties related to Oxfam’s programme as and when required by the Country Director

Others:

• Required to adhere to Oxfam’s principles and values as well as the promotion of gender justice and women's rights
• Understanding of and commitment to adhere to equity, diversity, gender, child safety and staff health and wellbeing principles

Skills, Experience & Knowledge
Essential:

• Advanced Degree in Humanitarian Studies, Development Studies, Project Management or any relevant qualification
• A minimum of 5 years’ experience in a similar position

Influencing:

• Technical knowledge of lobbying and advocacy methods.
• Significant work experience, including policy influencing, networking and alliance building with other agencies and civil society in Nigeria
• Strong results orientation, including a track-record of leading programme development processes that have resulted in strong programmes and quality relationships with partners and funders.
• Excellent representational and lobbying skills, and experience of advocacy with senior decision makers.
• Practical experience using the systems theory in addressing underlying structural causes of poverty or dysfunctional relationships
• Practical experience in leading influencing work contributing towards change in power relations, attitudes, and beliefs, and the formulation and implementation of official policies, laws/regulations, budgets in ways that promote more just societies without poverty
• Awareness and understanding of how media works and how to brief them

Programme Development and Funding:

• Excellent understanding of different aspects of quality programming (for example: partnership, participation, accountability, innovation, gender and monitoring, evaluation and learning) and how these can be incorporated into different interventions.
• Strong results orientation, including a track-record of leading programme development processes that have resulted in strong programmes and quality relationships with partners and funders.
• Evidence of successfully fundraising and growing programmes in an environment comparable to Oxfam
• Knowledge of donor environment, understanding of funding issues in relation to Northern and Southern NGOs work in emergencies and development.
• Creative and innovative approach – ability to lead thinking on technology choices and development approaches.
• Ability to develop programme design documents – including strong appreciation of theories of change (logic models, log-frames), contextual analyses (e.g. power, gender), budgets, MEAL plans.
• Ability and experience in leading programme development sessions/workshops
• Demonstrable understanding of programme/project cycle management practices in development programming.
• Strong technical competence in research, learning and monitoring and evaluation methods theory and practice; and, good critical grasp of latest sector thinking, codes, standards and practice;
• Evidence of leadership of impact assessment processes within an INGO or other institution.

Operational Leadership:

• Proven evidence of leadership skills including the ability to challenge, motivate and develop direct reports and terms
• Demonstrated ability to work successfully in large and complex organizations such as international NGOs. (Experience in advisory or matrix-based working an asset.)
• Ability to manage multiple processes at once – simultaneously understanding the ‘big picture’ but also aware of details.
• Ability to solve complex problems involving multiple stakeholders and interests.
• Ability to design, draft and review legal contracts and partnership agreements.
• Very strong analytical and conceptual thinking skills, able to translate complex issues into simple, workable actions and plans.

Cross-cutting:

• Understanding of gender issues in development and humanitarian programming, including key challenges and approaches to mainstreaming gender into programme design and management.
• Knowledge of training tools and methods and proven experience delivering training on accountability and transparency -responsive programmes and advocacy.
• Ability to adapt and work within a multicultural, multilingual and multidisciplinary environment.
• Ability to travel regularly at short notice.
• Excellent people skills, with proven ability to motivate others and work collaboratively, requiring strong self-awareness and inter-personal skills.

Desirable:

• Experience designing or managing programming in fragile or conflict affected contexts.
• Familiarity with Oxfam’s business rules and programme quality processes is an asset.
• Sufficient knowledge of Oxfam’s priorities and development and humanitarian programme work an advantage.

How to Apply
Interested and qualified candidates should send their Applications to: [email protected] using the Job Title as the subject of the email.

Note

• Shortlisted candidates will be assessed on our organisational values and attributes at the interview stage.
• The successful candidate(s) will be expected to adhere to our code of conduct. We encourage candidates to read and understand our code of conduct here.
• Oxfam offers various flexible arrangements which candidates can discuss with the Recruiting Manager at interview stage.
• Screening checks: All successful candidates will be screened through Refinitiv WorldCheck One to comply with counter terrorism and financial sanctions regulations.