Position: Program Management Unit – Lead (BUPGP)
Reporting Line: Director – Strategic Partnerships & Systems
Location: Patna
Number of Positions: 1
Duration – One Year
About the Project:
Similar to the Satat Jeevikoparjan Yojana (SJY) program in rural Bihar, there is a felt need for a graduation focused program in urban areas of Bihar for the urban ultra poor. Project Concern International, under the aegis of BRAC India, would therefore, work towards poverty alleviation of urban ultra poor, in two urban wards of the two districts Gaya & Patna. The Bihar Urban Poor Graduation Program (BUPGP) is envisaged to build on the knowledge of SJY program and partner with key stakeholders in urban Bihar to pilot this Graduation program in an urban context. The BUPGP would be piloted from July 2023 to March 2024 in the aforementioned geographies. The BUPGP is envisaged to have four pillars ; (1) facilitating social protection to support basic income security and immediate needs, such as food consumption support, crisis relief, and access to health, and education; (2) livelihoods promotion consisting of an asset transfer and/or skills training, or cash transfer, to manage the asset or access (self)employment opportunities; (3) financial inclusion to ensure direct access to convenient, formal or informal financial services, accompanied with financial literacy training; and (4) social empowerment through regular check-ins with Graduation coaches and life- skills support that build confidence and resilience. To successfully execute, the above-mentioned program, PCI would embed a team of 5 officials under Bihar Skill Development Mission (BSDM) to set up a program management unit (PMU). The farsighted approach of the program is to enable co-designing and implementing of program in close coordination with government department for attaining programs sustainability. For this the PMU, shall closely work with the following government departments; BSDM, the State Urban Livelihood Mission (NULM), the Urban Development and Housing Department (UDHD), and JEEViKA for converging efforts of multiple departments towards the program. Over the period, the program is expected to develop urban graduation coaches, enable access to government entitlements for the program participants, build an urban graduation ecosystem, establish linkages for financial inclusion through leveraging government programs, develop IEC & capacity building products along with robust MIS, for systemic program adoption and upscaling.
Position Brief:
The Program Management Unit (PMU)-Lead shall head a team of four personnels; Cadre Development Expert (1), Urban Poverty Alleviation Expert (1), Program Manager-Livelihoods & Enterprise (1) and Program Officer- Gender (1). The lead along with their team, shall be responsible for coordination, successful implementation of the designed program, in collaboration with the government departments with technical support from BRAC UPGI. Additionally, the team is expected to manage the efforts of the government departments, CSOs to integrate their inputs into the departments’ overall strategy, systems, and processes.
Key Roles and Responsibilities:
A. Program Planning & Management (50%)
- Develop and refine program strategies, goals, and objectives to address the needs of the urban ultra poor population.
- Collaborate with key stakeholders to identify program priorities and ensure alignment with organizational objectives.
- Design and implement a comprehensive program management framework to track progress and achieve program targets.
- Enable adaptive learning during the pilot phase and develop a strategy to scale the BUPGP.
- Facilitate, support development and customization of training resource material & tools for training of graduation coaches.
- Lead the design and structuring of all major knowledge products (including reports, Lessons Learnt Documents, workshop reports, etc.)
- Oversee support & conduct timely training of all graduation coaches identified under the project.
- Discuss with government department and determine the key indicators of progress and impact of the project, data to be captured through the MIS and analyses to be carried out.
- Identify best practices and lessons learned to guide programme improvement and strategy planning for scale up.
- Report any major or unforeseen roadblocks to senior management of PCI India to ensure that the project stays on course.
- Facilitate in developing the MIS dashboard in consultation with the government partners for continuous project monitoring & assessment.
- Work closely with program support team to ensure judicious use of project resources in compliance with organizational policies, along with proper management of project grant.
- Lead in managing and optimizing project operations, contract management in close coordination with Director-Strategic partnerships & Systems.
- Lead the team in developing the projects calendar & adhering to the timelines.
- Lead strategic interface with the key government stakeholders & personnel of the project on day-to-day basis.
- Maintain excellent relationship and meaningful association primarily through and facilitated by the governmental and non-governmental organizations and ensuring that the technical support provided by PCI team is valued by them and the project creates an enabling environment for its sustainability.
- Maintain and manage the channels of communication with the leadership teams of PCI.
- Ensure excellent communication and good working relationship with Government stakeholders, & other key players at the state level including other NGOs and civil society organizations.
Qualifications and Competencies:
Education:
- Post-graduate degree/ diploma in management (preferably rural management) or masters in gender/women studies pertaining to their empowerment & holistic development from premier institutes.
Experience:
- The ideal candidate should have minimum 10 years of experience in project management, livelihoods, urban development, working with government and international donors, with significant experience of working on ultra poor program.
Skills & Attributes:
- Knowledge and experience of ultra poor projects.
- Knowledge of large-scale women empowerment program.
- Strong knowledge of social protection systems, safety nets, health promotion, and nutrition interventions.
- Familiarity with relevant policies, guidelines, and best practices in social protection, health, and nutrition of ultra poor.
- Strong knowledge of gender issues, social norms, and gender-based violence prevalent in urban settings.
- Familiarity with approaches and methodologies for gender analysis and gender-responsive program design and implementation.
- Strong leadership capabilities & people management skills.
- Good analytical and problem-solving skills.
- Excellent oral and written command in English & Hindi
- Sound knowledge of database systems, and PowerPoint. Command on excel and budget management is a plus.
B. Stakeholder and Partnership Management (20%)
• Lead strategic interface with the key government stakeholders & personnel of the project on day-to-day basis.
• Maintain excellent relationship and meaningful association primarily through and facilitated by the governmental and non-governmental organizations and ensuring that the technical support provided by PCI team is valued by them and the project creates an enabling environment for its sustainability.
• Maintain and manage the channels of communication with the leadership teams of PCI.
• Ensure excellent communication and good working relationship with Government stakeholders, & other key players at the state level including other NGOs and civil society organizations.
C. Donor management and compliance (10%)
• Submit the progress reports to and attend briefing meetings and discussions with the donor representatives under the supervision of Director-Strategic Partnerships & Systems.
• Assume accountability for the quality and timely completion of final deliverables.
• Lead the donor-facing presentation and high-level dissemination of all final products.
D. Team Management (15%)
• To appraise performance and achievement of objectives of all members of their team in a regular frequency, advisably more frequent than annually.
• To ensure high motivation level among team members and promoting their urge to constantly increase efficiency and effectiveness.
• Plan, prioritize and monitor the activities of the team on a regular basis.
E. Other responsibilities (5%)
• To carry out any other relevant duties as required
APPLICATION PROCESS
Interested candidates can apply for the position of Program Management Unit – Lead (BUPGP) by 16th June 2023.
PCI India is an equal opportunity provider and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion (creed), gender, gender expression, age, national origin (ancestry), disability, and/or marital status. Due to the heavy inflow of resumes, only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.
Female candidates are encouraged to apply.