JOB DESCRIPTION

Vacancy-Job Ref: JKMLMC/1906/202467 Mercy Corps is a leading global organization In disaster, in hardship, in more than 40 countries around the world, we partner to put bold solutions into action — helping people triumph over adversity and build stronger communities from within. Now, and for the future.

📌 ### 📌 PROGRAM / DEPARTMENT SUMMARY

Mercy Corps is seeking a Director of Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting (CLA) for the anticipated USAID-funded “Regional Resilience Activity in the Sahel Region.” Funded and managed out of the USAID Sahel Regional Office, the anticipated program seeks to expand resilience in the Sahel by improving the ability of individuals, households, and communities to mitigate, adapt to, and recover from multi-faceted shocks and stresses. Implementation is planned for Burkina Faso, Chad, Mauritania and The Gambia – with the possibility of additional countries – and is expected to include the management of multiple awards under a single mechanism.

📌 ### 📌 GENERAL POSITION SUMMARY

The CLA Director will be responsible for leading and overseeing all CLA activities in the program. The CLA Director is an important position in the program responsible for driving strategy discussions and design of the CLA approach, providing technical assistance and developing successful mechanisms for learning. They will oversee co-development and facilitation of collaboration and learning workshops with MEL and technical leads, the establishment and management of robust knowledge management systems, and the engagement of team members and partners in identifying evidence-based ways to adapt and scale interventions. The CLA Director will use USAID’s Collaboration, Learning, and Adapting principles with a resilience lens to effectively integrate real time monitoring and learning back into the project strategy and program implementation and ensure knowledge is shared with the broader Sahelian implementation and donor community. They will design and lead the program’s overall approach to fostering CLA and supervise the learning agenda, knowledge management, and reporting functions to systematically generate, synthesize, share, and apply learning, effective, and adaptive management.

📌 ### 📌 ESSENTIAL RESPONSIBILITIES

📌 ### 📌 STRATEGY & VISION

●Provide overall leadership, management, and technical direction for program’s CLA activities. Develop and implement a CLA strategy grounded in a resilience approach and aligned with the program’s goals and the USAID Sahel Regional Office’s objectives. Develop and oversee a CLA workplan of planned activities, ensuring the strategy is implemented impactfully and on-time. ●Promote and actively strengthen a culture of collaboration, learning and adaptation across the program and region.

📌 ### 📌 TECHNICAL LEADERSHIP

●Design and facilitate CLA activities in co-creation with relevant technical representatives and partner organizations, including knowledge sharing, technical exchanges, learning events, and regular reflection sessions amongst both internal stakeholders (team members, partners) and external (peer agencies, local and regional institutions, and USAID implementing partners). ●Provide strategic guidance, technical assistance and capacity-building support to program staff and partners on CLA principles, practices and tools. ●Establish and nurture partnerships and regular communication with implementing partners, local organizations, donors, and other stakeholders to leverage resources and knowledge towards aligned objectives. Facilitate coordination and collaboration among these groups. ●Identify and build strategic linkages with complementary regional and local institutions and platforms to strengthen collective impact, reinforce local institutions’ resilience building efforts and make best use of resource allocation. ●Work closely with the MEL Director to ensure the coherent design and implementation of the leader project’s systems for monitoring, evaluations, internal and external reviews and learning agenda to assess the quality and effectiveness and impact of CLA efforts and adapt accordingly. ●Collaborate with M&E teams to adopt a holistic program-level CLA system and ensure that data collection and analysis is both systematic and properly utilized to support adaptive management. Use M&E findings to inform project decision-making and adapt strategies. ●Establish and manage the project’s knowledge management systems to track, curate and share knowledge products among partners.

📌 ### 📌 ●Ensure that tasks are performed to a high professional standard and fulfill donor and Mercy Corps’ CLA requirements, and that all deliverables are of high quality and met in a timely fashion.

●Lead and manage a team of CLA specialists. ●Actively hire, orient and lead team members and consultants as necessary, ensuring effective onboarding mechanisms are in place across the team. Actively support succession planning. ●Strengthen the capacity of the team as needed, both as individuals and as a cohesive unit. Facilitate mechanisms for effective collaboration. ●Promote accountability, communicate expectations and provide constructive feedback informally and formally via regular one on ones and performance reviews. ●Create and sustain a work environment of mutual respect where team members strive to achieve excellence.

📌 ### 📌 CAPACITY BUILDING AND MENTORING

●Develop and oversee implementation of the CLA staff and partner capacity building strategy that promotes a culture of learning through systematic analysis and reflection of program data. ●Identify and foster knowledge sharing and capacity strengthening across CLA points of contact across the countries, awards and partners. ●Build the capacity of all relevant team members to develop and maintain an excellent CLA system grounded in resilience approach principles, including regular reflection and analysis of program monitoring data.

📌 ### 📌 ●Work closely with Program Managers, Technical Leads, Human Resources and Finance to ensure that CLA skills are incorporated into all program position descriptions and positions are budgeted for.

●Contributes to the knowledge management repository with best practices in CLA and ensure that it is accessible to all staff and partners. ●Create and sustain a work environment of mutual respect where team members strive to achieve excellence.

📌 ### 📌 INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL COORDINATION

●Identify key stakeholders and partners at both the country and regional level and establish mechanisms for collaboration. Actively contribute and collaborate with regional and global counterparts to promote the use of CLA best practices. ●Share program learnings and impact with regional and host-county stakeholders including consortium partners, subgrantees, public and private sector entities, local government and other implementers, as well as with other Mercy Corps programs.

📌 ### 📌 ●Maintain close working relationships with CLA counterparts in other relevant international actors and USAID implementing partners across both the Sahel Regional Office and relevant country missions (Mali, Niger).

●Facilitate the dissemination of data, lessons learned, and best practices to program teams, local and regional stakeholders, USAID, and peer organizations across the Sahel region. ●Communicate effectively with USAID, program teams, partners, and stakeholders to ensure alignment with CLA objectives.

📌 ### 📌 ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING

●As part of our commitment to organizational learning and in support of our understanding that learning organizations are more effective, efficient and relevant to the communities they serve, we expect all team members to commit