Director of Program Development and Quality (PDQ)

The Director of Program Development and Quality (PDQ) leads strategic direction and quality assurance for Save the Children's programs in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, ensuring program relevance, coherence, safety, and impact for children. This senior leadership role involves cross-functional collaboration, program design oversight, quality monitoring, advocacy, partnership development, and staff management to achieve Save the Children's strategic goals for children in the country.

Responsibilities

• Lead the development/updating of the Child Rights Situation Analysis, including analysis of country context and taking into account child rights principles, ensuring participation and buy-in from all relevant staff, partners and other stakeholders as necessary.
• Lead the SMT to develop/update and drive forward the Country Strategy Plan (CSP) that is in line with the global strategy, Ambition 2030, with child rights at the core of all programming and advocacy work.
• Provide leadership on development of the Country Annual Plan, monitoring of progress against the plan, and completion of accurate, on-time Country Annual Report of outcomes and impact for children, aligned with the Global Results Framework.
• Facilitate the development and pursuit of thematic and cross-cutting strategic priorities in line with the CSP, including gender equality, to guide current and future SC programming and Humanitarian Strategies.
• Support ownership and commitment to the Country Office strategy by all staff and departments through clear communication, regular feedback on progress and engagement of all functions in updates.
• Participate in global discussions and working groups to represent country office, and the voice of children, in strategy design and policy development.
• Support change processes and roll-out new ways of working to improve achievement of the CSP.
• Review and position for opportunities that will drive the CSP based on tracking provided by the Awards Management team.
• Ensure technical advisors are involved in the design of proposals to assure high quality, evidence-based designs that draw on needs assessments, learning from past programs and child safeguarding principles.
• Ensure partners are identified and appropriately engaged in program design, linking with Operations and Awards teams as need be for assessments, especially to strengthen gender sensitivity at design stage.
• Ensure proposal designs and their budgets include robust MEAL plans that are aligned with the Global Results Framework and incorporate Common Approaches as relevant.
• Ensure that children and the community are involved in the design process, as appropriate.
• Ensure the country program delivers high quality, multi-sectoral programming in both development and humanitarian contexts.
• Monitor and advance technical and operational quality of programmes, including conducting regular field visits to provide feedback on quality benchmarks.
• Monitor program Key Performance Indicators and take steps to improve the quality programming platform to meet agreed upon standards.
• Work closely with the Director of Operations to ensure Quality Framework standards are met and procedures are followed throughout the project cycle and across the portfolio.
• Ensure technical experts proactively and regularly communicate planned requirements for program design, learning and implementation to relevant CO departments/functions.
• Build and lead a team of program technical experts needed to successfully deliver against the CSP.
• Ensure effective working relationships with SC global, Member and regional technical advisors, procuring technical support as needed to support program and advocacy efforts, including during Emergencies.
• Ensure that program technical experts engage in larger communities of practice within and external to Save the Children.
• Ensure that the different technical sectors of the Country Office are coordinated, integrated and support each other to optimize programs and projects.
• Ensure that child safeguarding and safe programming is embedded in program design and considered throughout implementation.
• Oversee a monitoring system that provides timely and accurate project results by embedding MEAL across program implementation.
• Lead programme quality improvements by monitoring and improving Programme KPI performance, including resourcing and conducting high-quality evaluations to demonstrate outcomes and impact.
• Ensure accountability mechanisms are in place for all projects so that identified actions are resolved, with critical issues escalated to senior management.
• Ensure the research, evaluation and policy work of the Country Office contributes to generation of evidence for development and improvement of Common Approaches, sound decision making and policy influencing internally and externally.
• Establish effective program learning and knowledge management systems to support adaptive programming and innovation.
• Contribute to ACCM on the development of an advocacy strategy and annual plans linked to the Country Strategic Plan, with clear Campaign deliverables.
• Represent Save the Children as delegated by the Country Director as part of advocacy and networking with government authorities, donors, partners, civil society actors, children and other stakeholders.
• Contribute inputs into the development and implementation of communications and media strategies to support Save the Children’s visibility and achievement of the CSP and Campaign objectives.
• Contribute to identifying, nurturing and strengthening strategic partnerships with local and international civil society organizations, NGOs, governments etc.
• Provide technical support and capability building to implementing and strategic partners as appropriate.
• Ensure appropriate staffing of Program Development and Quality team, and engagement of additional technical support when needed.
• Ensure that all PDQ staff understand and are able to perform their role in delivering first-class, quality programs for children.
• Manage individual and team performance using principles of leadership agility, and Save the Children’s performance management system.
• Ensure that staff proactively build and maintain technical, managerial and leadership skills, including competencies in child rights programming, child safeguarding and Common Approaches.
• Report all safeguarding allegations in accordance with local procedures.
• Alert any suspected safeguarding cases in accordance with the local reporting procedure.
• Report cases involving partners and other stakeholders in the implementation of SCI–DRC programs to the Safeguarding focal points.
• Contribute to the identification and analysis of Safeguarding risks within the areas of Program Development & Quality.
• Integrate Safeguarding into all proposed new programs (projects).
• Ensure that Safeguarding is addressed in the relevant sections of the Country Strategic Plan.
• Engage the affected community and populations impacted by each program in its design.
• Provide technical support for conducting Safeguarding risk assessments within the framework of all programs and projects.
• Ensure that safeguarding elements are incorporated into the Terms of Reference for Technical Advisors’ missions and into the work of sectoral workshops.

Requirements

• A minimum of seven years of progressive senior management and/or development experience, including experience designing and implementing programs for children.
• Experience in one or more of Save the Children's thematic sectors: education, child protection, child rights governance, health and nutrition, child poverty, emergencies.
• Understanding of advocacy, policy, and government systems in the host country, and particular experience with child rights programming, including UNCRC.
• Strong skills and proven experience in leading strategic planning, change management and program management processes; also from the knowledge and learning perspective.
• Strong skills and proven experience in new program development, project design and proposal writing with corporate, foundations and/or institutional donors.
• Credibility to lobby, influence and represent Save the Children at all levels.
• Experience in developing and managing monitoring, evaluation, accountability and learning systems.
• Excellent listening, inter-personal, communication and networking skills; proven experience and effectiveness working across functional teams and in a matrixed structure; and an ability to work with diverse populations.
• Skills in training, capability building, coaching, mentorship, problem solving, and project cycle management.
• High level of self-awareness and willingness to take feedback for growth and self-development.
• Proven experience as a team player and leader in an international organisation.
• Written and verbal fluency in English and in French.
• Masters’ Degree or Bachelor’s Degree, and experience in relevant social science (especially in Child Development or Community Development), human rights, development studies, NGO management or equivalent fields.

Skills

• Program Design
• Child Rights Programming
• Strategic Planning
• Change Management
• Programme Management
• Proposal Writing
• Donor Relations
• Monitoring and Evaluation
• Accountability Systems
• Learning Systems Development
• Advocacy
• Policy Analysis
• Government systems knowledge
• Training and Capacity Building
• Coaching and Mentoring
• Project Cycle Management
• Stakeholder Engagement
• Cross-Functional Collaboration
• Team Leadership
• Bilingual Communication

Languages

English, French