Senior Project Manager

Founded in 1933 at the request of Albert Einstein, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) responds to serious humanitarian crises around the world and helps victims to survive and rebuild their lives.

For over half a century, Tanzania has been a country of asylum, hosting one of the largest refugee populations in Africa.  Currently, the country hosts approximately 287,903 Burundian and Congolese refugees, many of whom arrived in 2015 as the crisis in Burundi increased. To date, refugees continue to co-exist with the host communities in Kigoma region expressing multiple reasons and needs. Within this context, IRC provides protection and basic assistance in the areas of Safety (comprises of Protection and Rule of Law, Women Protection and Empowerment, and Child Protection), Health (mental health and psychosocial support services and reproductive health), and Education.

Job Overview: 

PlayMatters is a consortium project, led by the IRC and includes Plan International, War Child Holland, Behavioral Insights Team, and Innovations for Poverty Action in partnership with the LEGO Foundation. PlayMatters promotes an active teaching method that capitalizes on a child’s natural desire to engage in play, focusing on building skills so that teachers and communities to intentionally plan to deliver contextually and age-appropriate guided play experiences to achieve specific learning objectives.  PlayMatters promotes LtP experiences that promotes child-centered learning, allowing peer interactions that provides children aged 3-12+ with the platform to question, experiment, practice, and discover, developing critical skills that they need to thrive today and in future. In Tanzania PlayMatters are implementing 3 main objectives.

·         Outcome 1: Integrate Learning through Play into Teaching & Learning

·         Outcome 2: Increase Community Engagement in Learning through Play

·         Outcome 3: Strengthen & Integrate Learning through Play in Policy & Systems

The Senior Project Manager will lead the programmatic and operational tasks related to the workplan, maintaining an updated version of the workplan and documenting decision-making, facilitating key management tasks, routine monitoring of technical progress and financial performance, workplan/budget realignments, etc. The role will support in all project management and administrative elements of the PM by leading the design and implementation of the PM Tanzania project management system, as well as designing tools and templates to improve, optimize and streamline all areas of the PM. The Sr project manager will work very closely with the Grants, finance and technical unit and the regional team for effective collaboration and implementation of PM project.

The Senior Project Manager will report to the country level Project Technical Lead.

Major Responsibilities

1. Award & Partnership Management:

• Maintain a broad and deep understanding of donor policies, regulations, and procedures and provide relevant guidance to the Tanzania Project Management Committee. Ensure that the award is well-administered and implemented in compliance with relevant donor regulations and IRC procedures (e.g., legal expectations, IRC PEERS policy, etc.).
• Lead internal and external reporting with programs and finance teams, ensuring high-quality, well-written and timely reports meeting donor and IRC requirements. Manage reporting timelines and processes for consortium, including developing and communicating timelines, providing reporting support/follow-up when needed, coordinating internal reviews and partner responses/revisions, and escalating major issues to Regional SMT. 
• Support the development, review, and amendment of donor, partnership, service, and collaboration agreements/amendments. 
• Continue to build upon and improve grant management tools and processes for effectiveness, feasibility, and consistency across the consortium.
• Lead development and review of annual project planning documents, including budgets, workplans, technical narratives and milestones, and targets. Support Senior Regional Project & Partnerships Coordinator to obtain donor and partner approval of annual deliverables. 
• Support routine technical and financial/compliance monitoring and evaluation of consortium partners and IRC country programs, including coordinating timelines, travel, and expectations of RPT and consortium teams. Lead documentation and communication of achievements, lessons learned, challenges, and changes needed. 

2. Project Management Systems

• Lead the design, roll-out and implementation of the PM Tanzania project management web-based system. Collaboratively develop a system approval and escalation flow process and monitor its implementation.
• Lead the PM Ethiopia consortium project management capacity building initiatives to ensure full utilization of the project management tools and systems. This will include conducting project management trainings, refresher trainings, on-boarding new staff and developing trainings for project management aspect on a need’s basis.
•  Increase efficiency and quality of project implementation by analyzing gaps and barriers, identify optimization opportunities, and troubleshoot issues in processes and workflows.
• Active participation in Project Cycle Meetings (PCMs) during the course of the project e.g., update the dashboard timely and follow up on action points agreed upon during the PCMs.
• Support the coordination of PM work planning and reporting process working in close collaboration with consortium members.
• Oversee knowledge management maintenance, including the creation of comprehensive resource and material maps for relevant content, documents, and templates.

• Provide inputs for budget realignment, quarter and interim reporting to the Project Coordinator.

3. Coordination

• Proactively identify awards management risks throughout the portfolio and creatively develop solutions in collaboration with Project Coordinator
• Support the Project Coordinator- PlayMatters to develop relevant communications materials, updates, and presentations for donors, senior leadership, or other external bodies (e.g., local stakeholders) in collaboration with the Communications and Technical Departments.
• Write or review donor communications, such as responding to requests for information, and assist with coordinating donor visits.
• Support relationship building with potential partners (both formal and informal), in collaboration with relevant Technical Department staff.

Key Working Relationships:

• Position Reports to: PlayMatters Technical Lead
• Position directly supervises: Project Officers
• Other Internal and/or external contacts: Education Team, PlayMatters regional leadership team, other consortium team