Project Officer (Technical + MEL)

Vacancy Announcement

Aasaman Nepal in partnership with Mercy Corps is implementing the Climate Resilience for Communities (CRC) program under Zurich Climate Resilience Alliance (ZCRA) in Madhesh Province. The Zurich Climate Resilience Alliance (ZCRA) is an alliance of nine organizations including international NGOs, private sector, and academic organizations, who have come together with the support of the Zurich Foundation to drive better policy and practice to reduce the negative impact of multi hazards (floods and heatwaves) on people’s and communities’ ability to thrive. The Alliance finished its first phase in 2018, second phase in Dec 2023 and third phase will run till Dec 2027. During this time, the Alliance will take a system approach and implement a combination of pilot programs, research, knowledge management and work to influence community donors, policy makers, and practitioners to invest in climate resilience through:

• Strengthened DRRM and CCA governance in Province and Local Level.
• Increased financing Government’s financing on DRRM and CCA at all levels of government.
• Enhanced Private Sector’s role in supporting DRRM and CCA efforts.

Mercy Corps is leading the ‘influencing and advocacy’ work within the Alliance, as well as making substantial contributions to work streams on knowledge management, research, and piloting innovative field programming with communities, private sector, and government.

1. Project Officer (Technical + MEL) Based in Rautahat, Field Office 

Job Summary

The Project Officer is responsible for implementation and quality assurance of community interventions of Climate Resilience for Communities (CRC) program including Palika and Community level advocacy and influencing. S/He will ensure alignment of the project activities with the project’s Theory of Change. S/He will supervise the field level community facilitators and ensure the achievement of high-quality program delivery and results ensuring Gender equality and social inclusion and governance as cross cutting components. S/he will directly report to the Project Coordinator and take leadership on Palika and community level implementation of the program activities and ensure the program MEL system is well functioning. S/he will collaborate/ interact with government (both local government and provincial government as required), UN, NGOs/ INGOs and private sector representatives at district and Palika level. 

Essential Job Responsibilities

The specific duties and responsibilities of the Project Officer include, but are not limited to the following:

A. PROGRAM IMPLEMENTATION (50%)

• Constantly align project activities with project’s Theory of Change and work plan of CRC phase III.
• Ensure set targets, work plans and schedules for each month and achieved on regular basis.
• Ensure the quality of climate resilient actions implementation at Palika and community level.
• Provide technical and management inputs to project staff to enhance effectiveness of program implementation and program cycle management. E.g.: quality planning, stakeholder engagement and implementation of the project activities.
• Ensure high quality program reports are generated and shared with Project Coordinator/Manager within the given timeline.
• Technical capacity building of community facilitators.
• Coordinate with Palikas and wards and support them to facilitate and formulate the DRR-CCA plan and policies and support local government to implement those plan/policies in risk informed development.
• Support Palikas to operationalize the Local Emergency Operation Center and Bipad portal.
• Lead the Palika level training on DRR-CCA.

B. ADVOCACY, INFLUENCE & REPRESENTATION (20%)

• Represent the CRC program with communities and the government and other external stakeholders. Ensure regular and on-going coordination with key governments, non-governmental, donor, private sector and stakeholders related to the climate and flood resilience agenda at Palika level.
• Coordinate with Coordinator on stakeholder mapping including climate and flood resilience interventions and planning at District and Palika level.
• Coordinate with Project Coordinator to Identify, document and communicate the changes in context and policy.
• Implement project influencing strategies at district level, municipality level and at community level.
• Suggest and support Project Coordinator to develop appropriate influencing materials for effective implementation of influencing strategies.
• Establish network and maintain strategic relations with relevant local stakeholders, to continually inform, challenge, and improve Project advocacy, strategy, and program development.

C. MONITORING, EVALUATIONS & KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT (30%)

• Lead the database management of the project progresses regularly 
• Support to execute research initiatives to support the program’s influencing agenda. Provide support to Project coordinator to identify and disseminate strong cases to influence communities, governments, and donors to improve investment for climate and flood resilience.
• Ensure proper integration of GESI (Gender Equality & Social Inclusion), CARM (Community accountability & Response mechanisms) aspects into sector-specific program planning and implementation.
• Support planning and production of effective, thoughtful, and timely written products that advance policy perspectives in brief reports.
• Support appropriate actions for institutional memory of produced knowledge products.
• Monitor and evaluate the impact of advocacy and communication work at different level.
• Prepare concept note and produce quality report of each event.

OTHERS

• Represent professionally and personally in such a manner as to bring credit to Aasaman Nepal and Mercy Corps Nepal and to not jeopardize their humanitarian mission.
• Expected to be part of humanitarian and emergency response in addition to their regular roles and responsibilities in such situations.
• Other duties as assigned by the direct Supervisor.
• Proactively ensure that team members operate in a secure environment and are aware of policies.

ACCOUNTABILITY TO BENEFICIARIES

• Project team members are expected to support all efforts toward accountability, specifically to our beneficiaries and to international standards guiding international relief and development work, while actively engaging beneficiary communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring, and evaluation of our field projects.
• Team members are expected to conduct themselves in a professional manner and respect local laws, customs and ASN’s policies, procedures, and values always and in all in-country venues.

SUPERVISORY RESPONSIBILITY

Community facilitators

ACCOUNTABILITY

• Reports Directly to: Project coordinator
• Works Directly with: Community Facilitators, Humanitarian lead- Aasaman Nepal, Province Coordinator- Mercy Corps

KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE

• Bachelor’s degree in Environment Science/ Disaster Risk Reduction and Management/ Forestry/ Natural Resource Management/Social science and another relevant field. Master’s degree is preferred.
• 2-4 years of experience successfully managing similar projects. (Program+ MEAL)
• Good knowledge of Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation, and Resilience in community and all tier of government.
• Good in community mobilization with sound coordination and communication skills.
• Experience of providing capacity building training and orientations to diverse teams.
• Strong organizational skills and ability to effectively handle multiple tasks, work under pressure and meet tight deadlines.
• Understanding of system change, influencing, research, monitoring and evaluation and knowledge management.
• Demonstrated proficiency with the MS Office software (i.e., Word, Excel, PowerPoint) is required.
• Ability to work effectively with an ethnically diverse team in a sensitive environment.

Languages: Fluency in Nepali and local language & communication skills required. 

• Aasaman has zero tolerance of abuse and exploitation of vulnerable people. We expect all our employees/volunteers to ensure we are protecting children, young people and vulnerable adults from harm and abide by our safeguarding policy.
• Other Attributes for all positions: Excellent quality of work and commitment to high standards, effective communication skills, team building and willingness and motivated for good service delivery with strong networking and interpersonal skills and comfortable to work under stress and emergencies.

Age Limit: Candidates between 21 years to 55 years are only eligible to apply for the above position, depending upon the nature of the job they will have.

All employees must adhere to child safeguarding in person’s provisions covered in the project agreement.

Monitor staff and partners’ and ensure adherence to Aasaman Nepal's policies and internal procedures, protocols, Aasaman Nepal's code of Conduct with special attention to Safeguarding Standards and Procedure, Case Handling Framework, Child Protection and Do No Harm Policies. Also, immediate reporting and redress of any complaints and issues based on its severity.

Notes:

• Locals, especially women, and members of ethnic or marginalized communities are encouraged to apply for this position.
• Applications received after the deadline will not be considered, and only shortlisted candidates will be notified for further processing.
• Canvassing at any stage of the recruitment process shall lead to the automatic disqualification of the candidate.

Interested candidates are requested to submit their filled-out application by downloading the link below along with an updated CV and cover letter by 30/03/2025. 

https://forms.gle/Fq22RSj39sgBfsWm6

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted for participation in the recruitment process. No telephone inquiry is entertained. ASN reserves the right to qualify or disqualify any application without any reason.