World Concern Development Organization Africa Area Director

World Concern Development organization wishes to recruit a qualified and competent person for the following position within World Concern Africa Area office:

Position: Africa Area Director

Location: Africa Area Regional Office- Nairobi

Reports To: Senior Director, Operations.

Supervises: Country Directors- Africa, Regional Office staff and Uganda Representative.

General Summary:

The Africa Area Director is responsible for the overall leadership and management of all of World Concern’s programs in Africa; Lead national and expatriate staff in successful fundraising, program development, management and expansion of WC’s disaster assistance and development programs in Africa.

He/She ensures cohesive alignment of program, country and organizational strategies to deliver an integrated development approach to reduce extreme poverty. International travel in the region includes Somalia, Sudan, Chad, Uganda, Kenya and others as necessary. Travel to the US averages two times per year to attend meetings.

Essential Job Duties:

Leadership, Governance & Management

• Provide the strategic leadership, management, administration, planning, organization, and controls necessary to accomplish World Concern’s objectives in Africa.
• Expand organizational capacity to identify opportunities, create innovative approaches, generate quality proposals, implement successful programs and monitor for effective learning and increased impact.
• Guide staff in pursuit of the vision, mission and World Concern’s core values through exemplary Christian leadership, lifestyle and ministry integrity
• Ensure the health and spiritual growth of the organization through discipleship programs, personal modeling and fostering of transparent accountable relationships.
• Facilitate synergy between country programs to exploit core competencies or comparative advantages and overcome challenges
• Participate as a member of the World Concern Global Leadership Team providing field based perspective for the development of policies and strategic plans of World Concern.
• Maintain organizational compliance with all relevant country laws or regulations ensuring WC is in good standing with government agencies.
• Serve as Chairman of WCDO local board in Kenya bringing key issues to the forefront for discussion and decision making.
• Mentor direct reports for improved decision making, increased skill development and higher capacity to lead others.
• Ensure effective policies and procedures are being utilized to enhance selection, motivation, development, nurture and evaluation of personnel.
• Ensure organizational management tools are being implemented and completed in a timely manner.
• Responsible for staff and asset security ensuring that country programs are maintaining and implementing good security practices and procedures.
• Ensure programs in the Africa region have integrated spiritual impact strategy in operation plans that are appropriate to the country contexts.

Financial Management

• Ensure compliance with World Concern finance policies and procedures.
• Monitor program and country financial reports on a monthly basis working closely with Country Directors to ensure programs stay within available funding sources and that program expenditures are reasonable and allowable.
• Supervise the Regional Accountant and Regional Grant/Compliance Officer to ensure that financial systems and reports have integrity.
• Advise senior management regarding changes, trends or developments that might influence decision making or pose additional risk to the organization.

Communication & Reporting

• Ensure that programs and country offices deliver the necessary written, oral, and visual input for use by Resource Development to promote the work of World Concern.
• Foster effective communication throughout the organization by keeping relevant people in the know; sharing information transparently, appropriately and in a manner that engenders trust and goodwill. Ability to keep things appropriately confidential.
• Ensure timely, accurate, professional internal and external reports for all World Concern projects/programs or administration in compliance with WC, donor and other stakeholder requirements.

Networking, Donor and Public Relations

• Develop a growing inter-agency networking strategy leading to increased opportunities for partnership and program funding
• Represent World Concern as the primary contact in Africa for partnerships, organizational memberships, UN, US Government and other key relationships
• Facilitate networking and partner relationships to expand WC Africa donor base resulting in increased locally raised funding sources for all programs.
• Assure effective collaboration with fund-raising conducted out of the US by Crista and WR donor relations and marketing.

Essential Qualifications:

1) Bachelor’s Degree from an accredited institution in a relevant field. Master’s Degree in development, leadership or other relevant field is desirable

2) Minimum 7 years management experience in relief and development with at least 3 years in a senior management role. Must have extensive experience managing US Government funded programs. Prior experience working in conflict or post-conflict settings is a must. Significant experience living and working cross culturally. Proven ability to write quality program proposals. Successful at fundraising across a broad spectrum of donors.

3) Competencies:

• Leadership;
• Initiative;
• Judgment;
• Cooperation/Teamwork:
• Reliability:
• Communication:
• Problem Solving:
• Staff Development:
• Networking:
• Confidentiality

4. Excellent command of the English language both written and oral is required. Proficiency in Kiswahili is highly desirable. Ability to speak, French or Arabic is a plus.

If you possess the above qualifications and the drive to meet the challenges, please send your cover letter and a CV including a day-time telephone contact, names and contacts of three referees to worldconcernhr@wcdro.org.

The deadline for receiving the applications is 31st August, 2011.

Only short-listed candidates will be contacted.