Part 1 – Job description
1. Main purpose of the job The Country Director (CD) is responsible for leading, managing, funding applications, representing and setting the overall direction of Tearfund’s strategy, partnerships, programmes, networking, advocacy and influencing work in line with key attributes for a Tearfund Model 3 country. Based in Nigeria, the CD ensures that the country’s strategy implementation is in line with Tearfund’s vision, corporate priorities, policies and procedures. As the most senior representative of Tearfund for the country, the CD is responsible for high-level representation to other NGOs, UN agencies, Government, the Church, donors and strategic networks. The CD is also responsible for envisioning and strengthening the Church, advocating with national authorities, participation in Integral Mission and influencing change in churches, government, society and countries in line with tearfund’s vision, strategy and corporate priority areas. The CD has overall responsibility for security management and health and safety for Tearfund staff within the country.
Position in organisation
● Grade: x
● Reports to: Regional Director
● Manages: Tearfund’s country office and any staff as required
● Works closely with: Advocacy & Influencing Teams, Human Resources Business Partner, Finance Regional Lead and other Regional staff, Thematic Support Team, Operations & Assurance, Strategy and Impact Group, HaRT.
2. Tearfund’s Christian culture
We believe that prayer and discernment is fundamental to Tearfund achieving its mission of restoring relationships, ending extreme poverty and transforming lives. As a Tearfund staff member you are encouraged to:
● Engage with Tearfund Prayers and the Prayer hub;
● Lead or participate in spiritual sessions of prayer and biblical reflection within your group;
● Be committed to Tearfund’s Mission, Values and Beliefs statement and to be actively working and living in accordance with Tearfund’s Christian beliefs and theory of mission;
● Maintain your own spiritual development, discover your gifts/callings and grow in discipleship
3. Organisational requirements
● All staff are expected to live out Tearfund’s values as they represent Tearfund externally;
● All post-holders are expected to fulfil their personal objectives set by their line manager, contribute to their team’s overall objectives, take responsibility for reviewing their ongoing personal development and maintain an awareness of Tearfund’s strategy;
● All Tearfund staff share responsibility to promote and maintain a strong safeguarding culture, including identifying the key actions they should take given their role and responsibilities;
4. Key Responsibilities
Strategy
● Responsible for the design and review of Tearfund’s strategy for the country, ensuring input from Tearfund stakeholders and external networks to shape the overall strategy as an outworking of Tearfund’s corporate vision, corporate priorities, strategic objectives and approaches for country Model 3; ● Develop and execute credible plans for ‘Resourcing Local Partners’ and ‘influencing change’, to create a potential pathway for transitioning to Model 1 or 2 (as permitted by context);
● Promote Church & Community Transformation (CCT), and Church & Community Mobilisation (CCMP) approaches, with an emphasis on catalysing and strengthening the Church for Integral Mission;
● Promote Environmental and Economic Sustainability (EES) by working with churches, governments, partners and allies to influence them to adopt more environmentally and economically sustainable approaches and policies.
● Promote Reconciled and Peace Filled Societies (RPS) by working with churches, governments, partners and allies to adopt peacebuilding and other approaches to reduce and end conflict within countries.
● Design and deliver large-scale development programmes and humanitarian responses, in line with Tearfund’s Crisis to Resilience (C2R) priority, to meet critical development and humanitarian needs;
● Promote and champion Integral Mission with the aim to grow the prevalence and effectiveness of Integral Mission by churches in their local communities, by funding humanitarian and development projects (in Tearfund’s corporate priority focus areas);
● Catalyse, envision and strengthen networks and movements of churches, theological institutions civil society actors and other key allies to influence change in government policy, economic systems, legal systems and social cultural practices;
● Envision the church to access their own resources to respond to emergencies and engage churches and church networks, who are effective in integral mission, in their local communities, with sufficient capacity and resources to reduce poverty in the local communities;
● Capacity-strengthening, that increases the vision and capacity of churches and church networks to become centres of transformation in their local communities, independently of Tearfund;
● Influence and support advocacy networks and engage in movement building efforts in line with Tearfund’s priority areas;
● Ensure formulation of country level disaster preparedness and contingency plans;
● Respond to new emergencies, coordinating with Tearfund teams and church networks to respond to disasters and other emergencies that arise.
● Monitor and act upon emerging socio-economic and political developments and humanitarian situations in country;
● Ensure Tearfund’s Quality Standards are upheld at the country level;
● Ensure coordination between the country strategy and Tearfund’s global work on the 4 corporate priorities working closely with regional roles;
● Ensure coordination and joint working between partners and direct programmes to ensure maximum synergy;
Team management and coordination
● Develop and model a team culture characterised by a shared understanding of Tearfund’s vision and programme objectives, and commitment to Tearfund’s values and behaviours;
● Implement Tearfund’s performance management system with any staff they directly supervise, with objective setting, probationary reviews, regular catch ups, 6-monthly performance appraisals, development planning and exit interviews, carried out for staff, and take appropriate remedial action to address areas of poor performance;
● Lead the management team, ensuring clarity over plans, budgets and priorities, providing supervision, guidance and mentoring, encouraging effective teamwork and inclusiveness;
● Provide spiritual leadership to the programme and pastoral support where appropriate to staff where appropriate;
● Recruit and support the required in-country team composition and an organisational structure that is diverse and inclusive, ensuring an accessible and supportive working environment and culture;
● Ensure effective onboarding and orientation
● Responsible for oversight of project and core budgets, reviewing the monthly management accounts, identifying any corrective actions required;
● Define the required in-country team composition and an organisational structure that is diverse and inclusive, ensuring an accessible and supportive working environment and culture;
● Ensure effective infrastructure and equipment, including IT/communications, is available to support the programme;
● Ensure procurement is compliant to Tearfund and donor procurement policies and procedures; Responsible for collaboration with support functions (finance, logistics, human resources, IT, technical/sector support) required to deliver the country strategy;
● Ensure projects are managed and compliant to Tearfund policies and procedures (and those of any back donors);
● Ensure all project reports are submitted on time and in accordance with required reporting formats;
● Ensure monitoring of projects to demonstrate progress and impact through field visits, reviewing project reports and ongoing communication, review beneficiary feedback, and identify corrective actions; ● Proactively draw down on technical support from Regional and Global levels to support programming and assure technical quality;
● Actively promote the capturing of learning through project reporting and field monitoring, and partner discussion groups, ensuring that learning is used effectively in country and transferred to the wider organisation;
● Ensure appropriate Tearfund registration, legal, tax and insurance requirements are met and maintained on an ongoing basis, in cases where Tearfund has an office and staff;
Funding
● Responsible for Country funding strategy;
● Supports our global funding teams by identifying projects suitable for institutional funding;
● Proactively secure sustainable funding streams, working with Tearfund’s Program Funding Support team;
● Fund community projects through local partners for maximum impact;
● Responsible for development of consortium applications with other INGOs and partners;
● Ensure reports are submitted on time and in accordance with donor requirements;
Effective Partner Management
The CD will oversee church mobilisation, partner programme coordination and capacity resourcing, and will be responsible for :
● Responsible for identifying and selecting appropriate portfolio of partners, church and advocacy networks to outwork the country strategy;
● Responsible for assessing partner capacity, managing risk, and agreeing capacity development plans;
● Responsible for the approval and funding of partner projects compliant to Tearfund policies and procedures;
● Responsible for the management of partner relationships marked by mutual trust and shared vision, and planning exits and transitions;
● Monitor Tearfund supported network and individuals to demonstrate progress and impact through visits, reviewing reports and ongoing communication, and identify corrective actions;
● Actively promote the capturing of learning through reporting and monitoring, and discussion groups, ensuring that learning is used effectively in country and transferred to the wider organisation;
● Oversee the assessment, design and implementation of partner projects, including budgets, in line with the country strategy, accepted good practice and Tearfund’s Quality Standards;
Advocacy and influencing
● Support the mobilisation of Christians and churches living justly, sustainably and inspired for integral mission;
● Work with churches, NGOs, networks and allies to inspire, empower, develop, mentor and mobilise them for advocacy;
● Responsible for identifying advocacy issues, developing position statements and briefing papers, and overseeing direct influencing at country level and arranging representation at Regional and global levels, in consultation with Advocacy Team;
Corporate policy and compliance
● Ensure the programme is compliant to policies and procedures set out in Tearfund’s Global Operating Manual;
● Ensure all reports are submitted on time and in accordance with required reporting formats;
● Responsible for security management ensuring security plans and procedures are in place implemented and regularly reviewed in line with Tearfund’s security policy and procedures, and staff/visitors are fully briefed/trained and understand their responsibilities for safety and security;
● In case of security incidents, ensure that incidents are responded to, reported, learning is recorded and corrective actions taken;
● Responsible for health and safety, ensuring Tearfund’s H&S policy is understood by staff and accidents are recorded and reported, and corrective actions taken;
● Ensure that policies and commitments regarding the safeguarding and protection of children and adults at risk and the prevention of fraud and bribery are consistently applied;
● Ensure compliance of projects to Tearfund’s Global Process System (GPS) for the development and implementation of project proposals, reporting, monitoring, evaluation, implementation of audit recommendations, learning, project completion;
● Responsible for ensuring audit and evaluation recommendations are implemented and adopted within ongoing operating procedures;
● Responsible for the corporate monthly, quarterly and annual reporting;
● Ensure appropriate Tearfund registration, legal, tax and insurance requirements are met and maintained on an ongoing basis, in cases where Tearfund has an office and staff;
● Ensure representation of the programme and raising its profile to the wider organisation through provision of information and stories for internal and external communications by other teams;
● Oversee and ensure the implementation of the counter-terror procedures;
External representation
● As the most senior representative for Tearfund in the country, responsible for high-level representation to the government, securing and maintaining the necessary approvals to operate, ensuring coordination and constructive working relations;
● Responsible for representing Tearfund externally through building relationships and networking with national Church leaders and networks, government, UN bodies, donors and INGO and NGO networks;
● Represent Tearfund to in-country donor supporting positive relations and ongoing communications;
● Responsible for developing media positions and press statements, serving as the principal local Tearfund spokesperson in media interviews, and facilitating media visits, in consultation with the global Media Team.
Do you have proven experience in implementing relief and rehabilitation projects in a humanitarian context? Then we have an exciting opportunity for you in our West Africa Team: Country Director – Nigeria.
The successful candidate will have relevant humanitarian and leadership experience, coupled with experience in managing security in a complex conflict environment, donor relationship cultivation and grants management, drafting and managing budgets and successfully mentoring, managing and developing team members. Experience of working in complex insecure locations is absolutely essential.
Responsibilities will include programme strategy and strategic oversight, partnerships and programmes management, operational oversight, policy & systems implementation, networking and representation
It is essential that the successful candidate has extensive experience of:
- Senior management with an INGO
- Living and working in a complex humanitarian context
- Experience working with local partners
- Designing new programmes and facilitating learning processes
The candidate will also demonstrate excellent communication skills and be a strong negotiator and problem solver.
Applicants must be committed to Tearfund’s Christian beliefs. We would expect applicants to be able to demonstrate a clear and specific desire to work in Nigeria.
The recruitment process will include specific checks related to safeguarding issues. In addition, personal identification information will be submitted against a Watchlist database to check against criminal convictions as a counter-terror measure.
The consolidated compensation for this position is NGN 34,215,338
More Information
- Job City Abuja