Project Officer

Position Summary

Search seeks a professional, motivated, creative, and well-organized Project Officer. This position holder will support the Project Manager (PM) in leading and coordinating various activities and a team, under one of Search’s flagship projects in Lebanon. S/he will ensure that assigned project activities are properly implemented and Search methodologies are effectively employed across activities. The project seeks to work with men, women, boys and girls to  promote positive and equitable masculinities and reduce violence against women and girls (VAWG)  in the country.  The project includes a series of training and capacity building sessions to local CSOs, in addition to a participatory youth-led research and a media campaign.

The position holder will support the PM in ensuring proper design of activities and implementation approach in such a way that they create lasting change towards peace, social cohesion, mutual understanding, and contributes to changing attitudes towards VAWG. 

The Project Officer is expected to support the PM in planning and facilitating team retreats, reflection meetings, and capacity building for the project team members.

Scope of Work

• Support the PM in the implementation of project activities in a timely manner ensuring good quality action and credible outcomes.
• Support the PM  in collaborating with target civil society organizations in conflict transformation.
• Support the PM in developing and maintaining proactive, positive, and professional relationships with all relevant stakeholders.
• Support the PM in the management and reporting on project activities, ensuring timely grant reporting and compliance with contract and donor guidelines in coordination with the local partners.
• Support the PM in developing and maintaining project records such as databases, reports, and records of decisions.
• Support the PM in implementing the financial and administrative systems necessary for the execution of the project.
• Support the PM in ensuring compliance with Search’s policies and procedures.

Roles and Responsibilities

 1.         Activity Design and Implementation

• Support the PM in designing the project’s activities, building on Common Ground Approach, Community Dialogue Approach, Enduring Change Package and other methodologies and tools used in Search;
• Support the PM in ensuring the quality, effectiveness, and ultimately the impact of Search’s ongoing project activities;
• Support the PM in analysing conflict, stabilisation, peacebuilding, VAWG and social cohesion dynamics in target communities and ensure activity design responds to and is informed by these;
• Support the PM in designing new activities that meet the purpose of the project, as well as fit with Search’s strategy;
• Support the PM in ensuring Search’s project activities are inclusive, and conflict and gender-sensitive;
• Support the PM in adapting activity design to digital and virtual methods to ensure project continuity in times of movement restrictions due to pandemics, tensions or other factors;
• Keep abreast of Search-worldwide peacebuilding work, findings from the evaluation of other countries’ projects, including lessons learnt and best practices, and use the findings to enrich project activity design;
• Support the PM in regularly monitor the quality, resonance, reach, the relevance of project activities by organising reflection and learning meetings (in close collaboration with the MEAL team);
• Closely collaborate with the MEAL team to ensure a monitoring system and monitoring and evaluation plan and system for the project;
• Participate in the design of new programs and projects to ensure that your learning from ongoing activities informs the design of new projects.
• Participate in project launch, mid-term reviews, and close-out workshop; and
• Support the strategy and mission of Search in the target country, the region, and globally.

2.  Project Planning and Reporting

• Support the PM in planning the work of the project team, including capacity building of the team, partners, and target participants;
• Support the PM in ensuring activities are delivered on time and with high quality;
• Support the PM in ensuring activities are documented by relevant staff;
• Support the PM in developing and following the project’s monthly work-plans that derive from the annual workplans;
• Support the PM in developing and regularly updating the project’s annual work-plan;
• Support the PM in ensuring that costed workplans for the project are developed and regularly updated;
• Support the PM in producing activity and project reports that are drafted in a results-based manner, ensuring high quality, consistency and completeness;
• Support the PM in producing at least one well-written success story from the project per quarter.

3. Team Management and Supervision

• This position currently has no supervision responsibilities but the candidate is expected to supervise assistants or interns who may be hired as needed in the project life.

4.         Relationship with Stakeholders

• Support the PM in in maintaining a network of participants, stakeholders, and influencers at the local and national and level and a contact database relevant to the project;
• Support the PM in managing the partnership agreements with champions, project partners, volunteers, etc. Keeping track of contracts and their end dates, ensuring timely renewal of agreements, and keeping track of support provided to each partner;
• Support the PM in developing and maintaining proactive, positive, and professional relationships with consortium partners, civil society organisations, international organisations, UN agencies, media outlets, ministries, local authorities, and local communities;
• Support the PM in building connections between local community peacebuilding activities to ensure project activities are locally driven;
•  Ensuring Search has a key role in reinforcing the partners’ capacity to deliver appropriate services (this can be removed as much has been mentioned about capacity building).

Required Profile

Education

• Bachelor’ degree in Peace and Conflict Studies, Gender, Development, Political Science, International Affairs, Social Sciences or another relevant field (Master’s Degree preferred);
• Additional education or training in conflict management, media for peacebuilding, communication for social change would be a strong asset.

 Experience:

Essential

• At least one year in gender, development, peacebuilding, or humanitarian work;
• Some experience designing and conducting project activities;
• Some experience with the use of project management tools such as Gantt charts, logical frameworks matrices, work breakdown structure, critical path analysis among others;
• Some experience in designing, planning, and facilitating community dialogues, round tables, town hall meetings, etc., in-person and virtually (online);
• Experience working with women, men, boys and girls local and refugee communities in addressing GBV issues.

 Desirable:

• Experience working in a conflict resolution setting;
• Experience working in a non-profit or similar environment;
• Experience of partnership building, with experience of influencing stakeholders and establishing and maintaining strong partnerships;
• An excellent planner with some knowledge and experience of project management tools and processes (project planning, workplans, budget planning, etc.);
• Organisational skills and attention to detail;
• Excellent use of Excel, excellent writing and analytical skills;
• Well organised, dynamic, and creative;
• Some comprehension of the principles of conflict, conflict transformation, and the role of media in peacebuilding;
• Ability to work under pressure and in challenging environments;
• Flexible and adaptable to changing circumstances;
• Willingness to travel regularly to Search’s field offices; and
• Proficiency in written and spoken English and Arabic.

  Other Relevant Requirements

• Written and verbal communications skills;
• Ability to work effectively in a team environment and strong interpersonal skills;
• Commitment to Search’s aims and a clear understanding of the links between policy, lobbying, campaigning, and social cohesion and peacebuilding work and of how policy change can be achieved through effective advocacy;
• Ability to responding flexibly to opportunities and requests sometimes with little notice;
• Ability to manage competing priorities in a rapidly changing environment;
• Demonstrate the capacity to adapt to a multi-cultural context, and tolerance and respect to issues related to gender, religion, race, and nationality; and
• Treats all people fairly without favouritism and solves problems in collaborative ways.