Organization: UNICEF – United Nations Children’s Fund
Location: Kabul
Grade: Mid level – NO-C, National Professional Officer – Locally recruited position
Occupational Groups:
Education, Learning and Training
Closing Date: 2024-07-08
Afghanistan Country Office is seeking an experienced Education Specialist responsible for supporting alternative learning pathways initiatives, including supporting program planning, budgeting, coordination with nongovernmental organizations, and monitoring/reporting.
UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential.
Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone.
And we never give up.
How can you make a difference?
The Education Specialist supports alternative learning pathways initiatives under the supervision of Education Manager, including supporting program planning, budgeting, coordination with nongovernmental organizations, and monitoring/reporting. In support of UNICEF’s emergency education program, the education specialist will ensure the program is implemented in accordance with donor compliance and UNICEF regulations.
Education programs for alternative learning pathways (including distance learning) are funded by various donors. The Education Specialist is responsible for ensuring that activities are implemented effectively, monitoring partner performance, and reviewing grantee reports on time. The Education Specialist will ensure more efficient communication and coordination horizontally across the different units of the Kabul office to support program planning, implementation, monitoring and reporting. The role entails pro-actively working with a number of units and implementing partners (NGOs and institutions).
Summary of key functions/accountabilities:
1. Planning, budgeting, and supporting grantees as they develop and implement activities under Alternative Learning Pathways:
- Engage with alternative learning (i.e., digital learning, distance learning, multi-media) networks and reach out to potential grantees and beneficiaries, collect and organize proposal submissions.
- Utilize agreed prescreening criteria for alternative learning pathways, based on preidentified funding windows, to review and shortlist eligible proposals for grant allocation.
- Ensure that the short list of eligible proposals (prescreened) is presented to the UNICEF internal rating committee and that the proposals are rated in a timely manner by members of the Technical Review Committee.
- Facilitate the review of proposals and budgets by members of the review committee through secretarial services.
- Support grantees to revise budgets or initiate amendments where operational conditions change.
2. Grant management, program implementation, and program reporting:
- Manage the selected beneficiaries and recipients of alternative learning initiatives, including drafting memorandums of agreement, or other partnerships/procurement documents, based on the grant size and following UNICEF’s procedures for contracting individuals, CSOs, non-governmental organizations, and international non-governmental organizations.
- Ensure that contracts are negotiated, and payments are processed with assistance from the Program Management Unit, the Financial Management Unit, the Supplies Unit, and Zonal Offices, if necessary.
- Monitoring, Ensuring Accountability, and Assessing Performance for Grant recipients, including (i) collecting regular progress reports from beneficiaries who have been selected; (ii) conducting occasional monitoring visits or coordinating with UNICEF relevant Offices to conduct monitoring/support missions.
- Providing internal monitoring reports and reporting to grant recipients in support of UNICEF Third Party Monitoring.
- Ensure activities are on track through creating a system and/or work plan to monitor progress and flag delays to supervisor.
- Coordinate with relevant experts (Prevention of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse/Gender Based Violence, Environmental and Social Safeguards, GRM) to maintain compliance with donor protocols.
- Prepare monthly and quarterly reports on the progress and utilization of grants to internal and external stakeholders.
- Communicate with grantees about financial management and expenditure tracking (soft and hard commitments, for example) to improve grant management, monitoring, and reporting.
3. Knowledge generation, knowledge management, and grantee technical capacity support.
- Support the grantee in socializing all innovative systems and solutions it has developed internally to improve program monitoring, expenditure tracking, etc.
- Chair relevant meetings related to knowledge sharing on alternative learning in Afghanistan with grantees and other stakeholders.
- Enhance the capacity of grantees to monitor their programs and report on progress according to the grants team’s standards and formats.
- Provide detailed feedback to grantees on improving performance, both in grant management and in program delivery.
- Collate multi-media resources from grantees for use in resource mobilization and donor reporting.
- Conduct periodic internal reviews of the portfolio and identify potential synergies between grantees to maximize use of resources and build partnerships.
- Support research partners to conduct studies on alternative learning pathways, particularly as a liaison with local partners.
To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have…
- An advanced university degree (Master’s) in one of the following fields is required: Education, International Relations, Information Technology, public administration, financial management or any other relevant studies
- A minimum of five of relevant professional experience in program planning, coordination, or management in the education sector.
- Experience with Grants, Financial, and Results Based Management of large grants with complex donor requirements, including using dedicated tools/systems/dashboards can be an asset.
- Experience working in complex contexts with multiple partners across different geographical areas is an asset.
- Experience with organizing work and data flows from multiple sources for donor reporting is an asset.
- Experience supporting the management of complex grants from WB and ADB will be an asset.
- Experience of managing and overseeing alternative pathways and should design educational projects is an asset.
- Fluency in English and either Dari or Pashto is required.
For every Child, you demonstrate…
UNICEF’s Core Values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, Accountability and Sustainability (CRITAS) underpin everything we do and how we do it. Get acquainted with Our Values Charter: UNICEF Values
UNICEF competencies required for this post are…
(1) Builds and maintains partnerships (2) Demonstrates self-awareness and ethical awareness (3) Drive to achieve results for impact (4) Innovates and embraces change (5) Manages ambiguity and complexity (6) Thinks and acts strategically (7) Works collaboratively with others.
During the recruitment process, we test candidates following the competency framework. Familiarize yourself with our competency framework and its different levels: competency framework here.
UNICEF is here to serve the world’s most disadvantaged children and our global workforce must reflect the diversity of those children. The UNICEF family is committed to include everyone, irrespective of their race/ethnicity, age, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, socio-economic background, or any other personal characteristic.
We offer a wide range of benefits to our staff, including paid parental leave, breastfeeding breaks and reasonable accommodation for persons with disabilities. UNICEF strongly encourages the use of flexible working arrangements.
UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. UNICEF is committed to promote the protection and safeguarding of all children.
Remarks:
UNICEF’s active commitment towards diversity and inclusion is critical to deliver the best results for children. For this position, eligible and suitable female candidates are encouraged to apply.
UNICEF appointments are subject to medical clearance. Issuance of a visa by the host country of the duty station, which will be facilitated by UNICEF, is required for IP positions. Appointments are also subject to inoculation (vaccination) requirements, including against SARS-CoV-2 (Covid). Should you be selected for a position with UNICEF, you either must be inoculated as required or receive a medical exemption from the relevant department of the UN. Otherwise, the selection will be cancelled.
All selected candidates will undergo rigorous reference and background checks and will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles. Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.
Government employees that are considered for employment with UNICEF are normally required to resign from their government before taking up an assignment with UNICEF. UNICEF reserves the right to withdraw an offer of appointment, without compensation, if a visa or medical clearance is not obtained, or necessary inoculation requirements are not met, within a reasonable period for any reason.
Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process.