What we do
Our REAP program replaces aid with sustainable income and helps women to “graduate” from extreme poverty by giving them the tools they need to start small businesses in their communities. With this new and diversified source of income, they can feed their families, pay for school fees and medical care, accumulate savings for long-term stability, survive drought, and adapt to a changing climate.
REAP helps women to build a pathway out of extreme poverty by addressing three elements that contribute to the cycle of aid dependency in the arid lands of Africa: low incomes, inconsistent cash flows, and inadequate financial services for the rural poor. Profits from each REAP business provide a diversified income, while BOMA savings associations help women to manage cash flow (for daily needs), plan for future expenses (such as school fees and medical care) and respond to shocks (such as drought or family emergencies).
Position Summary:
BOMA seeks to hire a senior-level Regional Graduation Advisor (RGA) to provide technical assistance to NGO partners, governments, World Bank and UN agencies in the poverty graduation approach. The RGA will lead the design and implementation of the poverty graduation approach with partners and governments in Uganda, Somalia and other East African countries outside of Kenya. Reporting to the East Africa Regional Director, based in Kenya, the RGA will lead in the research, design, development and evaluation of technical assistance opportunities, and in the delivery of technical assistance in East Africa. The RGA will work closely with NGO partners and governments to deliver on donor commitments to graduation, with a focus on adapting the implementation to the context in which the graduation approach is implemented.
The Advisor will lead in the research, design and evaluation of the approach, based on an iterative process that integrates learning and lays the foundation for implementation at scale.
Responsibilities include the following:
Advocacy/Engagement
Organize and/or represent BOMA and the Graduation agenda in global, regional and local events to enhance learning and promote adaptation of the Graduation approach;
Proactively engage with donors and national governments to advocate for embedding the Graduation approach into national social protection, humanitarian response, resilience, and financial inclusion policies and programs.
Business Development
Lead the process of building a robust pipeline of potential partners and governments interested in the provision of BOMA graduation technical advisory services;
Identify technical assistance leads within governments and NGO’s;
Lead the research, project/program design and proposal development process with NGO, foundation and government partners;
Collaborate with the Director of Strategic Partnerships and other staff to fundraise for pilot opportunities and full implementation.
Feasibility Studies
Assess whether the graduation approach is the appropriate fit within an existing social protection, national social protection, humanitarian response, resilience, and financial inclusion policies and programs;
Lead the analysis of the potential for the graduation approach within NGOs’ strategy and structure.
Poverty Graduation Implementation
Lead the development of systems, processes and tools for high quality graduation technical assistance via NGO and government partners;
Lead technical assistance initiatives for replication of the Graduation Approach; lead or oversee consultants on policy planning
Lead and support teams of consultants to deliver high quality technical assistance in graduation implementation in areas including field-level data collection, rapid livelihoods assessments, market assessments, stakeholder interviews, systems analysis, workshop facilitation;
With support from Human Resources, recruit field staff to drive implementation;
In collaboration with the senior training manager, design and delivering training curriculum to NGO and government partners, including incorporation of NGO partner training materials into graduation delivery;
Provide operational support to local partners (e.g. process mapping, coordination across multiple entities and programs including managing relationships across ministries, donors, and other key stakeholders);
Manage, train, and mentor junior members of the team.
Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning:
Establish and maintain periodic reviews of Graduation performance standards;
Collaborate with the Monitoring, Evaluation & Learning (MEL) Manager to design and implement high quality MEL in government adoption implementation;
In collaboration with the Director of Research, Evaluation & Learning (DREL), engage with the implementation team and stakeholders in documenting, sharing lessons learned and best practices, including inputs for reports and technical publications to inform and shape the global Graduation agenda;
In collaboration with the MEL Manager and DREL, help to develop data collection tools and approaches for evaluations of poverty graduation models with NGO and government partners, and provide support with the design of research and evaluation studies;
Provide technical guidance to the team and NGO and government stakeholders for the development of monitoring and evaluation frameworks;
Support the development of high-quality evaluation reports and other knowledge products related to poverty graduation implemented by government and NGO partnerships.
Location: Nairobi or Nanyuki
Travel: In Kenya and other regional and country locations, sometimes with limited amenities.
Qualifications:
Master’s degree in social sciences, international development, evaluation or another relevant field required;
Extensive expertise in poverty graduation models, resilience, livelihoods, women’s economic empowerment or financial inclusion methodologies required;
At least seven years of experience in international development, including program design, implementation, and budgeting; with field experience in Asia or Africa, required;
Sector experience in livelihoods, nutrition, social protection, gender, last mile financial inclusion, or health;
Experience as a technical advisor in curricula development, training, and facilitation preferred;
Experience working on behalf of development consulting agencies, multilaterals, such as the UN or World Bank, or as an individual consultant serving multilaterals, NGOs, or government-led initiatives; policy advocacy experience a plus;
A proven track record in new business development with experience supporting project design, proposal development and fundraising efforts; World Bank and DFID experience a plus;
Successful experience managing teams or individuals;
Exceptional public speaking and written English communication skills; including communication to partners and clients via written products and presentations;
Creative problem solver; able to easily adapt to change in a fast-paced environment;
Proactive leader, with ability to effectively manage competing work streams and deadlines;
Strong manager and mentor, with the ability to identify growth opportunities and provide ongoing mentoring and guidance to junior staff;
Proficiency in Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint required.
