Background

UN Women, grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, works for the elimination of discrimination against women and girls; the empowerment of women; and the achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security. Placing women’s rights at the center of all its efforts, UN Women leads and coordinates United Nations system efforts to ensure that commitments on gender equality and gender mainstreaming translate into action throughout the world. It provides strong and coherent leadership in support of Member States’ priorities and efforts, building effective partnerships with civil society and other relevant actors.

The Fund for Gender Equality provides direct multi-year grants of up to USD $3 million to women’s organizations and governmental agencies to advance women’s political and economic empowerment. Applications are reviewed by independent experts in the field. Grants are ratified by a Steering Committee composed of government, civil society and UN representatives.

Founded in 2009 with a contribution of US$65 Million from Spain, followed by contributions from Norway, Mexico, and the Netherlands, the Fund’s total income is $71 million dollars. From 2010 to date, the Fund has invested USD $43 million in support of 55 grantee partners in 40 countries.

Out of the USD 43 million granted, USD 26 million funded political empowerment programmes. From Mexico to Nigeria over 1,700 women are been introduced into electoral politics. From Bosnia-Hezegovina to the Pacific Islands, grantees are working with over 13.6 million women to strengthen their leadership skills and have catalized 24 legislative and policy changes that benefit women and girls in 12 countries. 

USD 17 million funded economic empowerment programmes to increase women’s access to and control over resources and assets – including land, water, technology, and viable employment. From Rwanda to Morocco, thousands of rural and indigenous women are implementing engendered sustainable development initiatives. From Egypt to Zimbabwe, grantees are helping over 4 million women getting financial skills, securing decent jobs, and gaining social protections for themselves and their families.

The second round of call for proposals started at the end of 2011 in response to the on-going transformations in the Arab States. The Fund awarded USD 4.85 million in grants for strategies ranging from advancing women’s political participation in Egypt, Libya and Yemen to fostering sustainable development in Algeria and the Occupied Palestinian territories.

Following, a call was launched in March 2012 for Africa, Central and South America, Asia and Eastern Europe. Proposals are under review and new grantees will be officially announced on November 2012.

The Fund for Gender Equality is managed by UN Women and is guided by a Steering Committee composed of donors, UN and other multilateral agencies and civil society organizations' representatives. A Technical Committee, composed of experts in women's economic and political empowerment from every region of the world, reviews proposals and makes recommendations for funding to the Steering Committee.

The knowledge management, communication, monitoring and evaluation aspects of the Fund are central to its operations.

The Programme Monitoring and Reporting Specialist will be part of a cohort of four specialists based in four developing regions. S/he will support the UN Women offices in the Africa Region to facilitate better monitoring and reporting by grant recipients.

The Programme Monitoring and Reporting Specialist will be responsible for the management of a grants portfolio of approximately 12-15 grants from the African Region.

She/he will be under the primary supervision and guidance of the Deputy Manager of the Fund for Gender Equality in New York, while at the same time be supervised by the UN Women Representative of the corresponding Regional Office for day to day tasks.

Duties and Responsibilities

Summary of key functions:
  • Monitoring & Evaluation Services
  • Reporting and Knowledge Management Services
  • Capacity development
Monitoring  & Evaluation Services
  • Serve as liaison between UN Women Dakar office, Country offices, Geographic Sections, and Fund for Gender Equality Secretariat at HQ.
  • Provide technical assistance to (approximately 12)  new grantees in the region in the design of grantees' Performance Monitoring Frameworks (PMFs). Assist them in clarifying proposed programmes' outcomes, outputs, indicators of success, methods of baseline and data collection, activities and budgets.
  • Review 1 narrative progress reports and 2 financial reports for the 3 ongoing programmes (Rwanda, Liberia, Zimbabwe)
  • Provide ongoing technical accompaniment for Fund for Gender Equality (FGE) grantees.
  • Provide lead technical and managerial assistance for the Midterm evaluation in Zimbabwe, Liberia and Rwanda.

Reporting and Knowledge Management Services

  • Prepare substantive reports and written contributions for various purposes, including inputs for the UN Women Annual Report, FGE annual donor reports, speeches and newsletters, fund raising efforts and other reporting needs.
  • Contribution to tracking, synthesizing and disseminating, developments, tools and good practices ensured including capturing/extracting findings and lessons learned from evaluations.
  • Work with relevant regional programme staff to contribute to continued learning between FGE programmes and other UN Women initiatives, including governance and economic empowerment programmes.
  • Liaise closely with the UN Women FGE Secretariat and regional focal points to identify and provide select written contributions and knowledge products. This includes writing select case studies and related products for wider dissemination in partnership and consultation with implementing partners.
  • Support the FGE Fund Management team in extracting critical lessons learned and good practices from final evaluation reports, including as relates to monitoring and evaluation.
  • Update and maintain FGE Grantmaking and Knowledge Management Tracking database with relevant grantee information.

Capacity development

  • Organize one regional seminar for new grantees for orientation and training session. This seminar will be the occasion to be trained on RBM principles and finalize the prodoc, logframe, budget and workplan.
  • Contribution to develop FGE templates and tools to ensure capturing of results and successful management tools in place.
Impact of Results:
  • Increased frequency and quality of technical assistance and monitoring support to UN Women FGE grantees in Africa.
  • Improved quality and use of FGE evaluations.
  • Increased number and quality of knowledge products produced and disseminated.
  • Improved quality of coordination in UN Women Organization as a whole.

Competencies

Core values and Guiding principles:
  • Integrity: Demonstrate consistency in upholding and promoting the values of UN Women in actions and decisions in line with the UN Code of Conduct.
  • Professionalism: Demonstrate professional competence and expert knowledge of the pertinent substantive areas of work.
  • Cultural sensitivity and valuing diversity: Demonstrate an appreciation of the multicultural nature of the organization and the diversity of its staff. Demonstrate an international outlook, appreciating difference in values and learning from cultural diversity.
Core Compentencies:
 
Ethics and Values:
  • Demonstrate and safeguard ethics and integrity
Organizational Awareness:
  • Demonstrate corporate knowledge and sound judgment
Development and Innovation:
  • Take charge of self-development and take initiative
Work in teams:
  • Demonstrate ability to work in a multicultural, multi ethnic environment and to maintain effective working relations with people of different national and cultural backgrounds.
Communicating and Information Sharing:
  • Facilitate and encourage open communication and strive for effective communication
  • Self-management and Emotional Intelligence:
  • Stay composed and positive even in difficult moments, handle tense situations with diplomacy and tact, and have a consistent behavior towards others
Conflict Management:
  • Surface conflict and address them proactively acknowledging different feelings and views and directing energy towards a mutually acceptable solution.
Continuous Learning and Knowledge Sharing:
  • Encourage learning and sharing of knowledge
Appropriate and Transparent Decision Making:
  • Demonstrate informed and transparent decision making
Functional Competencies:
  • Strong writing and oral communication skills.
  • Experience as a trainer and facilitator on monitoring issues, and in developing user-friendly practical guidance and tools conducive to learning
  • Ability to manage for results: translate strategy into achievable plans, with established priorities, monitor them, making periodic adjustments as required
  • Ability to effectively represent UN Women in, and contribute to United Nations inter-agency programming monitoring and reporting initiatives
  • Outstanding networking, team-building, organizational and communication skills
  • Capacity to work with diverse partners including governments, civil society and women’s groups
  • Demonstrates openness to change and ability to manage complexities
  • Ability to work under pressure and meet strict deadlines
  • Good interpersonal and diplomacy skills
  • Ability to use critical thinking, conceptualizes ideas, and articulate relevant subject matter in a clear and concise way
  • Ability to communicate effectively with and relate to people of different cultures, demonstrating an ability to see issues from other perspectives

Required Skills and Experience

Education:
  • Master’s degree or equivalent in Political Science, International Development Studies, Gender/Women's Studies, Economics or Sociology.
Experience:
  • Minimum of 5 years of relevant national/international working experience in gender equality and women's empowerment issues, monitoring and reporting of development programmers.
  • Strong knowledge of planning and monitoring and related development policy and programming issues, including knowledge of Result Based Management (RBM), familiarity with log frames and understanding of baseline data collection and monitoring methodologies
  • Experience working in the field of monitoring: developing plans, tracking results, reporting to different constituencies. Monitoring experience in the UN Women context highly desirable.
  • Experience in knowledge management and communications experience - supporting collection and dissemination of lessons learned/best practice.
  • Experience in reporting on programmes and managing evaluations.
  • Experience with databases and data management a plus
  • Experience in the United Nations, other multilateral, a governmental or civil society organization in a developed or developing country in projects and programmes related to women's economic and/or political empowerment is highly desirable.
Language Requirements:
  • Fluency in French and English 
Note:

In July 2010, the United Nations General Assembly created UN Women, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. The creation of UN Women came about as part of the UN reform agenda, bringing together resources and mandates for greater impact. It merges and builds on the important work of four previously distinct parts of the UN system (DAW, OSAGI, INSTRAW and UNIFEM), which focused exclusively on gender equality and women's empowerment.

All applications must include (as an attachment) the completed UN Women Personal History form (P-11) which can be downloaded from http://www.unwomen.org/about-us/employment

Kindly note that the system will only allow one attachment. Applications without the completed UN Women P-11 form will be treated as incomplete and will not be considered for further assessment.