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 centre of all its efforts, UN Women leads and coordinates the 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 and builds effective partnerships with civil society and other relevant actors.

UN Women Egypt Strategic Plan (2018-2022) focuses on promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment in line with the 2014 Egyptian Constitution and relevant international norms and standards. Egypt’s 2018-2022 UN Partnership Development Framework (UNPDF) considers that ‘dealing with issues of women’s social and economic empowerment must be at the forefront of the UN’s support in the economic and social arenas. The Egyptian National Women’s Strategy (NWS) 2030 focuses on four pillars: (a) women’s leadership and political participation; (b) women’s economic empowerment; (c) women’s social empowerment; and (d) protection of women. ‘Changing prevailing cultural norms’ and ‘legislative change’ are included as cross-cutting enablers.

Financial inclusion has been identified as a valuable tool in fostering women’s economic empowerment, increasing their capacity to face risk and unexpected expenses, and participate in the sustainable economic growth. Financial inclusion relates to people (especially low income), households’ and MSMEs’ access to a full range of useful and affordable quality financial products and services that meet their needs – such as accounts, savings, payments and transfers, credit, and insurance and others - in a responsible and sustainable manner, within a legal and regulatory environment conducive to their development, by a range of formal service providers.

Financial inclusion is specifically important for women and girls in the sense that it can increase their empowerment and improve gender equality in a number of ways. Firstly, by having access to resources and tools, women’s bargaining power within households will increase and in turn upsurge their influence and ability of decision making. Secondly, financial inclusion can support women sustain their own income, control assets outside the household and have a contribution to productive activities. Thirdly, financial inclusion can reduce women’s vulnerability and dependency on male family members by having access to financial opportunities to smooth consumption or meet unexpected expenses. Furthermore, women who are financially excluded lack access to basic financial services, which in turn has an impact on their access to household expenditures (for food, health, education, etc.) and expenditures for business. 

The current environment in Egypt holds huge potential for women’s financial inclusion. Egypt’s National Women’s Empowerment Strategy 2030 and its accompanying pillar on Women’s Economic Empowerment list women’s access to economic resources through increased access to financial services as an important objective. The CBE co-hosted the 9th Global Policy Forum of the Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI), held in September 2017. In his opening speech President H.E. Abdel Fattah El Sisi emphasised the high-level political commitment for financial inclusion in the country, especially for women.  Financial inclusion has moved to the top of the development policy agenda and gained a great deal of traction. In September 2017, the Central Bank of Egypt and the National Council for Women signed a Memorandum of Understanding to work together to foster women’s financial inclusion in Egypt, with   SGs expansion as one of the key objectives of the MOU. These developments pave the pave the way for programs to create financial inclusion of all in Egypt, especially the rural women.

Although Egypt has made a huge leap in financial inclusion, most Egyptian women, especially rural women, do not use formal financial services and the majority of adults in the poorest communities do not deal with banks. Overall, Egypt has made massive stride to almost double the number of people with accounts in formal institutions, but the overall penetration is still relatively low (32.8%). Rural accounts outreach is lower (29% against 33% nationally). While the rate of formal account penetration among women has more than tripled between 2011 and 2017 (from 7% to 27%), it is still less than the rate among men (39% in 2017), and the gender gap has kept increasing (from 6 percentage points in 2011 to 12 in 2017).

Women who are financially excluded lack access to basic financial services, which in turn has an impact on their access to household expenditures (for food, health, education, etc.) and expenditures for business.  Many therefore, depend on informal sources of finance, generally at unfairly high interest rates. It is in this context that financial inclusion initiatives aimed at women and managed by women assume greater importance.

To support the effective implementation of the Women’s Financial and Economic Inclusion in Rural Egypt Programme, UN Women Egypt Country Office will be recruiting a National Programme Associate. 

Duties and Responsibilities

Reporting to the National Programme Coordinator – Women’s Financial Inclusion and under the overall supervision of the Deputy Country Representative, the programme Associate works with and provides support to members of the programme team in the development and implementation of effective programmes consistent with UN Women rules and regulations. The programme Associate contributes to financial management, and pogramme implementation including providing necessary operational, administrative and programmatic support. The programme Associate works in close collaboration with the operations, programme and projects’ staff as required for resolving complex programme- related issues and exchange of information.

1. Provide advanced administrative and logistical support to the formulation and management of programmes

• Provide advanced administrative support and inputs in the preparation of programme work plans, budgets, and proposals on programme implementation arrangements;
• Provide technical guidance on programme delivery and reporting of programme supported activities and finances;
• Coordinate the collection of information for the audit of programmes/ projects and support implementation of audit recommendations; 
• Review programme data from programmes/ projects for website;
• Identify sources, and gather and compile data and information for documents, guidelines, speeches, reports, and position papers.

2. Provide advanced administrative support to the financial management of the Programme Unit

• Create projects in Atlas, prepare budget revisions, revise project awards and status; and determine unutilized funds and the operational and financial close of a project;
• Monitor budget preparation and the finances of programmes/projects; prepare periodic reports; finalize FACE forms;
• Review financial reports; prepare non-PO vouchers for development projects;
• Maintain internal expenditures control system; post transactions in Atlas;
• Create requisitions in Atlas for development projects; register good receipts in Atlas;
• Prepare and follow up of cost-recovery bills in Atlas.

3. Provide advanced administrative support to the Programme Unit

• Oversee all logistical, administrative and financial arrangements for organization for meetings, workshops, events, and missions;
• Oversee travel arrangements for the Programme Team, including travel requisitions and claims;
• Prepare public information materials and briefing packets;
• Prepare and assemble briefing materials and prepare power-point and other presentations; contribute inputs to the materials;
• Provide guidance to Programme Assistants.

4. Provide monitoring and coordination support through the following field support

• Follow up with local partners on implementing activities, including the monitoring of work plans and activities.
• Closely work with the programme teams to facilitate the preparations and implementation of field activities, events, assessments.
• Liaise with the field officers to ensure timely progress of field activities.
• Support the production of any material needed for information purposes, such as reports, articles for the web, brochures, films, etc.
• Follow up on operations in the field, day to day management and delivery of the activities and facilitation of knowledge sharing.
• Provide timely data collection for reporting purpose

5. Facilitation of knowledge building and knowledge sharing

• Support synthesis of lessons learned and best practices related to programme management and finance.

Key Performance Indicators:

• Timely and accurate support to events, workshops, and missions;
• Full compliance of administrative activities with UN Women rules, regulations, policies and procedures;
• Timely recording of overall programme unit finances;
• Timely and accurate tracking of data for programme management and donor purposes;
• Quality maintenance of internal systems;
• Quality background and presentation materials.

Competencies

Core Values:

• Respect for Diversity
• Integrity
• Professionalism

Core Competencies:

• Awareness and Sensitivity Regarding Gender Issues
• Accountability
• Creative Problem Solving
• Effective Communication
• Inclusive Collaboration
• Stakeholder Engagement
• Leading by Example

Please visit this link for more information on UN Women’s Core Values and Competencies: https://www.unwomen.org/-/media/headquarters/attachments/sections/about%20us/employment/un-women-values-and-competencies-framework-en.pdf?la=en&vs=637

Functional Competencies:

• Strong knowledge of programme management;  
• Ability to create, edit, synthesize and present information in clear and presentable formats;
• Ability to administer and execute administrative processes and transactions;
• Ability to provide input to business process re-engineering, elaboration and implementation of new data management systems;
• Ability to manage data, documents, correspondence and reports information and workflow;
• Excellent financial and budgeting skills;
• Excellent IT skills.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

• Bachelor degree in Social Sciences; Political Science (Economics Section), Business or Public Administration, development studies or other relevant degrees.

Experience:

• At least 7 years of progressively responsible experience in administration or programme management/support;
• Experience in working in a computer environment using multiple office software packages;
• Experience in the use of ATLAS is an asset;
• Experience in supporting a team.

Language Requirenments:

• Fluency (written and spoken) in English and Arabic required.