Country Lead – Moldova (Ukraine Emergency Response) – INT9213

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES Strategy:

• Realisation of the context-relevant country response strategy, in connection with the overall Ukraine crisis response strategy • Organise regular review and updating of the strategy, engaging in relevant relationships incountry. Explore opportunities for innovation and out-of-the box interventions and collaborations with impact.
• Ongoing mapping and engagement of stakeholders responding to the crises in the country – including civil society, government and private sector – and propose where and how Oxfam could potentially add value • Work with partners and allies to explore and seize opportunities for contributing to peace and sustainability – to influence immediate/intermediate responses (incl. influencing/our communications, innovation, capacity development, etc.)
• Ensure country response is in line with Oxfam’s humanitarian approach (community engagement, local humanitarian leadership, safe programming and feminist approach) • Quality. Ensure that the response strategy (speed, scale, contextually appropriated, integrated, gender responsive) is in line with Oxfam’s overall ambitions and external commitments.
• Delivery of Oxfam’s donor commitments to the country. Manage oversight of budget utilisation at Oxfam and partner level.

Leadership and Management:

• Lead on the implementation of the country response including proper planning, program quality and quality partnerships. Provide strategic steer on amending activities where necessary
• Ensure humanitarian and early recovery projects are delivered on time and on budget. Support and maintain oversight of financial and people resourcing for the response by:
• Oversight of country funding, supervise and ensure monthly budget monitoring and financial management.
• Planning HR requirements. Ensure response components are properly resourced and funded. Oversee the HR capacity planner and make decisions (in consultation with the Operational Lead) regarding additional staffing if needed. Explore local solutions.
• Make decisions in complex situations with minimal back office support using a systems-thinking approach and in relation to general compliance in programs.
• Strong coordination with other humanitarian actors in-country to ensure coherent, contextrelevant and impactful implementation of the response. Oxfam or its partners are represented in the relevant sectoral working group
• Development of appropriate MEAL for overall response. Lead on response reporting, in collaboration with partners and information dissemination
• Work in close collaboration with the Operational Lead and partners in the Ukraine response – to identify eventual bottlenecks early on and collectively resolve them. Work together to identify opportunities for collaboration or innovation
• Lead the team of Oxfam staff that is working in the country on short- and longer-term missions and be the focal point for Oxfam staff that plan to visit programs. Recruit critical staff and ensure minimum capacity to deliver the response programme on time.
• Regularly report back to the Operational Lead the content of the work, main decisions and outcomes.
• Ensure programmes are safe in terms of safeguarding, safe programming, health and safety, etc. Partnership Relations & Portfolio
• Build relations with potential and actual partners. Assessing mutual interest, potential, alignment, possible risks of engagement. Define Oxfam’s added value. Creation of a database (incl. partnership assessments) to inform management decisions
• Develop and maintain the partner portfolio. Identify short vs medium term relations; thematic focus; organisations vs networks/federation/consortia; cross-border vs national, etc.
• Day to day management of the relations with our partners, supported by other Oxfam staff engaged in the country response, to ensure a high-quality program response. Undertake regular ‘partnership health checks’
• Ensure that Oxfam partnership principles are embedded within the ways of working and fully understood by Oxfam staff and partners
• Represent Oxfam in the country.

Partner Funding and Contracting:

• Ensure a transparent assessment process of potential partnerships
• Support partnership assessments and due diligence checks processes through the relevant Oxfam instruments
• Support contracting process to ensure timely transfer of funds to partners
• Where needed, in dialogue with partners, include options for technical support and mentoring to partners – individual or collective – to fill essential gaps in partner capacity. This can be by Oxfam or resourced elsewhere.

Experience, Knowledge & Competencies

Essential

• Results-oriented
• Able to work independently
• Proactive and a problem solver, with the ability to adapt quickly to change, out of the box thinker
• Strong interpersonal and communication skills, you are a connector • Able to work directly and over distance with colleagues, partners, allies
• Track record in developing quality partnerships for impact, with mutual accountability
• Experience with managing external and internal relations.
• Experience with program management, ideally in humanitarian.
• Self-starter, able to make sound decisions in complex situations and with minimal support
• Fluency in English

Desirable

• Polish, Romanian and/or Moldovan language is an asset