About Mercy Corps

Mercy Corps is a leading global organization powered by the belief that a better world is possible. In disaster, in hardship, in more than 40 countries around the world, we partner to put bold solutions into action — helping people triumph over adversity and build stronger communities from within.
Now, and for the future.

Program / Department Summary

Mercy Corps anticipates applying as a part of a consortium for funding for a five-year USAID Food for Peace (FFP) Activity to support food security in Matabeleland North. The program will contribute to the goal of achieving food security and resilience among extremely poor and chronically vulnerable households through improving adaptive and absorptive capacity and watershed management.

General Position Summary

The Gender, Youth and Social Dynamics (GYSD) Lead will design and implement a strategy to ensure the program appropriately addresses the varied needs and of women, men, girls, and boys, and that staff are sensitive to gender, youth and social dynamics. The Gender, Youth and Social Dynamics Lead will ensure that the social dimensions of food security and community resilience are effectively addressed across all activities and components. They will manage staff and coordinate closely with partners to integrate and empower youth and gender as critical strategies for realizing program outcomes.

Essential Job Responsibilities

Technical

• Design assessment and tools for understanding the social dynamics and power structures related to food security and nutrition in the target communities. Ensure meaningful participation and consultation with young people, women and other marginalized groups that are often excluded.
• Train staff, partners and enumerators on analysis tools, manage data collection, lead on analysis.
• Conduct workshop with DFSA team and partners to go over the data and analysis, integrate the findings into the program’s final workplan and milestones.
• Write and submit gender and social dynamics assessment.
• Work closely with the DFSA team to integrate the findings from the gender analysis into the program’s workplan and milestones and to inform the broader program’s Gender and Youth Strategy.
• Develop Gender and Youth Strategy to guide gender and youth integration and priorities across the life the program. Work with DFSA team to ensure strategy includes learning questions around effective practices towards changing social dynamics.
• Work with DFSA team to meaningfully and safely engage young people and women across program opportunities and ensuring leadership roles in community visioning processes, including building staff and partner capacity on how to engage groups.
• Support DFSA team, including partners, on finalizing the targeting strategy.
• Support DFSA team, including partners, on gender and youth integration including conducting capacity building and training and engaging in regular reflection exercises to adapt and/or expand activities and approaches.
• Support integration of gender into the program’s M&E to ensure that gender is reflected in output, outcome and impact level indicators and that sex and age disaggregated data is regularly collected and reflected upon to inform adaptations.
• Contribute to research conducted in the program to ensure gender dynamics are represented.
• Conduct regular community consultations to ensure programming remains gender and age sensitive and on-track. Ensure youth are empowered and lead many of these consultations themselves and identify other ways in which youth, especially young women, lead in the implementation or management of activities.
• Collect and share learnings and best practices on gender and youth integration.
• Represent the program’s gender strategy, analysis, and research with external stakeholders including at workshops, conferences and annual learning events.

Team and Management

• Hire, orient, and directly manage staff in day-to-day Gender and Youth activities and develop capacity of this team.
• Work closely with Human Resources team to ensure gender and inclusion accountability is incorporated into the position descriptions of all program team members.
• Ensure that program and country staff understand and adhere to Mercy Corps’ Gender Minimum Standards.
• Ensure that Community Accountability and Reporting Mechanisms (CARM), Safeguarding Protocol and Processes and Child protection policies are adhered to and reported on to DFSA management team.

Security

• Work closely with the country team’s security focal point to promote and maintain systems that promote the safety and security of all team members and ensures child protection and safeguarding standards and processes are put into place.

Organizational Learning

• As part of our commitment to organizational learning and in support of our understanding that learning organizations are more effective, efficient and relevant to the communities they serve, we expect all team members to commit 5% of their time to learning activities that benefit Mercy Corps as well as themselves.

Accountability to Beneficiaries

• Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts towards accountability, specifically to our beneficiaries and to international standards guiding international relief and development work, while actively engaging beneficiary communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring and evaluation of our field projects.

Supervisory Responsibility

DFSA Gender and Youth Team

Accountability

Reports Directly To: Chief of Party

Works Directly With: DFSA team, Mercy Corps Zimbabwe country office, partners, and Mercy Corps headquarters support.

Knowledge and Experience

• Demonstrated technical experience leading gender and youth integration into food security programming.
• Seven years of field experience at the community level is required.
• A bachelor’s degree in a relevant academic area such as a social science discipline.
• Experience in Zimbabwe and an in-depth understanding of gender, age, and other locally significant socio-cultural factors in the context of food security programming.
• Demonstrated capacity to lead the collection, analysis, and utilization of information from a broad range of sources, as well as in adapting to on-going analyses to ensure program intervention effectiveness and accountability to community priorities.
• Skills in participatory learning and action and facilitating collaborative problem solving and demonstrated capacity to facilitate youth-led processes.
• Demonstrated ability to foster commitment and build capacity among program staff and in-country actors to ensure gender and youth integration and empowerment.
• Pervious staff management experience of similar size teams required.
• Persuasive written and oral communication in English, including writing. Shona or other local language skills strongly preferred.
• Demonstrated attention to detail, ability to follow procedures, meet deadlines and work independently and cooperatively with team members

Success Factors

The successful Gender, Youth and Social Dynamics Lead will have strong technical skills combined with strategic visioning and leadership. They will have an outstanding ability to inspire teams to deeply understand social dynamics and integrate this understanding into activities to enhance program impact. They will also have proven experience with cross-cultural teams and capacity building, individual staff development, and strong mentoring skills. Multi-tasking, prioritizing, problem solving and simultaneous attention to detail and strategic vision are essential. The most successful Mercy Corps staff members have a strong commitment to teamwork and accountability, thrive in evolving and changing environments and make effective written and verbal communication a priority in all situations.

Living Conditions / Environmental Conditions

The position is based in Bulawayo with frequent travel to implementation areas in Matabeleland North.

Mercy Corps team members represent the agency both during and outside work hours when deployed in a field posting or on a visit/TDY to a field posting. Team members are expected to conduct themselves in a professional manner and respect local laws, customs and MC's policies, procedures, and values at all times and in all in-country venues.

Fostering a diverse and open workplace is an important part of Mercy Corps’ vision. Mercy Corps is an Equal Opportunity Employer regardless of background. We are committed to creating an inclusive environment.