TITLE: Project Administrative Officer - Community Partnerships for Respectful Care (CPRC) project
DEPARTMENT: International Partnerships & Programs
REPORTS TO: Tanzania Project Director, Community Partnerships for Respectful Care (CPRC) project
ASSIGNMENT TYPE: Full-time
LOCATION: Mwanza, Tanzania
LENGTH: 24-months with possibility to extend based on performance and budget
ABOUT AMERICARES:
Americares is a health-focused relief and development organization that saves lives and improves health for people affected by poverty or disaster. Each year, Americares reaches more than 90 countries, including the United States, with life-changing health programs, medicine and medical supplies. Americares is the world’s leading nonprofit provider of donated medicine and medical supplies. For more information, visit americares.org.
About Community Partnerships for Respectful Care (CPRC):
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) under the New Partnerships Initiative (NPI) has awarded CPRC to the Americares Foundation Inc. NPI is shifting the focus of USAID’s traditional partners to mentoring, capacity-building, and technical oversight, by using umbrella mechanisms and sub-awards strategically to enable new and underutilized local partners to lead development in their own communities and advance the Journey to Self-Reliance. USAID seeks to expand its network of partnerships with local organizations because they can mobilize quickly and take advantage of long-standing grassroots relationships to bring needed interventions directly to people at risk.
The Americares Community Partnerships for Respectful Care (CPRC) project is a five-year, $25 million effort under NPI to reduce mortality and morbidity among mothers and their children through improved community-based health care. Americares will work with Christian Connections for International Health (CCIH) and its local affiliates in the United Republic of Tanzania (Christian Social Services Commission-CSSC) and the Republic of Liberia to leverage the expertise and reach of local and locally established organizations, by building their institutional capacity. This new partnership will work closely with Tanzanian and Liberian communities and faith-based networks to improve access to, and demand for, high-quality, community-based health care for mothers, newborns, and children; voluntary family planning; nutrition; and respectful maternity care
POSITION SUMMARY:
The Project Administrative Officer will work under the direct supervision of the Tanzania CPRC Project Director to perform her/his assignments within the CPRC project teams. S/He will be the main point of contact to plan and work on CPRC project administrative matters. S/He is expected to provide consistent and timely support to CPRC team in Tanzania to ensure compliance with USAID rules and regulations and Americares policies and procedures, especially in ensuring timely project Annual Work Plan (AWP) development, activities implementation, reporting, and overall project cycle calendar.
Female candidates are strongly encouraged to apply.
DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:
- Supports Project Director and project team in coordination of project administrative, technical, and activities tasks schedules as applicable
- Supports Project Director in coordinating CPRC project teams’ field work activities preparations, travels, and logistics, through close communications with the Finance and Operations Manager, Finance Officer, Human Resource & Logistics Officers, and Office Assistant to ensure smooth and timely execution of activities
- Contribute to maintaining effective and productive communications and relationships with USAID Mission and relevant stakeholders, such as MOHCDGEC, PO-RALG, Implementing Partners (IPs), and external partners and existing health private sector networks
- Supports project team in sub-grant and contract management by monitoring and facilitating tracking and accomplishment of milestones
- Ensure project-related documentation including program files and project activities budgets are compliant, properly documented, and organized
- Assists project team in the preparation, tracking and realignment of the CPRC project budget and sub-grant funding
- Supports the Project Director and project team in development/submission of contractual requests to the mission requesting USAID concurrence for all international travels
- Contributes to weekly updates and monthly reports, collection of CPRC success stories, best practices and lessons learned
- Assist project team in preparing and keep tracking of project correspondence, reports, meeting schedules, and minutes notes
- Work with the program and finance team in developing activity budgets and project activity advance requests
- In collaboration with HR and Logistics Officer, identify and books venues for activities, prepare and dispatch participant and trainers invitation letters, confirm participant and trainer’s attendance, arrange transport, sources training materials and supplies, request audio visual equipment etc.
- Ensure appropriate setup of the training hall and audio-visual equipment and oversee provision of conference services by the training centres
- Ensure availability of refreshments, manage disbursement of funds for participants costs with finance team oversight
- Coordinate with the finance team payments to vendors, reconcile and liquidate activity advances, provide secretarial support to project events, and carry out all other logistical tasks to ensure that activities are well organized
- Coordinate project meetings, develop meeting agendas, invite, and remind attendees, take and distribute minutes, track agreement points and action plan items and send out reminders on due items
- Draft, edit, copy, package and dispatch project documents, training materials and correspondence
- Assist in compiling quarterly and annual project progress reports
- Assist program teams with laying out and editing of presentations using PowerPoint, and ensure necessary approvals are obtained before publication of any project documentation
- Contributes to weekly updates and monthly reports, collection of CPRC success stories, best practices and lessons learned
- Compile and maintain an up-to-date inventory of all project reports and documents including monthly, quarterly, and annual narrative reports, activity reports, trip reports etc.
- Track all due reports and deliverables and send out reminders to project staff and ensure usage of the designated reporting formats
- Ensure adequate review, feedback, distribution and filing of the deliverables in a timely manner and according to project dissemination plans
- Establish and maintain a central filing system for the project, both electronic and hard copy, ensuring integration of individual’s-maintained files and the central files
- Work closely with Project MEL Specialist to establish and maintain a mini resource centre for the project, gathering and properly cataloguing project information and other relevant resources, and respond to miscellaneous requests for project information
- Perform other duties as assigned by the Tanzania CPRC Project Director to ensure smooth project implementation
CORE AMERICARES RESPONSIBILITIES:
- Foster Americares values of responsiveness, results orientation, collaboration, efficiency, and integrity
- Coach, support and develop staff to increase individual and team effectiveness
- Develop and manage implementation of plans to increase team operating performance, including SOPs and other efficiency initiatives
MINIMUM Qualifications:
- Bachelor’s degree in social sciences, arts with education, administration, management, or related field and at least five years of experience in support USAID funded projects administrative management roles
- Experience working with international development organization and experience working with sub-grantees and vendors
- Experience working in project knowledge management
- Ability to multi-task and work in a team environment, as well as independently when require
- Ability to perform program activities budget analysis, highly desirable
- Excellent interpersonal skills and strong communications skills; ability to develop partnerships across sectors and cultures
- Strong organizational skills, capacity to think strategically and attention to detail
- Excellent English-language writing skills and demonstrated experience meeting USAID and other donor reporting requirements
- Proficiency in Office 365 including Word, Excel, Teams, PowerPoint, and SharePoint
- Willingness and ability to travel at least two weeks per month
- Unrestricted authorization to work in Tanzania