Position: Accountability Manager

Department: MEAL

Location: Mogadishu

Contract Duration: 12 months

Direct Hierarchy: Country Meal Manager

Starting date: November 2023

Background on ACTED

Created in 1993, ACTED is an international non-governmental organization pursuing a dual mandate of emergency response and development interventions in 40 of some of the world’s most vulnerable countries affected by conflicts, disasters, or socio-economic hardship. With a team of 7,000 national staff and 400 international staff, ACTED implements 500 projects a year to support more than 20 million beneficiaries, notably in hard-to-reach areas.

ACTED goes to the last mile through programs and approaches that look beyond the immediate emergency towards opportunities for longer term livelihood reconstruction and sustainable development. Guided by the motto “Think Local, Act Global” and its 3Zero –Zero Exclusion, Zero Carbon, and Zero Poverty – strategy, ACTED puts local territories at the centre and provides a tailored support to local needs.

ACTED is looking for professionally confident, self-motivated, experienced, and committed team player to fill the Accountability Manager position to be based in Mogadishu, Somalia.

Position Profile:

Under the supervision of the MEAL Manager, the Accountability Manager contributes to improving the quality of Acted programming through the accurate registration and timely follow up of any complaints about Acted’s activities/staff and also contributes to the development of appropriate messaging and communication strategies to enable communities’ participation.

The Accountability Manager supervises the Accountability team to ensure that stakeholders of the project have access to a safe and responsive mechanism. The Accountability Manager will need to be neutral and establish mechanisms that are based on the highest integrity which beneficiaries will trust.

Duties and Responsibilities

Responsibilities :

1. Support the establishment and implementation of the Acted Feedback Mechanism
   1. Establishment and rolling out of the AFMs (Acted Feedback Mechanism) country level

• Establish, implement, monitor and centralized the Acted Feedback Mechanism (AFM) for the country’s mission in line with Acted standard AFM’s procedures.
• Review and improve the AFM’s channels, mechanisms, procedures with MEAL and program team.
• Support the Country MEAL Manager and PD team with AFMs to provide and present the trends in learning and reflection sessions.
• Support the MEAL team in development of the data collection tools ensuring the Accountability and community engagement questions are included in all assessments.
• Develop tools to track community satisfaction regularly and produce the result.
• Document the process of accountability initiatives, process learning to stimulate improvements as well as capture good practices, effects of AFM’s on the community engagement and program improvement.
• Develop monthly AFM’s factsheet with key findings and trends to show the effectiveness of the AFMs response.
• Work directly with the program team to mainstream the AAP within all the projects and provide inputs in all the project stages.
• Build capacity and understanding among Acted staff, partners and contractors on beneficiary accountability and AFM’s.
• Ensure that the MEAL and/or project teams spread awareness about the AFMs to beneficiaries, as well as local authorities and stakeholders in Acted’s areas of implementation, during field visits.
• Develop AFM’s IEC materials in a language that can be widely understood (including people with low levels of literacy).
• Regularly assess the effectiveness of all information-sharing efforts and incorporate findings into revised approaches.
• Maintain records of AFM’s awareness raising and promotion activities (including approximate numbers of participants) and submit to Project Managers & MEAL team as required.
• Attend and participate the external Accountability but not limited to the AAP WG.
  1. Implementation of the AFM’s
• Ensure the effective functioning of the AFM’s and that beneficiary complaints/feedback is adequately captured, analyzed, addressed and responded to in a timely manner and utilized by the program and coordination teams.
• Provide oversight and coordinate regularly with country MEAL Manager and Accountability team.
• Support the Accountability officers/assistants for managing and receiving the complaints through hotline.
• Follow up on complaints received by other Acted staff with MEAL diligence as complaints received through the AFM’s directly.
• Treat urgent and/or sensitive complaints with the immediate attention they require and ensure a fast resolution.
• Maintain confidential and detailed records of all complaints in the AFM’s database and other electronic and hard copy filing systems, as appropriate.
• Respond to complaints objectively, accurately, and in line with Acted guidelines, using information provided by Project Managers, MEAL Officers/Monitors, Area Coordinators, Technical Coordinators, project documents, FLAT documents and procedures, etc.
• Follow up on pending complaints with Project, MEAL, and Coordination staff.
• Analyse patterns and trends in complaints to help Acted improve its programming.
• Produce a monthly analytic AFM factsheet to share with Acted staff.
• Adapt and improve the AFM based on monitoring of its effectiveness.

1. Accountability team leadershipTeam Management

• Ensure that Accountability staff understand and are able to perform their roles and responsibilities.
• Manage Accountability staff delineating their responsibilities and follow-up the work plans and day-to-day activities.
• Undertake regular appraisals of accountability staff and follow career management.
• Ensure that the team retains all that is distinctive about Acted including the organizations values and beliefs, global identity, coherence and consistency, and independence and impartiality.Capacity Building and Training
• Identify the MEAL training needs of Accountability staff, discuss plans with the Country MEAL Manager for both internal and external training, and implement them according to MEAL strategic and operational priorities.
• Coach, train, and mentor the Accountability team with the aim of strengthening their technical capacity, exchanging knowledge within the Accountability team and providing professional development guidance.
• Train the program staff as relevant

Finance

• Participate and Support the Country MEAL Officers in the review of the BFU and forecast initial and regular costs and cross-check expenditures related to Accountability activities.
• Support the Country MEAL Manager and Country MEAL Officers in new budget development processes through contextual knowledge.

Other

• Provide regular and timely updates on progress and challenges to supervisors and other team members.
• Assist project and MEAL teams with other activities, as requested by immediate supervisor.
• Perform any other related activities as assigned by immediate supervisor.

Qualifications, Experience & Technical skills

• Completion of a university degree in M&E, Social Science, Development Studies, International / Humanitarian Law, Agriculture or another relevant degree
• Professional humanitarian qualifications / recognised training certificates in Accountability-related areas (CHS, PSEA, investigations, etc)
• Minimum 5 years of experience in international and/or local NGO; ideally involved in directly implementing field-level humanitarian assistance to refugees or IDPs and rural agropastoral communities.
• Minimum 3 years of professional experience working with humanitarian / development organisations with responsibilities for accountability, monitoring, and evaluation and/or programme quality functions.
• Minimum 3 years’ experience in team management.
• Advanced knowledge and demonstrated ability of principles and practices related to confidentiality, protection, and interviewing of extremely vulnerable individuals in a humanitarian context.
• Demonstrated capacity to work collaboratively in a multi-cultural environment with competing priorities, tight deadlines, and in a complex emergency context.
• Excellent communication skills.
• Excellent interpersonal and team-playing skills.
• Proficiency in English and local language, both oral and written.
• Experience in working with national partners, local/government authorities, and UN organizations.
• Experience, including leading/supervising subordinate staff, organizing activities, and report writing.
• Highly flexible, with the ability to use initiative.
• Ability to work in a multi-cultural environment.
• Commitment to humanitarian principles and values.
• Understanding of gender, protection, and human rights.
• Commitment to promoting gender equality.

Preferred experience:

• Managerial experience, including leading/supervising subordinate staff, organizing activities, and report writing.
• Experience in training and capacity-building of staff.
• Highly developed skills and demonstrated capacity developing accountability strategies and mechanisms, including implementation and training in accountability principles and practice.
• Experience engaging with partner organizations for transfer of knowledge through training, mentoring and other formal and non-formal methods.
• Experience contributing to the development of technical proposals.

Demonstrated MEAL field experience; skilled in collecting, manipulating, synthesizing and analyzing data. Skill with SPSS or similar data analysis software highly preferred