JOB DESCRIPTION

 

 

Position: State Program Manager – Women’s Economic Empowerment

Location: Patna & Lucknow

Vacancies: One for each location

Reporting To: Program Lead

 

ABOUT PROJECT CONCERN INTERNATIONAL

 

Project Concern International (PCI) India, a registered society under the Society Registrations Act, has been working in India since 1998. With the vision of building a happy, healthy, safe, and sustainable world for all, PCI deploys community mobilization strategies to co-create and scale sustainable solutions to complex social issues and improve development outcomes.

PCI’s deep community connect built over decades equipped it to discover the root causes of social and developmental challenges faced by the marginalized communities. PCI drives interventions to transform the lives of communities at scale by partnering with governments, private sectors, and development organizations. Over the last two decades, we have designed efficacious and scalable solutions to complex development problems such as improving child dietary diversity, gender-based violence, etc. which have been scaled-up by the government through its own resources. We are recognized as a high-quality technical partner to the state and national governments, having a partnership with the governments and/or the government-led institutions at national level and with the states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Odisha, Tripura, etc. Currently, we have presence in more than 13 states, directly reaching out to more than 7 million lives through our interventions focused on health, nutrition, women economic empowerment, gender, adolescents, social protection, and emergency response.

Please visit our website to learn more about our values, mission, vision and our work in India.

 

Project Background:

 

In India, government procurement constitutes above 20 percent of the GDP ~ $500 billion. In fact, India is among the large emerging economies where procurement by the government accounts for over 20% of the GDP. Since 2018, the provisions under Govt. of India mandate public buyers to procure at least 25 per cent of their annual procurement of goods from Micro & Small Enterprises (MSEs). With a view to support MSEs, several benefits have been provided, e.g., issuance of tender document for free, exemption from Earnest Money Deposit requirements and reservation of 358 items for exclusive procurement from MSEs. There has been a gradual increase in the share of government procurement made from MSEs in the past four years barring FY 2021.

However, in the public procurement of goods and services in India, Women’s Self-Help Groups and their federations have largely remained excluded and have not had the opportunity to create wealth for the rural poor through entrepreneurship. One of the reasons for this is a scarcity of evidence to demonstrate that viable models managed by community-based institutions exist and are successful in catering to the requirements of the State adequately and efficiently at scale.

 

PCI India has recently been engaged by a leading international philanthropic foundation to address this evidence gap and provide technical assistance (TA) to several State Rural Livelihoods Missions (SRLMs) to enable them to plan, create and manage more women-led businesses in public procurement space, thereby generating more jobs and income for women. The project is called ‘Leveraging Public Procurement for Women’s Economic Empowerment’.

 

Job Summary:

 

The State Program Manager based at the state office is expected to support the Program Lead-WEE and National Program Manager in refining and executing project strategies, action plans, evaluation tools for their respective state. He/ She shall be responsible for state specific budgeting and manage the team based out in the state’s SRLM during the program implementation. S/he will be responsible for coordination with the National Program Manager and the different verticals of PCI at the state office for ensuring smooth implementation of the project. S/he will be responsible for supporting the Program Lead in state specific landscaping for identifying goods and services that the state SRLMs promoted WLEs are efficiently providing to various buyers (state ministries, departments, autonomous organizations of state government, PSUs etc.). S/he will ensure continuous information flow with the National Program manager and professionals of SRLM, as per the requirement. S/he is expected to lead the team for development of instructional playbooks on PP and undertake risk assessments of existing WLEs for generating evidence of best practice. S/he will also support the National Program Manager in providing regular reports to different stakeholders as and when required. S/he will be responsible for organizing programs and activities in accordance with the project strategies at their respective locations. S/he is expected to be in continuous engagement with the stakeholders at the state level to make communication easy and assess risks in advance for ensuring smooth project implementation.

 

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Project Implementation & Management

• Lead the state-wide landscaping of women-led enterprises on models of public procurement and ensure development of a quality report for external dissemination.
• Develop detailed project implementation plan (PIP) for replication of successful WLE models at their respective location through SRLM network.
• Identifying and managing specialist partners that would support CLFs/ WLEs to build the required business and technical skills, thus leading to accelerated business improvement.
• Identify any shortcomings, address, and report to program lead to ensure uninterrupted project implementation.
• Ensure efficient budgeting of the project expenditures.
• Commission and review any strategic documents pertaining to the state as requested by donor, client, or any other stakeholder.
• Design action plan for the team at the state level for supporting the SRLM throughout the scale up process.

Stakeholder and Partnership Management

• Maintain excellent relationships and association with the state level governmental and non-governmental organizations and ensure that the technical support provided by the WEE team is valued by them and potential of WEE team is fully exploited in improving their work.
• Support Program Lead in partnerships management by conducting regular collaborative meets and extend support through required preparations for the same.
• Work closely with the state and national PCI team members in addressing any requirements for the donor and other major stakeholders

Reporting & Documentation

• Finalise captured learnings, project activities and best practices for dissemination at different online & offline platforms for upkeeping projects visibility.
• Contribute to designing and finalising of state and national project indicators & MIS and ensure timely reporting.
• Engage actively for providing field insights to the knowledge management team at PCI for producing different knowledge products.
• Work closely with PCI team members to produce knowledge and learning products for knowledge sharing, aiming to communicate with government, donor, partners, development agencies and civil society
• Finalising meeting notes, draft articles, speeches, briefings, presentations, reports, documents and collated information as and when required for the national and state office

Donor Management and Compliance

• Develop and submit the progress reports to and attend briefing meetings and discussions with the donor representatives
• Support in quality and timely completion of final deliverables.
• Assist the donor-facing presentation and dissemination of all final products, as required

 

Other responsibilities

• To carry out any other relevant duties as required and assigned by Program Lead.

 

Expected Competencies

 

1. Academic Qualifications:

 

The ideal candidate shall have a post-graduate degree/ diploma in management (preferably agri-business management, business management, marketing, financial management or rural management) or entrepreneurship development.

 

1. Professional Experience:

 

1. Minimum 6 years of experience of working with government and international donors and must possess expertise in one or more of the following domains:
   • Rural livelihoods,
   • Small and micro enterprise promotion,
   • Financial inclusion,
   • Skilling and
   • Employment generation.
2. Preferably have a deep experience of working as part of the core team of major Technical Support projects for the government, with a special focus on managing relations with donors and bureaucracy, writing project reports, budgeting and cost management.
3. Understanding of large-scale women economic empowerment programs & SRLM functioning

 

1. Skills and Attributes:

 

1. Knowledge and experience with gender approaches and tools
2. Good analytical and problem-solving skills
3. Demonstrated ability to provide leadership in a highly motivated team
4. Excellent oral and written English skills
5. Knowledge of local languages is a plus
6. Sophisticated digital literacy including word processing, database systems, and PowerPoint. Strong command of excel and budget management is a plus.

 

 

Duration of Appointment:

 

This is a 2-year project. The State Program Manager will be involved on full-time basis for 2 years in this project. The appointment is extendable for exceptional performers.

Application Process:

Interested candidates can apply for the position of State Program Manager – Women’s Economic Empowerment by 2nd November,2022 by clicking on following link: State Program Manager – Women’s Economic Empowerment- PCI India (pciglobal.in)

 

PCI India is an equal opportunity provider and does not discriminate on the basis of race, colour, religion (creed), gender, gender expression, age, national origin (ancestry), disability and/or marital status.

 

Female candidates are encouraged to apply