Capacity Development Officer

PACT Overview

Pact is an international nonprofit that works in nearly 40 countries building solutions for human development that are evidence-based, data-driven and owned by the communities we serve. Founded in 1971, Pact works with partners to build resilience, improve accountability, and strengthen knowledge and skills for sustainable social impact.

Department

Programs - Pact strives for a world where all people are heard, capable, and vibrant. The Programs Team helps realize this objective by bridging program management, technical support, and business development, enabling Pact to achieve its global strategy. We ensure program excellence through continuous learning, monitoring and evaluation and provide organizational and industry-wide thought leadership by leveraging a complementary set of cross-functional, multi-disciplinary skills, expertise, and experiences. The Programs team: influences progressive change through the development and implementation of global and regional strategies and business plans; supports advancement of innovative solutions; pursues new business opportunities; and drives effective internal and external engagement to maximize Pact’s impact across the globe. Across all aspects of its role, the Programs Department adheres to and promotes a culture of inclusion, accountability, and respect.

Position Overview

The Capacity Development (CD) Officer for the USAID CSM-STAND Sri Lanka Bolstering Civil Society Activity will support the project’s overall goal to assist Sri Lanka in maintaining a vibrant civil society that empowers citizens to advance the democratic values of citizen participation. Activities will link CSOs across communities, districts, and regions to have a voice in local governance and national reform processes.

Under the supervision of the CD Manager, the CD Officer provides technical programming and operations support for the design and implementation of capacity development activities. The role will support successful CD programming relevant to the needs of partners and stakeholders, such as through sustainability strengthening, systems level capacity development, and stakeholder engagement for non-traditional income generation models. This is to be a five-year program that commenced in September 2022.

Reporting to the Capacity Development Manager, CD officer will be responsible for leading the operation of cascaded capacity development activities in the field and ensuring that the capacity development activities contribute to local partners sustainability and system level strengthening. With the Capacity Development Manager, the position will support cascaded capacity development activities by working closely with different partner profiles, such as community-based organizations, networks, forums, private sectors, and government institution to respond to individual needs for tailored CD support. Further, the role is expected to support the implementation of technical capacity development strategy, using different approach modalities such as peer mentoring, community of practice, exchange visits and blended learning management. This individual must have a good facilitation skill, effective communication and understand the adult learning principle since they will interact day-by-day with different partner profiles every day whether during the workshop, training, or mentoring.  This individual contributes to building capacity of staff and partners and promotes local ownership and sustainability through participatory and empowerment methods. Further, the individual will support the integration of gender equality and social inclusion (GESI) to the CD activities, including ethnic and religious minorities, LGBTQI people and people with disabilities.

Key Responsibilities

• Support with the development and implementation of the project’s CD strategy to strengthen the technical and organizational capacity of local partners toward direct funding from USAID, while maintaining quality services.
• Lead self-guided assessment to the local organizations including analysis, as a baseline toward organization performance growth throughout the project life.
• Work closely with the Capacity Development Manager to implement project activities, monitor the achievement and evaluate the result including measuring local organizations performance periodically
• Monitoring the efficacy and suitability of CD marketplace as a platform to connect CSOs to the local CD providers.
• Work closely with different partner profiles, including community-based partners, networks, local CD providers, private sector institution to respond to individual needs for cascaded CD support.
• Managing learning management system and content development, including monitoring blended learning courses and contribute to the video material development.
• Responsible for day-to-day monitoring of the implementation of cascaded CD activities by mentoring CD providers and local partners in the field, ensuring adherence to the capacity development targets, timelines, budget management and achievement to the overall objectives.
• Implementing peer mentoring and learning session through community of practice and exchange visits to review progress and identify lesson learned, shared tools and innovations between mature organization to the nascent organization.
• Support the implementation of private-sector and CSO engagement to mobilize further partnership opportunities and financial resources including identifying CSR opportunities, business model development, contracting or joint advocacy.
• Support coordination and integration of CD technical approaches under project result areas.
• Assist in coordination with appropriate stakeholders for programming activities
• Contribute to project planning (i.e. development of work plans and operating budget) and work closely with the CD Manager for USAID reporting.
• Coordinate with relevant team members for data collection and knowledge management.
• All other duties as assigned.

Basic Requirements

• Master's degree with five (5) years work experience or bachelor's degree with at least seven (7+) years work experience
• Minimum two (2) years related experience in implementing technical and organizational capacity building programs, adult education, and institutional design.
• Experience working with community-based organizations and organizational capacity building of partners
• Fluency in English and local language(s).
• Strong planning and inter‐cultural communication skills required.
• Sri Lanka resident

Preferred Qualifications

• Knowledge of USAID rules and regulations supporting international development programming in other organizations similar to Pact.
• Strong analytical and organizational skills.