Strategic Partnership Program Lead

International Rescue Committee · Nairobi

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The International Rescue Committee (IRC) responds to the world's worst humanitarian crises, helping to restore health, safety, education, economic wellbeing, and power to people devastated by conflict and disaster. Founded in 1933 at the call of Albert Einstein, the IRC is one of the world's largest international humanitarian non-governmental organizations (INGO), at work in more than 40 countries and 29 U.S. cities helping people to survive, reclaim control of their future and strengthen their communities. A force for humanity, IRC employees deliver lasting impact by restoring safety, dignity and hope to millions. If you're a solutions-driven, passionate change-maker, come join us in positively impacting the lives of millions of people world-wide for a better future.

Background

The International Rescue Committee helps people affected by conflict and disaster to survive, recover, and regain control of their future. The Violence Prevention and Response Unit leads IRC's work across women's protection and empowerment, child protection, and protection and rule of law, positioning social work in crises as the connective practice across these areas.

POWER is a multi-country strategic partnership funded by Irish Aid, running from 2025 to 2027 across Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, and Sudan. Its core logic is holistic gender-based violence prevention and response delivered through strengthened local women-led organizations, including partners such as SSWC in Somalia and FODDAJ in Kenya, with a quarter of country budgets channeled directly to local partners under a feminist partnership framework and the PEERS power-sharing principles. The program includes a dedicated advocacy pillar, an emergency response pillar, and a partnership learning pillar, and it works through practices such as women-led safety audits that already constitute community-generated risk analysis feeding into local advocacy and decision-making.

Job overview

The Strategic Partnership Program Lead  coordinates quality and learning across the six POWER country programs. The role works through country WPE and program teams, POWER’s women-led and local partners, and the  WPE Global Practice, and  coordinates with the Award Management Unit (AMU), which leads the donor relationship with Irish Aid. It is accountable for technical quality assistance against IRC core WPE standards and the IASC GBV Minimum Standards for the design and delivery of the  partnership learning pillar, and for tracking and reporting delivery against scope, timeline, and budget across the six countries so that deviation is identified early. The position contributes to the partnership’s advocacy pillar and to the design of the next partnership phase.

Major responsibilities

The role holds the technical quality of POWER delivery to IRC's WPE standards, keeps the partnership and the WPE Global Practice in two-way exchange ,rather than a one directional flow of standards downward,  and tracks delivery across six countries against scope, timeline and budget so that deviation is flagged early enough for adaptive management

• Provide quality oversight across the six country programs, so that survivor-centered response, case management, women and girls' safe spaces, clinical and MHPSS referral pathways, and social norms work meet IRC WPE technical standards and the IASC GBV Minimum Standards.

• Serve as the connective role between the POWER partnership and the WPE Global Practice, translating core standards into partnership contexts and carrying partnership-generated practice back into the core.

• Support the sequencing of prevention and social norms activities to context, so they are introduced only where women-led community analysis confirms the preconditions for safe implementation are met.

• Maintain coherence of approach across the six countries without flattening contextual difference, identifying where a shared standard applies and where local adaptation is warranted.

• Track and report on delivery against scope, timeline, and budget across the six country programs, flagging deviation early enough for adaptive management rather than end-of-cycle correction.

• Ensure MEAL and program data feed directly into program adaptation, so that what the data shows changes what the program does, not only what it reports.

• Connect program data and implementation evidence to wider sector trends and debates, including comparable protection and GBV programming elsewhere.

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Learning, evidence, and the partnership learning agenda

The role leads the program's learning function, treating implementation learning as a legitimate evidence pathway rather than a lesser substitute for external research. It also support the partnership’s advocacy pillar, so that evidence generated with the partners informs partners’ own advocacy and IRC’s policy positioning.

• Lead the design and delivery of the partnership learning pillar, coordinating cross-country learning cycles, documentation, and structured reflection between IRC and partners.

• Position women-led safety audits as community-generated risk analysis, and strengthen the pathway from that analysis into local decision-making and adaptive management.

• Build the program's evidence base on what enables and constrains change in protracted crisis settings, surfacing failure modes honestly, including referral systems that exist on paper but not in practice, and norms work that shifts survey scores without shifting community behavior.

• Ensure learning is co-owned with partners and feeds their own institutional positioning, not only IRC's reporting obligations.

• Steward the POWER advocacy pillar, supporting partners to carry community-generated analysis into local, national, and global advocacy where they hold standing in their own right.

• Work with advocacy and policy colleagues so the partnership's evidence informs IRC positioning toward donors, multilaterals, and normative bodies.

Strengthening the core and surge capacity of women-led and local organizations

The role supports partners on two distinct fronts, their institutional core and their capacity to surge in emergencies, resisting the pattern where localization language coexists with authority still held by the international actor.

• Support partner institutional strengthening across governance, financial systems, safeguarding, and MEAL in ways partners define and lead, consistent with the PEERS principles and the direct funding commitment.

• Strengthen partner surge and emergency response readiness under the emergency response pillar, so local organizations hold a credible role when crises escalate rather than being displaced by international surge.

• Advance the shift of analytical and decision-making authority toward partners with genuine institutional standing, including SSWC in Somalia and FODDAJ in Kenya, co-designing tools and thresholds with them rather than imposing them.

• Support the broader civil society and women's movement ecosystem the partnership connects to, recognizing partners as governance and coordination actors in their own right.

Strategic focus on women and girls in conflict settings

The role keeps women and girls in active conflict and protracted displacement at the center of the partnership, including where conflict-related sexual violence is a feature of the context.

• Ensure program design and adaptation are anchored in the realities faced by women and girls across the six contexts, several of which are shaped by active conflict and large-scale displacement.

• Support conflict-related sexual violence sensitive practice where relevant, including safe and consent-based documentation, clinical pathways, and Do No Harm decisions taken at closest proximity to violence, with pattern awareness fed upward.

• Keep adolescent girls visible as a distinct group rather than folded into a general women-and-girls category.

Partnership and donor relationship management

The role supports coherence of technical delivery across countries and reporting cycles, contributing technical content into the strategic relationship with Irish Aid, which AMU stewards and holds overall.

• Serve as a central program coordination point for the POWER partnership, supporting planning, adaptive management, amendments, and quality reporting to Irish Aid in coordination with the European DE & Frameworks team (Irish Aid).

• Feed technical content on program direction, learning, and strategic opportunities into AMU's communication with Irish Aid and the Department of Foreign Affairs. .

• Coordinate across the six country teams and the relevant IRC technical, advocacy, awards, and finance functions to keep the partnership coherent and its commitments met.

• Contribute technical input to AMU's design and negotiation of the next Strategic Partnership phase (post-2027), including program scope, theory of change, and the monitoring, evaluation and learning framework, coordinating input from WPE pillar leads, country teams, and partners, under AMU's overall lead on negotiation, timeline, and the donor relationship.

Key working relationships

Works closely with:  AMU, Global and VPRU Advocacy; VPRU MEAL/METAL Unit.

Country WPE and program leads across the six POWER countries; POWER women-led and local partners, including SSWC in Somalia and FODDAJ in Kenya; IRC Awards Management Unit (AMU); VPRU Business Development; Irish Aid and Department of Foreign Affairs counterparts.

Job requirements

Education: Advanced degree in a relevant field such as social work, gender studies, international development, human rights, public health, or law, or an equivalent combination of qualification and experience.

Work experience: A minimum of 8 years professional experience in GBV, WPE, or protection programming in humanitarian and conflict-affected settings, at a technical lead level, including demonstrated experience in partnership and locally-led social action, in program quality or learning, and in program or grant management including budget oversight.

Demonstrated skills and competencies:

• Strong technical grounding in WPE practice and the IASC GBV Minimum Standards.

• Practical experience in feminist partnership and localization, including working with women-led organizations as partners rather than subgrantees.

• Learning and MEAL capability, with the judgment to treat implementation learning as evidence and to surface difficult findings.

• Program and grant management across multiple countries, including tracking and reporting r delivery against scope, timeline, and budget, and the systems to flag deviation early.

• Ability to translate program evidence into policy-relevant framing for donors, multilaterals, and normative processes.

• Multi-country coordination across diverse and often insecure contexts, with contextual and political sensitivity.

• Sound Do No Harm and safeguarding judgment, particularly in conflict-related sexual violence contexts.

Languages: Fluent English required. French is an asset given the East and Central Africa footprint, and Arabic is an asset for the Sudan and South Sudan contexts.

Working environment and travel: Possible travel across the six countries, including to hardship and conflict-affected locations.

This is a hybrid position open to internal candidates based in countries where IRC operates who have the right to work in their location. Successful candidates will be hired on a local employment contract and according to local salary scale.

This role is open to candidates located and with the right to work in Kenya, Uganda, Burundi.

Professional Standards: All International Rescue Committee workers must adhere to the core values and principles outlined in IRC Way - Standards for Professional Conduct. Our Standards are Integrity, Service, Equality and Accountability. In accordance with these values, the IRC operates and enforces policies on Safeguarding, Conflicts of Interest, Fiscal Integrity, and Reporting Wrongdoing and Protection from Retaliation. IRC is committed to take all necessary preventive measures and create an environment where people feel safe, and to take all necessary actions and corrective measures when harm occurs. IRC builds teams of professionals who promote critical reflection, power sharing, debate, and objectivity to deliver the best possible services to our clients.

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