Director of Capacity Development and Sustainability

Pact seeks a Director of Capacity Development and Sustainability for the USAID-funded Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, Child, Immunization, and Malaria Integrated Health (including family planning) Activity, hereafter referred to as “Kira Ukuze” (“Grow well”). This Activity will focus on facility-level interventions and collaborate with the USAID Integrated Community Health (ICH) Activity at the community level to improve the quality of, and demand for, service delivery interventions. This will be a $45M five-year (August 2024-August 2029), cooperative agreement. This position is subject to project award and funding. As this is a Key Personnel position, the candidate selected for this opportunity must have his/her candidacy confirmed by USAID. The location of this position is anticipated to be Bujumbura. Frequent travel to the provincial offices is anticipated.

Kira Ukuze will be the flagship Activity in the USAID Burundi Health Portfolio for Family Planning and Reproductive, Maternal, Neonatal, and Child Health (FP/RMNCH) at the household and health facility level. Kira Ukuze will be the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) malaria service delivery Activity at the health facility level, working in public and private health facilities in four malaria high-burden provinces of Gitega, Cankuzo, Rutana and Makamba. This Activity will also have to strongly collaborate with the Integrated Community Health Activity in these seven provinces, with collaboration focused on strengthening health facility and community health worker touchpoints, including building and enhancing the referral and counter referral system, supervision of Community Health Workers (CHWs), and reporting of data to facilities by CHWs, along with the delivery of integrated community case management of childhood illness, which includes malaria. Kira Ukuze will also collaborate closely with the USAID Integrated Community Health (ICH) Activity for community-level interventions outside of malaria.

The Director of Capacity Development and Sustainability will lead a team that drives and monitors implementation of CD activities by mentoring technical teams, ensuring adherence to targets, timelines, budget management and achievement of objectives. In addition to leading the technical and contextual adaptation of Pact and CD tools and approaches to support achievement of Activity objectives and targets, the Director will be responsible for CD related resource sharing, knowledge management, best practices, cross learning, and innovations that yield sustainable CD results.

The Director will be accountable for delivering national-level results for this Activity. The Capacity Development Director will be accountable for leading the Activity’s strategy for strengthening the capacity of local partners and leading the development and realization of local organizations’ business sustainability planning and resource mobilization strategies. He/ She will also be responsible for providing quality support in strategic planning for partner organizations.

The Director will partner closely with the Technical Director to provide training and mentoring to partners to strengthen capacity for technical service delivery and compliance with donor rules and regulations. The Director will also liaise with the MEL Advisor to promote coordination, collaboration, continuous learning, and adaptive management across all Intermediate Results of the Activity. The Director of Capacity Development and Sustainability will report to the Chief of Party.

Key Responsibilities

• Manage, supervise, and support the Capacity Development and Sustainability team and ensure the team is responsive to the needs of the Kira Ukuze Activity. Spearhead the customization and implementation process of capacity development tools to ensure capacity development support provided contribute to addressing capacity development needs of local partners.
• Lead CD strategy development, implementation, and monitoring. Provide input to the development of annual implementation plans, annual budgeting, project reports, and other key project deliverables that contribute to the development of the project’s analytical products including research policy briefs, presentations, project updates, environment scans, or newsletter articles, etc.
• Lead network analysis and network strengthening activities to identify barriers and opportunities for advancing shared civil society strengthening programming and to improve coordination and integration of activities
• Oversee capacity and performance assessments of partners/subgrantees and support the development and implementation of Change Action Plans for each partner/subgrantee.
• Identify partner/subgrantee training needs, identify trainers, and support the development of curriculum for all trainings. Identify opportunities for partner/sub awardee mentoring needs and provide mentoring on a range of organizational development topics. Conduct regular monitoring review meetings on subgrantee capacity action plans to track capacity development achievements and identify any immerging capacity development issues /needs. Contribute to the development of resources/ documents for specific technical areas identified for capacity development of subgrantees, including training, mentoring, and coaching, etc.
• Support collaboration with donors, multilateral organizations, host country governments, and implementing partners to apply civil society strengthening approaches and best practices for the purpose of capacity strengthening, especially training, mentoring, and learning activities.
• Lead capacity building on quality assurance/continuous quality improvement of project tools, methodologies, and approaches. Document CD-related best practices and produce blogs/articles drawn from capacity development successes. Regularly collect, analyze, and report on CD data.
• Provide written inputs and/ contribute to the development of tools required to monitor the implementation and monitoring of project capacity CD activities.
• Coordinate on/off-line training sessions, workshops, mentoring of subawards to ensure the efficient and timely implementation of project activities.
• Lead CD learning sessions/ coordinate peer exchange sessions for subawards on various technical areas. Conduct regular field visits to provide technical support, capacity development, mentorship, or coaching to subawards.
• Orient Pact and program team on a range of CD tools, including Integrated Technical and Organizational Capacity Assessments (ITOCA), Organizational Performance Index (OPI), Change Action Plans (CAP)and Capacity Solutions Platform (CSP)
• Provide written inputs and/ contribute to the development of tools required to monitor the implementation and monitoring of project capacity development activities.
• Provide capacity development and sustainability technical leadership, creating and sustaining a culture of capacity development at all levels of the Activity.
• Lead the development and implementation of the capacity development plan, taking into consideration all Activity deliverables and conditions, and ensuring robust monitoring of progress towards results, evaluating Activity performance, and intentional learning to inform adaptation.
• In partnership with the MEL Advisor, integrate collaborating, learning, and adapting (CLA) approaches, tools, and strategic throughout the Activity.

Basic Requirements

• Master’s degree plus 9 years of experience (or Bachelor’s degree and at least 11 years of experience) in public health, health services research, organizational development, population health, social or behavioral sciences, or related field. Master’s degree strongly preferred.
• 9+ years of experience working with international development programming and CD systems, including qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis in a low-resource setting; 5 years of management experience.
• Demonstrated senior technical expertise in the field of capacity building and sustainability for health programs, including leadership in system development and implementation.
• Demonstrated experience in strengthening individual and institutional capacity building and sustainability.
• Demonstrated capacity building experience in the context of health services program delivery.
• Experience in designing and implementing technical and organizational capacity building programs and application of CD tools (ITOCA, OPI, CAP, CSP).
• Knowledge of, and experience with, USAID’s collaborating, adapting, and learning (CLA) approaches.
• Demonstrated ability to foster positive technical working relationships with, and partner successfully with team, partner/subgrantee organizations, and other Kira Ukuze stakeholders.
• Excellent organizational skills; excellent English and French oral and written communication skills.
• Demonstrated ability to work with diverse and large teams and to foster positive technical working relationships with counterparts, subgrantees, and partners.

Preferred Qualifications

• Fluency in Kirundi strongly preferred.
• Burundian nationals are strongly encouraged to apply.

Pact is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate in its selection and employment practices on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, political affiliation, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, disability, genetic information, age, citizenship status, genetic information, matriculation, family responsibilities, personal appearance, credit information, tobacco use (except in the workplace), membership in an employee organization, or other protected classifications or non-merit factors.

At Pact, we recognize your impact, offer you opportunities and support your total well-being. Our comprehensive benefit offerings may include healthcare, retirement (8.8% to 13% based on service tenure) and savings plans, paid time off, disability and life insurance programs, learning and development opportunities, wellness programs as well as other optional benefit elections .

With the continuing impacts of COVID-19 around the world, we are taking action to protect the health and well-being of our colleagues and maintain the safety of the communities where we operate. Pact seeks an environment free from COVID-19 and prefers all employees to be fully vaccinated for COVID-19. Attestation of vaccination status will be required for employment with Pact. Unvaccinated employees may be subject to additional health and safety requirements to include any federal, state and/or client restrictions.