Grants Management Specialist

Mission and objectives

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) works in about 170 countries and territories, helping to achieve the eradication of poverty, and the reduction of inequalities and exclusion. We help countries to develop policies, leadership skills, partnering abilities, institutional capabilities and build resilience in order to sustain development results. UNDP in Armenia was established in March 1993, and supports the government in meeting its development priorities and the Sustainable Development Goals. UNDP has been working to accelerate the development of Armenia for almost 25 years. It works at the upstream policy level, advising on legal and policy frameworks, and implements downstream initiatives, turning projects into policies and policies into actions. UNDP also has enormous reach across the country – in rural and urban areas and amongst a growing network of youth, innovators, and social entrepreneurs.

Context

The “Women in Politics, Public Administration and Civil Society” Project (hereinafter WiP 2.0 Project) is funded by UK Good Governance Fund (UK GGF), which is logical continuation of the previous “Women in Politics” project (funded by UK GGF) and Gender Equality in Public Administration of Armenia” project (GEPPA, funded by UNDP). The project builds on the previous results and gender equality and women empowerment effort at national and local levels to further advance women’s right and opportunities in decision-making roles. The project is implemented in partnership with the RA Ministry Territorial Administration and Infrastructure, the RA Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs and OxYGen Foundation. The project includes programmatic work in three Strategic Directions: 1. Advance women’s leadership and political participation in local decision-making via public or civic roles 2. Strengthen the gender sensitivity and gender responsiveness of public administration system and gender mainstreaming in public institutions at national and local levels 3. Strengthen the role of civil society in setting agenda, contribution to decision-making and monitoring of governance processes on gender equality, women rights and women empowerment in Armenia. Under Strategic Direction 1, the project aims to distribute and implement 37 local initiatives (small grants) under the UNDP’s “Innovation Challenge” to further advance leadership, cultivate sense of ownership towards community affairs, transform attitude and commitment to participatory local democracy, as well as strengthen co-operation with the LSGs. The initiatives will be implemented both by the women leadership school participants, as well as the members of the Women and Youth Advisory Councils. The initiatives will be geared towards strengthening social cohesion and social mobilization, participatory democracy, awareness raising on local self-governance, community needs assessment through participatory research, sectoral projects towards community development, as well as improvement of community services. Local initiatives implementation will imply design/finalization of the grants call, disseminating, collecting, reviewing and finalizing grant applications, constant engagement with the grant recipients to monitor and adjust course of action, advising and consulting in the course of implementation, as well as reporting on the results. Given the complexity and volume of the work to be done, WiP 2.0 project will engage a dedicated Grants Management Specialist to co-ordinate the whole chain of the afore-mentioned local initiatives’ delivery under the UNDP’s “Innovation Challenge”, including preparation phase, grants ideation and conceptualization, implementation and follow-up.

Task description

Under the overall guidance and supervision of the Project Analyst/Coordinator, the Grants Management Specialist will be responsible for the services described below. The work will be carried out in line with the Project Document and in full compliance with UNDP Rules and Regulations. Duties and responsibilities:

Preparation Phase

• Revision of the project grant schemes, identification of the specificities of each type, formulation of potential coding categories;
• Based on the revision and the project needs analysis, development of internal grants and results management system;
• Validation of the proposed system with the Gender Equality Team;
• Identifying the needs of the grant recipients and suggest capacity building topics to ensure effective project implementation.

Grants Ideation and Conceptualization

• Review selected Project Documents, Budgets, Gantt Charts, other relevant document and provide recommendations to improve the package;
• Collect and prepare required documentation as per the templates provided by the UNDP team for contracting;
• Technical support to teams in sourcing the local self-government/ national government partnership commitment.

Implementation

• Ensuring regular communication, guidance, and weekly monitoring of the project implementation in close collaboration with Project Analyst/Coordinator and Project Expert
• Maintain and update the grants and results management matrix on weekly basis;
• Flag the bottlenecks to the project management;
• Amend the project proposals when needed to address the bottlenecks as the case may necessitate;
• Ensure regular filing of the grant interim reports, check and verify the conformity of deliverables to the tranche targets;
• Provide comments to the interim and final narrative and financial reports.

Follow Up

• Upon the project completion, provide analytical summary based on the grants and results management matrix;
• Based on the success of the pilot, develop a short model for possible replication by other interested parties/ beneficiaries.