IRC’s Technical Excellence (TE) group, located within the Crisis Response, Recovery and Development (CRRD) Department, provides technical assistance to IRC’s country program staff and shares what we learn to influence policy and practice.
IRC’s Technical Excellence team is comprised of five teams or sector “Units” which have deep expertise in their respective fields: Education, Economic Wellbeing, Governance, Health, and Violence Prevention and Response, as well as teams which provide measurement and finance/grant management support. Technical teams are also matrixed with a team that focuses on the quality and content of cross-sectoral programming in emergency responses.
IRC’s Technical Excellence teams offer five core services to IRC country programs and the wider organization:
1. Program Design: We support country and regional teams to design state of the art programming, incorporating the best available evidence, cost data, and expertise of what has worked elsewhere, with the knowledge that country teams, partner organizations and our clients bring to the table.
2. Quality Assurance: We partner with our measurement teams to design and drive the use of indicators to measure progress towards outcomes; we partner with regional and country teams to review program delivery progress and help address implementation challenges and adapt interventions to changed circumstances.
3. Business Development: We partner within and outside the IRC to design winning bids and identify winning consortia; we deploy technical expertise in public events and private meetings to position IRC as a partner of choice.
4. Research & Learning: We partner with our research lab to design cutting edge research to fill evidence gaps, and with country teams to learn from implementation such that we continuously improve our future design and delivery.
5. External Influence: We showcase the IRC’s programs, technical insights and learning in order to influence and improve the humanitarian sector’s policy and practice.
Technical Excellence is currently going through a change process called "Regional and Technical Alignment." We are doing this to ensure that the impact of our programs and the influence of our ideas create meaningful change for people affected by crisis. This next phase of IRC's commitment to program quality will more deliberately resource and link global thought leadership with practice on the ground. Updated Technical Unit structures will have new roles with clearer mandates. The Regional Lead is a new leadership role introduced by this change process.
Health Unit
IRC’s health programs comprise the largest proportion of its overall program budget and are essential to both IRC emergency response and long-term programming worldwide.
The Health Technical Unit is a dynamic team of more than 70 professionals in Primary Health Care, Sexual and Reproductive Health, Nutrition, Mental and Environmental Health. They provide IRC’s 40 plus country offices and emergency response team with world class technical expertise, capacity building and a cross country view of what works to achieve outcomes in terms of both evidence and practical experience. They also lead focused research agenda, influencing donor policy to support interventions and innovations proven cost effective to achieve positive change in people’s lives.
West Africa Regional Overview:
The International Rescue Committee (IRC) has been actively involved in West Africa since 1991, addressing critical challenges such as disease outbreaks, armed conflicts, food insecurity, natural disasters, and governance issues. Operating in six countries — Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone — and supported by a project-specific office in Monrovia, Liberia, and regional headquarters in Dakar, Senegal, the IRC has established a comprehensive network with offices and sub-offices in 43 locations across the region.
In West Africa, the IRC's mission is to promote socio-economic stability, improve physical, environmental, and mental health, and ensure the safety of vulnerable groups. We serve approximately 30 million people in need of humanitarian assistance and 22 million who are facing food insecurity. The IRC's reputation as a reliable partner in both emergency and recovery contexts is built on client-centered strategic plans and integrated, multi-sectoral interventions. These efforts are crucial in making a substantial impact on community lives and addressing the complex, interconnected needs of the region
Job Overview
Health Unit West Africa Regional Lead provides coherence and direction to the provision of technical support for Health Unit in the West Africa Region. As a member of both the regional team and the technical unit Leadership team, the Regional Lead has accountability for technical quality and responsibility for assuring the advice from Technical Advisors is taken into appropriate action by the country office.
The Health Unit Regional Lead (RL) will lead a highly effective, strategic Health Unit regional team to ensure the West Africa Region has high quality, sound technical support needed to deliver on global program goals and effectively serve our clients. The role will serve as a functional leader, advisor, and a thought partner to both TU leadership and Regional leadership, with a particular focus on leading the operationalization of outcome strategies in West Africa region, multi-sector and sub-sector program integration, evidence-based design, business development, and quality assurance for high-impact and scale strategic projects. The Regional Lead will coordinate across individuals and projects, ensuring clear priorities are set and communicated, and navigating the challenges inherent in being an advisory function. They will be an excellent people manager, with great team building/animation skills, able to help technical staff succeed and grow in their careers. The Regional Lead will invest deeply in understanding the context and dynamics of the country and regional teams and the challenges they face. They will ensure coherent ways of working within and across the regional technical team, as well as within the wider Health Unit, to align high quality technical support with the operational realities of the country offices. By doing so, the Regional Lead will ensure high quality programming across the Health practice areas in West Africa region, high quality coordination and partnership with regional teams, effective team performance, and efficiency and impact of technical excellence service offering to the West Africa region and country programs.
Major Responsibilities
Functional Leadership, Coordination, and Implementation Support:
Staff management, learning, and development
Program Design and Business Development
Knowledge Management, Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning
External Influence and Representation
Key Working Relationships
Key Internal Relationships:
Key External Relationships:
Desired Experience and Skills
Education: Masters’ degree in Public Health, and/or related fields or an equivalent professional experience background is required. Sound training on the use of data and research evidence for programmatic decisions and rigorous analytic skills are an advantage.
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