Associate Area Coordinator

Job Title: Associate Area Coordinator, Eastern Uganda
Location: Mbale, with a lot of travel to the field
Reporting To: Area Coordinator, DSW Uganda
Start Date: Immediately, Applications considered on a rolling basis
Deadline: Friday, 4th July, 2014 – 5:00pm EAT

About Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA)
IPA is an international non-profit research organization. Based in New Haven, Connecticut, USA, with offices in Washington, D.C., USA and worldwide, IPA works with development partners and academic researchers to create and evaluate approaches to solving development problems, to communicate “what works” in development and to scale up successful projects in a variety of fields, including health, education, microfinance, governance and agriculture.

About Evidence Action
Evidence Action is a new organization working in partnership with IPA to scale proven interventions. IPA has played in important role incubating technical assistance and service delivery programs, such as the Dispensers for Safe Water Program and the Deworm the World Initiative, which are currently housed within IPA. The management and further growth of these “scale up” initiatives is transitioning to Evidence Action. IPA will continue to provide support for these programs during their transition period.

About the Dispensers for Safe Water Program
Each year, over 1.8 million children under the age of five die from diarrhea, a leading cause of which is unsafe drinking water. Dispensers for Safe Water (DSW) is an entrepreneurial team tasked with scaling the Chlorine Dispenser System (CDS) – a proven innovation that dramatically expands access to water treatment at an extremely low cost. DSW is growing rapidly: we currently serve over 650,000 people in Uganda. Our goal is to reach 5 million people in the end of 2015 in multiple countries, which will prevent 2.3 million cases of child diarrhea and avert over 2,200 child deaths each year.

About the Position
Reporting to the Area Coordinator for the Dispensers for Safe Water Program – Mbale, Uganda, the Associate Area Coordinator position is a key leadership role for Dispensers for Safe Water Program, assisting in the management of field activities in Eastern Uganda.

As a middle level management position, the Associate Area Coordinator will lead and manage program operations for the dispenser program in a designated area/region.

Key Responsibilities:
• Deputize the Area Coordinator in building and managing the Dispensers for Safe Water program in Eastern Uganda;
• Manage a team of Field Officers to ensure thousands of dispenser installations across Eastern Uganda annually;
• Lead a team of Field Officers in delivering high quality community sensitization and education meetings, community leader meetings and local government meetings;
• Support field team to develop efficient and cost-effective weekly work plans for the dispenser implementation roll out;
• Lead teams to implement dispenser activities through teamwork, training, coaching and mentorship;
• Coordination of various team activities and promote team ownership;
• Effective supervision of the field teams to ensure high quality deliverables for activities;
• Recruit high caliber field staff, with consultation of the Area Coordinator, through a competitive, fair and transparent process;
• Manage the dispenser program in his/her designated area following the laid down financial procedures and in a cost effective manner;
• Conduct staff performance reviews with the consultation of the Area Coordinator and Program Manager;
• Other duties and responsibilities as assigned by the Area Coordinator and Program Manager.

External Relationships
The Associate Area Coordinator has an important role in ensuring the program maintains a good brand and reputation within the area under his/her jurisdiction. The Associate Area Coordinator will develop useful relationships with program stakeholders and ensure a good rapport with them. The Associate Area Coordinator is expected to manage communication between the program and stakeholders in consultation with the Area Coordinator and the Program Manager.

Qualifications, Experience and Skills
• Minimum Degree in Management, community work, project management or equivalent from a recognized institution;
• At least 2 years of significant operations and management experience with a non-governmental organization as well as demonstrated experience working in the field;
• Excellent written and spoken English required; Eastern languages desirable
• High level of financial integrity and stewardship;
• Demonstrated experience developing work plans and budgets to execute field activities;
• Excellent organization and coordination skills;
• Good people management and leadership skills and demonstrated experience in leading large field teams;
• Embraces team work and aspires and supports the ideals of working in a team work environment as a team champion;
• Passion to work in a rural community setting in Eastern Uganda;
• Experience with social work and social administration;
• Flexible mindset and willingness to take challenging assignments not within the scope of this position;
• Self driven and highly motivated to deliver results within tight deadlines;
• Ability to communicate effectively within the organization and externally with the rural communities and local leaders;
• Excellent computer skills/data management skills and comfort to advance the skills in a dynamic IT field;
• Proactive and ambitious to support innovation and change in a dynamic working environment;
• A positive attitude to work and to develop in a fast paced work environment.