JOB VACANCIES:Freetown City Council- Project Manager

FCC Job Advert: Senior Project Officer (SPO)

Friday 12^th April 2024

JOB TITLE: PROJECT MANAGER

Summary

Freetown City Council will be implementing a project called “Freetown Caring City” which is an urban care innovation project, funded by the International Development Research Centre. The project seeks to adapt Bogotá’s Care Block initiative, a feminist program that reorganizes city neighborhoods to make caregivers’ essential needs more easily accessible, to reduce their time poverty, and to offer opportunities for self-improvement and well-being. Freetown’s Care Block will be the first of its type on the continent and brings special attention to reducing sexual violence, often associated with delivering care responsibilities.

Led by the Freetown City Council, the project team behind this initiative includes the Sierra Leone Urban Research Centre (SLURC), WoLEAD, and the City Hub and Network for Gender Equity (CHANGE). The project is set to start in Q1 2024 and last three years, ending with an African summit on urban care, hosted by the FCC. Dynamic research is an essential component of the grant, and as such, SLURCs research is designed to inform and influence the delivery of the Care Block, as well as relevant policymaking.

At the center of this project is the Project Manager, who will oversee Freetown’s pilot Care Block, serving as a point of contact for service providers and all project participants. This person will report back to the Head of the Mayor’s Delivery Unit and brief the mayor regularly. Importantly, this person will be responsible for flagging and addressing bottlenecks in the development and delivery of the care block. The project manager will also support grant reporting, the development of the mayor’s gender strategy, participate in IDRC’s learning cohort, and plan the final summit at the end of the project.

Responsibilities

Coordination
Serving as a lynchpin for the project, the incumbent will be in regular communication with all project partners, ensuring that everyone is delivering project requirements as needed and on time, and reporting back to the Head of the Mayor’s Delivery Unit. Specifically, they will be responsible for:

CHANGE
- This person will support CHANGE in overseeing grant compliance and reporting. While CHANGE leads on reviewing and editing final grant reports, the incumbent will offer regular updates to the CHANGE team as part of the grant reporting process.

Over the first 6 months of the program, CHANGE will handover project coordination to the Project Manager. To do this, the project manager will meet with the CHANGE secretariat weekly for the first 6 months of the project. During this time, CHANGE will help the project manager stand up procedures and manage new partnerships.

SLURC
- To ensure that the FCC is kept abreast of year 1 baseline research and dynamic evaluation meant to inform program and policy, it is essential that the project manager fully understands and engages with the research component of the project. The project manager will meet with SLURC once a week, and shadow field research as necessary, especially in years 1 and 3.

Service Providers

The project manager should serve as the main point of contact with the service providers of the Care Block.

In Year 1, this means the project manager should work with the construction team building the Care Block infrastructure. This may mean overseeing the timely delivery of the required Environment Impact Assessment.
- The project manager will also identify and secure contracts with all service providers, overseeing the required public procurement procedures, and agreeing the parameters of the work provided by various service providers.

In Year 1, building off the findings of SLURC research, the Project Manager will help design the details and schedule of the service delivery at the Care Block, and help structure service provision.

WoLEAD:
- The project manager will work closely with the feminist organization in the project team, who are tasked with delivering workshops and courses. This will mean identifying where and how WoLEAD colleagues may need support or upskilling and supporting them in this.

In years 2 and 3, the project manager should spend no less than 2 or 3 days a week at the Care Block to ensure quality control of services, understand how they are being delivered, and if there are challenges that need to be resolved.
- The Project Manager will be responsible for setting and communicating the schedule of activities at the Care Block.

Troubleshooting: It is the project managers responsibility to identify, flag, and resolve roadblocks. It is imperative that the Project Manager raise urgent matters with the Mayor’s Office in a timely matter.

Communications

The incumbent will work with CHANGE to design and deliver a communications strategy.

The project manager will be responsible for sourcing stories and supporting content creators in organizing content gathering trips. This includes identifying individuals who can share a story and organizing a day between them and the content creator.

African Care Summit

In year three, the Freetown City Council, led by Mayor Aki-Sawyerr, will host an event inviting other municipal leaders and relevant stakeholders from the region to visit the Care Block in action, discuss the co-responsibility of care in an African context, and learn from the project’s research findings.

Starting in year two, the Project Manager will be responsible for convening and organizing the appropriate partners and vendors for planning meetings and event preparation.

Management of the Outreach Worker

An Outreach Worker will help ensure that the caregivers in Susan’s Bay know what the Care Block is, what it intends to do, and how caregivers can use it. This means the engagement worker will help community members understand what services and activities are provided and when. Importantly, this person serves to build a sense of confidence amongst potential users, so that they feel that they can enter the Care Block and speak up about what works and doesn’t work. This is a part-time role, held by a young, community member with valued opinions. This person will not be a local chief, but a member of a new generation of leadership. This person will report to the Project Manager.

Briefings
- The Project Manager will meet with the Chief Administrator weekly, to keep them abreast of the project and any issues that need to be resolved.
- The incumbent will also organize a monthly check-in meeting with the project team. This includes setting the agenda, leading the call, and following up on action points.

Coming out of this monthly call, the project manager will prepare monthly, written briefing notes for the mayor.

The project manager will be responsible for organizing the quarterly meetings, including one in-person and three virtual, where the team will report back to the mayor on project development. This will be an opportunity for the program delivery teams to adapt and change as necessary, and for supporting experts to discuss and advise on challenges.

The project manager will organize the closing summit at the end of the project.
Learning Cohort: IDRC require that all funded projects contribute to and participate in initiative-wide efforts to track, share, and learn. The project manager is expected to travel to Nairobi once a year and collaborate across the Scaling Care Innovations portfolio for the purposes of harnessing the diverse expertise involved, promoting ongoing learning and networking, identifying, and seizing emerging opportunities and achieving maximum impact beyond the scale of individual projects. Opportunities may include, for example:
- Co-developing and participating in yearly learning reviews to explore lessons and areas of synergy across the initiative.
- Participating in initiative-wide working groups on capacity strengthening, gender and inclusion, knowledge management, research for impact and/or monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) to advance learning, innovation, and impact.
- Participating in a regional community of practice on unpaid care work fostered by Scaling Care Innovations to facilitate knowledge sharing, peer learning and agenda setting.

Development of a Gender Strategy: Listed outcomes for this project include a clear pathway towards scaling up the pilot Care Block to a city-wide initiative, as well as updated policies based on the program research and pilot findings. The Project Manager will be responsible for drafting a strategy that brings together lessons from the project to enable feminist urban planning in Freetown.

Required Skills and Qualifications

Advanced Project Management Skills, including:

Proven ability to work efficiently and collaboratively with many stakeholders, and manage multiple tasks, while being a committed team player
- An ability to create long- and short-term plans, including setting and meticulously tracking targets for milestones and adhering to deadlines.
- An ability to find solutions to project disruptions and make sure objectives are delivered at a high standard and on time; and
- Adept at budget management and reporting.

Experience in gender justice frameworks and gender sensitivity, including:
- An understanding of issues related to sexual and gender-based violence, especially in the context of informal settlements (which can be attained through formal education or lived experience);
- Proven ability to take a gender sensitive approach to stakeholder relations and communications, especially with Care Block users and service providers;
- Either brings or is able to generate a sense of trust within Care Block community, serving as a point of contact for caregivers to raise questions or concerns, including as it pertains to gender-based violence; and
- Able to communicate effectively about gender context and related policies with project team and donor.

Communication Skills, including:
- Excellent written and oral communication skills and a comfort in developing strong working relations with project partners, donors, and Care Block users;
- Strong ability to build and maintain strategic partnerships with a diverse range of stakeholders.