Overview
The Economic Empowerment Officer will oversee the quality delivery of pilot activities, coordinate with stakeholders, and lead government capacity strengthening initiatives to promote economic empowerment among social safety net beneficiaries.
Key Responsibilities
- Oversee quality delivery of all EEP pilot activities across planning and implementation phases.
- Supervise field-level implementation teams and coordinate with social workers, agricultural extension workers, and local partners.
- Coordinate with SPA to ensure regular meetings of the Project Oversight Team (POT).
- Ensure gender-responsive and youth-inclusive delivery.
- Coordinate with SPA to ensure regular meetings of the Technical Working Group (TWG) and provide the Secretariat function.
- Lead day-to-day engagement with government counterparts.
- Support engagement with sectoral stakeholders.
- Lead engagement with MoLSA and SPA to strengthen institutional capacity for economic empowerment programming.
- Facilitate alignment and integration of pilot activities within government platforms.
- Oversee the cooperating partner’s support provided to government field-level staff.
- Ensure a gradual handover of systems and responsibilities to government institutions.
- Identify opportunities to strengthen government capacity strengthening and provide strategic recommendations.
- Ensure that the pilot implementation is aligned with the research and learning agenda.
- Lead the design and implementation of the pilot’s learning and evidence agenda.
- Ensure that WFP-led monitoring activities are completed in a timely and high-quality manner.
- Document and communicate lessons learned of the pilot.
- Lead the development of an EEP manual and EEP scale-up roadmap.
- Led the development of knowledge management documents.
- Organize knowledge dissemination and closure engagement and events.
- Contribute to policy dialogue with the GOI.
- Maintain strong oversight over budget planning, utilization, and reporting.
- Ensure compliance with WFP and partner procedures and standards.
- Manage risks and ensure timely mitigation actions.
Required Experience
- At least 5 years of progressively responsible experience in social protection, livelihoods, economic empowerment programming, labor market interventions, or private sector engagement.
- Demonstrated previous experience working on either the design, implementation or evaluation of livelihoods or employment programmes in complex settings.
- Strong experience working with Iraqi government institutions, particularly MoLSA/SPA.
- Proven experience implementing institutional capacity strengthening programmes with government institutions.
- Experience developing training materials/manuals and delivering Trainings of Trainers (TOTs) on economic empowerment, livelihoods or employment-related topics.
- Familiarity with social research methodologies and experience managing programmes with robust evaluation components.
- Proven track record in multi-stakeholder coordination including with UN agencies, IFIs, donors, and government counterparts.
- Familiarity with Iraqi context.
Qualifications
• A bachelor's degree is required, and an advanced university degree (Master’s or higher) is asset in Economics, Development Economics, Public Policy, Social Protection, Labor Economics, or a related field.
