Strategic Partnership Program Lead

This role coordinates quality and learning across six POWER country programs, collaborating with country WPE teams, women-led and local partners, and the WPE Global Practice. It also coordinates with the Award Management Unit (AMU) for donor relations with Irish Aid. The Lead is accountable for providing technical quality assistance in line with IRC's WPE standards and IASC GBV Minimum Standards for the design and delivery of the partnership learning pillar. The position involves tracking and reporting on delivery against scope, timeline, and budget across the six countries to enable early identification of deviations. Additionally, the role contributes to the partnership's advocacy pillar and the design of future partnership phases.

1. Provide quality oversight for survivor-centered response, case management, women and girls’ safe spaces, clinical and MHPSS referral pathways, and social norms work across six country programs, ensuring adherence to IRC WPE technical standards and IASC GBV Minimum Standards.
2. Act as a liaison between the POWER partnership and the WPE Global Practice, adapting core standards to partnership contexts and integrating partnership-generated practices back into the core.
3. Support the contextual sequencing of prevention and social norms activities, ensuring safe implementation based on women-led community analysis.
4. Maintain a consistent approach across all six countries while respecting contextual differences, identifying where shared standards apply and where local adaptation is needed.
5. Track and report on program delivery against scope, timeline, and budget across the six country programs, identifying deviations early for adaptive management.
6. Ensure that MEAL and program data directly inform program adjustments and adaptations.
7. Connect program data and implementation evidence with broader sector trends and debates, including comparable protection and GBV programming.
8. Lead the design and implementation of the partnership learning pillar, coordinating cross-country learning cycles, documentation, and structured reflection between IRC and partners.
9. Position women-led safety audits as community-generated risk analysis and strengthen their integration into local decision-making and adaptive management.
10. Build the program's evidence base on factors enabling and constraining change in protracted crisis settings, including honest assessment of failures.
11. Ensure learning is co-owned with partners and supports their institutional positioning, beyond IRC's reporting needs.
12. Steward the POWER advocacy pillar, assisting partners in using community-generated analysis for local, national, and global advocacy.
13. Collaborate with advocacy and policy colleagues to ensure partnership evidence informs IRC's positioning with donors, multilaterals, and normative bodies.
14. Support partner institutional strengthening in governance, financial systems, safeguarding, and MEAL, as defined and led by partners, consistent with PEERS principles and direct funding commitments.
15. Enhance partner surge and emergency response readiness under the emergency response pillar, ensuring local organizations play a credible role during crises.
16. Advance the shift of analytical and decision-making authority to partners with genuine institutional standing, co-designing tools and thresholds.
17. Support the broader civil society and women’s movement ecosystem connected to the partnership, recognizing partners as governance and coordination actors.
18. Ensure program design and adaptation are centered on the realities of women and girls in the six contexts, especially those affected by active conflict and displacement.
19. Support conflict-related sexual violence sensitive practices, including safe documentation, clinical pathways, and Do No Harm decisions, with pattern awareness fed upward.
20. Maintain visibility for adolescent girls as a distinct group.
21. Serve as a central program coordination point for the POWER partnership, supporting planning, adaptive management, amendments, and quality reporting to Irish Aid.
22. Provide technical content on program direction, learning, and strategic opportunities for AMU's communication with Irish Aid and the Department of Foreign Affairs.
23. Coordinate across the six country teams and relevant IRC technical, advocacy, awards, and finance functions to maintain partnership coherence and meet commitments.
24. Contribute technical input to AMU's design and negotiation of the next Strategic Partnership phase (post-2027), including program scope, theory of change, and MEAL framework.

1. Advanced degree in social work, gender studies, international development, human rights, public health, or law, or an equivalent combination of qualifications and experience.
2. Minimum of 8 years of professional experience in GBV, WPE, or protection programming in humanitarian and conflict-affected settings at a technical lead level.
3. Demonstrated experience in partnership and locally-led social action, program quality or learning, and program or grant management including budget oversight.
4. Strong technical foundation in WPE practices and IASC GBV Minimum Standards.
5. Practical experience in feminist partnership and localization, specifically working with women-led organizations as partners.
6. Capability in learning and MEAL, with the ability to treat implementation learning as evidence and to surface challenging findings.
7. Experience in program and grant management across multiple countries, including tracking and reporting delivery against scope, timeline, and budget, and systems for early deviation flagging.
8. Ability to translate program evidence into policy-relevant frameworks for donors, multilaterals, and normative processes.
9. Experience in multi-country coordination across diverse and often insecure contexts, demonstrating contextual and political sensitivity.
10. Sound judgment regarding Do No Harm and safeguarding, particularly in contexts of conflict-related sexual violence.