ECD Senior Officer x2 - Beirut

In Lebanon, the IRC implements Education and Early Childhood Development (EECD) programs that provide a strong foundation for children’s future learning, health, nutrition, protection, and overall well-being, while actively engaging caregivers to strengthen responsive caregiving practices, positive parenting, and supportive home environments that enable young children to thrive. The IRC is preparing to launch an ECD project that focuses on caregivers to improve outcomes for vulnerable children aged 0–5.

Job Overview:

The ECD Senior Officer leads the overall coordination, supervision, and quality assurance of the ECD project implementation. The Senior Officer ensures technical quality, adherence to standards, timely implementation of workplans, and harmonization of ECD approaches across target locations.

The role supports strategic planning, reporting, stakeholder coordination, and integration of ECD programming across platforms in close collaboration with the ECD Project Manager and technical leads.

The ECD Senior Officer leads the day-to-day field oversight of the ECD pilot implementation in the assigned governorate(s), ensuring high-quality delivery of both household visits and group sessions through frontliners and social workers. The role provides direct management and technical oversight to a team of Field Officers (around 6 per governorate) who supervise frontliners, monitor fidelity to Standard Operating Procedures SOPs, and support troubleshooting and service linkages. The ECD Senior Officer is responsible for validating weekly and monthly deployment plans, ensuring consistent supervision coverage, overseeing field-level quality assurance and coaching systems, and ensuring timely, accurate reporting and documentation in coordination with MEAL and project leadership. The role maintains close coordination with central and regional focal points and SDCs to ensure safe, feasible implementation aligned with agreed minimum standards and referral pathways.

Key Responsibilities

1. Team Management & Supervision

• Directly supervise and support ECD Field Officers, including task planning, performance follow-up, coaching, and ensuring consistent field presence.
• Develop and monitor weekly and monthly workplans for Field Officers, ensuring that all frontliners receive regular accompaniment and support.
• Conduct regular performance follow-up meetings and provide structured mentoring and feedback.
• Support Field Officers in addressing implementation challenges.
• Lead regular coordination meetings with Field Officers to review implementation progress, quality findings, emerging risks, and required corrective actions, ensuring harmonized implementation across locations.

2. Technical Oversight & Quality Assurance

• Ensure quality and consistency of the ECD package delivery across households and SDCs.
• Document field observation reports and provide technical guidance.
• Identify technical gaps and recommend corrective actions.
• Support adaptation of ECD content and methodologies.
• Ensure adherence to safeguarding, confidentiality, and referral standards.
• Lead on Focus Group Discussions to collect lessons learned and best practices.
• Ensure structured quality assurance mechanisms are applied consistently by Field Officers (e.g., observation checklists, coaching notes, fidelity scoring, corrective action tracking).
• Conduct routine accompaniment and spot-check visits to verify delivery quality, adherence to SOPs, and appropriate facilitation approaches.
• Identify systemic implementation gaps and lead remedial actions (targeted mentoring).
• Support the technical development of ECD package and trainings.

3. Planning & Implementation

• Develop and monitor implementation plans, ensuring equitable caseload distribution and feasibility across locations.
• Oversea weekly/monthly schedules and ensure consistent implementation against agreed targets.
• Coordinate with SDCs to confirm space availability, session sequencing, and operational readiness for group sessions, including minimum standards compliance.
• Track overall progress against targets and deliverables.
• Ensure coordination between different stakeholders and partners (at regional level and central level).
• Oversee scheduling of group sessions and household visits.
• Support and track referral pathway implementation and inter-sectoral coordination.

4. Monitoring, Reporting & Data Management

• Develop a unified database for all locations.
• Oversee data collection processes and ensure data accuracy and completeness.
• Oversee the verification process for attendance, session delivery records, registration data, and referral logs submitted by Field Officers.
• Review attendance data, field visit documentation, and payment and activity tracking.
• Ensure timely, accurate consolidation of field data and submission of regular progress updates, including qualitative learning from field observations and caregiver feedback to recommend improvement.
• Analyze program data to assess impact and recommend improvements.
• Coordinate closely with MEAL to ensure data quality standards, completeness, and consistency across teams and locations.

5. Coordination & Representation

• Serve as primary focal point in the field at coordination level.
• Represent ECD programming in coordination meetings when required.
• Coordinate with internal departments (HR, Logistics, Finance, Procurement, Fleet, MEAL).
• Support procurement planning and administrative processes related to training activities and payments.
• Maintain structured communication and escalation lines with the Project Manager and technical leads to ensure alignment and rapid decision-making.

Position Reports to:

ECD Project Manager

Staff Directly Supervised by this position:

ECD Field Officers

Job Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in social work, education, social sciences, or related field.
• Minimum 4–5 years of experience in ECD, Education, caregivers’ support programs, Health, nutrition.
• Minimum 2–3 years of experience supervising teams.
• Experience with NGOs/INGOs.
• Proven experience in capacity building and training oversight.
• Demonstrated experience in M&E and data analysis.
• Strong leadership, coordination, communication, organization and stakeholder engagement skills.
• Strong report writing skills.
• Ability to manage multiple priorities under pressure in tight deadlines and timeframe.
• Fluency in Arabic and English (written and spoken).
• Commitment to IRC policies including safeguarding and confidentiality.

Preferred

• Experience working with Government entities.

Working Environment:  

The position would be based in Beirut office, with regular field work in BML (and potential visits to Baalbeck el Hermel).