Administrative & Operation Manager

Expertise France is looking for an Administrative & Operation Manager to be based in the Expertise France’s Beirut office to manage the day to day operations of activities under the EU for Women Economic Empowerment project. 

Project description

A lot of efforts have been invested in promoting gender equality and the recent creation of the Office of the Minister of State for Women’s Affairs to coordinate governmental and non-governmental actions demonstrates the government’s willingness to keep progressing toward gender equality in the country. However, and despite recent advancement toward gender equality, in 2018 Lebanon still ranked 140th out of 149 countries on the global gender gap index of the World Economic Forum. The most important gaps identified concern inadequate legislative framework which carry grounds for discrimination against women, lack of institutional referral system for victims of gender based violence and limited participation of women in the Lebanese economy.

Expertise France has been identified by the EU Delegation in Beirut as the main implementing partner of a new PADA programme aimed at supporting the Government of Lebanon in promoting gender equality and fight against gender based violence.

The overall objective of the programme is to support equality between men and women by enhancing an effective institutional mechanisms for gender equality and by reducing gender based violence.

In order to achieve this objective, the project will be structured in three main components of activities presented below:

1) Support institutional mechanism for gender equality:

Providing support to the National Gender Equality Mechanism (NGEM) toward fulfilment of its mandate including supporting interinstitutional coordination of actions on issues related to gender equality. Promotion of the role of Gender Focal Points in Ministries and institutional bodies. Provision of support to the Parliamentary committee on Women’s affairs for the revision/amendment of discriminative laws.

2) Enhance the legal mechanisms to fight GBV

Enhance capacities of legal professional on dealing with GBV issues and protecting the victims. Support the institutionalization of legal aid to victims, develop GBV curriculum for the Bar Association in Beirut and in the regions and support the Committee on Women’s Affairs of the Ministry of Justice’s for the formulation of evidence-based policy and for carrying out effective advocacy on specific issues related to GBV

3) Women economic empowerment initiative

Support skilled women, jobseekers and women entrepreneurs through various means such as entrepreneurship training and motivation, counselling, mentoring and access to seed funding (grants) to develop innovative  business ideas.

Job description

Under the supervision of the Team leader, the operation manager will be responsible for the day to day operational and administrative management of the activities of the project including supporting the team leader in the planning and operationalisation of activities. The project coordinator will be responsible for monitoring all contractual commitment with the contracting authority, and for monitoring financial and administrative aspects.

The operation manager must always work in close coordination and cooperation with the Team Leader. His/her main responsabilities include (but are not limited to):

He/she will closely monitor the project progresses, outputs and expenses in compliance with the workplan and logical framework.

Together with the Team leader, he/she will identify needs for short-term assignments and plan short-term expert’s mission according to the workplan and budget.

He/she will assist the team leader in the identification of short term expertise and will be responsible for the recruitment and contractualisation of the short term expertise

He/she will review and control the quality of the short term expert’s mission’s reports and will ensure payment of short-term experts upon completion of the mission (while the TL controls the quality of the short-term expert’s deliverable)

He/she will implement the monitoring and evaluation system for the project,

He/she will ensuring visibility for actions of the project and implement the Communication and visibility plan,

He/she will ensure proper reporting to the EU delegation in Lebanon. Responsible for consolidation of the technical and financial progress reports into one final version to send to the contracting authority. He/she will also control the quality of the reports before sending to the CA. She/he will address the question and comments of the EU in liaison with the project team.

Daily financial management of the project (reporting of expenses in the monitoring tool, issue payment orders, expenses reporting, financial/budget planning…)

Regular check of the projects accounting and reconciliation between the project’s accountancy and the expenses monitoring tool to identify gaps.

Daily management and archiving of the project’s expenses supporting documents.

Ensure respect of the contractual obligations to the CA.

Plan, prepare and implement expenditure verifications with the auditor.

Finally, the Project Coordinator will coordinate all logistical aspects of the project (organisation and implementation of all events, training, seminars (…), organisation of expert’s and short term expert’s missions etc…

Requested profile:

Qualifications / Qualifications and skills

• University diploma (master level of equivalent) in Management, political sciences, international relations or any topics relevant to the project.
• Excellent, proven organizational and project management skills.
• Capacity to establish effective working relations with Lebanese public institutions  and non-state actors including at senior level and to ensure an efficient co-operation with the EU DelegationGood understanding of women rights and women economic empowerment issues and the Lebanese institutional and/or political context.
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills (both in writing and verbal)
• Excellent commend of English and Arabic both written and spoken

General and specific professional experience

• At least 8 years general professional experience
• At least 5 years’ experience in operational and administrative management in the framework of an international cooperation projects in a sector relevant to the project.
• Proven knowledge of the European Union’s rules and procedures in management of grant and/or delegation agreements.