Senior Accountability Officer
Senior Accountability Officer
Terms of Reference TOR)
Position: Senior Accountability Officer
Department: Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL)
Location: Amman and Field Locations (Camps and Host Community)
Reports to: MEAL Manager
Dotted Line/if any: N/A
ABOUT RI:
Relief International (RI) is a leading non-profit organization working in 16 countries to relieve poverty, ensure well-being and advance dignity. We specialize in fragile settings, responding to natural disasters, humanitarian crises and chronic poverty.
Relief International combines humanitarian and development approaches to provide immediate services while laying the groundwork for long-term impact. Our signature approach — which we call the RI Way—emphasizes local participation, an integration of services, strategic partnerships and a focus on civic skills. In this way, we empower communities to find, design and implement the solutions that work best for them.
Relief International includes the three members of the RI Alliance in the USA, UK and France. Under our alliance agreement, we operate under a single, shared management structure with one CEO and one Board of Directors.
About our Programs:
RI is active in 16 countries around the world, including some of the most fragile: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Myanmar, Pakistan, Philippines, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Turkey, and Yemen. Often, RI is the only organization providing assistance to highly vulnerable communities.
Position Summary:
Under the direct supervision of the MEAL Manger, the Sr. Accountability Officer is responsible for the routine administration and maintenance of RI’s beneficiary complaints, feedback and response mechanism (CFRM) for all of its projects and programs. He/she works closely with the MEAL Officers, MEAL Manager and Program staff to provide accountability to all of RI’s beneficiaries, implementing the Accountability aspects of RI’s MEAL Plan, including the Feedback and Complaints Mechanism.
ESSENTIAL RESPONSIBILITIES AND DUTIES:
Lead in establishing and administering a mechanism that allows beneficiaries in RI Jordan’s projects to leave feedback and complaints securely and confidentially:
- Lead in procuring and installing materials needed for establishing and administering the mechanism including signage, suggestion boxes, feedback sheets, feedback logs, etc.
- Coordinate the collection and upload of all feedback from RI suggestion boxes in all program locations
- Liaise with program staff to regularly follow-up on feedback to provide responses to beneficiaries in a timely matter
- Follow up on the closing and the resolution of cases.
Act as a point of contact for beneficiaries:
- Supervise the management of the Accountability Assistant
- Management of RI’s accountability mobile phone receiving feedback from beneficiaries via messaging apps and voice calls and logging into the feedback matrix
- Interact with beneficiaries to ensure they are being appropriately served through the different projects.
- Work with MEAL Manager to ensure regular short surveys with beneficiaries are conducted and encourage them to leave feedback when they desire to do so
- Where necessary, communicate resolutions from complaints back to the complainant.
- Develop child-friendly tools/mechanisms to allow direction participation of beneficiaries
Complaints and Feedback Reporting:
- Manage CFRM online tracking system (Smartsheet).
- Provide monthly reports that shows the analysis of complaints and feedback received.
- Integrate accountability reports into regular donor reports.
- Act as a focal point with GSO incident management team.
- Ensure timely and accurate reporting of results of the common, custom and performance indicators within the project progress reports.
- Assess existing reporting tools and procedures (database, collection tools), research, suggest, and implement improvements.
Awareness Raising:
- Actively promote the Incident Reporting and Management policy within RI, ensuring that posters and other awareness raising materials are visible and that staff are aware of what incidents must be reported in accordance with the policy.
- Work with Human Resources personnel to include the incident reporting and management policy content in staff inductions.
- Provide awareness-raising sessions on the incident reporting and management policy for all staff and other associates in the office on a regular basis, including for newcomers. Where applicable, this should include awareness raising for partner staff.
- Work closely with field program team to form a parallel body that allows active participation from the served community in the awareness raising activities.
Incident Response and Reporting
- Act as incident reporting focal point
- Ensure physical presence at service sites
- Receive complaints, reports and questions about alleged incidents fraud & financial crimes and protection & safeguarding violations.
- Take appropriate measures to ensure safety and confidentiality for reports made to him/her.
- Schedule incident management team meeting on a weekly base, and updating the committee, PMs and the program director with new feedback received, and discuss the ongoing /pending cases.
- Once a report of an incident is received, manage the immediate response to incidents to ensure that:
-No actions are taken that might compromise a subsequent investigation into theincident
-Reportingtheincidenttothe CountryDirectorwithoutdelay
-Ensuring that relevant paper and electronic records relating to incidents are secured andstoredsafely
-Completing an Incident Form and sending it to the Incident Management Team within24 hours.
Conduct MEAL learning tasks:
- Lead on capturing & conducting informal and formal lesson learned process.
- Conduct accountability-related learning sessions with the project teams on quarterly basis to outline the most important lessons learned during a period of 3 months
- Support MEAL department on conduct learning session’s monthly meeting with the programs/field staff to outline the most important gaps found and how they could be covered during the next durations.
Conduct additional data collection efforts as needed:
- In coordination with the MEAL Manager, perform ad-hoc research efforts in and around Jordan on different projects,
- Supervise data entry from the collection efforts and send them back.
- Analyze the data and make detailed reporst (weekly, monthly and quarterly statistical report).
Representation
- Represent RI in a positive and professional manner to contribute to the creation of a positive image and overall credibility of the organization, notably through the application of RI's mandate, ethics, values and stand-point with regard to other actors.
Safeguarding
- Uphold and promote RI’s commitment to ensuring the safeguarding and safety of the vulnerable communities we serve
- Ensure that your behaviour inside and outside of work promotes the values outlined with RI’s code of conduct and safeguarding policies
- Consistent with RI’s safeguarding and protection policies,
- contribute to ensuring that all those who come into contact with Relief International staff and the communities we serve can be trusted to work safely with them
- ensure your job-related activity and practice is compliant with safeguarding standards
Qualifications & Requirements:
- A B.S. or B.A. degree in a related field.
- Background in education, protection and livelihood projects is a plus
- Well experience, preferably 4+ years
- INGO’s experience is a plus
- Experience in monitoring and evaluation activities (surveys, data entry and reporting) highly desired.
- Good contextual knowledge of local issues, community priorities, social and cultural constraints and realities.
- Ability to organize and work independently and within teams.
- Proficiency with Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. – Excellent communication skills both Arabic & English.
- Demonstrated ability to manage multiple priorities, deadlines, tasks efficiently with strong attention to detail,
- Experience working in post-conflict environment or with refugee populations in emergency response context a plus.
- Desire to learn, willingness to ask questions, cultural sensitivity, and flexibility are desired characteristics.
- Excellent analytical and organizational skills. Ability to think critically and creatively.
- Excellent interpersonal skills, including patience, diplomacy, willingness to listen and respect for colleagues..
- Ability to work effectively in a fast-paced, stressful environment. Must be flexible, willing to perform other duties and work irregular hours.
RI Values:
We uphold the Humanitarian Principles: humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and operational independence. We affirmatively engage the most vulnerable communities. We value:
- Inclusiveness
- Transparency and Accountability
- Agility and Innovation
- Collaboration
- Sustainability
All staff are expected to abide by RI Safeguarding, Code of Conduct & Incident Management Policies & procedures.