Senior Project Officer – Accountability Full Time

Job Title:                            Senior Project Officer – Accountability

Department:                     Programs

Band:                                  8

Reports To:                       Program Manager I- Accountability

# of staff required:          2

Country/Location:          Ethiopia, Addis Ababa

Job Summary:

As a member of the Safe and Dignified Programming unit, the Accountability Senior Project Officer is responsible for ensuring that mechanisms are established within projects and programs to comply with CRS internal policies, particularly the Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability, and Learning (MEAL) Policies and Procedures (MPP), as well as key accountability commitments such as the Core Humanitarian Standard, Humanitarian Accountability Partnership (HAP), and other emerging standards.

This role involves working on accountability activities with CRS and partner staff across various projects, providing technical guidance throughout the project cycle in accordance with CRS MEAL policies and procedures. The officer will lead the setup and implementation of field-level Feedback and Complaint Response Mechanisms (FCRM), ensuring they are accessible to community members, project participants, and other stakeholders.

Additionally, the role includes coordinating feedback and complaints through multiple channels, such as the Country Program hotline, post-distribution monitoring surveys, and routine field monitoring. The officer will assist with information-sharing and community participation processes to ensure timely responses. Collaboration with the Accountability team is also essential for capturing and sharing insights from different accountability systems within projects and partners.

Job Responsibilities:

Develop and strengthen accountability system:

• Establish and oversee Feedback, Complaint, and Response Mechanisms (FCRM) in close coordination with project or response leadership, ensuring accountability to beneficiaries, donors, and stakeholders.
• Support and build the capacity of CRS and partner staff to design, implement, and monitor FCRM systems, enhancing program quality and accountability.
• Establish sustainable FCRM systems at project sites, ensuring that project participants can submit confidential complaints and receive timely responses.
• Develop systems to track and analyze feedback trends to continuously improve programming.
• Monitor the functionality of the hotline system in collaboration with the call center supervisor.
• Develop Terms of Reference, launch, and lead an accountability working group with partners to enhance the functionality of the FCRM system.

Capacity development

• Collaborate with CRS implementing partners to assess accountability capacity, develop, and implement strategies to improve feedback and complaint handling, and strengthen data management systems.
• Provide training and capacity-building sessions for CRS and partner staff on FCRM tools, processes, and data management to ensure consistent and effective implementation across all project sites, with a particular focus on frontline staff.
• Build the capacity of staff, partners, and project participants in safe and dignified programming frameworks and Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) policy and procedures (MPP), with a strong emphasis on accountability practices.
• Facilitate the application of safe and dignified programming principles, particularly accountability, in project design, implementation, and partnership agreements.
• Actively participate in the Inter-Agency Accountability Working Group (IAAWG) in Addis Ababa, representing CRS-ET, and ensure that updates on accountability systems and relevant information are shared with key staff.

In support of Monitoring, Evaluation, Learning, and knowledge management

• Identify and ensure that the priorities of target communities are incorporated into program design, implementation, monitoring, evaluation, and learning processes.
• Support the integration of CRS Ethiopia’s accountability framework into project design and the overall MEAL system during startup and any MEAL review exercises.
• Monitor and report on key elements of the country program’s accountability mechanisms, including progress related to the feedback system, information sharing, and community participation.
• Organize learning events focused on lessons learned from accountability practices and the application of CRS Ethiopia’s accountability framework.

 In support of Safeguarding, protection and gender integration

• Ensure that safeguarding, protection, and gender issues are thoroughly considered in the development of the Country Program accountability system and the application of the CRS Ethiopia framework. Specifically, ensure that the overall accountability mechanisms, particularly the complaint and response system, address gender issues, including incidents of abuse and exploitation.
• Ensure that accountability data collection tools, checklists, and reporting templates gather disaggregated data on sex as well as other relevant social, economic, cultural, and environmental aspects useful for decision-making, including information on disability.
• Ensure that male, female, and other relevant segments of the community are fairly represented in the complaint handling process (primarily complaint committees), as well as in training and monitoring activities.
• Support CRS’s work in Ethiopia by undertaking additional tasks as appropriate and required.