Duty Station: Kathmandu, Nepal (with extensive travel in Nepal (Madhesh and Lumbini Provinces)

Background:

UKaid Skills for Employment Migration Component Leader will provide strategic guidance and lead a dynamic result-oriented team responsible for co-designing and implementing series of market responsive skilling and migration management projects.

The component lead is expected to come up with innovative ways of engaging the Nepalese private and public sector partners in designing sustainable and cost-effective models to increase migrants’ skills; lower the cost of migration, increase migrants’ and migrant households’ net savings and investment of remittances to upscale co-funding & impact thereby contributing to the program goal of maximizing returns on migration for Nepal’s workforce and economic development. 

Role and Responsibilities:

The key responsibilities of the Migration Component Leader are as follows:

• Provide strategic direction in mobilizing challenge fund mechanism to effectively advance skilling, affordable financing, responsible recruitment, and migration management practices in Nepal. This includes identifying and partnering with the relevant private sector entities engaged in the labour migration landscape (primarily the banks, financial institutions, training institutes and recruitment agencies) to co-design and implement interventions on lowering the overall costs of migration, expanding formal and affordable financing options for the migrants and households, discouraging informal sources of borrowing, while supporting safer, orderly and regular migration including lowering costs of remittance, increased savings and investments.
  
• Supervise and support the component team to manage on going and develop new partnership projects as well as working alongside the Challenge Fund, Monitoring, Evaluation and Learnings (MEL), Regional Managers, GESI and Communications Team to oversee and support effective and results focused management of migration partnerships. This entails tracking and ensuring attainment of stated skilling, income increment, savings and investments goals, systemic change, partners performance monitoring, timely reporting and progress sharing.
• Working closely with MEL and component team, deploy value for money, cost benefit assessments, beneficiaries’ verifications, to ensure sustainability and impact of migration models, assuring regular receipt of monthly and quarterly reports including beneficiaries’ profiles from all partners, as well as ensuring partners and component team receive timely support to address project implementation constraints. 
• Actively participate in annual and bi-annual including quarterly review meetings with the donors/ funding agencies, the provincial government including beneficiaries and stakeholders to monitor and provide feedback on the programme progress and achievements. 
• Supervise and support the team to undertake relevant research and literature reviews including updating of the desk review reports – such as stakeholders mapping of the migration ecosystem, survey with the recruitment agencies, surveys to prioritize emerging sectors and corridors including identifying new and emerging job roles for the Nepali migrants. Support the team members in collating data from the beneficiaries’ profile to generate evidence and analysis for scaling up successful partnerships as well as to feed into to the systemic change and relevant policy documents.
• Develop and maintain liaison with relevant authorities of the Ministry of Labour, Employment and Social Security, relevant authorities of the provincial government as well as keeping abreast of the new policies and changes in labour migration governance system.
• Coordinate with the government, donors and public private institutions engaged in migration initiatives and link SEP and its partners efforts for harmonization, showcasing of good practices and scale up interventions in order to maximize results.
• Maintain effective working relationship with the project team, clients and donors and stakeholders by providing timely information on all projects and program matters.
• Based on management of series of migration projects, work with MEL to collate learnings and knowledge products to feed into relevant policy and future programmatic actions. 

Reporting: 

• Candidate will report to the Team Leader

Requirements for the Position 

• Masters’ degree in social science, economics, business management/ administration/ related fields.
  
• Previous work experience of having worked in similar development programmes that deploy co-investment Challenge Funds to generate economic growth opportunities for migrant and migrant households in Nepal. 
• Minimum 8-10 years of experience in working in and managing migration partners and economic and enterprise development projects catered to and preferably for migrants and families including technical experience and expertise in the International Labour Migration.
• Familiarity in mobilizing challenge fund mechanism for project/ program implementation gained through prior management of FCDO funded projects including use of co-investment models through engaging of the private sector for skilling and financial inclusion for foreign employment.
• Prior experience of working as in the migration sector / similar donor funded projects on skilling and private sector engagement with in-depth understanding of theory of change, log frames, relevant reporting requirements. 
• Ability to supervise and manage dynamic and multidisciplinary team members.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills (both English and Nepali)