Program Officer

PROGRAM OFFICER

Location: Qamishli.

Position Status: Full-time, Regular

Salary Level: As per salary scale

About Mercy Corps

Mercy Corps is a leading global organization powered by the belief that a better world is possible. In disaster, in hardship, in more than 40 countries around the world, we partner to put bold solutions into action; helping people triumph over adversity and build stronger communities from within. Now, and for the future.

Program / Department Summary

Mercy Corps seeks to alleviate suffering, poverty, and oppression around the world. We recognize that instances of sudden change within a country or region are rare moments to enact significant, lasting change. Mercy Corps, with its global experience working in countries undergoing major transitions, brings knowledge, expertise, and strong management skills to position the agency as a partner of choice for progressive change in Syria. Mercy Corps has been operational in Syria since 2012 as a leading agency implementing triple nexus programming in one of the world’s most complex humanitarian crises. Millions of Syrians remain displaced, essential services are degraded, and communities struggle with economic collapse, food insecurity, and limited access to healthcare, water, and protection services. At the same time, localized stability in some areas has created opportunities for early recovery and transition.

Mercy Corps humanitarian and development bridges emergency response with resilience‑oriented approaches, ensuring that lifesaving assistance continues while communities begin to rebuild systems, livelihoods, and social cohesion. Mercy corps is expanding its scope off programming to accelerate a shift by fast‑tracking critical support and strengthening local capacities for a sustainable humanitarian transition. Mercy Corps’ focus is to rapidly deliver lifesaving assistance to crisis‑affected populations in Syria while enabling a strategic humanitarian reset that strengthens local systems, enhances resilience, and supports a transition toward early recovery and stabilization.

General Position Summary

The Program Officer will be responsible for the planning, coordination, and supervision of Mercy Corps’ components of the ECHO-funded action “Enhancing Emergency Preparedness and Response in Syria through Multi-Hazard Early Warning Systems and Anticipatory Action Protocols”, implemented by an FAO-led consortium with IOM, UNDRR, NRC/NORCAP, DRC and the Ministry of Emergency and Disaster Management (MoEDM). This includes leading sub-national preparedness activities in selected multi-hazard hotspots across Al-Hasakeh, Idleb, Aleppo and Daraa governorates, such as hotspot selection, stakeholder mapping, participatory capacity gap analyses, governorate preparedness plans and SOPs, community-based early warning systems, and the Crisis Modifier for locally led anticipatory action, including multi-purpose cash assistance.

The Program Officer will lead field-level implementation, support local partners and community structures, and ensure that activities are completed according to the approved workplan, budget, and timeline in line with ECHO requirements. The position will also play a key role in building the capacity of local authorities, first responders, volunteers, and civil society organizations to interpret and act upon early warning information, and in ensuring that community feedback informs the national Multi-Hazard Early Warning System (MHEWS). The Program Officer will represent Mercy Corps at the field level with local authorities, consortium partners, and other stakeholders, ensuring effective coordination, conflict sensitivity, and accountability throughout project implementation.

Essential Job Responsibilities

1. Program Planning and Implementation

• Coordinate closely with the ECHO Program Manager to plan, implement, and monitor Mercy Corps’ components of the action under Results 3 and 4, in line with the consortium workplan, logframe, and ECHO requirements.
• Lead the identification of multi-hazard priority hotspots in Al-Hasakeh, Idleb, Aleppo and Daraa governorates, including introductory meetings, hotspot selection criteria, stakeholder mapping, and participatory preparedness and response capacity gap analyses.
• Support the development or update of governorate disaster preparedness plans and Standard Operating Procedures that link early warning information, triggers, and thresholds to pre-agreed anticipatory and early actions, ensuring coherence with the national anticipatory action protocols.
• Support the development and activation of the Crisis Modifier, including the Crisis Modifier Protocol, trigger-based multi-purpose cash assistance, and After-Action Reviews, ensuring recommendations are incorporated into protocols and DRR plans.
• Develop and maintain work plans and implementation schedules, ensuring activities progress in line with project objectives, budget, and timelines.

1. Local Partner and Field Supervision

• Monitor the performance of local partners, community-based organizations, and service providers, ensuring quality, adherence to timelines, and compliance with Mercy Corps’ SOPs, ECHO requirements, and environmental standards.
• Conduct regular field visits to hotspot locations, prepare progress reports, and escalate any technical, access, security, or logistical issues that may affect implementation.
• Support the ECHO Program Manager in managing partner agreements, activity plans, and budget follow-up, and in adapting implementation to access constraints or emerging risks.

1. Coordination and Community Engagement

• Liaise with MoEDM directorates, local authorities, first responders, and community structures to ensure effective coordination and ownership of preparedness and anticipatory action activities.
• Represent Mercy Corps in consortium and national coordination mechanisms, including the Technical Committee, the Interagency Project Implementation Team, and the National DRR and AA Coordination Platform, as delegated by the ECHO Program Manager.
• Facilitate participatory community consultations and support the establishment and use of community-based early warning systems and last-mile dissemination pilots, ensuring the inclusion of women, youth, older persons, persons with disabilities, IDPs, and returnees.
• Ensure that community feedback and local risk information inform the MHEWS, anticipatory action protocols, and DRR plans, applying conflict-sensitive and Do No Harm approaches throughout.

1. Capacity Building and Knowledge Sharing

• Support the design and delivery of training of trainers, simulation exercises, and after-action reviews for local authorities, MoEDM volunteers, first responders, and local civil society organizations on preparedness, early warning interpretation, and anticipatory action.
• Support the establishment and capacity strengthening of a deployable roster of locally led first responders, working with Mercy Corps’ network of local partners.
• Contribute to internal learning by documenting lessons learned, best practices, and challenges for future program improvement.

1. Reporting and Compliance

• Prepare weekly and monthly progress reports, and provide inputs to consortium and ECHO reports, including activity updates, indicator data, challenges, and recommendations.
• Support the MEAL team in data collection and verification for project indicators, including the ECHO beneficiary survey indicator, post-distribution monitoring, pre- and post-training assessments, and the complaints and feedback mechanism.
• Maintain accurate and complete records of all assessments, plans, training and simulation reports, distribution records, photos, and other documentation, ensuring data protection, ECHO visibility requirements, and file retention in digital and physical formats in line with Mercy Corps standards.

1. Other Duties

• Represent Mercy Corps professionally in all interactions with authorities, communities, and partners.
• Perform any other tasks assigned by the supervisor to support successful program delivery.

Supervisory Responsibility: Program Assistant.

Reports Directly To: ECHO Program Manager.

Works Directly With: Mercy Corps program teams; relevant regional PaQ team; MEAL department; grants department; staff from consortium partner organizations (FAO, IOM, UNDRR, NRC/NORCAP, DRC); MoEDM; and local partners.

Minimum Qualifications

• University degree in Disaster Risk Management, Humanitarian Studies, International Development, Environmental or Climate Sciences, Social Sciences, Public Administration, or a relevant field.
• At least four years’ experience in humanitarian or development programming.
• At least two years’ experience in disaster risk reduction, disaster preparedness, early warning, anticipatory action, resilience, or emergency response programming.
• Knowledge of multi-hazard early warning systems and anticipatory action concepts (triggers, protocols, SOPs, flexible financing), Early Warnings for All (EW4All), and Cash and Voucher Assistance.
• Experience in community-based disaster preparedness, rapid assessments and needs analysis, and capacity building of local authorities and civil society organizations.
• Understanding of conflict sensitivity, Do No Harm, and gender, protection, and inclusion mainstreaming.
• Fluency in written and spoken Arabic and good command in English.
• Strong organizational skills and experience working with local NGOs and authorities are needed.
• Reporting skills, and computer skills are required.
• Preferably experience with ECHO or other institutional donor-funded consortium projects, and familiarity with GIS, KoboToolbox, or dashboard tools.

Success Factors

• High self-organization skills.
• Ability to manage and coordinate with different members/levels of a team.
• High level of confidentiality.
• Ability to work under pressure.
• The ideal candidate must be highly motivated and positive. They must be detail oriented as well as organized to handle multiple tasks and work well with the team.

Accountability to Beneficiaries

• Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts toward accountability, specifically
  to our beneficiaries and to international standards guiding international relief and development work, while actively engaging beneficiary communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring and evaluation of our field projects.
• Team members are expected to conduct themselves in a professional manner and respect local laws, customs and MC's policies, procedures, and values at all times and in all in-country venues.
• Ensure all interventions adhere to Mercy Corps’ Gender Policy, Do No Harm principles, and beneficiary accountability standards

Organizational Learning

As part of our commitment to organizational learning and in support of our understanding that learning organizations are more effective, efficient and relevant to the communities they serve, we expect all team members to commit 5% of their time to learning activities that benefit Mercy Corps as well as themselves.

Team Efficiency and Effectiveness

Achieving our mission starts with how we build our team and collaborate. By bringing together individuals with a variety of experiences, backgrounds, and perspectives, we strengthen our ability to solve complex challenges and drive innovation. We foster a culture of trust and respect, where every team member is valued for their contributions, empowered to reach their full potential, and motivated to do their best work.

We recognize that building a strong and effective team is an ongoing process, and we remain committed to learning, improving, and growing together.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Mercy Corps is an equal opportunity employer that does not tolerate discrimination on any basis. We actively seek out diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and skills so that we can be collectively stronger and have sustained global impact.

We are committed to providing an environment of respect and psychological safety where equal employment opportunities are available to all. We do not engage in or tolerate discrimination on the basis of race, color, gender identity, gender expression, religion, age, sexual orientation, national or ethnic origin, disability (including HIV/AIDS status), marital status, military veteran status or any other protected group in the locations where we work.

Safeguarding & Ethics

Mercy Corps is committed to ensuring that all individuals we come into contact with through our work, whether team members, community members, program participants or others, are treated with respect and dignity. We are committed to the core principles regarding prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse laid out by the UN Secretary General and IASC and have signed on to the Interagency Misconduct Disclosure Scheme. We will not tolerate child abuse, sexual exploitation, abuse, or harassment by or of our team members. As part of our commitment to a safe and inclusive work environment, team members are expected to conduct themselves in a professional manner, respect local laws and customs, and to adhere to Mercy Corps Code of Conduct Policies and values at all times. Team members are required to complete mandatory Code of Conduct elearning courses upon hire and on an annual basis.

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The organization participates in the Inter-Agency Misconduct Disclosure Scheme (the “Scheme”) (www.schr.info/the-misconduct-disclosure-scheme). Accordingly, we request information from a job applicant’s previous employer(s) about any investigations which found that the applicant committed sexual exploitation, sexual abuse and/or sexual harassment during employment, or incidents of misconduct under investigation when the applicant left employment. By applying, you confirm your consent to the organization collecting your prior employment history under the Scheme as part of the application process. Your data will be stored for up to four years.

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