It’s hard to believe that today over 663 million people in the world still don’t have clean, safe water and over 2.4 billion live without adequate toilet. The resulting diseases kill one child every 2 minutes.

Introduction:
WaterAid Liberia as expressed in its Country Programme Strategy (CPS) inspires to maintain a high-level profile in national and international level policy influencing and advocacy. The CPS is focused on WASH Governance and Sustainable Service Delivery in Urban and Rural areas, integrated in the areas of Health and Education. Advocacy for policy influencing and sector strengthening at the national and county levels are two critical essentials of the CPS. The gaps identified in the National Policy on Water, Sanitation & Hygiene are relating to poor institutional arrangements and policies, low sector financing, poor WASH infrastructures, limited sector performance monitoring, poor information management among others.
Another key focus of the Country Programme is to harness existing partnerships for better results as well as build new partnerships and network with key sector players including the government of Liberia and donors to ensure implementation of WaterAid Liberia’s Programme Strategy.
The Role
The Senior Policy Specialist (SPS) is a senior management position in WaterAid Liberia and co-chairs WaterAid Liberia’s Senior Management Team. The SPS is responsible for and leads the overall development, coordination and management of WaterAid Liberia’s Influencing agenda. He/She will support the achievement of WaterAid Liberia’s WASH Governance programme at both local and national levels and support its integration with Knowledge Management and Sustainable Service Delivery Programmes. As lead for all WaterAid Liberia’s policy influencing and campaign work, the Senior Policy Specialist will engage with the WASH sector at the highest level in country to enhance country level linkages as well as ensure that outputs from policy engagements in Liberia feed into WaterAid West Africa to influence regional and global development priorities.
Responsibilities:
Strategic Management
• Contribute to the review and re-designing of the overall CPS and lead annual planning and budgeting of the WASH governance and Sustainable Services Delivery
• As a member of the Senior Management Team (SMT), contribute to strategic direction, decision making, fundraising, corporate governance and WaterAid brand maintenance in Liberia
• Ensure good coordination between WASH Governance, Fundraising, Programmes and other support functions within the CP
• Preposition WAL’s WASH programme to contribute to the national and global SDG discussions and implementation.
• Contribute to shaping regional and global initiatives using experiences and lessons from the Liberia Programme.
Partnerships and Capacity Building:
• Support the Liberia Country Programme to develop adequate and effective processes and systems for partnership engagement and management
• Strengthen the collaboration and develop relationships with other agencies working in the WASH sector including networking with donors, other international organisation, the Liberia WASH Consortium at both local and national levels
• Support civil society’s policy engagement in the WASH sector and work closely with national NGOs, CBOs, and CSO networks to strengthen capacity to effectively engage with national and local policy making by lobbying and advocating for improvement in sector financing, strategic planning and high sector level performance
• Assess and develop capacities of staff and partners on policy influencing and advocacy, and new frameworks, approaches and programme principles (eg District Wide Approach (DWA), Human Rights-Based Approach (HRBA), etc) to enhance the effectiveness of overall programme

Fundraising and Financial Management:
• Support the design of quality programmes and project proposals that are in line with Country Programme’s strategic priorities and responsive to grant funders requirements
• Support overall budget management of the CP’s budget and specifically ensure proper management of all budgets or cost centers (ie. 6PP00, 6CS00, 6TN00, etc) relating to WaterAid’s Governance programme
• Lead WaterAid and donor reporting processes and ensure quality and timely reports in line with donor compliance and WaterAid standards
• Work collaboratively with the Fundraising Manager and other relevant staff to source new donors, develop and sustain ongoing donor relationships.

Research, Monitoring and reporting:
• Lead the CP in conducting informative researches by developing research concepts and proposals, undertaking implementation, disseminating findings and facilitating learning in the CP and at sector level
• Support the CP in managing the Programme Monitoring Evaluation and Reporting (PMER) System for periodic work planning and tracking progress of Country Programme Strategy.
• Work effectively with other departments to promote policy – practice linkages, and the culture of learning/knowledge management
• Lead the development of case studies, position papers and support the CP in implementing learning from the field and PMER community of practice
• Lead the development of high quality midyear and annual prgramme reports as well as specific donor reports relating to CP’s WASH Governance Programme.

People and Team Management:
• Ensure effective team working within and across the different departments, especially with the programmes team while enhancing integration among the programmes and policy departments
• Ensure the effective performance and development of high quality staff in line with the demands of the CP strategy