Project Facilitation Officer (Host Enterprise)

Who is VSO Ethiopia

VSO is the world’s leading international organisation working through volunteers to create a fair world for everyone. We focus on people who are marginalised or excluded, including those living in poverty, people with disabilities or illness, and those facing discrimination, violence, disasters, disease, and conflict.

VSO places these individuals at the centre of its work as primary actors and agents of change. We work with communities to identify their priorities, opportunities, and solutions, supporting locally led and sustainable change.

Our Approach

VSO’s Volunteering for Development (VfD) approach supports vulnerable and marginalised people to claim their rights and drive lasting change. It addresses the root causes of vulnerability and marginalisation through three core approaches: social inclusion and gender, social accountability, and resilience. These approaches underpin our work in inclusive education, health, resilient livelihoods and peace building.

About the Job

VSO is a lead implementer of the Internship Opportunities for Young Women program (iWork), financed by the Mastercard Foundation. The program will be implemented in Ethiopia across Amhara, Oromia, and Harari regional states, as well as the Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa city administrations. iWork aims to create internship opportunities for 24,000 financially disadvantaged young people, with a primary focus on young women. The program also promotes inclusion by reaching persons with disabilities, refugees, internally displaced people, and returnees. Through internships, iWork aims to help young women build the skills and experience they need to access dignified and fulfilling work, contributing to poverty reduction and an improved quality of life.

VSO Ethiopia is recruiting a Project Facilitation Officer (Host Enterprise) for iWork program.

Role Purpose:

Implement the activities for strengthening host enterprise engagement and capacity in the assigned cluster under i-Work programme to expand safe, inclusive and quality internship and employment pathways for young women and other disadvantaged youth. identifies, engages and strengthens host enterprises; supports safe and inclusive workplace practices, and links enterprises with business development and financial services to improve their capacity to host, support and transition young people into work opportunities.

Tasks Responsibilities

•  Implement cluster-level host enterprise engagement to expand safe, inclusive and dignified pathways to internships, wage employment and self-employment for young women and other disadvantaged youth.
• Assess and strengthen host enterprise capacity, workplace systems and supervision arrangements through practical guidance, and mentoring.
• Coordinate internship matching and support pathways with the Training and Workforce Development Officer, ensuring placements reflect participant aspirations, skills, business needs, safeguarding and inclusion standards.
• Promote safe, inclusive workplaces that support women, youth with disabilities and other disadvantaged youth to access quality work-based learning and employment opportunities.
• Assess the host enterprises’ policies and processes and tailors interventions to improve inclusion, safeguarding, and the opportunities provided to the interns.
• Strengthen capacity of enterprises in business development and access to financial services to improve their capacity to host, support and transition young people into work opportunities.
• Monitor internship placements, enterprise participation, retention pathways and compliance with project standards through regular follow-up visits, data collection, progress reporting and regular updates. Assess the performance of VSO’s interventions and propose improvements.
• Support the project team appropriately use of donor grant, monitor expenditures and spending realisation against budget allocation, proceed in compliance with finance and procurement policies and processes.
• Support on administration, logistics and procurement at the cluster level.
• Build and maintain strong relationships with host enterprises, local government, job creation offices, training providers, community actors and consortium partners to expand safe, inclusive internship and employment pathways.
• Serve as the cluster focal point for enterprise engagement, including identifying placement opportunities, supporting internship agreements and coordinating follow-up with enterprises and participants. Anticipate potential issues and propose remedial solutions to sustain the delivery of the project.
• Coordinate with VSO Ethiopia, consortium partners, government institutions and other partners to align enterprise engagement with the consortium delivery model and local economic development priorities.
• Strengthen collaboration between enterprises, community networks, CSOs, technical partners and local authorities to build trust and support young women and other disadvantaged youth entering the workforce.
• Report on the cluster-level progress of enterprise engagements, identifying bottlenecks in the placement process, and providing field-level insights to inform policy and operational adjustments.
• Tracking the status of placements, collecting data from enterprises on intern performance and retention, and ensuring accurate reporting on key performance indicators. Advise Cluster Coordinator on potential issues, and recommend corrective action.
• Sharing success stories or case studies from host enterprises to demonstrate the program's impact and support advocacy efforts.
• Ensuring cohesive support for the cohort, sharing best practices for engaging different types of enterprises, and coordinating support for interns across various sectors.

Location: Addis Ababa (1) Bahir Dar (1), and Kombolcha (1)

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent knowledge and skills in development studies, Economics, Business Administration, Project Management, Sociology, Social Work, Education, Labour Studies, or related fields.

• Significant relevant professional experience in youth employment, workforce development, internship programmes, TVET, livelihoods, private sector engagement, or economic empowerment programmes.
• relevant experience in project coordination or management roles.
• Experience managing donor-funded programmes is required.
• Relevant experience with practical knowledge of youth employment, internship pathways, workforce development, enterprise engagement, inclusive workplace practices, women and youth economic empowerment.
• Lived experience in the project location with the ability to apply gender-transformative, disability-inclusive and youth-centered approaches.
• Experience in the field/ cluster-level implementation including budget, procurement, logistics and field office administration.
• Proficient skills in partnership and engagement to build and maintain cluster-level stakeholder engagement with local government, private sector, host enterprises, TVETs, universities, training providers, civil society, OPDs, youth networks and local communities.
• Practical skills in safeguarding, duty of care, risk monitoring and incident responses, and escalation reporting.
• Proficient skills in people management, coaching and mentoring with effective team management and ability to facilitate learnings and support collaborative teamwork, staff wellbeing and performance at the cluster-level.
• Sound knowledge of participatory M&E and community-level learning facilitation.
• Effective communication and digital skills, including relevant local languages, working English proficiency, and use of Microsoft Office and programme management systems.
• Practical understanding of locally-led development and system strengthening.
• Demonstrated VSO behavioral competencies at the level relevant to the role.
• Commitment to VSO’s vision, mission, values, code of conduct, people-first principles and Volunteering for Development approach.