The Sustaining Defenders Programme Assistant assists in the timely financial and technical
response to interventions and needs of womn’s rights activists and organizations with the
aim of advancing womn’s human rights and social justice on the African continent. This
includes support in the awarding of grants to African womn human rights defenders and
their formations while maintaining relations with Grantees and Advisors.
Specific Responsibilities.
• Act as the initial interface with grantees and provide prompt and suitable communication
with the applicants.
• Review of grant requests, prepare checklists for the grantmaking team to review and
follow through the grantmaking process up to the point of issuing the grant notification
letter and awarding grants.
• Correspondence with finance on funds disbursement to grantees.
• Correspondence with grantees, advisors and fiscal sponsors.
• Seeking opinions and working with formal/informal advisors and endorsers on grant
proposals.
• Data entry of Sustaining Defenders: Economic, Environmental & Climate Justice
inquiries, requests and grants on the grantmaking database, salesforce etc.
• Conducting and reporting on due diligence research of potential grantees and requests
under review.
• Completion and filing of grant related paperwork.
• Assisting with documenting activity reports when required.
• Preparing country related context trends and analysis on Sustaining AWHRDs, Economic
Justice and Environmental & Climate Justice.
• Assist with planning and implementing outreach missions and other UAF-Africa
networking or programmatic activities as assigned.
• Performing any other duties as may be assigned by the direct supervisor.
Qualifications
Bachelor’s Degree in Development Studies, International Relations, Social Science,
Gender Studies or related fields of study.
Skills and Experience
• Minimum of 2-3 years relevant experience for degree holders and (2) years relevant
experience for diploma holders.
• Demonstrate high levels of integrity and confidentiality
• Excellent interpersonal, verbal and written communication skills in English. French is a
plus.
• Strong Organizational, planning and administrative skills.
• Understanding of the Feminist and women’s human rights issues on the African
continent required.
• Good attention to detail and ability to work with minimal supervision.
• Good time management skills and ability to produce quality work with minimal
supervision.
• Teamwork and ability to work in diverse teams
Role Specific
• Able to coordinate tasks
• Creativeness
• Translation.
• Ability to organise oneself and complete assignments on time.
• Understanding of the Feminist and women’s human rights sector required.
• An understanding of gender equality and womn’s rights issues, particularly in Africa.
• Demonstrated understanding of a feminist political analysis and familiar with feminist
movement building.
• Passionate about UAF-Africa’s mission, committed to teamwork, and achieving results
• Ability to perform detailed work, frequently and/or to handle a large volume of work
systematically, optimally, and accurately.
• Able to identify project needs, develop a detailed timeline for completion, oversee
schedules, and milestone management.
• Ability to organise, categorise, and synthesize information from a range of datasets
existent within and outside the Fund.
• Ability to contribute on a team and coordinate assignments to achieve common goals.
• Excellent interpersonal, public speaking, writing, and negotiation skills.
• Flexibility and willingness to travel on the African continent and beyond as and when
required.
• Experience working in a virtual work environment is an added advantage.