Project Coordinator At Basic Needs Basic Rights

Basic Needs Basic Rights Kenya is seeking a highly organized, proactive, and detail-oriented Project Coordinator to support the planning, coordination, and execution of projects from start to completion. The ideal candidate is reliable, resourceful, and comfortable managing multiple priorities, tracking deadlines, coordinating teams, and ensuring that project activities remain organized and on schedule. The position will be for an initial period of nine (9) months, effective 1st October 2026, with the possibility of renewal subject to satisfactory performance and availability of funding.

KEY DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Design Phase Coordination

• Coordinate implementation of the Co-Impact design phase and the overall project development process.
• Develop and monitor a detailed nine-month design-phase workplan, clearly outlining activities, milestones, responsibilities, and timelines.
• Coordinate implementation of agreed design activities and ensure that key milestones are completed within agreed timelines.
• Maintain coordination among project teams, partner organisations and other stakeholders involved in the design process.
• Organise and coordinate regular design-team meetings, ensuring that decisions, action points and responsibilities are clearly documented and followed up.
• Maintain a design-phase action tracker and provide regular progress updates to management.
• Identify emerging implementation risks, capacity gaps or delays and escalate them promptly for resolution.

Systems-Change Strategy Development and Project Design

• Lead and coordinate the development and refinement of the project's systems-change strategy.
• Support development and refinement of the original concept, proposal and subsequent project design.
• Work closely with the dedicated design team, technical advisers and stakeholders to define the problem, intended systems-level outcomes, target populations and proposed interventions.
• Support the identification and design of interventions capable of producing sustainable institutional and systems-level change.
• Coordinate the testing of assumptions supporting the proposed strategy and support the team to refine strategic priorities based on emerging evidence and stakeholder feedback.
• Analyse how policies, institutions, actors, relationships, incentives and practices influence the system supporting children affected by conflict and crisis.
• Ensure that the proposed strategy identifies realistic pathways towards long-term systems change.
• Coordinate the preparation, review and finalisation of design-phase outputs and strategic documentation.

Literature Review and Evidence Generation

• Lead the review of relevant internal and external literature, research, policies, strategies, programme documents and evidence related to education, children affected by conflict and crisis, and systems change.
• Develop an agreed literature-review and evidence-generation framework in consultation with the design team.
• Review relevant national and county policies, strategies, institutional frameworks and existing interventions.
• Identify evidence gaps, lessons and potential systems-level interventions.
• Prepare concise evidence summaries, analysis and recommendations to inform project design and strategic decisions.
• Support the design team to use evidence to challenge assumptions and refine proposed interventions.

Organizational Skills and Capacity Mapping

• Assess the technical and operational skills required to successfully undertake the design phase.
• Map existing skills and capacity within Basic Needs Kenya and partner organisations against identified design requirements.
• Identify critical skills and capacity gaps that may affect successful completion of the design phase.
• Recommend appropriate technical expertise, consultants, advisers or partners where required.
• Coordinate onboarding and engagement of technical experts supporting the design process, where applicable.
• Monitor whether additional expertise is required as the project design evolves.

Stakeholder Mapping

• Coordinate a comprehensive stakeholder-mapping exercise to identify key actors who influence or are affected by the systems supporting children affected by conflict and crisis.
• Coordinate engagement with key actors within the system to understand barriers, opportunities, relationships, incentives and potential interventions.
• Plan and facilitate stakeholder-mapping workshops, consultations, focus groups and other engagement forums.
• Develop and maintain a stakeholder engagement matrix capturing stakeholder interests, influence, roles, relationships and proposed engagement approaches.
• Build and maintain relationships with relevant government agencies, education actors, civil society organisations, communities, development partners and other stakeholders.
• Track stakeholder engagements, feedback, commitments and agreed follow-up actions.
• Ensure insights from stakeholder consultations are systematically incorporated into project design.

Community Engagement

• Ensure that the project design reflects the lived experiences, agency, voice and aspirations of the target population.
• Coordinate meaningful and inclusive engagement with children, young people, parents, educators, communities and other groups directly affected by the issues being addressed.
• Work with the design team to ensure that community perspectives inform problem definition, proposed solutions and systems-change priorities.
• Promote meaningful participation of marginalised and underserved groups throughout the design process.
• Ensure all engagements involving children and vulnerable groups comply with Basic Needs
• Kenya safeguarding requirements.

Winning Coalition Development and Partnership Coordination

• Coordinate the process of identifying organisations, institutions and individuals capable of forming a strong coalition to support the proposed system-change initiative.
• Develop objective criteria for identifying and assessing potential coalition members.
• Facilitate discussions with prospective coalition partners to clarify interests, capabilities, comparative strengths, roles and potential contributions.
• Coordinate engagement among prospective coalition members and other key system actors.
• Support the design team to agree on an appropriate coalition structure, roles, responsibilities and ways of working.
• Support development of shared expectations and collaboration arrangements among coalition members.
• Coordinate documentation of coalition commitments and agreed next steps.

Design Phase Project Workshops Facilitation

• Coordinate project workshops, design sessions, stakeholder forums and other collaborative engagements required during the design phase.
• Develop clear objectives, agendas and expected outputs for workshops in consultation with relevant technical leads.
• Facilitate or support facilitation of structured discussions aimed at generating insights, testing assumptions and refining the systems-change strategy.
• Ensure workshop findings, recommendations and decisions are accurately documented.
• Coordinate follow-up actions arising from workshops and consultations.
• Work closely with the Project Assistant and Operations team to ensure logistical arrangements support effective participation.

Learning and Reporting

• Maintain accurate records of design meetings, consultations, workshops, decisions, emerging lessons and strategic changes.
• Coordinate preparation of narrative progress reports and other documentation required by management and Co-Impact.
• Capture key lessons emerging from the design process and ensure they inform subsequent stages of programme development.
• Document how the strategy evolves in response to evidence, stakeholder engagement and testing of assumptions.
• Support preparation of presentations, briefs, concept documents and other materials required for internal, donor and stakeholder engagements.
• Support preparation of final design-phase documentation and transition materials for the subsequent implementation phase.

Academic Qualifications

• A bachelor's degree in Education, Education Policy, Development Studies or a closely related field. A background in Education is essential.
• A postgraduate qualification in Education, Development Studies, Public Policy, Project
• Management or a related discipline will be an added advantage.
• Relevant training or exposure to systems thinking, systems change, or programme design will be an added advantage.

Professional Experience

• At least five years of relevant professional experience, preferably within education, childfocused programming, humanitarian settings, development programmes or related sectors.
• Demonstrated experience coordinating projects involving multiple stakeholders.
• Experience in programme or project design and strategy development.
• Experience conducting literature reviews, research, policy analysis or evidence synthesis.
• Practical experience planning and facilitating stakeholder workshops, consultations or participatory design processes.
• Experience engaging government institutions, civil society organisations, communities, donors and other development actors.
• Demonstrated ability to coordinate relationships across multiple partners or institutions.
• Previous exposure to programmes serving children in conflict, crisis, marginalised or underserved settings will be an advantage.