CIRCLE Alliance Country Coordinator

Practice/Department: Catalyzing Inclusive, Resilient, and Circular Local Economies (CIRCLE) Alliance 

Location: Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam  

Job Title: CIRCLE Alliance Country Coordinator 

Reports to: CIRCLE Alliance Chief of Party (COP) 

GENERAL DESCRIPTION  

POSITION MANDATE 

The CIRCLE Alliance: Catalyzing Inclusive, Resilient, and Circular Local Economies is a public-private initiative to reduce plastic use and tackle plastic waste. Founded by Unilever, USAID, and EY, its aim is to support women entrepreneurs, improve livelihoods, and protect the environment by accelerating the development of a circular economies. CIRCLE will build on the successful approaches developed as part of impact enterprise accelerator TRANSFORM and by programs implemented under the USAID’s Save Our Seas Initiative. CIRCLE will work across three key areas: developing circular economies through grants funding and business consulting to social enterprises, supporting effective and transparent mandatory extended producer responsibility (EPR) policies and implementation, and advancing gender equality and women’s economic empowerment.  

CIRCLE is seeking a Country Coordinator for Vietnam. The Country Coordinator will lead country-level project implementation, with an emphasis on creating a steady pipeline of SMEs, grantee selection; coordination with and between grantees, partner governments, and CIRCLE members organizations; and oversight. The Country Coordinator will partner with the Grants and Program Manager, Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) Advisor, USAID AOR and Mission Activity Managers, the Unilever Project Leads and Country/Regional Leads, and key points of contact at EY to engage with grantees to identify priority acceleration needs and develop Tailored Acceleration Packages (TAPs), which are designed to strengthen business operations, gender inclusive practices, sales, etc. Engagement with Unilever may also include engaging with third party suppliers and helping targeted small and medium enterprises (SMEs) pursue opportunities to engage within the Unilever supply chain. The Country Coordinator will likewise lead the selection and management of local capacity builders and specialized short-term technical assistance resources when required. Lastly, the Country Coordinator will serve as an in-country point of contact for grantees, providing grant monitoring support and fostering cross-grantee collaboration and learning.  

This is a full-time position based in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam reporting to the Chief of Party. This position is expected to be hybrid and will align with Unilever office mandates. 

OUTCOMES / ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS 

• Serves as the CIRCLE Alliance’s country representative and partnership liaison to USAID Mission, Unilever, and EY in-country teams; participates in country, regional and global coordination meetings as required. 
• Supports Alliance member in-country teams with the development of grantee pipelines, which includes collaborating with in-country peers, leveraging entrepreneurship ecosystems through extended networks, identifying viable grantees within the SME ecosystem, and representing the Alliance at in-person or virtual grants information sessions.  
• Supports the successful implementation of award and grants management processes, including engaging in the solicitation, pre-award risk assessment and due diligence, evaluation, implementation, communication, MEL/reporting/tracking, and closeout. 
• Manages grants evaluation and selection committee processes and chairs their respective country-level committee.? 
• Maintains an understanding of USAID programming and grants, with emphasis in ensuring grants are well administered and implemented in compliance with donor regulations and Resonance policies and procedures.  
• Maintains responsive and clear communications with the CIRCLE COP, WEE Advisor and Grants and Program Manager on grants and grantee-related activities to ensure timely and responsible implementation of activities, as well as troubleshooting and remediation as needed.  
• Ensures integration of gender equality and women’s empowerment priorities across the activity, including grant administration and implementation. 
• Supports grantees with grant and financial management, milestone reporting, specific conditions compliance as part of the capacity building component, and general guidance.  
• Provides technical and management inputs into contractual and technical reporting needs of USAID, Unilever, and other applicable partners.  
• Conducts field monitoring visits to grantee locations to observe, understand, report, and improve the progress of grant project implementation, security protocols permitting. 
• Oversees and coordinates in-country CIRCLE Alliance consultants (in Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), MEL, WEE, Acceleration), including support to start-up assessments. 
• Supports the design of scopes of work and manages local capacity builders engaged through the grants fund.  
• As needed, provides targeted support to CIRCLE in the following areas: workshop logistics and facilitation, work planning, training, and assessments.?
• Engages with host government as needed to communicate delivery of CIRCLE with prior consultation with the CIRCLE COP and partners.  

REQUIRED EDUCATION & EXPERIENCE 

• Master’s degree in international relations, public administration, business administration, natural resource management, or another relevant field and 5 years of experience; or a bachelor’s degree and 7 years of experience. 
• Minimum of 3 years of project management experience on a USAID-funded project and/or donor-funded project, including proven experience managing and supporting the full grants cycle and providing grants and/or subaward oversight. 
• Minimum 2 years of experience directly advising SMEs and/or social enterprises or designing and overseeing implementation of programming supporting social enterprises in Vietnam. 
• Proven experience working in one or more of the following technical areas: WEE, EPR, circular economy or solid waste management. 
• Working knowledge of Microsoft software packages: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook.
• Fluent in English and Vietnamese (ti?ng Vi?t) reading and writing.  

PREFERRED EDUCATION & EXPERIENCE  

• Experience in facilitation and meeting/workshop design and coordination. 
• Strong networks with the SME ecosystem within Vietnam. 
• Prior public-private partnership experience 
• Prior experience working for both donor and private sector clients 
• Prior experience and expertise in solid waste management
• Prior experience implementing projects with gender equality and women’s empowerment components 

TRAVEL EXPECTATIONS 

The employee must be able to travel domestically up to 20% for work assignments. 

WORK ENVIRONMENT & PHYSICAL DEMANDS 

This position operates in a professional office environment, and routinely requires the use of standard office equipment such as computers, phones, printers, photocopiers, and filing cabinets. 

The physical requirements described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job.  

As a part of the responsibilities for this job, the employee is required to communicate, detect, converse with, discern, convey, express oneself, and exchange information orally and in writing with others. The employee must be able to remain in a stationary position, sitting at a desk for prolonged periods, move or traverse inside the office and facilities; operate, activate, use, prepare, inspect, place, detect, or position computers and other office equipment, such as a calculator, copy machine, furniture, and computer printer. The employee must be able to make substantial repetitive motions of the wrists, hands, and fingers. The employee must be able to lift and move up to 15lbs at times.  

WORK AUTHORIZATION / SECURITY CLEARANCE 

N/A 

AAP/EEO STATEMENT 

The Equal Employment Opportunity Policy of Resonance is to provide a fair and equal employment opportunity for all associates and job applicants regardless of race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, or disability. Resonance hires and promotes individuals solely based on their qualifications for the job to be filled. 

Resonance believes that employees should be provided with a working environment which enables each associate to be productive and to work to the best of his or her ability. We do not condone or tolerate an atmosphere of intimidation or harassment based on race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, or disability. 

We expect and require the cooperation of all employees in maintaining a discrimination and harassment-free atmosphere.