About the Opportunity

The Safeguarding Officer is a crucial member of the Inkomoko team, working with all staff to create a culture of safety, dignity, and well-being of all clients, staff, and partners. This role will implement, monitor, and enforce safeguarding standards in alignment with international humanitarian best practices, and will work closely with Inkomoko’s security, HR, and program teams for prevention, detection, and response. The Safeguarding Officer will also conduct training and provide guidance on safeguarding issues across all Inkomoko programs, and will be a key partner if any safeguarding or protections issues arise. Investments is an area that has very high rates of safeguarding risk and potential for harm so Safeguarding lead will work with the investments team specifically as this requires some specific skills and understanding of the financial context.

Responsibilities

 Culture of Safeguarding and Abuse Prevention:

• Safeguarding staff play a crucial role in ensuring the organization is continuous in its dedication to safeguarding. This may come in the form of working with leadership for annual reminders, talking points for events or meetings, revisiting the KPIs process to ensure everyone is setting safeguarding goals, and revisiting safeguarding in Inkomoko values.
• Foster a culture of safeguarding within the organization, ensuring that all team members understand their roles and responsibilities to keep clients, staff, and partners safe; lead the Cultural Advocates to support safeguarding best practices
• Develop and deliver safeguarding training to ensure ignorance is never an excuse for protections and that clients always know their rights when working with Inkomoko.
• Provide specialized training sessions tailored to the needs of different program areas
• Safeguarding Lead is responsible for working with People & Culture on staff recruitment and selection, ensuring safeguarding is included in all job descriptions, establishing interview questions to assess for safeguarding knowledge, and the background check process toward safe hiring practices. The SG lead also ensure new staff are onboarded to safeguarding policies, in partnership with the People and Culture team

Active Response Case Management and Reporting:

• Provide survivor support that honors the victim and provides culturally relevant resources in all cases of safeguarding violations or reporting
• Collaborate with legal, medical, and psychosocial support services and maintain accurate and accessible referrals
• Manage safeguarding concerns and cases from a client-centric perspective, ensuring appropriate and timely response, and guidance to leadership
• Maintain a confidential and secure system for reporting and documenting safeguarding incidents (i.e. Navex reporting line)
• Engage with external partners (i.e. police and UNHCR) as needed to report violations

Compliance and Monitoring

• Develop and implement a monitoring framework to assess the effectiveness of Inkomoko’s safeguarding
• Conduct regular field visits to ensure safeguarding practices are being upheld in all sites.
• Prepare and submit regular reports on safeguarding activities, trends, and incidents.
• Align Inkomoko’s safeguarding policies with international best practices, particularly UN protection principles, and regularly review and update safeguarding policies to reflect the changing operational context and emerging risks.

Stakeholder Engagement:

• Lead “Safe partnering” including evaluating partnerships for risks and compliance around safeguarding, training partners, and making partners (particularly financial institutions) aware of Inkomoko standards.
• Work closely with local communities, partners, Inkomoko Cultural Advocates, and other stakeholders to promote safeguarding awareness and practices.
• Liaise with UNHCR and other humanitarian organizations to stay informed of best practices and collaborate on safeguarding initiatives.
• Represent Inkomoko in safeguarding-related forums, workshops, and meetings.

Risk Assessment and Mitigation:

• Conduct periodic “systems audit” and risk assessments to ensure full review of all safeguarding, and possibly protection, mechanisms in place
• Develop and implement risk mitigation strategies to address identified risks.
•  Ensure that safeguarding measures are integrated into program design and implementation.
• Create and manage budgets for safeguarding, ensuring resources are adequate for our safety priorities.

Minimum Qualifications

Successful candidates will embody our organizational culture and mission to support entrepreneurs, including those from vulnerable populations. Our work environment is fast-paced, positive, solutions-oriented, and we have very high standards.

Qualifications Include:

• Bachelor’s degree in Social Work, Psychology, Human Rights, Gender, or a related field. A Master’s degree is preferred.
• Minimum of 7 years of experience in safeguarding, protection experience in Africa
• In-depth knowledge of international safeguarding standards
• Skills and experience in financial inclusion is preferred – as this area a high-profile area of safeguarding
• Previous experience working in a refugee context in Africa.
• Excellent communication, training, and interpersonal skills.
• Ability to handle sensitive information with discretion and maintain confidentiality.
• Commitment to Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion across a range of identities including gender, race, refugee status, economic status, sexual orientation, religion and more.
• Fluency in either English/French, and at least one Eastern/Central African language.