LULZIM MORINA

Contact Details: SKYPE: lulzimmorina.ks

Private Email: ad46im@r.postjobfree.com

Private Phone: +383-**-***-***

Mr. Lulzim Morina brings extensive humanitarian expertise and leadership prowess, boasting a proven track record of exceptional program operations management. His adeptness in navigating diverse sectors and cultivating relationships serves as a valuable asset to the humanitarian and development sectors.

With over 25 years of dedicated service, with International Non-Governmental Organizations, Mr. Morina has garnered invaluable experience across development, emergency response, and humanitarian endeavors. Of these, 20 years have been spent in pivotal leadership capacities within program operations. His breadth of expertise encompasses the orchestration of large-scale and intricate operations, including multi-country cross-border initiatives aimed at facilitating swift response and recovery. Mr. Morina's efforts have been instrumental in delivering emergency humanitarian aid for vulnerable populations residing in conflict-affected regions across Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.

Throughout his illustrious career, Mr. Morina has assumed various leadership roles, including Interim Country Director and Director of Programs and Deputy Country Director for the Mercy Corps Sudan mission, Director of Operations for North Syria, Turkey, and Yemen, and Support Service Director for North-West Syria. Noteworthy contributions also include his tenure as Program Specialist for Uganda, where he adeptly addressed donor concerns while bolstering operational support efforts. Additionally, his extensive experience extends to pivotal roles such as Chief of Party, Director of Programs, and Program Manager in Kosovo, alongside a stint as Logistics and Pipeline Manager.

Mr. Morina's proficiency shines through in his adept management of leadership Operations, Procurement, Logistics, Administration, ICT and Programs, programs quality and partnerships, leadership management, and security domains. His expertise further extends to auditing compliance across programs and operations, both remotely and on-site. Notably, his ability to foster direct collaboration with staff and stakeholders underscores his capacity to cultivate cohesive teams and forge external networks to effectively navigate complex scenarios. Mr. Morina's leadership has been instrumental in managing large teams exceeding 450 members within challenging operational environments.

ACADEMIC EDUCATION:

2018 Master’s in electrical engineering

1985 -1998 Graduated, University of Prishtina in Metal Melting Furnace with Electric Arcs,

1993 – 1994 Graduated, TOMER University Kirsehir, Turkey, Turkish Language and Literature for foreigners.

LANGUAGES (Spoken and Written):

English (fluent), Albanian (native), Serbian/Croatian (Fluent), Turkish (Excellent)

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:

Humanitarian Assistance Capacity Development Expert, Global Mission, Global Best Practice Group, Feb 2024 – Present.

Mr. Morina is a experienced Humanitarian Assistance Capacity Development Expert with over 25 years of experience in managing complex humanitarian programs and strengthening organizational capacities. With a proven track record of success in delivering vital aid to vulnerable populations affected by conflict and displacement, he has demonstrated expertise in strategic planning, program management, program and operations auditing and logistics coordination with the organizations he worked with. Mr Morina joined the Global Best Practice Group in Feb 2024 and has since been the valuable team member. His objective is to support organizational goals and objectives tailored to humanitarian and development assistance and improve interventions to maximize the impact.

Interim Emergency Programs Director Democratic Republic of the Congo, Oct 23 – Jan 24.

Starting from October 16, I have been serving as the Interim Emergency Programs Director, overseeing the comprehensive leadership, management and strategic direction of Mercy Corps’ Emergency Humanitarian Support for the Emergency Response Team within SAFER Consortium. The consortium comprising ACTED, Concern Worldwide, Mercy Corps, NRC and Solidarites International manages a total portfolio exceeding $66 million. Mercy Corps is a lead of the consortium and specifically holds an individual implementation budget of $31.3 million within the consortium. Our humanitarian programs in Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) focus I assisting population affected by the conflicts and crises in Ituri, North Kivu and South Kivu states in Eastern DRC.

In this role, I provide crucial guidance to the Program Implementation Staff, shaping both the strategic vision and day-to-day program operations. The SAFER Program, generously supported by esteemed donors such as BHA, FCDO, ECHO and SDC, addresses key areas within the Emergency Department. These areas encompass a blend of longer-term development and immediate humanitarian response programs with the primary objective of:

- Enhancing water service delivery and ensuring adequate access to Water, Hygiene and Sanitation services within the place of displacement often overpopulated IDP camps

- Improving Food Security and Livelihoods through Cash and Voucher programing

- Ensuring protection activities and referrals as part of the humanitarian support to ensure dignity within the IDP population.

Since the Establishment of the SAFER consortium in 2019, a total of 332 programatic interventions have been implemented. These interventions have provided the life-saving support to over 4.3 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) and host communities. Notably, Mercy Corps has contributed to this effort though 42 interventions, aiding over 1.2 million IDPs and host communities with a total investment of over $20 million.

As of now, Mercy Corps is actively recruiting for the position of Emergency Programs Director, and the interim role is scheduled to phase out by January 16, 2024.

Director of Support Services for Mercy Corps North-West Syria, Amman, Jordan Mar 2023 – Sep 2023

From March through September 2023, Mr Morina was performing a Support Service Director function for the North West Syria supporting earthquake affected people in Syria. The main function was playing proactive leadership support for effective and timely delivery of humanitarian aid. The main responsibility was coordination of operational and programmatic effort to ensure quick and effective humanitarian aid delivery. Following are main achievement to date in this process:

- Introducing regular weekly meetings btw the procurement and program staff to ensure information sharing is taking place and everyone is informed. In order to enable quick access to information to build new steps the daily meeting slot is introduced to the mission.

- Ensure operational compliance in Northwest Syria operations.

- Share the PR Masterlist on a weekly basis with all relevant staff across the mission.

- Online logistics vehicle request is designed and rolled out. This automation requires multi-level approval before the vehicle is approved. The main aim is to ensure efficiency and reduce the huge number of vehicles which are in use right now. The thorough analysis will be conducted in August and the results will dedicate number of vehicles to be used in the future.

- Organizational Contract Tracker developed, introduced, and operationalized. Shared with all relevant staff for the tracking.

- Reviewed the Asset Masterlist, identified gaps, and now working on updating in full the asset masterlist.

- Developed the staff list for Syria and Amman with all relevant information’s such as base, program, phone number and email and handed over to administration to manage. In the same go created the automated phonebook file with all relevant information’s to be uploaded automatically to the smartphones.

- Review Earthquake focused budgets and ensure the deviations on spending are reported to Finance Director and Area Director

- Presented Function analysis to the HR director and discussed the benefits of such exercise. The system is absorbed and now the HR department is under the planning for this exercise.

- Monitor the implementation of the Corruption Zero Tolerance Policy.

- Initiated discussions in the organization in relation to Program Quality Standards and various departments have already taken steps to coordinate to measure the status but also develop the actions toward the compliance with the Program Quality Standards.

- Introduced the In-House Learning Together Sessions on a weekly basis which is widely accepted. To the System not only Northwest Syria but also Northeast Syria mission has been included.

- Introduced various planning tools inline with the T4D such as Project Plan 365, Smartsheets, StakePoint Project, Microsoft Forms, and other tools to improve program and operational performance.

- Support to Area Director on the structural changes to the Northwest Mission

- Supporting Director of Programs to create a positive environment for learning to increase programmatic skills to perform and meet Mercy Corps Program Minimum Standards.

The original function was a three-month assignment but due to the positive impact the assignment was extended until 6 September 2023.

Director of Programs, Deputy Country Director, Mercy Corps Sudan from Dec 2020 – Dec 2022

As of December 2020, Mr Morina is performing function of the Director of Programs and Deputy Country Director for Mercy Corps in Sudan, leading quick response, humanitarian and development portfolio of over 24 million USD throughout implementation of 11 individual programs across four states in Sudan. Due to the efforts Mr Morina and his team had managed to submit new proposals for additional $60 million out of which $40 has been successfully negotiated with the donor community and are expecting to start during the first quarter of 2023.

- During the performance in Sudan as Director of Programs, Mr Morina managed to increase a team to over 100 programs staff (directly or indirectly managed) across all 5 offices, provided the leadership and programmatic guidance and supervision and monitoring to all team leaders, program managers and head of offices in the field in Sudan.

- In addition to 11 ongoing programs ($24.6 million), during the period of last two years Mr Morina successfully managed to successfully complete additional 14 programs (@ value of $14.5 million) as well as successfully negotiated additional $48 million of the humanitarian and development programs for the 2023. Additionally, 6 other proposals are under the development to be submitted to the donor at value of $36.4 million.

- The programs portfolio was consisted of quick response, multi-sector humanitarian (WASH, Agriculture and Livelihoods, Protection, CASH, Food Security, Protection), Development (Value Chain in Agricultural production and assets, Market System Developments, Economic Development, Durable Solution) and Peace Building Programs (women empowerment).

- Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA), Sudan Humanitarian Fund (SHF), Scottish Government, BPRM, UNHCR, OCHA, SIDA, SDC, Dutch Government, EU Teams Initiative, GAC etc are the main donors supporting the program portfolio in Sudan.

- Recent annual audit report (December 2022) shows that the average spend of program portfolio was at 87% while the program targets were met or exceeded.

- Mr Morina was also ensuring all the Program projections are always in time submitted to Finance department and before submission has been reviewed and endorsed.

- Mr Morina is also a regular member of INGO forum in Sudan actively contributing to the humanitarian coordination, collaboration, and development.

- During his performance, Mr. Morina successfully established the Program Assurance and Quality (PAQ) Department and the relevant SOPs for the Sudan Mission. This department outlines strategy of the program implementation performance to maximize the impact produced.

- Staff Capacity building and performance motivation were central in the staff management strategy. Frequent visits to field offices, provision of the various programmatic and operational training courses and visits to beneficiaries were central in the strategy. This was also an option for Mr Morina to learn more on the programs direct implementation and employ program revision and evaluation as necessary to ensure success.

- Program partnership with the local NGOs but also those with international NGOs were a central in the program implementation. This due to the Government of Sudan requirement. The central activity was to build their capacities and monitor the implementation of the part of each of the programs. Each program was due for a minimum of one local partner while more complex programs included consortia with the international NGOs and multiple local partners.

- According to Mercy Corps requirements for program partnership strategy, each local or international NGO should have been technically assessed before the agreement. Mr Morina and his team has successfully completed 29 Technical Assessments for the partnership in Sudan.

- During the assignment, while Director of Programs performance, Mr Morina was automatically also Deputy Country Director and has been successfully covering for the Country Director during his absence. Recently from June to Oct 2022 Mer Morina was assigned as a Interim Country Director due to the country Director re-assigned to another post and until HQ has recruited and deployed new Country Director.

- Mr. Morina also completed the Emergency Leadership Training for Emergency Environments organized by the UNHCR and provided by the Inter Works LLC and now is assigned as a Mentor to other young leaders (Young Director of Programs) for the three cohorts. Currently its Mentoring the Director of Programs in South Sudan while three other previous students have already graduated.

Interim Country Director Mercy Corps Sudan from Jun 2022 – Oct 2022

As Interim Country Director for Sudan mission the main function was to ensure Mercy Corps Sudan development strategy continuation and ensure the Pathway to Possibility HQ strategy was enrolled and translated into the local context. Mr Morina was also successful in ensuring following:

- Ensure smooth collaboration and build synergies btw all departments in Sudan Mission. Ensure sufficient and required support is provided to achieve excellence.

- Participate in all collaborative global and regional sessions with Mercy Corps global HQ and Technical Support Units (TSU).

- Travel to field offices and program sites, monitor the program implementation and performance and ensure the country financial portfolio is steady and strong.

- Liaise and play an active role in the INGO forum contributing to the numerous solutions to challenges that Humanitarian Sector in Sudan was facing.

- Liaise and engage with the relevant government authorities to become solution to challenges. This has in particular positively impacted issuing of the Program Technical Agreements (government permit for program implementation) and incoming visa and residency permits where Mercy Corps didn’t face any rejection.

- During this three-moth assignment successfully collaborated and developed program partnerships agreements with three other NGOs of which one is international. These partnerships have been incorporated successfully into three new proposals which were successfully supported by the donors.

- Draft and finalize the Senior Management Team (SMT) Terms of Reference (TOR) and Extended Senior Management Team (ESMT) TOR. This is one of the management strategies that mission was lacking until Jul 2022. Setup of SMT and ESMT has ensured the successful and effective department collaboration within the mission.

- Rolled out new Mercy Corps Global Pathway to Possibility Strategy in Sudan,

- Supported the support functions such as HR, Operations and Security and Finance. During this period, the HR department for the first time managed to create the full traceable staff list in Sudan and its fully workable orgchart, the Operations department for the first time created accurate Asset Masterlist enabling programs to plan, reporting and dispose assets and supported the IT to automatize some functions to facilitate easy working environment such as create one touch phone tree distribution for automatic loading of all staff phone data into smartphones.

- During this period Mr Morina with the Grants and reporting team ensured continuous negotiation and development of the ongoing proposal development valued at more than $36.4 million in total which are expected to be submitted to the donors for their consideration during the first quarter of 2023.

Mr Morina handed over the assignment to the newly recruited Country Director in October 2022.

Director of Operations Yemen & Head of Office Sana’a in Mercy Corps Yemen from Jul 2019 – Dec 2020

During Period July 2019, through December 2020 Mr. Morina was performing as a Director of Operations for Yemen Mission, for a portfolio of over 30 million USD per year, and as a Head of Office for Sana’a office Branch, leading procurement, logistics, IT, Assets, and Administration and government liaison performance across 9 offices in Yemen. Some of the main achievements during this assignment are as following:

- Providing in person and online (remote) guidance and leading all the procurement in country, organize and effectively utilize the logistics by decreasing its expenses, support IT to effectively provide services to other staff, support Administration to centralized option to be able to track program and office inventory ad leases, support Asset Management officer to successfully establish the asset list and database and register and track all program and donor assets and support liaison officer to successfully negotiate all the incoming visas and residency permits.

- Developed the operational strategy for the logistics support whereas the result the logistics expenses dropped by 40% for the period of 3 months due to the planning and compensating control mechanisms established

- Directly or indirectly provided supervision to over 50 staff in Operations Department across all offices in Yemen.

- Build the staff capacities in person and online I sphere of procurement, compliance, safety and security and collaboration. Special attention was paid in building capacities around donor and organizational compliance to be able to mitigate any potential wrongdoings. Technology for Development (T4D) and use of technology in everyday performance was also critical to ll capacity building sessions. Project Plan 365, Stakepoint Project, Microsoft Teams and sharepoint, use of google documents for collaboration other google resources we just some of the technological platforms where staff build their capacities.

- Capacity building in Mercy Corps and donor operational policies were also paid attention during the sessions including regular trainings on Field Procurement Manual FP3, ADSs (The Automated Directive Systems of US), FARs (Federal Acquisition Regulations of US), CFRs (Code of Federal Regulations of US) and other US, EU and Canadian donor regulations.

- Participating and playing key active and constructive role in the Senior Management Team member.

- Managed to startup and ensure the culture of regular and formal collaboration btw Programs and Procurement and Logistics and Finance.

- Guiding the procurement team and ensuring that all the tenders and other small procurements are executed in time and within the budget. The critical achievement was completion of over 43 tenders which was pending before joining the mission within first 6 months of assignment.

- Ensuring all the organization and capital assets are accounted, registered, tracked, and disposed as necessary as per the existing asset management policy.

- Training of the program and operations staff on effective programmatic planning for the emergency and development programs, in particular for the programs funded by the GC, DFID, FFP and the USID. Such programs consisted of support to vulnerable communities in food and nutrition (voucher programs), non-food, WASH, Construction, Health, and Agriculture.

- Performed program and office closeout and inventory and asset disposition as per the Program Management Standards for 5 offices in Yemen.

Mr Morina left the Yemen mission in December 2020 to join Sudan mission the same month.

Program Management Specialist Apollou Program and a Head of Office Kotido, Mercy Corps Uganda from Mar 2018 – June 2018 and Jan 2019 – Jul 2019

Led a program strategic support for the start-up phase of a five-year $41 million USAID Food for Peace program to support agriculturalists, agro-pastoralists, and pastoralist households living across the districts of Amudat, Kotido, Kaabong and Moroto in Karamoja, Sudan and perform a Head of Office function for Kotido office in Uganda. This program has supported over 310,000 beneficiaries across Karamoja region. The main tasks and achievements are as follows:

- Apollou Program was a consortium complex program led by Mercy Corps in four districts in Karamoja region, and in Partnership with the Save the Children, WHAVE, TUFT University’s Feinstein International Center, and four other local partners.

- Lead a Resource Development component of a five-year $41 million complex consortium Program Apollou.

- Direct supervision of 5 local staff in resource transfer department.

- Played a Key Strategic Role in Apollou complex program oversight, technical, administrative, operational, staff capacity building and logistical management of the Resource Transfer Staff and Kotido office other program and supporting program activity implementation in the field. Support to Apollou program COP to develop vision and strategy for the program development and implementation in Karamoja.

- Successfully designed and implemented the resource transfer Strategy of the food and nutrition component for the CU5 and PLW in four districts Kotido, Amudat, Kaabong and Moroto.

- The tender for the resource transfer is executed successfully. The Platform for resource transfer is developed and used to transfer cash resources for food and nutritional support for CU5 and PLW.

- Parallel to the Program Management Specialist Role Mr Morina performed as the Head of Office for Kotido Office supporting all the program operations implemented through this office and directly supporting an additional 25 local and international staff.

- Contributed in the design the M&E plans and strategies for Apollou and two other programs as well as tools to ensure plans are consistent with implemented activities by the Mercy Corps staff and program partners in the field.

- Lead, design and mapping of various surveys with primary and secondary beneficiaries to ensure program data for startup. Designed the resource transfer actor mapping for entire Karamoja region including merchants and beneficiary families in Google Earth.

- Liaised with the local government structures to make sure that Mercy Corps activities are in line with existing local and central government policies and supported by the local government.

- Program Startup Advisor/Head of Office was responsible to make sure that all Mercy Corps systems of programs, operations, security, and other organizational functions are working and or setup appropriate functions for a smooth and uninterrupted work creating conducive and pleasant work environment for all.

- Initiated and successfully organized online capacity building through google teams’ regular weekly capacity building for entire Karamoja staff and later o for entire Uganda Mercy Corps staff continuously for two full years.

- The Head of Office also act and Security Focal Point for the district office ensuring staff and proper safety and security. During this time Mr Morina created Security Management Plan for Kotido and has built safety and security systems in place to ensure smooth and continuous program performance.

- As Head of Office Mr. Morina also acts as bridge between Kotido office and main mission office in Kampala reporting directly to the CD and the Senior Leadership Team.

Mr Morina has left Uganda mission to join Yemen mission in Jul 2019.

Program Management Specialist, multiple program lead – Mercy Corps Uganda Jun 2018 – Dec 2018

During this period of performance Mr Morina played critical strategic and leadership roles in addressing the mission and donor concerns for three programs in. Central and West Nile regions in Uganda. Some of the task and achievements are outlined as following:

- Played a key program leading role to address Donor (JSI/USAID) Corrective Action Plan for the $1.9 million SKY (DREAMS) program that aimed to address growing rate of HIV/AIDS among Adolescent Girls and Young Woman (AGYW), who engaged in transactional sex, in three districts in Uganda; Gulu, Lira and Oyam in Central Acholi Region.

- Program was aiming to reduce the reliance to transactional sex of the AGYWs by providing support through the skill development and income generations all this in coordination with other partners and actors in the region, and providing AGYWs with skills, confidence and connections needed to create sustainable jobs.

- Pls note that Program Implementation was delayed therefore the donor John Snow Research & Training Institute (JSI) has set the Corrective Action. Plan and the Country Director have assigned Mr Morina to work on addressing the door concerns for SKY (DREAMS) Program.

- Mr Morina successfully created the operational plan and presented those plans Infront of the donor which resulted with the permit for program continuation.

- Mr Morina has supervised 7 program local staff and has built the technical capacities for the program implementation, community acceptance strategy, income generation and livelihoods programing and operational planning and data collection and monitoring. As a result, the program team was able to collect all the means of verifications for activities which has been implemented before the hold of the program by the donor and continued to gather all the means of verifications moving forward.

- Due to the proper planning and during the second meeting with the donor Mercy Corps was able to exhibit progress that made the John Snow Research & Training Institute (JSI) lift the Corrective Action Plan, in August 2018. Mr. Morina also lead the Administrative Closeout by the end of Nov 2018.

- By the Nov 2018 a total of 4500 AGYWs were graduated through the vocational trainings in three districts and have gained required skills to continue their income generation activities and refrain forever from engaging in the transactional sex. The three public graduation ceremonies have been organized in Gulu, Lira and Oyam districts enabling 4500 AGYW marching proudly Infront of their communities.

- During the January and February 2019, Mr. Morina lead the Mercy Corps team in Uganda through the Program Performance Audit conducted by the Office of Inspector General of US (OIG) and successfully presented all the program documentation requested by them. Mr Morina was assigned to lead the Mercy Corps team during the OIG auditing and have successfully responded to all queries that they had. Through the final report produced by the OIG, Mercy Corps was praised for the impactful program in the life of AGYW.

- In November 2018 Mr Morina was deployed to West Nile region in Uganda for the administrative closeout of two refugee programs funded by the ECHO and the NETHOPE.

- In West Nile Mr Morina has successfully developed the program closeout plans for the $5.5 Million Refugee Program funded by the ECHO. The plan is designed to meet all the Mercy Corps Program Closeout requirements and has been successful executed to ensure closeout by December 2018.

- During this period a total of 20 staff has been guided and lead by Mr Morina before the programs have been handed over to the local government authorities.

Country Operations Director – Mercy Corps North Syria / Turkey, April 2015 to June 2017

Leading and managing all operations functions (managing, leading and coaching more than 400 international and local staff) in Turkey and in North Syria including Procurement, Tendering, Assets, Fleet and logistics, Warehousing, Commodity Quality Control and Administration. Following are the main achievements during this assignment:

- Managed and guided remote and in person critical operation functions in North Syria and in Turkey (two missions in one; North Syria and Turkey Refugee missions)

- Staff training and guidance on donor and organizational compliance focused on the procurement and assets.

- Participated in the program operations strategic development to support North Syria and Turkey missions. Played a key role in the Senior Leadership internal forum.

- Continued and further developed cross department collaboration including programs, finance, and security to achieve excellence in particular in procurement of life saving commodities both inside North Syria and in Turkey and successful delivery to people in need.

- Setup the procurement and tendering SOPs based on the Mercy Corps Field Procurement Manual

- Special attention was paid to compliance for the high value procurement (multi-million USD contracts) and asset management throughout the mission. A mitigation control mechanism to prevent fraud, collusion and corruption was developed and strictly implemented.

- Mr. Morina was successful on establishing and developing close relationship with Turkish government and border authorities, Turkish Red Crescent and Mayors in Gaziantep, Kilis and Hatay and AFAD to ensure smooth, continuous and in-time cross border support delivery.

- Mr Morina was

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