Regional Adolescents and Youth Adviser At Save the Children

ROLE PURPOSE:

The Regional Adolescents and Youth Advisor provides technical leadership and support to SCI’s country programs in the Middle East and Eastern Europe region in line with Country, Regional and SCI global priorities. Working in close coordination with country office staff and regional advisors, this position will play a key role to strengthen SCI’s adolescent and youth programming capacity, primarily through strategy development and review; hands on technical assistance, strategic and programmatic support, coordination, advocacy, fund-raising, capacity building (training / mentoring / coaching), talent acquisition and development, and humanitarian response planning support. The position plays an important role in terms of ensuring quality delivery and contextual adaption of SCI’s global Common Approaches, building their evidence-base in line with the regional strategic priorities. This role also actively contributes to high level representation with external actors at regional level, and to SCI Global conversations as appropriate.

This position has responsibility for leadership of a multi-country youth civil engagement program, including line management of the Technical Manager for this program. The Regional TA will also play an active role in advancing progress on gender and disability inclusive approaches across the region and works in collaboration with other advisors to support overarching regional priorities, including program integration, nexus programming, advancing the localisation agenda, and durable solutions for refugee children.

In the event of a major humanitarian emergency, the post holder will be expected to work outside the normal job description and be able to vary working hours accordingly.

The position includes regular travel to SCI’s Country Offices (CO) in the MEEE region.

KEY AREAS OF ACCOUNTABILITY

Strategy & Leadership

• Lead and collaborate with others to develop and support operationalisation of regional technical steer on Adolescents and Youth, with explicit linkages to other thematic and cross thematic steers
• Support Country Offices in the design of their thematic strategies (program and advocacy), ensuring alignment to Save the Children’s global thematic priorities and breakthroughs
• Thematically guide and negotiate youth and adolescent inputs into strategic documentation, policies and guidance (including integration and mainstreaming into other sectors)
• Provide technical inputs to regional / multi-country programs, ensure high quality technical approaches.

Technical Capacity Building & Mentoring

• Provide contextualised, hands-on, demand driven technical support for MEEE Country Offices; develop technical guidance in priority areas of practice
• Provide technical inputs on CO and regional adolescent and youth focused advocacy initiatives
• Capacity build, mentor and build networks across CO adolescent and youth experts in the region; facilitate cross-country learning between adolescent and youth experts in the region, and participate in cross-country learning with other regions; identify creative ways to share learning, best practices and collectively address challenges
• Support other regional technical experts to understand and contextualise global and regional guidance for their thematic area, and ensure that learning from the region informs SCI’s global evidence, technical standards, and strategic direction
• Identify sources of technical support for COs and facilitate access where needed through Save the Children’s flexible Technical Expertise systems, and others for key regional technical needs.

Programme Development and Quality

• Support CO in their design, proposal development, implementation and monitoring of key strategic programmes, to ensure high quality delivery, monitoring and evaluation. Ensure that a child rights programming approach, gender, disability and resilience considerations are reflected in programme design and implementation.
• Explore innovative opportunities and trends which could be applied in adolescent and youth programming in the region and support country offices to pilot, and document, new or updated tools and guidance, especially with a focus on gender, disability, and resilience.
• In collaboration with regional New Business Development, contribute to regional strategic partnerships; identify partners and donors to strengthen our portfolio in the region
• Identify funding possibilities for (integrated) youth and adolescent programs and contribute to the quality of CO and RO project and programme proposals, through leading/supporting project design and review processes
• Support Emergency preparedness, recovery, and where appropriate response, including country office capability building for humanitarian response, emergency preparedness planning.
• Be a focal point in MEEE RO for systematic capacity building for relevant evidence based Common Approaches through training, mentoring and coaching SCI staff and partners across the region.

Program Management

• Provide effective leadership of the regional youth focused program, ensuring strategic intent is translated into project strategies and activities
• Ensure effective work planning, financial management and delivery of the regional program, in line with donor and SCI policies and procedures, and ensuring excellent performance on SCI’s KPIs for program delivery
• Provide effective line management of program staff, ensuring enabling support to progress performance and development objectives, and ensure compliance with SCI HR policies and procedure.

Representation and networking

• Build collaborative regional partnerships, through representation on regional clusters, working groups and technical fora, in order to facilitate learning and promote child rights.
• Maintain oversight of the adolescents and youth agenda in the region, regularly sharing relevant information with Save the Children RO, COs and members.

General

• Contribute to regional team collaboration, meetings and planning processes, internal initiatives and reporting requirements
• Demonstrate leadership in relation to Save the Children policies and practice with respect to child safeguarding, bullying and harassment, code of conduct, equal opportunities and other relevant policies and procedures.

In order to be successful, you will bring/have:

• Master’s degree in a related field
• At least 7 years’ experience of working internationally on Adolescent and Youth programs in emergency and development settings, preferably with solid experience in a technical role on one or more program sectors (eg protection, livelihoods, health, education etc)
• Successful experience with adolescent and youth transitions programming, youth economic empowerment programs,
• Demonstrable experience in gender inclusion approaches
• Understanding of Adolescent and youth programs and contexts in MEEE
• Demonstrated program design, monitoring, research and evaluation skills, including designing pathways to sustainable impact at scale.
• Significant experience in training, capacity building, and mentoring
• Successful project management; and staff management and mentoring experience
• Experience of influencing and advocacy at regional/international level in order to hold duty bearers to account to realise children’s rights.
• Skilled at networking, representation and partnership development in order promote learning, strengthen civil society and mobilise resources.
• Track record in successful business development/fundraising and donor engagement, with a broad range of donors
• Experience of supporting humanitarian preparedness, response and recovery
• Fluent in English with high level of English writing skills.
• Fluent in Arabic (desirable)
• Experience with disability inclusion (desirable)

The Organisation

We employ approximately 25,000 people across the globe and work on the ground in over 100 countries to help children affected by crises, or those that need better healthcare, education and child protection. We also campaign and advocate at the highest levels to realise the right of children and to ensure their voices are heard.

We are working towards three breakthroughs in how the world treats children by 2030:

• No child dies from preventable causes before their 5th birthday
• All children learn from a quality basic education and that,
• Violence against children is no longer tolerated

We know that great people make a great organization, and that our employees play a crucial role in helping us achieve our ambitions for children. We value our people and offer a meaningful and rewarding career, along with a collaborative and inclusive environment where ambition, creativity, and integrity are highly valued.

Application Information:

Please attach a copy of your CV and cover letter with your application, and include details of your current remuneration and salary expectations. A copy of the full role profile can be found at www.savethechildren.net/careers

We need to keep children safe so our selection process, which includes rigorous background checks, reflects our commitment to the protection of children from abuse.

All employees are expected to carry out their duties in accordance with our global anti-harassment policy.