SENIOR TECHNICAL ADVISOR, EDUCATION At CARE USA

CARE is seeking a Senior Technical Advisor – Education (STA-E), who will be a member of CARE’s Education and Adolescent Empowerment (EAE) Team and will play a key role in positioning CARE as a leader in education and adolescent girls programming and guiding the Education sector strategy implementation, including defining CARE’s gender transformative approaches and comparative advantage in aspects our global education work; building CARE’s capacity to implement equitable quality education programs and capture best practices; and promoting the quality and impact of CARE’s work in education. The STA will be knowledgeable of global trends and best practices in education, girls’/adolescent empowerment, and gender integration and will collaborate with external and internal partners and contribute to global discourse on girls’ education and empowerment.

The STA will provide technical guidance to Country Offices, providing input into the design of new initiatives and to the revision of existing approaches, fostering innovation and strengthening overall technical quality. S/he will ensure that the technical assistance process places a strong emphasis on capacity building of local teams. The STA will ensure the integration of new/proven innovative approaches to adolescent empowerment through education and identify synergies with existing programs to avoid duplication and to maximize impact.

The STA will also contribute to resource mobilization and program development through program design, and engage donors to generate additional funding for education and girls’ empowerment programs that will further the Education Team’s technical global leadership priorities.

The STA will report to the Director, Technical Services. They will help mentor other junior technical advisors and support other team and CARE staff members. As such, the STA must possess excellent inter-personal communication and analytical skills, have experience with project management, be an experienced team leader, and be able to work in any of the regions in which CARE is operational.

An advanced degree in education or international development, sound writing skills and proficiency in English, and willingness to travel up to 30% of the time are requirements. Ability to speak Arabic, French, Portuguese or Spanish is highly desired.

Responsibilities:

1. Technical Leadership

• Supporting the Director of Technical Services, the STA will serve as the lead technical advisor for the Team’s Technical Services (TS) cluster which provides technical leadership to Country Offices, other PSI program units, and CI members for quality education and adolescent and girls’ empowerment programming. They will oversee and coordinate the provision of specific technical support as required by central grants or contractual agreements with donors.
• For the projects assigned, the STA is responsible for ensuring that projects managed by or supported by the unit, which the position contributes directly to, will comply with donors’ technical requirements as well as with quality and ethical programming principles. This includes complying with requirements during project design as well as ensuring that such requirements are observed during reporting, monitoring, evaluation and adaptive management of technical approaches.
• The STA provides grant oversight of contractual agreements with donors for the grants s/he is supporting. The STA will work with the Operations Teams and the Senior Advisor for Operations to build CO capacity on grant management and compliance for all complex grants supported. Grant oversight may include review of work plans, periodic reports including financial reports, forecast against implementation, and review of and adherence to the implementation design. The STA will ensure reports for the grants they are supporting are submitted on time, are of optimal quality, and meet donor requirements and general standards of reporting. The STA will ensure that there is close collaboration with the Research, Advocacy, and Learning (RAAL) cluster to inform sound MEAL systems that provide for strong impact measurement and capture of learning.

2. Technical Assistance

• In addition to technical leadership and grant oversight (JR 1), the STA will provide technical assistance on large, key projects (GPE, USAID, FCDO, etc.) to which they are assigned. In particular, the STA will focus on systems strengthening support including technical assistance to government(s) to create a stronger, more resilient education system.
• Being able to support these education system strengthening efforts will require ongoing professional development (e.g., desk reviews, participating in technical working groups, online courses, etc.) to meet the evolving needs of education ministries and their increased interest in partnering with CARE to address these needs. It will also require increased communication, collaboration, and negotiation skills to navigate power relations and differences in perspectives across multiple actors. It will also require building ET TA and country office staff technical capacity while exploring other ways in which to help advance the work (in the absence of country office capacity) and to strengthen collaboration efforts with country offices.

3. Knowledge, Learning and Influence

• The STA will support the building of networks of practitioners within CARE and CARE’s partners (international and field level), promoting technical dialogue and capacity development, documenting, sharing and improving strategies and approaches. The STA with the RAAL team to ensure an effective two-way flow of information which captures experiences and knowledge generated at the field level, is distilled and analyzed (especially cross-site analyses where applicable) with findings shared broadly. Consonant with their role in technical leadership, the STA will facilitate opportunities to share current thinking on global trends and best practices, guiding the design and delivery of workshops and conferences and the development of a regional level/cross learning and engagement strategy to foster a global community of learners. In addition, the STA will contribute to the development of technical materials for internal and external audiences, in close collaboration with the RAAL Cluster. This position will also promote CARE’s profile in the international education community to inform key issues. They will present key findings and policy positions of CARE programs and contribute to the learning agenda through synthesizing findings from the education effort globally.

4. Team Leadership

• In coordination with the Director-TS, the STA will be responsible for mentoring junior members of the cluster, helping build their technical capacity and support.

5. Resource Mobilization

• This position will be responsible for contributing to new business development, including proposal writing of complex proposals (in particular, those that require systems strengthening interventions); facilitation of project design processes; providing input to budget design; and liaising with donors and partners, as necessary.

6. Education Team Membership

• Participate in Education Team virtual meetings, team retreats, regular team and sub-team meetings, working groups and task forces. Actively contribute to the fostering of a positive, collaborative work culture within the Education Team and CARE broadly.

Qualifications:

• An advanced degree in education or international development. Teaching certification and teaching experience
• 10+ years of professional experience in education program design and implementation or related development programming Community level program development, management and support.
• Facilitation and training skills including development of training materials and facilitation of participatory program development and capacity building
• Experience in strategic communication and dissemination techniques.
• Familiarity with research/analytical skills.
• Experience working in developing contexts and in different cultural contexts.
• Technical Skills:
  • Knowledge of education strategies, including formal and non-formal education, in particular teacher training, curricula, and other teacher and learning materials.
  • Strong understanding of girls’ empowerment and adolescent programming strategies
  • Strong ability to design, implement and monitor development programs
  • Proposal writing skills
  • Background in gender integration in education programs
  • Fundamental understanding and practice of participatory learning and community organization methodologies.
  • Understanding of behavior change concepts
  • Excellent verbal and written English skills, particularly communication skills for diverse audiences
  • Strong presentation, training, workshop development and facilitation skills
  • Demonstrated ability to work in teams and facilitate teamwork
  • Ability to establish and maintain effective partnerships and working relationship donors, ministry officials, community leaders and other development partners
  • Computer proficiency (including word processing, spreadsheets)
  • Knowledge of budgeting principles

Desired

• Specialty in international development program management
• INEE minimum standards training
• 7+ years programmatic and administrative experience in education programming
• Experience with qualitative data management and analysis methods and tools
• Experience in Conflict/ Post-Conflict/Fragile States Programming
• Experience with multisectoral programming with adolescents

* Remote to CARE USA hub countries.