Project Leader Weaving Safe Educational Networks At Plan International

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We believe in the power and potential of every child. But this is often stifled by poverty, violence, exclusion, and discrimination. And girls are the most affected.

Working together with children, young people, our supporters and partners, we fight for a just world, addressing the root causes of the challenges faced by girls and all vulnerable children.

We support children’s rights from birth to adulthood. We empower children to prepare for and respond to crises and adversity. We drive change in practice and policy at the local, national, and global levels, leveraging our reach, experience, and expertise.

We have been building powerful partnerships for children for over 85 years and are now active in more than 80 countries.

PURPOSE:

She leads the regional implementation of the ECHO project ‘Weaving Safe Educational Networks’ in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, ensuring the effective, timely and coordinated implementation of a 23-month project that seeks to contribute to improving school safety conditions and preparedness for risks and disasters to increase the resilience of schools, children, adolescents, educational staff and the community in vulnerable areas exposed to multiple threats, including various forms of violence, in the three countries prioritized by the project.

The regional project leader is the person responsible for ensuring the effective, coordinated and successful implementation of the project’s regional actions, as well as technical, programmatic and financial compliance with the donor and implementing entities in the three countries.

The project aims to achieve the following results in the three countries:

  1. Children, adolescents, teachers, educational staff, and other members of the educational community are better prepared to respond to multiple threats, including violence, in vulnerable areas of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador through a comprehensive Safe Schools programmatic model.
  2. The technical capacities of systems, institutions and key actors at the national and regional level are strengthened for the effective and relevant implementation of actions that contribute to the implementation of a comprehensive programmatic model of Safe Schools that addresses preparedness to respond to multiple threats, including violence, in vulnerable areas of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

The project will offer a comprehensive, multi-risk, and multi-threat response solution focused on people, integrating disaster risk reduction in the education sector, education in emergencies, and protection with coordinated efforts from the Ministries of Education, Justice and Defense, disaster risk management entities, civil protection, CECC-SICA, CEPREDENAC, and the Regional Education Group – GRELAC, who coordinate actions with UNICEF, UNDRR, UNESCO, INEE, GADRRRES, GCPEA, and other regional NGOs and CSOs.

The project leader will provide direct guidance to the core team: at the technical level of emergency education from various countries; along with guidance to the Project Coordinators in each country to ensure high levels of motivation, commitment, capacity and teamwork.

ROLE DIMENSIONS:

The impact of this function is significant in the 3 countries and will have repercussions for the safe schools initiative for the countries of the SICA region.

  • Local hiring in Guatemala until the completion of the project (April 2027).
  • The position will represent the implementing countries to the donor.
  • The project leader will provide strategic guidance on the implementation of the project budget of around 1.1 million euros.
  • The position will lead and closely interact with/monitor the work of the country teams in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.
  • He will be responsible for obtaining, consolidating and integrating the technical and financial progress information of the three countries and the implementing entities of the consortium, ensuring the quality, consistency and timeliness of the regional reports.

Other dimensions of the function are as follows:

  • Management of sensitive and confidential information.
  • Membership in relevant networks: Regional and Global PIIs for Education in Emergencies.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

  • To provide technical leadership for the development and implementation of project activities and interventions, ensuring consistent regional technical guidelines for project coordinators in the three countries. To lead complex coordination and governance processes for the regional consortium, facilitating consensus building, conflict resolution, and strategic alignment among partners, government actors, and humanitarian coordination mechanisms.
  • To technically represent the project before humanitarian coordination bodies, regional mechanisms and high-level government actors, promoting collaborative relationships and strategically managing complex inter-institutional dynamics
  • Lead and ensure the planning, implementation, monitoring, and reporting of high-quality, results-oriented technical and financial reports, in accordance with agreements established with the donor and governments. This also includes organizing follow-up meetings with the donor and the consortium.
  • Design and oversee project cycle management processes, including initiation, annual planning, monitoring, and closure, in collaboration with each country team.
  • Closely monitor the use and disbursement of project funds with the support of the national financial specialist and Plan International Spain, ensuring that funds are committed, reallocated and spent in a timely and efficient manner.
  • Financial management in coordination with the finance and compliance teams of the countries/consortium to provide early warnings about excessive or insufficient spending that require adjustments to financial planning, including requests for donor approval through Plan International Spain.
  • Ensure compliance with the agreements signed with the donor in close interaction with the Emergency and Humanitarian Response Implementation Manager of Guatemala.
  • Align project implementation with regional frameworks and procedures for education in emergencies and safe schools.
  • Lead processes of documentation, systematization, evidence generation and regional technical positioning derived from the implementation of the project
  • Responsible for regional accountability to the donor, including the consolidation, validation, and presentation of technical, programmatic, and financial progress of the project and the implementing entities.
  • Ensure timely monitoring of the use and disbursement of project funds, guaranteeing efficient, strategic execution aligned with the commitments established with the donor.
  • Establish, maintain and manage the risk matrix for the project with the collaboration of the coordinators from each country.
  • Identify, analyze, and proactively manage operational, reputational, institutional, and coordination risks that may affect the regional implementation of the project
  • Manage project knowledge management and all your project memory documents in OneDrive.
  • Ensure compliance with Plan International’s global policies for the protection of children, adolescents, and young people, and for gender equality and inclusion. This includes, among other things, ensuring that staff and partners are aware of and understand their responsibilities under these policies and Plan International’s Code of Conduct (CoC).

Communication and Coordination

  • Ensure the standardization of project implementation across the three countries, in alignment with the approved proposal and consortium agreements
  • Ensure the technical and programmatic coherence of the approaches and strategies implemented in the three countries. Lead the regional coordination between country offices, implementing partners and regional mechanisms to ensure coordinated implementation aligned with the project commitments.
  • Support the creation of alliances and advocacy with key stakeholders for the project.
  • Sharing experiences, lessons learned, and leading knowledge management.
  • Monitor, evaluate and manage knowledge with the support of the national project coordinators to ensure implementation with respect to the indicators and benchmarks established in the project document and annual work plans.
  • Conduct field and/or virtual visits to each country.
  • Organize and facilitate relevant committees and coordination meetings between key stakeholders in accordance with the RACI matrix management structures and project governance.

Participation in promotional initiatives, policy visibility

TECHNICAL EXPERIENCE, SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE:

Training:

  • University degree linked to key themes of the Project: Undergraduate degree in some line of Social Sciences, Education, Social Pedagogy, Cultural Animation, Psychology, Sociology or other related or equivalent in a humanitarian field and disaster risk management in education.

Experience:

  • 5 years of proven experience in Emergency Education, Safe Schools, disaster risk reduction in education or educational resilience programs.
  • 5 years of experience in humanitarian project management, including logistics, budget control, preparation of programmatic and financial reports, planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation.
  • 5 years of experience in team management and leadership.
  • 5 years of experience in managing humanitarian grants with local/international partners.
  • Previous work experience in project management in the context of emergency response and/or NEXUS approach.
  • Understanding of the Core Humanitarian Standards, SPHERE, the Code of Conduct, the INEE and CPiE minimum standards, the WISS global safe schools initiative, the CSSF comprehensive school safety framework, the SSD Safe Schools Declaration and other international standards relevant to humanitarian response.
  • Experience facilitating capacity building processes, technical workshops, multi-sectoral coordination and spaces for inter-institutional dialogue
  • Capacity to develop processes of technical advocacy and strengthening of public policies related to Education in Emergencies, Safe Schools and educational resilience
  • Previous experience coordinating multi-country projects and working with remote teams in different national contexts
  • Knowledge and/or experience in anticipatory action, disaster preparedness and multi-hazard approaches applied to the education sector

Essential skills and behaviors

  • Excellent bilingual oral and written communication skills (Spanish and English).
  • Ability to produce high-level reports that include data analysis and relevant qualitative information.
  • Ability to make decisions and monitor implementation in a timely manner, tracking program quality through donor-approved monitoring and evaluation systems.
  • Strong negotiation, facilitation, and influence skills.
  • Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
  • Ability to work under pressure in an evolving humanitarian emergency and a prolonged crisis, and to implement projects with rigorous timelines and deliverables.
  • Ability to work effectively in a multidisciplinary and multicultural environment with diverse stakeholders.
  • Strong motivation and team-building skills, including remote management, promoting high-quality standards, innovation, and learning.
  • Ability to develop and implement systems and processes to manage and share large amounts of information.
  • Office automation and specific systems: Advanced handling of computer tools and Microsoft Office suite (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, etc.)

Job availability:

  • The work location is at the national office of PLAN INTERNATIONAL Guatemala, but travel to El Salvador and Honduras is required.

Location: Guatemala City

Role type: Coordination Staff

Reports to: ERM Cluster Management of Central America and Mexico

Closing date: June 12, 2026

Equality, diversity and inclusion are at the heart of everything Plan International stands for.

We want Plan International to reflect the diversity of the communities we work with, offering equal opportunities to all regardless of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil union, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation.

Plan International is based on a culture of inclusion and we strive to create a work environment that ensures that every team, in every office, in every country, is rich in diverse people, thoughts and ideas.

We foster an organizational culture that embraces our commitment to racial justice, gender equality, girls’ rights, and inclusion.

Plan International believes that in a world where children face so many threats of harm, it is our duty to ensure that we, as an organization, do everything we can to keep children safe. This means that we have particular responsibilities towards the children we come into contact with and must not contribute in any way to harming or putting children at risk.

A series of pre-employment checks will be carried out in accordance with Plan International’s Child and Youth Protection Policy. Plan International also participates in the Inter-Agency Misconduct Disclosure Scheme. Under this scheme, we will request information from applicants’ previous employers regarding any findings of sexual exploitation, sexual abuse, and/or sexual harassment during employment, or incidents under investigation after the applicant left employment.

By submitting an application, the job applicant confirms that they understand these hiring procedures.

Please note that Plan International will never send unsolicited emails requesting payments from candidates.

How to apply

To apply, please send your CV via the link below:

https://jobs.plan-international.org/job-invite/54193