Gender Specialist- Education Consortium at Save the Children International

Country/Region: Uganda

Location: Kampala

Organization: Save the Children International

Join us to lead sustainable change for children:

• Be part of a GLOBAL and DIVERSE technical community
• Get EXPOSURE in many different contexts
• Test and scale up INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS
• Influence policies that affect MILLIONS OF CHILDREN

OVERVIEW

Are you passionate about being an advocate for children? Do you want to use your expertise to bring about lasting change for children and be a part of an inspiring, dynamic global movement?

The Gender Specialist is responsible for maintaining good working relationships with identified focal points at partner organizations, counterparts at the ERP Secretariat and MoES and providing representation at external forums as necessary. This includes coordinating complex, multi-stakeholder activities. It is expected that the Gender Specialist will travel to project sites to support the implementation of activities and trainings as necessary.

Sounds interesting? Read more below

THE ROLE

Key areas of accountability include:

Programme Development, Planning and Implementation

• Support the development of new proposals to donors, ensuring that they are gender-sensitive at a minimum, and ideally gender transformative, and that GBV considerations are mainstreamed in Uganda Education Consortium’s programmes.
• Fully engage in and technically lead the preparation of funding proposals for EiE U-EC work, ensuring strong theory of change and value for money with proposed interventions, as well as strong partnerships and localization agenda.
• Participate in regular field monitoring visits with a focus on monitoring quality and timely implementation of project activities, planned jointly with the Consortium Operations Advisor.
• Identify and support the resolution of challenges, and ensure that these are tracked using the CMU issues tracker.
• Review and ensure evidence of strong performance, impact and need is packaged and shared with donors and other key stakeholders.
• Ensure the prioritisation and implementation of gender priorities and deliverables in programmes
• Utilize the IASC GAM monitoring tool to monitor implementation, identify lessons learnt and programming adapted accordingly.

Technical Leadership

• Lead the development and dissemination of technical guidance to achieve quality, impact, the harmonization of approaches and program learning, collaborating with other technical experts where relevant through an intersectional lens.
• Demonstrate technical leadership by ensuring regular and facilitated consultation with U-EC members on technical gender priorities and challenges, collaborating with other technical experts.
• Using data and evidence, coaching and peer-learning approaches support partners to overcome quality and implementation challenges, in collaboration with the Operations Manager.
• Participate in regular technical and needs-based conversations with donors in close collaboration with EiE Director.
• Work with the CMU, Consortium partners, the EIE Working Group and the Ministry of Education and Sports (MoES) to ensure the integration of gender mainstreaming in technical approaches.
• Ensure the integration of gender sensitive and gender transformative activities into consortium technical approaches, and ensure consideration of intersecting vulnerabilities.

Representation, External Engagement and Coordination

• Keep abreast of national and global debate in Education, EIE and relevant sub-themes, with a focus on gender, as well as analyse and use such evidence in programming and advocacy to pro-actively inform the advocacy activity and strategy.
• Build and maintain strong relationships with the U-EC partners, relevant GoU, UN, donors and other key EIE Stakeholders in Uganda, in collaboration with the EiE Director and other technical experts
• Represent U-EC in relevant working groups, task forces, seminars and related fora in the thematic area; and among donors, UN agencies, International NGOs, and national and sub-national government counterparts in coordination.
• Collaborate with the ACCM Team to develop relevant policy and analysis briefs which support the overall achievement of Consortium objectives.
• Lead the formation of a Gender Focal Points Working Group within the consortium, and hold regular meetings to share best practise, challenges and identify solutions.
• Be accessible to partners, providing support to resolve challenges and improve implementation, answer questions and queries and respond to concerns.
• Participate in Steering Committee Meetings and in meeting with ERP Secretariat as required

Capacity Strengthening

• Jointly identify partner gender capacity gaps and ensure adequate support is provided in collaboration with relevant stakeholders and support the development of partner capacity strengthening plans.
• Identify local and/or regional resources and networks that can be accessed for knowledge building on gender equality and empowerment of women and girls.
• Contribute as relevant to knowledge networks and communities of practice on gender in EiEPC
• Organize the documentation of lesson learned and best practices.

  MEAL

• Contribute to the development and operationalisation of a consortium wide MEAL strategy, and accompanying frameworks and systems that monitor the impact of projects and progress towards strategic operational and advocacy objectives, ensuring that these are gender responsive.
• Support the development of Quality Benchmarks, for the Education Consortium projects to guide monitoring, and collaborate with the Senior MEAL Advisor, Senior EiE Advisor and Operations Manager to ensure actions plans are agreed after QB monitoring is conducted.
• Support the MEAL team to conduct regular needs assessments, that capture intersectional gender related needs, and include gender analysis, and ensure that results are shared and programming is adapted accordingly.
• Support the development of appropriate gender-responsive monitoring tools, and ensure they are understood and used by the CMU and consortium partners.
• Ensure learning is captured in new proposal design processes.

Reporting

• Review partner reports from a technical perspective, and provide feedback and take follow up actions as needed.
• Contribute to the development of donor reports by providing technical inputs and review.
• Escalate any potential irregularities, and/or obstacles which may hamper the implementation of the action in a timely manner, to the EiE Director.
• Ensure the inclusion of information on gender equality and empowerment of women and girls in donor reports, including collaboration with the Advocacy Campaigns Communication and Media team to generate human interest stories.

To be a strong supporter and advocate for children in this role you will need to have:

• Minimum of Post Graduate Degree in Women Studies, Social Science or related field, with a focus on gender issues.

• Recommended a minimum of five years of relevant experience.
• Knowledge of current global and regional evidence and research within the areas of gender mainstreaming, women and girl’s empowerment, ideally within an education sector; with a preference for knowledge of refugee education.
• Ability to identify the main gender and intersecting gaps and needs in EiE in the given context to inform a holistic response for children.
• Experience in monitoring and evaluating programmes in emergency, transition and development contexts; with a preference for experience in refugee education.
• Experience in capacity building and in strengthening various duty bearers understanding of and response to EiE with a focus on gender transformative approaches.
• Proven experience and skills in research and advocacy and influencing institutional, private and/or corporate donors and writing up high-quality donor reports.
• Experience of working with local/national governments and capacity building of systems, partners and staff
• Highly developed interpersonal and communication skills including influencing, negotiation, steering and coaching, and demonstrated ability in coaching internal and external staff/partners.
• Experience of solving complex issues through analysis, definition of a clear way forward and ensuring buy-in and managing risk.
• Highly diplomatic with strong oral and written communication skills in English.
• Commitment to Save the Children values.

Application Information:

Please apply using a cover letter and up-to-date CV as a single document. Please also include details of your current remuneration and salary expectations. A copy of the full role profile can be found at https://hcri.fa.em2.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/CandidateExperience/en/sites/CX_1. 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.

Application closes on 12^th April 2023 at midnight Uganda time.

Save the Children is an equal opportunity employer and seeks to employ and assign the best qualified talent, persons with disabilities and female candidates are encouraged to apply.

Disclaimer: Save the Children International does not charge any kind of fee at whichever stage of the recruitment process and does not act through recruitment agents.

OUR DIVERSITY BELIEF

Save the Children International is committed to create a truly inclusive, effective and representative organisational culture, encouraging equity and diversity among its employees and eliminating unlawful discrimination. We want our people to be truly representative of all sections of society. Having a diverse profile of employees, different age groups, backgrounds, cultures, disabilities, gender identities and expressions, sexual orientation etc., including a range of different experiences and capabilities helps us understand, represent and serve our beneficiaries better. We are guided by our values in everything we do, and recognise that being a diverse and inclusive employer helps us fulfil our responsibility to make a difference for children around the world.