REGIONAL CHILD PROTECTION ADVISOR- AFRICA AND COLOMBIA REGION

‘An experienced, strategic leader with a humanitarian background and people skills’

About us

War Child: the charity for children affected by war. We are a specialist charity for children in conflict, delivering high-impact programs that are rebuilding lives across Afghanistan, Iraq, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the Central African Republic, Colombia, Ukraine, Uganda, Burundi, South Sudan, Jordan, oPt, Syria and Yemen. We understand children’s needs, respect their rights, and support their efforts to find lasting solutions to address the underlying causes of their specific vulnerabilities.

We look forward to a world in which the lives of children are no longer torn apart by war. This is a vision that can only be realized through the collective actions of children themselves, communities and their leaders, organizations like War Child, governments, and key decision-makers.

Your Challenge

Your role as regional Child Protection Advisor is to strengthen War Child’s regional humanitarian support and response capacity based on the commitment to a meaningful and effective localisation agenda. War Child’s child protection programming prioritises technical assistance, strategic and programmatic development and support, coordination, competency development (training/supervision/mentoring/coaching), and surge capacity for emergencies. The position provides thought leadership to ensure quality programming, primarily focussed on evidence-based interventions in line with War Child’s care system and on advocacy around local, international and global standards and well-integrated processes based on contextual needs.

The Regional Child Protection Advisor reports to the Technical team lead with a dotted line to the Global Child Protection Advisor.

Your Responsibilities

Programme development and strategic confluence.

Proactively stay abreast of thematic developments in the region and countries.
Active participation in local and regional child protection for a.
Collaboration with country teams to set strategic priorities, visioning and programme development for child protection in the region,
Lead the designing of regional/multi-country programmes that facilitate collaboration between variety of stakeholders and ensuring high-quality, coherent technical design.
Works with COs and other stakeholders to develop, update and operationalize quality implementation of child protection initiatives.
Foster regional strategic partnerships for new business development, e.g. Strategic positioning with donors at regional level.
Lead the design of regional/multi-country programmes, facilitating collaboration between COs and ensuring high-quality, coherent technical design.
Collaborate with the region and country offices to review child protection -specific components of proposals.
Participate in global and regional child protection in the form of collaboration in events and campaigns geared at policy change and lobbying for effective and meaningful local participation.
Engage with country office teams to draft briefs and products, coach team members on preparation of messages and presentations for communication at child protection events.

Result: War Child’s CP programmes in the Africa and Colombia region are well designed and in line with organisation and international standards of Child Protection in humanitarian settings.

Programme quality and technical support.

Collaborate with stakeholders (COs, partners) to understand capacity strengthening needs.
Develop a capacity strengthening plan in response to identified programme directions and associated needs.
Be a focal point in the region to provide capacity and competency building, including to partners, with focus on improving quality of child protection and integrating new methods.
Provide timely technical guidance to country teams, ensuring competencies and expertise for the contextualisation, implementation and monitoring of evidence-based and best practice child protection programming.
Guide child protection inputs into country and global strategies, policies and guidance by reviewing and providing inputs to technical documents, guidelines, program development, country strategies, policies, both regionally and globally as needed.
Collaborate with COs to gather lessons learnt from child protection programs, including documentation and dissemination of new knowledge and ensure that lessons learnt are shared.
Coordinate monthly communication plans with a focus on disseminating key products, research and messages on social media channels and other mediums,
Collaborate with COs to develop and implement child protection - fast aid initiatives. This might include in conducting assessments and delivery of a quality child protection response.
Provide technical oversight to COs with implementation and monitoring of regional/multi-country/and country specific child protection programmes, to ensure high-quality delivery, monitoring, and evaluation in line with War Child’s thematic guidelines, M&E (monitoring & evaluation) framework and other relevant policies and tools.
Coordinate integrated programming approaches and boost child protection mainstreaming across other sectors. Particularly to ensure up to date developments of cross cutting issues- localisation, gender, youth, accountability and learning.
Providing interim (‘gap filling’) technical assistance to specific COs or programmes when in-country capacity is not available.

Result: War Child’s Child Protection programmes in the Africa and Colombia region are delivering quality programming aligned with internal theory of change and international standards.

Roll-out and scaling of evidence-based interventions.

Contribute to the development of core War Child’s care system interventions, such as the Seeds approach.
Collaborate with COs to support roll-out and scaling of War Child’s global care system and evidence-based interventions (EBIs) including support to develop new methodologies, and in coordination with countries, with particular focus on ensuring relevance and context appropriateness of methodologies.
Collaborate with the regional Scaling Coordinator to promote partnership development in the region to support scaling of interventions and contribute to network organization.
Coordinate the capacity development of country teams and partners on the child protection interventions implemented in the region.

Result: Scaling of War Child’s care system in the Africa and Colombia region is boosted through knowledge sharing, capacity building and relevant partnerships

Cross-country learning and communication

Coordinate regional working groups linked to the quality implementation of key child protection approaches, methodologies and strategies.
Provide opportunities for regional cross-country knowledge acquisition, capacity and competency development.
Gather lessons learnt and best practices from the region, including on scaling activities of evidence-based interventions, documentation and share to inform child protection programming regionally and globally.
Coordinate child protection capacity development initiatives and share resources across countries.
Ensure synergies and shared learning between countries and from country to global level and vice versa, including contextualization as needed.
Develop and disseminate relevant child protection material among countries and regions.
Support design of the regional programmes through sound and contextual analysis of cross-country child protection risks

Result: Child protection programming in War Child’s Africa and Colombia region is of quality and coordinated through dissemination of child protection knowledge and capacity.

Coordination, representation and fundraising

Participate in and/or lead War Child’s child protection regional working group or sub-groups, ensuring design, implementation and monitoring of workplan that supports improving quality of child protection programming.
Represent War Child in relevant regional child protection technical fora, including relevant regional child protection donor meetings as required.
Support engagement and representation of national staff and partners in global and regional child protection technical groups.
Attend and contribute to coordination and fundraising initiatives for child protection in the region and contribute to the development of regional initiatives focused on child protection.
Participate in national platforms to increase knowledge, awareness and involvement of key government stakeholders and donors about the importance of child protection.
Engage in fundraising efforts to expand child protection programs in the region, based on evidence gathered, monitored and analysed in countries, including proposal writing and review (technical components), in close coordination with regional partnerships and business development advisor.

Result: War Child’s child protection programming is profiled at regional level with relevant stakeholders for increased access to fundraising opportunities, consortia and collaboration

These duties provide a framework for the role and should not be regarded as a definitive list. Other reasonable duties may be required consistent with the grade of the post.

Your Profile

Knowledge and experience

Advanced degree in Social Sciences, preferably social work, psychology or sociology, law or another relevant field.
At least 5 years of extensive experience in child protection programming in the humanitarian sector focussing on case management, community based, and community led approaches and reintegration of children associated with armed forces and groups.
Excellent knowledge and experience in using key tools and approaches, including humanitarian guidelines on child protection, case management and community based, or community led child protection approaches.
Experience in child protection context, capacity and policy analysis at regional/international.
Skilled at networking, representation, and partnership development to promote child protection learning and mobilize resources.
Able to generate and use data and evidence to innovate, deliver, learn, and share what works and what doesn’t work for children.
Demonstrated programme design, monitoring, and evaluation skills, including designing pathways to ensure exponential reach of children affected by conflict.
Experience of preparing concept notes for resources mobilisation
Excellent understanding of M&E processes and interventions relevant for child protection
Experience in advocating and communicating on issues related to child, youth and family child protection and interrelated thematic areas.
Experience or exposure to youth or SGBV programming is an added advantage
Fluent in English
Working knowledge of French and Spanish is an advantage.

Skills and competencies

Diversity, inclusion and cultural sensitivity
Interpersonal and communication skills
Negotiation, coaching and influencing skills.
Applying child protection principles
Understanding humanitarian standards and principles
Problem resolution focussed.
Result oriented focus to ensure programme quality and impact.
Managing in high-pressured and changing environments - adaptability and flexibility
Demonstrating leadership - integrity and self-awareness

Our Terms & Conditions

A challenging job, within an inspiring and motivated team of people and the support of a strong and professional organisation in the Netherlands.

A fair salary and comprehensive secondary benefits and opportunities to develop and learn professionally.

Contract type: Local contract, salary grid and Terms & Conditions will apply. Expats will be offered an expat package.
Contract duration: War Child Alliance will offer a 1 year contract with the intention to prolong into an open ended contract depending on mutual agreement and performance.
Working hours: Full time, 40 hours per week.

Note: The position is based in any country where War Child has a presence in the Africa and Colombia region and the successful candidate must be eligible to work in that country and is expected to travel in the region (and beyond) as needed.

Our Organisation

War Child is a dynamic organization. We try to keep an informal ambiance within our offices, with a lot of room for creativity, inspiration and self-initiative from employees. We practice what we preach: dynamic, innovative, integrity focused, and a drive to reach the highest possible results against the lowest possible costs. War Child Alliance offers a challenging job in an inspiring workplace.

Child safeguarding

Our work with children to keep them safe is the most important thing we do. We are committed to the safeguarding of children in all areas of our work. Successful applicants will be expected to be compliant and sign up to our Child Safeguarding policy, which you can read here: How War Child upholds Integrity | War Child

How to Apply

Interested and qualified candidates are invited to apply before June 30th, 2024. Make sure to upload your English CV (maximum of two pages) and cover letter here:

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Safeguarding

War Child is committed to humanitarian values, standards and norms and we expect the same from job applicants. War Child is especially committed to safeguarding the children and youth we support and doesn’t tolerate any form of abuse. Because we want to prevent and deter any actions that place children and youth at risk, conduct references are an important part of our recruitment procedure. As part of the selection process, War Child will request standardized references in accordance with the Inter-Agency Misconduct Disclosure Scheme and a recent Criminal Records statement.

Equal opportunity

War Child has a dream that every child lives in peace - no matter who or where they are. That’s why we pride ourselves on being an equal opportunity employer. We promote diversity and belonging in everything we do and select our potential new colleagues without regard to gender, race, colour, religion, nationality, disability, age or sexual orientation.

Application process

To ensure that we spend as much of our resources on the support of children and youth, War Child needs to operate as efficiently as possible. This means we can only process job applications received through our websites.

If we appoint a suitable candidate before the given closing date, the vacancy will be removed from our websites. In this case, any responses received after removal will not be processed. Sometimes the closing date of a vacancy is extended. If so, and you have not yet heard from us, your application will remain active.

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