Adolescent Girls Specialist at International Rescue Committee

Position Summary:

The Adolescent Girls (AG) Specialist will be responsible for supporting a 36-month French Development Agency (AFD)-funded grant titled “Feminist Solidarity Fund for Girls’ Education” (FSF). Through this project, the FSF Consortium (a partnership between Doria Feminist Fund, the International Rescue Committee (IRC), the Partnership for African Social and Governance Research (PASGR), and Urgent Action Fund-Africa (UAF-Africa). will support a range of feminist civil society organisations (CSOs), Women’s rights and Women led organisations (WROs/WLOs) and youth organisations, working across 7  countries (Burkina Faso, Cameroon, DR Congo, Ethiopia, Jordan, Lebanon, and Nigeria)  and/or at a regional level to accelerate gender equality in and through education. 

Gender equality initiatives include: 

• CSOs providing direct support to girls and their families to remove individual-, family- and community-level barriers to education. 
• CSOs working directly with schools and other sub-national institutions to improve the quality of support for adolescent girls in school as well as access to education for out-of-school girls. 
• CSOs conducting research and/or advocacy to advance the rights of girls, including access to education. 
• CSOs working directly with the most marginalized subgroups of adolescent girls (e.g. those that have experienced violence, living through multiple crises, or marginalized because of their gender identity and sexual orientation) who are less likely to be engaged in education programs.

The Adolescent Girls specialist will guide the program design, provide direct technical support, and technical capacity strengthening to implement, measure and continuously improve the proposed project in close collaboration with the FSF Education Technical Advisor. 

This is a primarily a field-facing position with the central responsibility focused on program quality. The Technical Advisor’s specific responsibilities are as follows: 

• Provide technical guidance to ensure a shared regional approach, as well as context-appropriate adaptation, for program design, innovation, influence, and monitoring, evaluation, and learning for the FSF project;
• Support consortium partner staff to undertake FSF activities, ensuring that they are aligned with the project strategies which include contextualizing gender equality in education outcomes and including interventions chosen based on best available evidence;
• Support consortium partner staff to review CSO applications and provide guidance on the development of criteria for selection of CSOs, with a focus on barriers to access and retention of adolescent girls to education;
• Support and provide guidance to the research partner, as appropriate, in relation to Gender equality and understanding the specific barriers faces by adolescent girls to education;
• Provide support to ensure proposed activities are responsive to client needs and preferences based on sound context and gender analysis;
• Document and share cross-context learning internally (with country program staff) and externally (in relevant meetings, conferences, etc. in national, regional, and global fora);
• Contribute to relevant communication materials such as fact sheets, briefs, papers, and presentations that can be disseminated and used for influence at the national and global level;  
• Provide technical inputs for internal and external reports, as needed;

Key Working Relationships: 

• Position Reports to:  FSF Project Director in VPRU. Located in Uganda
• Work closely with the FSF Education Specialist and the rest of the FSF project team, partners to the FSF project as well as other VPRU staff as appropriate.

Job Qualifications: 

• Education: Bachelor’s/undergraduate degree in gender studies, international development or relevant field or equivalent combination of education and experience is required.  Participate in ongoing training courses and share knowledge and skill sets within the unit.  
• Work Experience: A minimum of 3-5 years of implementing and/or managing large education, protection, or gender equality and girls’ empowerment programs, is required, within a humanitarian or international development setting, as are at least 1—2 years acting in an advisory capacity on women’s protection/ child protection/ gender equality programming.
• Experience in technical tools and materials development, monitoring and evaluation, innovation, and research in relation to women’s protection/ gender equality is highly desired.  
• Experience working in adolescent girls programming. Experience in strategy development and working across sectors or disciplines is highly desired.
• Demonstrated Skills and Competencies: 
• Demonstrated expertise in program design, monitoring and evaluation, with the ability to turn concepts and strategy into measurable action.  Strong verbal and written communication skills.  
• Experience working directly with partners through a consortium is highly desirable.