Senior Director, Safeguarding at World Vision Kenya

PURPOSE OF POSITION:

The Senior Director, Safeguarding leads a division, including the WVI Safeguarding Unit, to develop and lead implementation of a global strategy for end-to-end Safeguarding processes, including guidelines and tactical delivery at global, regional, and national levels. The Senior Director, Safeguarding develops policy standards and best practices for technical leadership in child and adult safeguarding, including preventing sexual exploitation and abuse (PSEA).

The WVI Safeguarding Unit is mandated by the WVI Board of Directors to provide global strategic and technical leadership for action across the World Vision Partnership in preventing harm through integration of safeguarding across operations and organisational processes.

The unit also ensures reporting and responding to child and adult beneficiary safeguarding risks and incidents, particularly focusing on a survivor-centred and professional approach to investigation and risk mitigation measures.

This role is critical to WVI fulfilling its Board-mandated commitment to be an organisation that is safe for the children and communities  it serves, maximising our efforts to first do no harm to the children and families we engage with and minister alongside. Utilising his/her specialised knowledge of the safeguarding and related fields, the Senior Director, Safeguarding shapes internal and external discourse on key safeguarding topics, moving the organisation and sector closer to achieving "Do No Harm" principles.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:

Defining standards and policy

• Define Safeguarding standards to which all entities must adhere and evaluate their sufficiency on an annual basis.
• Develop corresponding policy guidance and cross-functional best practices to enable compliance by all entities and which furthers the safeguarding agenda in World Vision and across the sector.
• Define accountability mechanisms for multiple functions, including global, regional, and national P&C, Child Protection, Audit, Sponsorship, Communications, and Supply Chain among others
• Support strategic initiatives and innovations to apply safeguarding policies and principles
• Serve as the Partnership’s spiritual, moral and technical authority on safeguarding issues, conducting himself/herself with the highest levels of integrity while making rapid and pragmatic decisions that ensure the best outcome for children and adult beneficiaries.
• Sets policies and guidelines for direct communication to donors; engage with multilateral agencies in incident management

Safeguarding strategy & system

• Lead a division to develop a global strategy for end-to-end Safeguarding processes, including guidelines and tactical delivery at global, regional, and national levels. Includes influencing leaders who oversee functions which need to embed safeguarding into their processes.
• Identify areas of systemic or emerging organisational weaknesses and gaps and directing efforts of multiple GC, SO, FO, and RO and VisionFund leaders and departments to address strategic gaps
• Proactively address risks in collaboration with key leaders across the Partnership, identifying process improvements that increase efficiency and add value to implementing entities, particularly Field Offices.
• Direct multiple functions and hold accountable senior leaders, managers and stakeholders across the Partnership to take strategic and timely actions to strengthen safeguarding of children and adult beneficiaries, including targeted improvements, culturally relevant prevention efforts, and systematic awareness building.
• Influence budget decisions at global, regional, and national level, including support offices, for safeguarding activities (both prevention and response for investigations and survivor support).

Incident management & organizational learning

• Oversight of incident management protocols, particularly to ensure a survivor-centred approach.
• Ensuring excellence in incident management and response to high-risk safeguarding incidents through the safeguarding investigations team
• Support case managers to oversee incidents to highest possible standards.
• Support crisis management, particularly in cases with external pressures such as donor or media attention.
• Monitor/spot check for potential areas of concern, training needs, and risk mitigation measures for prevention.

Data-driven trend analysis for continuous improvement

• Strategic change management based on data and trends analysis
• Leadership of WVI Safeguarding Oversight Group
• Initiation of targeted and data-driven prevention efforts
• Annual Safeguarding Update Report exercise and Global National Office Dashboard (GNOD) results reporting

Team leadership

• Lead high-performance team and broader safeguarding network. Matrix management of Regional Safeguarding Leads

KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS & ABILITIES:

• Minimum two years’ experience in a developing world environment, minimum 10 years working in NGO sector.
• Experience in strategic leadership, management, and/or policy formation, guidance and implementation.
• Seasoned experience and knowledge from best practice externally as well as field experience of managing child safeguarding and/or adult beneficiary safeguarding (PSEA) protocols.
• Very strong organizational skills; ability to delegate and set clear priorities for work team; ability to complete a complex variety of tasks in an organized manner and to quickly change and adapt to new priorities.
• Experience making judgement calls on need-to-know and right-to-know parties within highly sensitive matters.
• Experience in communicating to and influencing decisions at the highest degrees of organizational leadership and Boards of Directors.
• Proven ability to exercise judgement and decisive leadership, balanced with diplomacy and consensus building, in highly complex and high-stakes situations.
• Able to quickly discern the core issues within a multi-faceted incident and move a team to action.
• Familiarity with child protection issues, beneficiary safeguarding, humanitarian accountability, Preventing Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, and the UN Conventions on the Rights of the Child, along with ability to quickly learn, analyse and interpret large amounts of complex information.
• Proven ability to lead cross-cultural teams, seeking diverse views and rapidly building consensus to address multi-faceted challenges.
• Experience achieving timely results while enhancing stakeholder relationships and buy-in in a large, federated organizational structure.
• Demonstrates a level of interpersonal, influencing, and team building skills which net high degrees of trust and efficient collaboration in a diverse and virtual work environment.      
• Experience developing and interpreting complex or challenging policies, with an advanced understanding of implementation implications across various contexts and settings.
• Excellent leadership, management and coaching skills, with a track record of motivating and developing the capacities of others, including peers, direct reports, and staff over which there is no line management authority.
• Experience engaging in external forums, including UN agencies and inter-agency working groups. Well-honed presentation skills, including use of data to influence decisions.
• Expertise in written communication, including drafting and editing technical or legal documents.
• Master’s degree or equivalent in a Legal, Human Resources, Management, Development, Humanitarian or Child Rights-related field; or field/practical experience working with situations of strategic leadership and/or policy formation, guidance and implementation
• Strong technical Safeguarding knowledge gained from continuous learning of best practice externally, as well as extensive operational experience including child safeguarding and adult beneficiary safeguarding and PSEA.
• Deep understanding of and appreciation for WV’s Christian identity and ethos, and how it links to the organisation’s mission, risk management philosophy, and staff motivation at all levels
• The position requires ability and willingness to travel domestically and internationally up to 15% of the time.  
• Effective in written and verbal communication in English; language skills in Spanish, French, and/or Portuguese is a preferred