Senior Technical Advisor at International Rescue Committee

Sector: Program Administration

Employment Category: Proposal

Open to Expatriates: Yes

Job Description

IRC is seeking a Senior Technical Advisor for a five-year, large-scale East Africa regional project to increase access to quality educational opportunities for refugee and host communities. IRC is currently working on this funding opportunity to improve the social, emotional, and cognitive development of refugees from early childhood to primary school aged. The Senior Technical Advisor will provide quality technical assistance and leadership to ensure the overall quality of the technical design and implementation across multiple countries, which includes the development of developmentally appropriate teaching and learning materials. The project will consist of a consortium of partners that will focus on active learning. The Advisor will ensure that programs also benefit from lessons learned, promising practices, and evidence generated across the region; as well as represent the project in appropriate global forums to share with the larger education in emergency sector. S/he will also have a specific focus on quality technical assistance to support field programs to test, rigorously evaluate, and scale active learning methodologies to improve children’s outcomes. This position is contingent on the IRC being awarded funding and is anticipated to begin in mid-November 2019.

Job Responsibilities

• Provide technical leadership and assistance on the overall approach with a real focus on teaching and learning material development, training and capacity building for a variety of stakeholders responsible for children’s learning; as well as approaches for testing and scaling up active learning methodologies to improve learning outcomes
• Coordination of technical approaches, content development, and influence across field programs
• Support field staff to use project data to track progress and engage in meaningful course correction discussions at regular and frequent intervals; as well as ensure data is tailored to facilitate similar discussions at the global and senior management level.
• Ensuring lessons learned, promising practices and evidence are shared across contexts.
• Provide ongoing capacity building, training and technical assistance as needed of field staff, government counterparts and partners to ensure high quality programs with a focus on uptake and use of active learning methodologies
• Regular communication and coordination with the Project Director and key home office staff on technical and project management issues;
• Manage a small team of education and content development experts at the global and country level;
• Represent the project’s evidence, lessons learned, and achievements in external meetings, panels and conferences; as well as participate in inter-agency efforts related to improving learning outcomes for refugee children;
• Give input 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;
• Conduct regular visits to project sites, as possible, to provide technical assistance and ensure proper implementation and monitoring of project activities;
• Produce inputs to monthly, quarterly, semi-annual and annual reports for the Head of Project and donors, as needed.

Qualifications

• Advanced degree (PhD or MA) in education, or closely related field;
• At least eight years’ experience in education programming, with at least four years of experience with work specifically in crisis or conflict-affected contexts is required, preferably in East Africa.
• Significant prior experience with material development, active learning methodologies, and capacity building/training;
• Experience in social emotional learning interventions, monitoring and evaluation, and research in relation to Education is highly desired. Experience in strategy development and working across sectors or disciplines is highly desired;
• Strong negotiation skills and the ability to develop relations with local counterparts, donors, and other stakeholders;
• Strong communication skills, both oral and written;
• Fluency in English required;
• Ability to travel at least 30% of the time

Reports to: Deputy Director, Education

Working Environment: This role may require working remotely full or part time (i.e., telecommuting). Applicants must have a home or alternate workspace they can effectively complete their work from during regularly scheduled hours.