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HEAD OF GIRLS' EMPOWERMENT & ADOLESCENT PROGRAMMING

CARE is seeking an experienced Head of Girls’ Empowerment and Adolescent Programming to provide strategic direction and intellectual leadership to CARE's effort in girls and adolescent empowerment by evolving its strategy, approaches, linkages and internal capacity to effectively address, promote and implement CARE's gender and development priorities. S/he will promote the fulfillment of the rights to equitable and quality education, as well as promoting the application of gender transformative approaches in other sectors for adolescents. With support from the Senior Director for the Gender and Empowerment Unit, this role supports the refinement of CARE's strategies/approaches in girls and women empowerment, incubates new products, promotes access to knowledge, leads and fosters collaboration with other teams and division across CARE, builds external partnerships and develops linkages to global expertise. The position requires excellent leadership and communications skills, a deep understanding of poverty issues and girls and women's empowerment approaches and the ability to develop strategic internal and external partnerships and teams, as well as lead policy and advocacy work. The position holder will have demonstrated experience and competence in program management and in successfully guiding, mentoring and supporting staff. The Head of Girls’ Empowerment and Adolescent Programming is also responsible for supporting the acquisition of financial and technical resources for field programs and for the global leadership and technical support capabilities. S/he will be responsible for working with individual and institutional fundraising teams to develop a robust pipeline of funding in order to implement CARE's girls and women empowerment framework within the education sector.
The Head of Girls’ Empowerment and Adolescent Programming will be expected to represent CARE externally around the issues of gender, girls’ and women's empowerment, and education, proactively reaching out to external organizations and coalitions, learning from external stakeholders and contributing lessons and findings from CARE’s work in gender-transformative adolescent programming.
CARE's programming recognizes that an end to poverty depends on the fulfillment of everyone's right to education, especially girls. There is also growing recognition that poverty eradication cannot happen outside of women's empowerment and thus a comprehensive strategy that has the empowerment of women and girls at its core is central to any successful development effort. Through its Power Within approach, CARE has developed an organizational framework for its education programs that focuses on mainstreaming gender in education coupled with girls leadership development and advocacy as key ingredients in realizing girls and women's empowerment. This approach emphasizes integration with other programming areas such as health, economic development, and food security.
Responsibilities:
  • Provide ongoing supervision, leadership, support and guidance to three regional Technical Advisors and a Senior Technical Advisor, who oversees a team of 3 project coordinators.
  • Provide intellectual leadership and institutional strengthening for gender transformative programming for adolescents, including Education.
  • Plan, develop and maintain strategic global partnerships and linkages with NGOs, research institutions, academic circles, foundations institutional donors, international organizations and multi-laterals.
  • Work with Policy, Advocacy staff to ensure strategic policy analysis and the application of appropriate policy and advocacy strategies related to gender discrimination and promotion of leadership and empowerment among adolescents, especially girls.
  • Coordinate and/or support the strategic acquisition of financial resources and their effective allocation in a manner that promotes innovation, scale-up, program integration and demonstrated impact.
Required:
  • Master's degree in Social Sciences, Education, Public Health, International Development or related field
  • Training in management or experience equivalent
  • 6-8 years of progressively responsible professional work experience in the development, implementation, management and evaluation of programs, particularly working with children, youth, and women, marginalized groups and gender based programs in developing countries.
  • 3-5 years successful senior leadership in international development field with a focus on child empowerment, child protection, gender and education and or work with marginalized communities
  • 3 to 5 years experience managing and leading a complex development program
  • Experience in managing USAID grants and/or contracts
  • Advocacy experience that has resulted in policy change
  • Experience in a previous position developing partnerships and building coalitions to advance organizational learning and program impact
  • Program development skills
  • Visioning and strategic development skills
  • Demonstrated capacity in organizational learning and knowledge management
  • Advanced written communication skills
  • Effective interpersonal communication skills
  • Significant technical competencies in one or more areas of education, child protection and gender programming
  • Knowledge of policy development, management of policy implementation advocacy and community and social mobilization
  • Demonstrated ability to recruit, coach, mentor and supervise staff
  • Demonstrated financial management and budgeting skills
Desired:
  • Doctoral Degree in International Development
  • Specialty in international development program management
  • Direct program experience in implementing and promoting rights-based approaches.
  • Experience in a previous position developing strategies for multi-donor support of gender programming
  • Demonstrated teambuilding skills
  • Training and Facilitation skills
  • Advanced advocacy skills and competency in human rights
  • Proficiency in a second language, preferably Spanish, French, Portuguese or Arabic.


HEAD OF GIRLS' EMPOWERMENT & ADOLESCENT PROGRAMMING