Programme advisor, Right to essential services

Poverty and lack of access to basic services go hand in hand across much of our planet. Abuses of power and persistent inequality mean that marginalised people are most vulnerable to the risk of ill-health and least able to face its costs and impacts. Christian Aid believes that, through concerted action with our partners, we can root out and challenge the power relationships at the heart of this problem. Could you join us in this exciting work?

You’ll make a key contribution to increasing Christian Aid’s work on securing rights to essential services and particularly health. As an organisation we have developed strong models and programming in this area. Now we are looking to deepen our programme impact and our focus on supporting equitable institutions and inclusive social norms. We don’t see poor access to essential services as a technical issue so much as a political one with decisions being made about who has access to what. Building on our strong track record in community health and HIV programming, we have increasingly focused on the central role of power and inequality in accessing services. Our new strategy has laid out our ambition to challenge and change this, setting a transformative new goal of Just Power Relations.

Working as part of a global team of Programme Advisors, you’ll provide advice and support to teams on the ground as they seek to ensure greater access to essential services. You’ll help Christian Aid staff and partners across Africa, Asia and Latin America sharpen their work and to identify new opportunities to bring about change in their own contexts. You’ll equip them to put this analysis into practice through a portfolio of empowering projects within the framework of our newly developed community health framework.

You’ll enable programme teams to learn from their own experience, from other Christian Aid programmes and partners, and from wider good practice. With the rest of the advisory team and other colleagues, you’ll feed programme learning into a deeper organisational understanding and public position on access to essential services.

You’ll have the technical knowledge and practical experience to provide credible, relevant and useful support to fellow practitioners, including previous experience in an advisory role. You’ll also bring excellent communication and facilitation skills. Your ability to translate theory into practice will help programme colleagues engage with complex political and social challenges, and spark innovative and creative responses. Most important will be your ability to develop strong relationships and bring people from different parts of the organisation together around a common vision. You’ll be ready to pioneer new ways of thinking and develop new partnerships to achieve these ambitious goals.

Please show your suitability for this post by giving answers to the following questions. Using the guidance notes may help you formulate your answers.

Communicate effectively

Describe a situation where you helped other people to understand a complex political, social or cultural problem. How did you help them to see both the different elements of the problem and how these were connected? How did you help them see the problem differently?

Deliver results

Describe a situation where you worked with others to develop a new or improved response in a complex and dynamic social or political context. How did you help them to reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of previous work? How did this process have an impact on ways of working?

Realise potential

Describe a situation where you enabled other people to share their learning more widely. How did you support them to identify the key lessons from their own experience? How did you support them to share these with a wider audience and/or feed into a bigger learning process?

We value the contribution each person makes to the success of our organisation. That’s why you can expect a wide range of rewards and benefits, including a generous holiday allowance, an interest-free season ticket loan and flexibility that will ensure you enjoy a good work/life balance.

If this post is UK based, non-EC nationals will require current and valid permission to work in the UK.

Download the role profile (154 KB pdf)

To apply for this post, please download an application pack and email your completed UK & Ireland application form to:  recruitment@christian-aid.org  (quoting the reference number). Alternatively, your completed application form can be printed out and posted to us at:

Christian Aid
35 Lower Marsh
Waterloo
London 
SE1 7RT

Please note that CVs will not be accepted.

Job reference: 647-MA

Closing date: 9am, Tuesday 28 January, 2014

Interview date: 7 February 2014

Christian Aid values diversity and aspires to reflect this in our workforce. We welcome applications from people from all sections of the community, irrespective of race, colour, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation, religion or belief.