JOB OPPORTUNITY
Position: Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI) Specialist
Number of Vacancies: 1
Functional Area: Programme
Reports to: GESI Senior TA
Location: Regional Office – East
Travel required: 50% Plan International Nepal working districts.
Effective Date: 1 July 2020
Grade: D1
Type: Fixed Term Employment for 2 years based in Regional Office, East- Dhanusha
ABOUT
PLAN INTERNATIONAL
Plan International is a development and humanitarian organization that advances children’s rights and equality for girls. We strive for a just world, working together with children, young people, our supporters and partners in over 75 countries. Our programs are underpinned by a core of defined values, including transparency and accountability, team collaboration, inclusion and integration, as well as the overall ambition to empower girls and young women as legacy.
Plan International has been working in Nepal since 1978 and developed a strong reputation as a respected development and humanitarian actor helping marginalized children, their families and communities to access their rights to health, education, economic security and protection. Through the support of local partners, Plan International works in 24 districts in Nepal.
Plan International Nepal has a vision for 2030 as “an inclusive, just and safe society where all girls and young women enjoy their rights and live in freedom”. This is coupled with the ambition of taking action so that 100 million girls learn, lead, decide and thrive as “Girls and young women in all of their diversity reach their full potential as equal and active citizens” by 2023. The country strategy is put into action through the implementation of three interrelated program areas defined as follows:
LEARN: the “Education and Skills and Opportunities for Youth Employment and Entrepreneurship (SOYEE)” program aims to assist vulnerable and excluded girls and young women in adapting and thriving in a changing climate;
LEAD AND DECIDE: the “Youth as Active Drivers of Change and Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights (SRHR)” program aims to empower girls and young women in leading change, having control over their bodies and making informed decisions; and
THRIVE: the “Early Childhood Development (ECD), Child Protection and Child Poverty” program enhances vulnerable and excluded children, especially girls, to be valued and cared for without discrimination, fear and any forms of violence.
Plan international Nepal seeks candidates who practice feminist leadership, promote diversity, actively seek innovative solutions for problems, courageously and respectfully share their opinions and ideas, break down barriers and engender cross-department collaboration, practice active plan-international.org Role Profile 1 listening, maintain confidentiality, build trust and are passionate about children’s rights and equality for girls.
ROLE PURPOSE
Achieving gender equality, promoting gender justice, realizing girls’ rights and fostering an inclusive Society are core objectives of our work as an organization dedicated to child rights and equality for girls. This commitment is reflected in our Global Strategy 100 Million Reasons, our Values and Behaviors Framework and our Theory of Change. Plan International requires all the program to be gender transformative and the GESI Specialist will be responsible for ensuring that it is achieved in designing and implementation of programs at the three districts-Sindhuli, Sunsari and Makawanpur under the Regional Office-East. He/she will provide technical leadership on designing and delivery of gender transformative program in the field as well as Country office as required and ensure its implementation.
The GESI Specialist will facilitate the integration of Plan’s Gender Equality and Inclusion Policy across thematic programs thereby providing implementation and technical guidance to the program team at Regional Office-East. S/he will support for quality design, implementation and evaluation of programs to ensure the unique needs/challenges of women, men, girls, boys, and other genders, minority groups and persons with disabilities are identified and responded by our programs and that inequality is challenged wherever possible (transformative approach).
S/He will lead the coordination and implementation of Plan’s Gender Equality Self-Assessment (GEISA) action plan. S/He will enable and identify gender related training and capacity building areas to Plan staff, partners and government officials.
Description
DIMENSIONS OF THE ROLE
The GESI Specialist will work closely with Business Development Team, Heads of Program, Project Managers, Thematic Specialists, Program Coordinators and partners. The Specialist will represent as Plan International Nepal’s Gender expert in external forum.
The position holder will have direct reporting to Head of Influencing in the current structure. The specialist will provide technical support on gender equality and Inclusion policy, guide the mainstreaming of the policy into program design and proposals, and support capacity development as well as implementation of the gender equality and Inclusion policy, campaign and influencing work and research.
S/he will build strong, strategic relationships with external stakeholders, including government officials, legislators, UN agency and development partner staff, to position Plan International as an influential leader on promotion of gender equality, girls’ right, and inclusion. S/he will focus on district-level influencing at Sindhuli, Sunsari and Makwanpur while supporting national level influencing and program delivery.
ACCOUNTABILITIES
Technical Support and Program Development
- Support and work with the program team to design, plan and develop program, including proposals to ensure quality gender transformative and inclusion perspective
- Support the implementation, monitoring and evaluation of program from gender transformative and inclusive lens with concrete guidance and support in education and WASH project. plan-international.org Role Profile 2
- Support the team in developing of gender sensitive data collection tools , gender analysis throughout the program life cycle and the reporting matrix
- Guide and advise the team with the development of tools to increase the participation of girls or to remove existing barriers and to create equal participation engaging men in social change process
- Assist program team in developing strategies and integrating gender perspectives in the institutional collaboration/ partnership programs at the country and district/province levels.
- Working collaboratively with thematic leads and project leads to support, design and implement activities to foster understanding of gender and social inclusion concepts among project staff and implementing partners.
- Support and lead development of policy briefs, manuals, and guidelines for integration of gender in education and WASH program at municipality / rural municipality level.
Capacity development of staff and partners on gender equality and inclusion
- Support and guide program team including partner staff to identify issues for gender transformation and realization of children and girls rights at national and grassroots level.
- Work in a team on developing training guidelines and session for training the staff and partners in implementing gender transformative approaches into all aspects of work.
- Promote Plan International Nepal as a gender transformative organization through effective implementation of GEISA recommendations and action plan.
- Facilitate sessions to staff and partner staff on integrating Gender equality and inclusion while conducting the components’ technical training and capacity building initiatives according to the needs.
- Support and ensure gender sensitivity in Plan Nepal’s communication and publications.
- Establish a gender resource center by collecting and developing relevant learning materials.
- Assess the needs related to promoting gender transformation in program and policies and organize consultations with staff and partners for providing sensitization and technical training on Gender including Plan’s gender and inclusion policy ( Planting equality : getting it right for girls and boys) with a rights based approach to development.
Coordination, Networking and Advocacy
- Coordinate with field team and identify, compile and prioritize the major issues on Gender equality and inclusion and prepare appropriate influencing plan and its implementation
- Coordinate and facilitate to build strategic alliances with other key actors internally and externally to advocate for gender-transformative programming.
- Provide technical support to field team and identify opportunities for the development of relevant influencing and communication/information materials to gender transformation.
- Coordinate and liaise with program partners, government line agencies and other counterparts to build the synergy and mainstream gender and inclusion in project cycle, including social and behavior change communications.
- Take lead in carrying out influencing and campaigns for eliminating gender based discriminations through partnership and networking
- Participate and contribute as a focal person in Plan’s country/regional / international Gender networks and alliance.
- As a custodian of the gender mainstreaming regularly update Plan Nepal CMT and ARO technical counterpart on the progress and challenges on gender equality plan-international.org Role Profile 3
- Play a lead role as focal person for Gender in emergencies ensuring Plan Internal Nepal adheres to the Prevention on sexual exploitation and abuse (PSEA) response and commitment
Monitoring, documentation and reporting
- Involve in conducting monitoring and evaluation of the activities from gender and inclusion perspective and provide feedbacks in coordination with Monitoring Evaluation and Research team.
- Conduct assessment by using gender marker of all projects and provide guidance for improvement.
- Conduct monitoring visits to the program area, provide onsite coaching and feedback to team to mainstream Gender equality and inclusion, prepare and share monitoring reports of partners in line with Gender equality and inclusion policy implementation guidelines
- Collect and promote good practices and lessons learned, contributing to a collection of replicable good practices for programming.
- Involve in analyzing the strengths and gaps and prepare action plan to address it in programming
- Identify and document the success stories and failure experiences in approaches, strategies, processes and tools and its results and disseminate it.
- In coordination with social and behavior change and outreach communication team prepare learning materials out of the success and achievements (flyers, brochures, leaflet etc.) based on project based outcomes and approaches
Ensures that Plan International’s global policies for Child Protection (CPP) and Gender Equality and Inclusion (GEI) are fully embedded in accordance with the principles and requirements of the policy including relevant Implementation Standards and Guidelines as applicable to their area of responsibility. This includes, but is not limited to, ensuring staff and associates are aware of and understand their responsibilities under these policies and Plan International’s Code of Conduct (CoC), their relevance to their area of work, and that concerns are reported and managed in accordance with the appropriate procedures.
KEY RELATIONSHIPS
The GESI Specialist will work with Regional Managers, Heads of Program, Project Managers, Technical Advisors, Program Coordinators at field with direct reporting to GESI Senior Technical Advisor.
The position holder will represent Plan International Nepal in external networks within and outside Nepal to develop strategic relationships with external stakeholders, including government officials, legislators, UN agency and partner organization, to position Plan International as an influential leader on promotion of gender equality, girls’ right, and inclusion.
TECHNICAL EXPERTISE, SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE
ESSENTIAL
- Master’s Degree in Gender Studies, development studies, social science, or relevant field with experience in managing and leading gender related programmes
- At least 5 years of technical advisory / program experience in designing, implementing and evaluating gender programmes.
- In-depth knowledge on gender and development issues along with hands-on experience of mainstreaming gender issues plan-international.org Role Profile 4
- Knowledge of advocacy and lobbying together with providing policy inputs on strategic gender mainstreaming
- Skilled in conducting gender analysis, assessments and developing gender sensitive methodologies for programme and related evaluations
- Excellent communication, facilitation and presentation skills with ability to multitask and coordinate with multiple stakeholders
- Excellent command and proficiency in spoken and written English and Nepali languages
- In-depth understanding of the international human rights framework for development, key development issues, approaches and tools
- Knowledgeable about working in disaster management context and relevant humanitarian response
- Proven knowledge of latest debates, issues, research and practice in Gender & Child Rights programs and programme implementation in a range of contexts – local, national and regional
- Up-to-date and various project design and evaluation models and government program and policies
- Knowledge of the Nepal Government Policies, Program Priorities and Ministry of women, children and social welfare
Skills & Ability
- Analytical, strategic thinking and negotiating skills.
- Ability to build effective relations for influencing.
- Excellent organization and prioritization skills.
- Ability to write clearly and concisely in English and Nepali, translating complex issues for a variety of audiences (e.g. general population and policy-makers).
- Excellent verbal communication skills.
- Creative thinking and problem solving skills.
- Proven IT skills: Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint etc.
- Ability to priorities and multitask work when dealing with competing deadlines, sometimes with limited resources.
Behaviour
- Uses evidence-based results to make choices and drive change.
- Taking initiative to be innovative and creative to achieve results.
- Strives for quality in all they do, respecting deadlines, working continuously to improve performance.
- Takes responsibility for their actions, and learn from behaviour, successes and failures.
- Supports gender equality and diversity, and challenges forms of inequality or harassment.
- Encourages children young people, partners and colleagues to be meaningfully involved in decisions that affect them.
- Listens to and understand views of colleagues and partners. Draws on their experience to ensure high quality work.
- Upholds and demonstrates Plan’s values and behaviours.
- Ability to build, nurture and manage team.
- Calm under pressure.
- Ability to work comfortably and sensitively across cultures.
PLAN INTERNATIONAL’S VALUES IN PRACTICE
We are open and accountable
- Promotes a culture of openness and transparency, including with sponsors and donors.
- Holds self and others accountable to achieve the highest standards of integrity. plan-international.org Role Profile 5
- Consistent and fair in the treatment of people.
- Open about mistakes and keen to learn from them.
- Accountable for ensuring we are a safe organization for all children, girls & young people
We strive for lasting impact
- Articulates a clear purpose for staff and sets high expectations.
- Creates a climate of continuous improvement, open to challenge and new ideas.
- Focuses resources to drive change and maximize long-term impact, responsive to changed priorities or crises.
- Evidence-based and evaluates effectiveness.
We work well together
- Seeks constructive outcomes, listens to others, willing to compromise when appropriate.
- Builds constructive relationships across Plan International to support our shared goals.
- Develops trusting and ‘win-win’ relationships with funders, partners and communities.
- Engages and works well with others outside the organization to build a better world for girls and all children.
We are inclusive and empowering
- We empower our staff to give their best and develop their potential
- We respect all people, appreciate differences and challenge equality in our programs and our workplace
- We support children, girls and young people to increase their confidence and to change their own lives.
- PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT
- Based in Regional Office-East but needs 50% travel (national and international).
- Able to work in difficult circumstances (remote, disaster areas, etc.)
- Work with multi-culture and multi-lingual staff/team members
LEVEL OF CONTACT WITH CHILDREN
[Please delete as applicable]
Mid contact: Frequent interaction with children
Say Yes ! To Keeping Children and Young people safe and Protected.