ROLE PURPOSE:
The purpose of the role is to lead the Advocacy, Communications, Campaigns, and Media team, and the development and implementation of the Country Office (CO) advocacy strategy. The Senior Manager will work as part of the Senior Management Team to undertake risk mapping, mitigation and management on issues identified as most relevant for the CO and develop relevant advocacy and communications approaches and strategic planning in response to those issues.
The Senior Manager will work closely with Child Rights Governance (CRG), Program Development and Quality (PDQ) and Award Management and Business Development (AMBD) colleagues, supporting child protection, education, and child poverty related advocacy and communications in a highly complex context in a situation of national crisis. The Senior Manager plays a vital role in program development and in donor and member engagement. The Senior Manager works closely with Area managers and field teams in development and delivery of localized communications strategies.
In the event of a major humanitarian emergency, the role holder will be expected to work outside the normal role profile and be able to vary working hours accordingly.
CHILD SAFEGUARDING:
Level 3: the post holder will have contact with children and/or young people either frequently (e.g. once a week or more) or intensively (e.g. four days in one month or more or overnight) because they work country programs; or are visiting country programs; or because they are responsible for implementing the police checking/vetting process staff.
SCOPE OF WORK:
Reports to: Country Director
Role Dimensions: Lebanon CO is a high complexity country with approximately 200 staff.
Staff reporting to this post: 3
Budget Responsibilities: Advocacy, Communications, Campaigns, and Media Budgets
KEY AREAS OF ACCOUNTABILITY:
As a member of the Senior Management Team, contribute to:
Together with Senior Management Team, ensure strong leadership of the Lebanon Country Office.
- Support the development of an organisational culture that reflects the full programming spectrum (humanitarian and development) values, promotes accountability and high performance, encourages a team culture of learning, creativity and innovation, and supports staff to deliver outstanding results for children, including through supporting the senior management team on internal communications.
- As a Senior Management Team Member, help design, develop, and deliver agency wide priorities and projects around strategic objectives, organizational shape, agency priorities, and risk management.
- Ensure that all required support is provided promptly, during emergencies or times of humanitarian crisis.
- Develop risk mitigation management plans in response to SMT, Regional Office, center (HQ), or Member identified risks to the delivery of quality programs for children.
Advocacy Strategy Development and Implementation
- Lead the development of the Advocacy Strategy, aligned to and embedded within the Country Strategic Plan and ensure coordination and engagement across all departments to deliver on the strategic objectives. The postholder will hold primary responsibility for risk mitigation and management associated with the delivery on this strategy.
- Responsible for building alliances within involved Members around prioritized advocacy objectives, to amplify voice and impact at capital level, including through leading the CO engagement with the HAWG and other internal advocacy stakeholders.
- Based on Save the Children (SC) program priorities, and identified priority advocacy issues for children, develop key messages and identify targets from lessons learned, assessments, research and evidence gained through project implementation, in partnership with PDQ team members.
- Develop and implement advocacy objectives and initiatives, both short and long term, encompassing a wide range of issues and audiences.
- In close collaboration with Child Rights Governance teams (CRG), lead on child participation efforts to ensure that voices of children are integral to SC’s advocacy, including in planning and implementation.
- Maintain a strategic overview of issues effecting children’s rights in Lebanon, monitoring trends in the external environment including donor government foreign policy agendas and inputting and/or leading as required to organisational strategy and planning processes, in coordination with other team members.
- Ensure a robust overview, ongoing analysis, and development of key messages around protecting children in conflict issues with the particular focus on education and protection, movement and access, humanitarian and operational space issues affecting Save the Children’s ability to deliver quality programs for children.
- Support active engagement with policy makers and other key players, internally and externally, including donors and government in relation to children’s rights issues and identify opportunities to raise awareness and influence policy change.
- Support the delivery of advocacy, communications, and campaigning training to national partners and provide technical support in development of their advocacy strategies.
Influencing
- Develop good knowledge of local and national government structures (in Lebanon and in key Member capitals), parliamentary and political processes and key decision-making structures and how to influence them.
- Undertake, and support the Country Director or Technical Advisers to undertake, a range of lobbying, communications and other activities to inform and persuade policy makers, including donors and politicians, of the value of SC’s policy recommendations and programming approaches.
- Working closely with the MEAL team, build systems for research, analysis and documentation that underpin evidence-based advocacy and influencing at national and international levels.
- Develop dissemination and communication strategies for key advocacy messages, together with the communications team.
- Produce or manage the production of reports, briefing papers and presentations for internal and external audiences, as needed.
- Promote the role of children in influencing local and national governance to ensure their survival, learning, and protection.
Coordination & Representation
- Develop and cultivate strategic relationships with other agencies engaged in advocacy and policy work in Lebanon.
- Lead or support external advocacy coordination forum, including within LHIF, the Humanitarian Country Team, and the Education Sector Advocacy Task Team, promoting or ensuring inclusion of Save the Children prioritized child rights issues in these essential coalition fora.
- Co-lead the Education Advocacy Task Team for the Education Sector.
- Develop and maintain a network of external contacts with key individuals in the government, donors, NGO sector, civil society and the media.
- Represent SC at various policy forums and advocacy opportunities at national and international levels, as directed.
- Represent Save the Children, or support CRG colleagues representation, in child rights forums including the Higher Council for Childhood and child participation committee meetings, as agreed.
- Act as a spokesperson for SC to a variety of external audiences including policy makers and the media, as directed. Coordinate and manage the training of spokespeople within the Country Office, ensuring the list of spokespeople on a range of topics is updated.
- Develop strong links with the Members programmes for advocacy / awareness raising globally.
Communications and Programme Support
- Support programme leadership to articulate their top priority advocacy or communications objectives in line with the Country Office Strategic Plan.
- Manage the media, campaigns, and communications staff/team, ensure delivery of high quality communications and documentation support to the CO and programs.
- Ensure the delivery of a media outreach strategy, locally, and that the team provides adequate support to engage with the Regional Office and Center for meeting media requests.
- Ensure development of the CO communications plan, towards donors (working with the RMM) and other external stakeholders.
- Ensure development and delivery of an internal communications approach, towards Save the Children staff, to ensure all staff stay connected and energized by the Save the Children mission.
- Ensure proper planning and engagement in program proposals around advocacy, communications, branding and visibility, for all proposals . Ensure proper budgeting for Advocacy, Media and Communications within proposals.
- Support NBD to analyse donors’ investment in advocacy, communication, and documentation.
- Support the specialists and implementation team/s in defining and articulating thematic policy change objectives.
- Support to CRG on establishment and engagement with child/youth advisory committee that provides bi-annual inputs and feedback to SC Lebanon’s strategic plan and actions.
- Act as one of SC Lebanon’s child participation focal points, providing guidance and advice on meaningful involvement of children and youth in our programming, campaigns and advocacy.
- In close collaboration with PDQ and technical experts write, or commission regular progress reports as needed, to keep the CO and regional team updated, and contribute to advocacy updates for the internal regional and global teams as required.
- Ensure that SC responds appropriately to emergencies, appointing and supporting the Comms focal point to meet emergency comms requirements, including sitreps, fact sheets, updates and other required products.
QUALIFICATIONS
- Degree in Social Science, Journalism & Media or related field
- Fluency in Writing and Presentation skills in English
EXPERIENCE AND SKILLS
- A minimum of 8 years demonstrated experience in progressively responsible positions at senior management levels.
- At least 5 years’ experience in a humanitarian or development environment, preferably leading advocacy and policy change in the Middle East.
- Substantial experience in successfully leading the development of policy change analyses and implementation of advocacy strategies towards clearly articulated policy change agendas.
- Demonstrated ability to develop and lead research, surveys and other activities oriented towards developing positions and evidence base.
- Ability to present complex information in a succinct and compelling manner
- Excellent influencing and representational skills in advocating towards government officials
- Strong skills in developing and implementing advocacy strategies
- Good attention to detail
- Extensive knowledge of child rights and international humanitarian law
- Understanding of UN and donor operations at country level
- High level analytical and strategic thinking skills
- Cultural awareness and ability to build relationships quickly with a wide variety of people
- Patient, adaptable, flexible, able to improvise and remain responsive and communicate clearly and effectively under pressure
- Excellent planning, management and coordination skills, with the ability to organise a substantial workload comprised of complex, diverse tasks and responsibilities
- Advanced understanding of Protection issues arising from a conflict setting, impact on protected populations, and implications for humanitarian aid agencies.
- Commitment to Save the Children values
Desirable
- Experience working for an international humanitarian organisation in Lebanon (or the Middle East) preferred
- Proven skills in media work, including interviews on Radio and TV
- Experience with programs, program development, proposal writing, or implementation a plus.
- Experience in coordination of various stakeholders a plus
- Experience solving complex issues through analysis
- Capacity in writing and presentation skills in Arabic
- Has a strong international network within advocacy and policy settings
- Understanding of the issues concerning the INGO sector with an in-depth knowledge in communications, marketing and/or fundraising
- Demonstrable track record of leading change, resulting in significant results for the organisation and their stakeholders.
- Strong results orientation
Additional job responsibilities
The duties and responsibilities as set out above are not exhaustive and the role holder may be required to carry out additional duties within reasonableness of their level of skills and experience.
Equal Opportunities
The role holder is required to carry out the duties in accordance with the SCI Equal Opportunities and Diversity policies and procedures.
Child Safeguarding:
We need to keep children safe so our selection process, which includes rigorous background checks, reflects our commitment to the protection of children from abuse.
The role holder is required to carry out the duties in accordance with SCI Health and Safety policies and procedures.
