The Ugandan Jobline

Job Title:   Gender and Safeguarding Specialist

Organisation: Heifer International (Heifer)

Duty Station:  Jinja, Uganda

About US:

Heifer International (Heifer) is a non-profit, humanitarian organization dedicated to ending world hunger, poverty and saving the earth. HI works with resource limited families around the globe to become self-reliant. Since it begun in 1944, Heifer International has worked directly with 7 million families in more than 125 countries.

Job Summary:   This is a key management position within the project structure and directly reports to the Project Director. The Gender & Safeguarding specialist will provide technical direction, oversight, and leadership to create and maximize opportunities to mainstream gender and safeguarding through direct project activities. He/she shall ensure that program implementation emphasizes inclusiveness and responsiveness to the needs of young women as well as providing a safe environment and a robust community feedback and response mechanism.

The scope of work of the Gender & Safeguarding specialist shall require experience and in depth understanding of conducting gender and safeguarding assessments and analyses, designing approaches that address the youth, women, and girls economic, social, leadership and reproductive health issues. The specialist will be expected to have in depth understanding of the country and regional context of Busoga. He/she will build capacity of project staff, local organizations, small & medium sized enterprises and relevant partners on gender inclusion related issues, tools, and approaches as well as technical assistance for the delivery of a gender transformative. She/He will be responsible for overseeing all areas of safeguarding to include policy formulation and implementation, raising awareness, training on compliance, advise and support to teams within the consortium as well as downstream partners to ensure that safeguarding is embedded in all stages of the program lifecycle, from design to completion in a manner that meets local and global standards.

Essential Character Traits: Empathetic, Problem-solving, communication, policy knowledge and research

Key Duties and Responsibilities:

Technical leadership on gender strategy, analysis, advocacy, and mainstreaming gender in all project activities (40%)

• Conduct technical gender analysis and audits across the country program and advise project teams on practical strategies to increase women, girls, boys, and men involvement across the project.
• Liaise with the Heifer Africa Women Development Lead to review and facilitate adoption of the gender strategy.
• Support the operationalization and integration of the project gender strategies during implementation and project closure.
• Provide orientation and on-job training of project staff and partners on gender mainstreaming, gender core concepts, and safeguarding.
• Support contextual adaptation, design and roll-out of information, education, and communication (IEC) materials on gender and safeguarding for the project, including delivery of trainings on different aspects as well as development of behavioral change information.
• Support young women to mobilize into women -led self-help groups and agri-hubs that serve as a collective platform to obtain assets, resources, and credit.
• Using Heifer’s Values Based Holistic Community Development model mobilize young women, girls, boys and men to learn practical skills and gain experience while supporting each other and develop a collective voice to advocate for themselves and market their products.
• Conduct annual consortia and downstream partner gender assessments, providing training and suggest action plans that offer pathways to improve practice in relation to support and promoting young women’s participation.
• Support project partners to design interventions that address the unique challenges that young women and people with disability face in both agribusiness and non-agribusinesses.
• Oversee the development and implementation of the Gender and Safeguarding Action Plans and ensure that planned activities are delivered on time and within scope and meet technical standards. – In collaboration with key Project director and People Manager review, modify, design and support implementation of key processes, practices, and tools to help guide more gender equitable practices.
• Lead the integration of gender in monitoring, evaluation, and learning) system of the project and build capacity of project and partner staff to monitor implementation of gender and women empowerment programs as well as referral mechanisms across program geographical areas.

Partnerships, Engagement, and coordination of gender activities. (25%)

• Identify, actively engage, and represent Heifer International and partners on the SAYE project in strategic partnerships, networks, platforms, coalitions, and spaces that are relevant and instrumental for delivering a gender transformative project.
• Engage with partners and stakeholders to foster collaboration to promote gender equality and assist in the preparation of project reports to partners and donors.
• The job holder will be required to identify and contribute to relevant learning networks including the Mastercard Foundation’s Gender and Safeguarding Community of Practice and facilitate the exchange of learnings on safeguarding and gender across the Young Africa Works programs across the Continent.

Promoting gender and safeguarding practices. (20%)

• Overseeing all areas of safeguarding to include policy formulation and implementation, raising awareness, training on compliance, advise and support project teams to ensure that safeguarding is embedded in all stages of the program lifecycle, from design to completion.
• Provide orientation and on-job training of project staff and partners on gender mainstreaming, gender core concepts, and safeguarding. Support contextual adaptation, design and roll-out of information, education, and communication (IEC) materials on gender and safeguarding for the project, including delivery of trainings on different aspects.
• The specialist shall be the focal person tasked to receive safeguarding concerns related to the project. He/she will be responsible for leading establishment of a robust system for reporting safeguarding concerns. The specialist will be required to URGENTLY report safeguarding concerns within the guidelines set by the Foundation.
• Liaise with the HRM to ensure that all project staff complete the mandatory training on safeguarding.
• Ensure that all SAYE project staff adhere to HPI’s Safeguarding policies and procedures.
• Ensure that all project activities are operated in accordance with HPI’s safeguarding policies including child and youth protection policy, code of conduct, whistleblowing policy and harassment policy with an aim of creating a work environment free from sexual exploitation and abuse of young women and people with disabilities.
• Put in place a feedback and safeguarding response mechanism and ensure accessibility by all project participants.
• Support partners and service providers in introducing and maintaining safeguarding standards by supporting risk assessments, trainings and advisory.
• Monitor project implementation through field visits, focus group discussions and key informant interviews with staff and beneficiaries. Produce reports to demonstrate impact, progress against action plans and inform ongoing and future program design.
• Develop a project referral pathway for managing incidents of safeguarding and ensuring it is updated.
• Provide, collate, and monitor regular, accurate and timely data on safeguarding and child protection incidents and outcomes.

Capacity building (10%)

• Support project partners on developing gender modules, tools and related policies/Strategies.
• Review and provide input in project related training manuals and ensure they address specific gender issues that directly affect target populations.
• Plan for and conduct gender capacity assessments and develop tailor made gender plans for project staff and partners including training and coaching. In doing so, identify capacity gaps in terms of delivering gender programs and addressing issues of masculinity and engaging men and boys in promoting gender equality and equity.

Others:

• Performs any other duty as may be assigned by the supervisor (5%)

Qualifications, Skills and Experience:

• The applicant must hold a Bachelor’s Degree in Gender and Women studies, social sciences, or community development studies plus five years’ experience managing and implementing development activities including those related to gender integration and focusing on sexual exploitation and abuse of women, youth, and vulnerable groups.
• Hands-on experience in planning, designing, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of development programs.
• Knowledge of and experience with developing and conducting youth and gender analysis, including organizing and facilitating youth and gender trainings.
• Experience in developing and planning social capital gender mainstreaming strategies in relation to the economic empowerment of women and youth.
• Clear understanding of HPI’s selected value chains and HPI’s Values-Based Holistic Community Development (VBHCD) model.
• Demonstratable interest in working to prevent sexual exploitation and abuse.
• Strong mentoring and coaching skills.
• Knowledge of and experience in cooperative development.
• Good understanding of the sustainable livelihoods approach and related issues.
• A strong commitment to learning and development for themselves and their team.
• Self-motivated, highly organized, positive attitude, resilient, and willing to learn new skills.
• A good communicator to a range of audiences in both written and oral (Knowledge of some languages locally used in the East and central regions of Uganda)
• Well-developed assessment, analytical and planning skills.
• Proficient knowledge of word processing, spreadsheets, presentation tools, electronic mail (Microsoft office preferred) and internet.
• Proven ability to synthesize and distill information from a variety of source, to draw lessons from project documentation and to summarize complex information accurately and concisely.
• Excellent oral and written reporting skills with the ability to prepare and present documents in a well-designed and attractive format with superior attention to detail.
• Sensitivity to the needs and priorities of disadvantaged populations, particularly women and youth.
• Working in a multi-cultural setting and commitment to promoting teamwork, gender equality and sensitivity to hunger and poverty issues.
• Willingness to travel domestically and internationally, occasionally on short notice.
• Excellent communication and negotiation skills with the ability to relate to individuals diplomatically and tactfully.
• Sound judgment, professionalism, and a positive attitude with the ability to adapt to a rapidly changing environment and in sometimes difficult circumstances.
• Demonstrate a high degree of honesty, professional maturity, sensitivity to different cultures and integrity that exemplify the Foundation’s and Heifer International’s values.
• Ability to work with sensitive information and maintain confidentiality.

Desired:

• Familiarity with national youth and gender policies in Uganda as well as diversity, equal opportunities, and inclusion principles.
• Experience in developing private-public partnerships especially at national and district levels.
• Experience in community group formation and strengthening.
• Experience in a role with a focus on safeguarding, youth, child protection or gender programming and technical training in the same. A job holder with experience directly working with young people especially young women and persons living with disabilities in rural and or at-risk communities will be an added advantage.

How to Apply:

All suitably qualified and interested applicants should apply online at the link below

Click Here

Deadline: 17^th November 2023

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