SENIOR TECHNICAL ADVISOR, YOUTH SKILLING

Work Location: US - Atlanta, GA

Type of Post: Not Applicable

Other Possible Location: Remote Work Location

Funding: APPROVED

Expected Travel: up to 30%

Type of Contract: Local

Language Requirement: English, Spanish, French or Arabic

Application Deadline:

Employee Duration: Full-Time

JOB SUMMARY:

CARE is committed to gender equality and empowerment of women and girls to end poverty. As such, CARE’s education, skills, and adolescent empowerment priorities are embedded in its poverty reduction and social justice efforts. CARE focuses on the most marginalized and hard-to-reach young people who have been left out of formal education. Its priorities include developing academic abilities and life and leadership skills to help young people seize social and economic opportunities and become engaged members of society. CARE also recognizes the unique needs of adolescents and youth and has developed frameworks and approaches to meet them.

The Education and Skills Team (E&S) is a Unit within the Program Strategy and Innovation (PSI) Department. The Senior Technical Advisor-Youth Skilling (STA-YS) is a key member and leader of the E&S team part of the Technical Support Cluster and reports to the Unit’s Director of Technical Support with a dotted line to the Unit’s Senior Director, given its strategic focus. The STA-YS works closely with members of the Technical Support Cluster and with the E&S Team’s other clusters: Research, Advocacy and Learning (RAAL) and Operations (Ops) as well as with the Senior Technical Advisor-Adolescent Empowerment (STA-AE). The STA-YS is also a strategic role within PSI to support the advancement of CARE’s integrated approaches to serving youth with holistic skill development. The STA-YS also works collaboratively with other teams, departments, and country offices across the organization.

The STA-YS primarily provides technical leadership and support to program staff in CARE Country Offices (COs) and CARE Member Partners (CMPs), implementing integrated programming that equips youth (ages 15-24) with relevant skills for work and life. The STA-YS sets and champions the vision and plan for advancing this work in close collaboration with the Sr. Director, other Directors, and other colleagues across CARE. The STA-YS also supports knowledge, learning, and positioning by helping to identify and synthesize emerging trends and innovative work in youth skilling and by sharing findings more broadly to promote learning. As such, the STA-YS will need to champion CARE’s work with youth internally and externally, building solid working relationships with development partners and other stakeholders. The STA-YS also supports resource mobilization to generate additional funding for youth programming. Finally, the STA-YS is a part of the E&S team and is expected to participate in all key meetings and take on additional relevant tasks as/where needed across the team, Department, and organization.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

Technical Strategy for Youth Skilling

• Champion CARE’s technical approaches to support integrated youth skilling, incorporating them within CARE’s impact area strategies and its work in Education, Skills, and Adolescent Empowerment.
• As part of such, the STA-YS will set and achieve annual goals for integrated programming in youth skills.
• In particular, this advisor will take the lead on advancing holistic approaches that build contextually relevant hard and soft skills among young people, including skills for employment and entrepreneurship. This advisor will also take the lead on developing a youth programming toolkit, in collaboration with other teams across CARE.
• Co-lead CARE’s Adolescent and Youth Working Group (A&YWG) for the E&S Team in coordination with the STA-AE and other team(s), setting a clear agenda and annual work plan with milestones.
• Lead other committees/groups/platforms that may arise to advance integrated youth programming within PSI and CARE.

Technical Support and Capacity Strengthening on Youth Models

• As assigned, provide technical leadership and support to individual, large projects in applying approaches to meet youth’s various needs. As part of such, the STA-YS will lead and/or support the completion of complex technical deliverables and reports in close coordination with project and country office teams as well as to work closely with other project stakeholders, including the government, other partners, and the private sector.
• As with other technical advisors, they will be expected to work with the other clusters to support the project teams in the tracking and completion of project workplans, deliverables, and reports using CARE program quality and donor standards.
• The STA-YS is expected to engage proactively and regularly with project staff to identify where they can best lead and/or support.
• The STA-YS is expected to travel as needed to support project deliverables, implementation, and monitoring and learning visits.
• Provide technical leadership and support to portfolios of projects, including skills for work. This will require developing and completing comprehensive reports and other technical deliverables to document the progress of and to advance these portfolios of projects within CARE and externally.
• Provide capacity strengthening support to other team members, project teams, and country offices, etc., on models to support youth, particularly through education and skills development.

Knowledge Management, Learning, and External Positioning

• Identify and incorporate best practices for integrated models globally for youth skilling in CARE’s approaches and strategies.
• Track, analyze, document, and raise up evidence and learning from CARE’s youth skilling initiatives in meaningful ways for CARE colleagues and external audiences to learn from and use.
• Identify and advance opportunities to highlight CARE’s work with youth in coordination with other team members, other teams, and externally.
• Represent the team internally related to program quality, research and impact measurement to promote integrated programming for shared impact groups such as within the Adolescent & Youth Working Group.
• Represent CARE at strategic external conferences, working groups, and coalitions that are part of youth programming spaces. This will require them to develop and deliver presentations and actively network and collaborate with peer organizations (INGOs and NGOs), think tanks, universities, research centers, etc., that are engaged in work on similar topics.
• Support the establishment and advancement of strategic partnerships with external organizations, groups, coalitions, etc. also engaged in youth programming.

Resource Mobilization

• Support in the creation of the vision for growth and associated resource mobilization needed for integrated youth programming in coordination with the Senior Director, Directors, and other teams.
• Serve as a technical lead and/or as technical support on relevant resource mobilization opportunities, including drafting and reviewing complex concepts and proposals, integrating best practices, CARE’s evidence, and CARE’s quality program standards.

QUALIFICATIONS:

• A Master’s or advanced degree in Education, International Development, or a related field.
• At least 10 years working with youth in designing and implementing integrated programming, ideally in development contexts.
• A strong understanding of global approaches to skill youth, including for employment and entrepreneurship.
• Ability to think strategically to move forward the portfolio of projects as well as to the ability to advance individual projects/initiatives.
• Facilitation and training experience and facilitation of participatory program development and capacity building, ideally related to youth programming.
• Experience developing and tailoring training materials to build implementation capacity and understanding around best practices in youth empowerment approaches and models.
• Familiarity with research/analytical skills including measurement tools, ideally related to youth programming.
• Experience leading the design of integrated programs through complex concept notes and proposals, ideally related to youth programming and ideally with key institutional donors including USG (USAID, USDA, DOL, etc.), FCDO, GPE, and others.

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