Back Influencing Specialist, Mano River Cluster

The Organisation

Plan International is an independent development and humanitarian organisation that advances children’s rights and equality for girls.

We believe in the power and potential of every child. But this is often suppressed by poverty, violence, exclusion and discrimination. And it is girls who are most affected.

Working together with children, young people, our supporters and partners, we strive for a just world, tackling the root causes of the challenges facing girls and all vulnerable children.

We support children’s rights from birth until they reach adulthood. And we enable children to prepare for – and respond to – crises and adversity. We drive changes in practice and policy at local, national and global levels using our reach, experience and knowledge.

We have been building powerful partnerships for children for over 80 years and are now active in more than 70 countries.

The Opportunity

We are in an exciting time at Plan International as we are implementing our global strategy for 2017-2022. Our overall strategy defines who we are, why we exist, the change we want to see in the world, and how we are going to help make it happen. It underpins everything we do, guides all of our work in all regions of the federation. To have a greater impact on children's lives, we are radically changing the way we operate. We need bold, forward-thinking and innovative individuals to lead the operations of our country, bring about change and deliver results that transform the lives of 100 million girls around the world.

Plan International Mano River Cluster counting Senegal, Guinea-Bissau and Guinea are putting their effort together in helping vulnerable children, young people and their families to break the cycle of poverty. Plan International is a well-known and respected player in children and girls’ rights in Senegal, Guinea and Guinea-Bissau with a strong community presence and expertise in gender transformative programming. For fiscal year 2020, almost thirty-five million euros (€ 35,000,000) with four hundred thirty (430) employees are expected to be impacted by our programs.

Plan International’s ambition for its policy and influencing work is to drive changes in policies, behaviours and practices at international, regional, national and local levels, so as to advance children’s rights and equality for girls. Plan International’s new Global Strategy aims to transform the lives of 100 million girls and implement a programme and influence approach to achieve it. National and transboundary level influencing in Mano River Cluster will play a key role in delivering results at scale.

The Mano River Influencing Specialist is responsible for working with the operation and programm team to make Plan International a partner of choice in Senegal, Guinea and Guinea Bissau in the area of girls’ leadership and children rights (i.e. child marriage, FGM). S/he will support the adequate capacity building on influencing of the leadership and staff and ensure that influencing work is streamlined in all our interventions.

As part of the broader organisational effort to transform to achieve greater impact, the Mano River Cluster is going through a transformational change and strategy development process. This process requires leadership of the Mano River Influencing Specialist and experience in making our programs mechanism influencing oriented. The organization is committed to meeting safeguarding expectations across all its programming and will expect the Mano River Influencing Specialist to ensure all aspects related to child and youth safeguarding are mainstreamed in the influencing work and the incidents regarding child and beneficiaries abuse and sexual harassment are reported and effectively managed.

Do you have what it takes?

As a Mano River Cluster Influencing Specialist, you must coordinate, advise on and implement influencing strategies and contribute to Plan International becoming a recognized voice as an advocate for girls’ rights and child rights for each Mano River country (Senegal, Guinea Bissau and Guinea):

• You will develop and manage the strategies and activities of the Mano river cluster (Senegal, Guinea, Guinea Bissau) in the area of influencing.
• You will support country office teams with the development of influencing goals for their country strategies and leading the design, review and implementation of a corresponding Influencing Strategy taking an integrated approach to influencing
• You will contribute to positive policy and legislative changes, as well as increases in national and local budgets, at country level in order to achieve the Country Strategy and the Global Strategy.
• You will leading the development of key advocacy messages, defining effective tactics and partnership strategies, leveraging our influencing strength to mobilise support for change making in the different mano river cluster’s countries.
• You will work closely with the Programme teams to ensure influencing is evidence based and the Programmes and Influencing approach is applied
• You will lead and manage the design and implementation of the Influencing Strategy in coordination with staff and partners, by taking an integrated approach to influencing. Review and update the Influencing strategy as appropriate in response to the evolving context.
• You will ensure that Influencing and PR activities meet Plan International child and youth safeguarding standards and standards for ethical journalism
• You will ensure gender mainstreaming into influencing and public relations activities and maintain gender sensitivity towards staff to avoid discrimination
• You will produce campaign reports and media type productions and promote girls through case studies and assist NOs in productions about girls.
• You will identify and build strategic partnerships and engagement with organisations, networks, political contacts and other key stakeholders to further Plan in the delivery of its influencing agenda.
• You will manage and contribute to the development of Plan International partnerships in relevant fields of expertise and influence including strong and innovative relations with media.
• You will build and maintain relationships, partnerships and networks with advocacy, gender and influencing specialists in other organizations, agencies and institutions.
• You will ensure all interventions identify appropriately the range of risks that arise for children and young people in all their diversity who are engaged in or impacted by such work

For a detailed job description, please click on the below link: Mano River Cluster Influencing Specialist