Senior Advisor, Youth Livelihoods and Employment

Summary

The Senior Advisor Youth Livelihoods (SAYL) is a member of Save the Children US (SCUS)’s Food Security, Livelihoods (FSL) technical team. The FSL Technical team supports SCUS’ global portfolio of programs related to agricultural development, natural resource management, climate change adaptation, market systems development, enterprise development, financial services, women’s economic empowerment and youth economic opportunities.

The SAYL will manage technical quality of youth related programming as a cross-cutting theme across projects as well as for targeted youth economic empowerment projects; Integrating relevant economic strengthening strategies including promotion of entrepreneurship, employment, employability, transferable life skills, entrepreneurship, and financial capability. The SAYL will ensure effective integration of a Positive Youth Development approach in programming and lead the development of technical approaches and evidence models for SCUS’s global priorities related to youth engagement in agricultural value chains and addressing climate change in Food Systems.

What You’ll Be Doing (Essential Duties)

Technical Leadership for Quality Programming (40%):

• Provide technical assistance to a portfolio of projects deploying economic strengthening strategies targeted at young people – focusing on cost-effectiveness, building a solid evidence base, and moving innovations to scale.
• Maintain a line of sight into technical quality of all youth economic strengthening technical assistance at the country level through productive relationships with Country Office (CO) staff, enabling the timely provision of appropriate technical inputs and oversight, as well as the distillation and documentation of lessons learned.
• Contribute to the development, dissemination, and monitoring of program quality tools (including assessments, frameworks and Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) systems).
• Lead the best practice documentation and learning for both internal and external audiences to position Save the Children as a thought leader in youth economic strengthening work.
• Facilitate cross-program linkages, across Save’s global movement’s portfolio and multi sectoral.
• Provide direction and support to the design, testing, and evaluation of innovations to advance youth integration in FSL programming.

Resource Development (30%):

• Serve as the technical contributor or lead on relevant FSL proposals, including capture planning, positioning, information gathering, partnership brokering, program design facilitation, decision-making, and technical writing.
• For interdisciplinary programs, coordinate with other SCUS departments and external partners to develop a coherent, high-impact integrated approach.
• Support CO team members in analyzing information and formulating effective technical strategies, integrating best practices and innovations.
• Conduct training and orientation for program design team members to ensure all relevant information is on hand to inform a sound design process.
• Participate in-person in design workshops, assessments, team writing assignments, and other proposal processes.
• Engage in proposal after action reviews, guaranteeing that lessons learned are incorporated into subsequent efforts.
• Develop and sustain FSL-related relationships with donors (with a particular emphasis on United States Agency for International Development (USAID)/Bureau of Humanitarian Affairs (BHA), USAID/ Bureau for Resilience and Food Security (RFS), United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), United Nations (UN) and private donors/foundations), partners and academic institutions.

Knowledge Management & Learning (20%)

• Lead or participate in documentation and presentation of the design of learning studies.
• Contribute to an evidence base for effective youth integration in FSL implementation modalities.
• Lead or participate in maintaining updated capacity statements, program descriptions, or other documentation useful in articulating youth specific approaches to address FSL deficits.
• Confirm technical tools and materials are filed according to DHL knowledge management protocols, so team members may access them.

Advocacy & External Representation (10%)

• Participate in the development of youth livelihoods related policy and advocacy positions and champion dissemination.
• Represent DHL on relevant technical and coordination working groups.

Required Qualifications

• Minimum of a Bachelor Degree or equivalent experience, plus at least 7 years of relevant experience
• Successful proposal development track record, especially for US Government funding sources
• Ability to synthesize high-quality knowledge products from diverse data sources including programmatic materials and tools
• Ability to engage at both detailed project/programmatic level and big-picture view of industry
• Talent for building strong working relationships across cultural and organizational boundaries, and managing through influence
• Willingness and ability to travel internationally up to 30%
• Professional proficiency in MS Office suite
• Professional proficiency in spoken and written English
• Demonstrated ability to communicate and collaborate effectively with individuals and teams at all levels, both internally and externally
• Demonstrated commitment to fostering and maintaining an environment of diversity, inclusion, and belonging.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with other sectoral youth development strategies; particularly with reference to nutrition
• Experience working with DHL’s priority donors particularly USAID BHA, RFS and USDA
• Relevant Master’s degree
• Experience implementing programs supporting youth in agriculture and inclusive finance for youth
• Monitoring, evaluation and learning dissemination skills and experience
• French or Spanish language ability

Compensation

Save the Children is offering the following salary ranges for this position, dependent on candidate location:

• Geo 1 – NY Metro, DC, and other locations with labor costs significantly above national average: Target Salary for this position is $108,800 – $121,600 base salary
• Geo 2 – Locations around the US National Labor Cost Average: Target Salary for this position is $98,600 – $110,200 base salary
• Geo 3 – Locations significantly below the US National Labor Cost Average: Target Salary for this position is $88,400 – $98,800 base salary

Actual base salary may vary based upon, but not limited to, relevant experience, base salary of internal peers, business sector, and geographic location (more information on job structure is available here). Employee may be eligible for an incentive program. Save the Children also offers paid vacation, accrued at least 12 days a year, depending on paygrade and length of service, paid safety and wellness leave of at least 1 day per month worked for a full time employee which is pro rata reduced for employees working less than a full time schedule, and at least 10 paid holidays a year. Employees may be eligible for additional bonus compensation. Save the Children US also offers outstanding benefits that include health, dental, vision and life insurances, short-term and long-term disability coverage, an Employee Assistance Program, a retirement savings plan with employer contribution, family leave, paid parental/adoption leave of 60 days, commuter benefits, paid caregiver leave days, 1 paid volunteer day a year, paid critical child illness leave days, dress for your day, and much more.