Consultancy: Consultant, Coordinator for Mission Recovering Education - Education, PG, NYHQ/Home based - Req

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UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential.

Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone.

And we never give up.

For every child, hope.

Vacancy Announcement: Coordinator for Mission Recovering Education

Section/Division/Duty Station: Education/PD/NYHQ

Duration: 60 days between 15 August 2021 – 31 October 2021

About UNICEF

If you are a committed, creative professional and are passionate about making a lasting difference for children, the world's leading children's rights organization would like to hear from you. For 70 years, UNICEF has been working on the ground in 190 countries and territories to promote children's survival, protection and development. The world's largest provider of vaccines for developing countries, UNICEF supports child health and nutrition, good water and sanitation, quality basic education for all boys and girls, and the protection of children from violence, exploitation, and AIDS. UNICEF is funded entirely by the voluntary contributions of individuals, businesses, foundations and governments. UNICEF has over 12,000 staff in more than 145 countries.

BACKGROUND

The COVID-19 pandemic has been the worst shock to education systems in a century, with the longest school closures combined with the worst recessions in decades. More than 1.6 billion children have lost instructional time for many months at a time, if not for much of the last year, and over 630 million children are still not back in school. School closures and the resulting disruptions to school participation and learning have had profound consequences on children’s overall health and wellbeing.

The future of an entire generation is at stake. However, simply reopening schools is not enough. Students need tailored and sustained support to help them readjust and catch-up after the pandemic and they need it urgently.

This is why UNESCO-World Bank-UNICEF, have launched a Mission: Recovering Education 2021 to ensure all children and youth are back in school and receive the tailored services needed to meet their comprehensive needs including learning, health and psychosocial well-being. The Partners are joining forces to support countries to take all actions possible focused on three priorities: bringing all children back to schools, recovering learning losses, and preparing and supporting teachers.

At Global level, the Mission leaders will advocate for these priorities and ensure they are on the global education agenda. This will include joint surveys and data collection that will be made available to support decision-making. Technical assistance will be provided to share the breadth of international experience on successful school reopening and support to scale innovations through structured policy dialogue, knowledge sharing, and peer learning actions. The Mission will further act at the country level to engage with governments and decision-makers to prioritize education financing by mobilizing additional domestic resources to support governments to accelerate and implement actions to advance the three priorities.

For each priority, ambitious targets have been set and will be tracked but with this ambition, there must be fast-paced action to support countries to respond to the overwhelming needs and UNICEF requires a coordinator to support the process.

Terms of Reference / Deliverables

Under the supervision of the Senior Advisor, the purpose of this consultancy is to coordinate the implementation of the Mission: Recovering Education 2021 with the 3 partners as per the workplan at a global level. This will specifically involve coordinating key advocacy events and milestones, implementing the joint communication workplan and a global knowledge management role to disseminate evidence and data to share country level innovations for replication and scale up. The consultancy also aims to further provide technical support to identified priority countries with implementation of the three mission priorities in the process of reopening schools, document lessons and leverage domestic financing as part of the ambitious goals. More specifically, the consultant will:

1. Global/Regional Advocacy- support the communication working group with dissemination of standard key messages to be used by partners at key identified global and regional advocacy events. Track successful interventions and lessons and disseminate for country-level contextualization and support.
2. Global Communications– Support social media and key advocacy messages. Lead on its monitoring with key staff from 3 agencies.
3. Global Knowledge Management – develop a knowledge management system to support the Mission with dissemination of global evidence products; document lessons and support key knowledge sharing events including technical webinars and bimonthly newsletters
4. Country Level Actions
   1. Work with select pilot countries to identify an effective and feasible methodology to develop key milestones for country level implementation
   2. Develop implementation workplan with responsible actions from each agency
   3. Support select countries remotely (and/or through in person visit to one country) to coordinate implementation and report to the steering committee regularly.
   4. Target country level advocacy and financing mobilization activities
   5. Identify relevant technical assistance required to reach priorities - this may involve assessing and analyzing the capacity strengths and weaknesses across relevant priorities at national and sub-national levels in order to align capacity building activities with national sector plans.
   6. Support the reporting of country level milestones including bottlenecks and corrective actions to be taken.
5. Governance, Management and Reporting – work with the Senior Adviser EiE to support the management system between 3 partners to ensure streamlined coordination of the Mission – this includes the Steering and Working Groups and providing secretariat functions and regular reporting.

Supervision: The consultant will be supervised by Senior Education Advisor leading on Mission Education Recovery and Education Specialist supporting its work.

Work Assignment Overview:

1. Global Advocacy for Mission - Coordination of technical inputs manage representation and liaison with partners for special events (as decided by the Steering Committee). Also support operational and administrative preparations for events.

• Updated standardized messages agreed by 3 Partners
• Successful examples shared to countries
• Support Priority countries contextualization and planning

Coordination of technical inputs manage representation and liaison with partners for special events (as decided by the Steering Committee). Also support operational and administrative preparations for events.

2. Global Communication

• Support the implementation of the communication workplan for the Mission including social media
• Support the monitoring with key staff from 3 agencies

3. Knowledge and information management systems developed and kept current

• Knowledge and information management systems developed and regularly updated
• Technical data brief/evidence/webinars disseminated and supported
• Design, write and edit newsletter content. Coordinate submissions and disseminate newsletter

4. Country Level Actions

• Coordinate development of work plans and lead tracking and reporting on work plan implementation for priority countries
• Identify relevant technical assistance required to reach priorities in country
• Support Mission Technical Package as needed
• Support country level advocacy and financing activities
• Work plans revised and updated quarterly if required.

5. Governance, Management and Reporting

• Secretariat functions put in place for Mission
• Prepare and coordinate calls and bi-monthly meeting and reporting (virtual)
• Contribute to research and preparations for requests for proposals for Mission Partners

6. Monthly progress report outlining progress against all listed deliverable and required actions toward completion

• Monthly progress reports submitted to support processing of monthly invoices

Qualifications

(1) Education

• Master’s degree required,
• Advanced degree in relevant field, preferably education, statistics, international development, human development or social sciences, economics

2) Knowledge/Expertise/Skills required:

• 5-8 years professional experience in the field of education; this should include direct programme coordination and management
• Experience in developing advocacy materials, or “how-to guides”.
• Knowledge and experience in education sector planning and monitoring including related capacity building
• Knowledge of global developments and strategies in the area of education.
• Knowledge and experience in supporting countries with capacity development issues.
• Excellent written English language skills.
• Excellent writing skills and ability to synthesize complex information and issues.
• Strong analytical and conceptual thinking.
• Ability to survey literature in other UN languages (ex. French, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese and/or Russian) will be regarded as an asset.
• Ability to organize and plan complex work following the established timeframes.
• Ability to coordinate and work effectively with others and facilitate partner engagement

Requirements****:

• Completed profile in UNICEF's e-Recruitment system and provide Personal History Form (P11) Upload copy of academic credentials
• Financial proposal that will include:
• your daily/monthly rate (in US$) to undertake the terms of reference.
  • travel costs and daily subsistence allowance, if internationally recruited or travel is required as per TOR.
  • Any other estimated costs: visa, health insurance, and living costs as applicable.
  • Indicate your availability
• Any emergent / unforeseen duty travel and related expenses will be covered by UNICEF.
• At the time the contract is awarded, the selected candidate must have in place current health insurance coverage.
• Payment of professional fees will be based on submission of agreed satisfactory deliverables. UNICEF reserves the right to withhold payment in case the deliverables submitted are not up to the required standard or in case of delays in submitting the deliverables on the part of the consultant.

U.S. Visa information:

With the exception of the US Citizens, G4 Visa and Green Card holders, should the selected candidate and his/her household members reside in the United States under a different visa, the consultant and his/her household members are required to change their visa status to G4, and the consultant’s household members (spouse) will require an Employment Authorization Card (EAD) to be able to work, even if he/she was authorized to work under the visa held prior to switching to G4.

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process

For every Child, you demonstrate…

UNICEF’s core values of Commitment, Diversity and Integrity and core competencies in Communication, Working with People and Drive for Results. View our competency framework at: Here

UNICEF is committed to diversity and inclusion within its workforce, and encourages all candidates, irrespective of gender, race, sexual orientation, nationality, culture, appearance, socio-economic status, ability, age, religious, and ethnic backgrounds, to apply to become a part of the organization

UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. UNICEF also adheres to strict child safeguarding principles. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks, and will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles.