Public Engagement Manager

With over 70 years of experience, our focus is on helping the most vulnerable children overcome poverty and experience fullness of life. We help children of all backgrounds, even in the most dangerous places, inspired by our Christian faith.

Come join our 33,000+ staff working in nearly 100 countries and share the joy of transforming vulnerable children’s life stories!

Employee Contract Type:

Local - Fixed Term Employee (Fixed Term)Job Description:

The Public Engagement Manager will be responsible for spearheading strategic public engagement, communications, and advocacy initiatives within World Vision Timor-Leste (WVTL). This role guides planning, coordination, management and delivery of the WVTL’s integrated communications program through creative content development, media and public engagement, and digital marketing. This role provides leadership and guidance to WVTL’s public engagement and advocacy sectors, ensuring clear and consistent messages when partnering with key stakeholders like local and national government and technical working groups. This role also ensures community voices for changes are captured and clearly presented to decision makers. This role will also ensure brand and messaging alignment across all corporate publications and collaterals produced in WVTL.

The Public Engagement Manager is part of WVTL’s Senior Management Team (SMT) reporting directly to the Country Director and is matrixed to the Communications and Public Engagement Director for the South Asia Pacific Regional Office. The position will support the SMT in crisis and emergency communications and manages a small team of communication and engagement specialists.

Leadership (30%)

• Provide overall leadership, supervision, mentoring and capacity building to the Communications team.
• Promote a customer centric culture by building professionalism and responsiveness in delivering services to staff and leaders. Lead and motivate staff by example.
• Develop and deliver on an overarching Public Engagement Strategy and an Annual Business Plan which supports the functional and national objectives of WVTL, with measurable outcomes, and ensure effective monitoring/evaluation and reporting.
• Develop and implement WV Timor-Leste Communications Guidelines, Systems and Policies and ensure their adoption across the organization. Manage and monitor needs and incoming requests from other Departments related to communications, ensuring timely response and delivery.
• Manage the communication of risk issues to protect the reputation of the organization.
• Maintain a pool of external contractors and partners for communications surge capacity
• Support effective decision-making within Senior Management Team and escalate any issues needing to be addressed.
• Provide spiritual leadership to staff, facilitating a supportive environment for spiritual formation of staff, the internalization of WV’s Vision, Mission and Core Values, and the full and appropriate expression of World Vision’s Christian identity.

Public Engagement and Communications (30%)

• Represent WVTL at national events and ensure WVTL is represented in key government and development partner events with consistent messaging and strong relationships
• Provide strategic input during grants proposal development to ensure grant communication resources are planned into the grant-life cycle and are adequately funded.
• Ensure communication team produces and package feature stories, photos, videos and issues-oriented reports high-quality creative content bringing out strong messaging on WVTL’s ministry, and ensure all creative products are marketable, packaged for different audiences and different platforms and have a wide reach to improve grant funding opportunities and ensure effective donor and public engagement.
• Liaise with National and Local Press to support Programmes’ media coverage.
• Act as communication lead during a media crisis.
• Develop and maintain external stakeholder engagement list
• Plan key national-level events aligned with WVTL strategy and/or ensure WVTL representation and visibility during international/national days, such as International Children’s Day and 16 Days of Activism.

Advocacy & Executive Communications (20%)

• Ensure there is a consistent and clear advocacy agenda across the organization along with key messages in support of WVTL’s strategy
• Work with WVTL leadership / managers / technical specialists to deliver advocacy messages to the right audiences
• Collaborate with local-level (CVA) advocacy leads to develop community-led messages
• Support the production of communications resources requested by the National Director.
• Increase the visibility of WVTL within the Partnership through existing and innovative channels which include LinkedIn, executive speaking, editorial and media opportunities; strategic external engagements.

Creative Content Creation (15%)

• Oversee productive pitching and provision of stories and photos to/through “ContentFlow” and other WV Communications platforms like StoryHub, thereby ensuring that all such assignments are produced on schedule while meeting professional standards for informing, educating and engaging target audiences such as donors.
• Oversee the production and updating of quality documents for positioning WVTL efforts towards attaining child well-being including annual reports, publications, sectorial fact sheets, etc.
• Review and give oversight to all external WVTL’s communications, including articles, blogs, appeals, website and social media, and ensure compliance with World Vision’s brand guidelines.
• Ensure 100% alignment of WVTL to the Branding Guidelines and that all visibility material are reviewed by Comms for approval.

Emergency Communications (5%)

• Ensure communication team members can rapidly deploy to disaster zones if/as required to produce quality stories and photos for WVTL and the WV Partnership.
• Liaise with national media during emergencies, providing them with information, content and assistance if/as required.
• Be responsible for revising the Communications Disaster Preparedness Plans.

Required Qualifications, Knowledge and Skills

• 5+ years of development/ humanitarian and/or external communications/PR experience is preferred; commensurate experience will be considered.
• Bachelor’s Degree or an advanced Diploma in, media studies, journalism, Communications, English, or related field
• Excellent oral and written (English and Tetum) communications skills
• Creative storyteller that is able to communicate effectively across a wide range of stakeholders
• Excellent knowledge of the government and media climate within Timor-Leste and proven track record of establishing successful relationships
• Excellent knowledge on sensitivities related to country, cultures and ethnicities
• Skills in grants communication and reporting
• Skill in leading a multi-role team with clarity
• Ability to switch on to emergency mode when required and do a quick change of priorities
• Ability to work collaboratively with staff and leadership to think strategically
• Ability to handle multiple and varied tasks with ease, while demonstrating a high level of accuracy
• Strong computer skills that include Microsoft Office, various social media (Facebook, Youtube, etc) and familiarity with relational donor databases
• Ability to work collaboratively in a team-oriented environment while taking ownership of assigned duties and initiatives

Applications must be submitted through Workday by 2 January 2024.

World Vision Timor-Leste applies the safeguarding of children and vulnerable adults and has zero tolerance towards incidents of violence or abuse against children or adults, including sexual exploitation or abuse, committed either by employees or others affiliated with WV Timor-Leste's work. World Vision Timor-Leste is committed to diversity and inclusion within its workforce, and encourage candidates of diverse background, women and differently-abled, to apply.

Applicant Types Accepted:

Local Applicants Only