Regional Adolescent Development and Participation (ADAP) Officer

Volunteering Communications & PR

Overview

Support adolescent development initiatives across Latin America and the Caribbean

You have:

• At least 3 years of experience in working with adolescents and young people, especially in facilitating groups and training processes.
• Experience in gender programming is an asset, as is experience working in the UN or other international development organization.
• High degree of work and personal ethics and integrity, including understanding of child safeguarding and PSEA principles.
• Excellent oral and written skills, excellent drafting, formulation and organization skills.
• Self-motivated, well organized and with the ability to work with minimum supervision, ability to work with tight deadlines.
• Strong digital literacy, including proficiency in MS Office and the ability to quickly learn and adapt to new software and applications.

Contract

This is a UNV International Specialist contract. This kind of contract is known as International UN Volunteer. It is normally internationally recruited only. More about UNV International Specialist contracts.

The UNICEF Strategic Plan for 2022-25 emphasizes structural and norms change to transform the underlying drivers of gender inequality and reflects an intersectional approach to the compounding social exclusion and marginalization related to factors like poverty, racism, disability and migration. With this new, transformative approach, UNICEF is strengthening the mainstreaming of gender equality throughout our programming and systems, while increasing investment in gender-related data.

UNICEF works to ensure that adolescent wellbeing, development and participation established under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, international treaties, and UN intergovernmental bodies, are integrated in UNICEF’s advocacy, policies, programmes, and humanitarian work. UNICEF focuses our efforts in working together meaningfully and safely with adolescent and young people to accelerate the realization of the SDGs.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, UNICEF has a Regional Office (LACRO) based in Panama, and 24 country offices (CO) operating in 36 countries and territories. The UNV will support Adolescent Development and Participation (ADAP) and Gender teams to accelerate results for the positive development and wellbeing of adolescents and young people with a special focus on girls their empowerment, participation and leadership.

The UNV will focus in 3 main areas: 1) Support the implementation of the Adolescent Girls Strategy in LAC, in particular the coordination of the Regional UNICEF Adolescent Girls Task Force, 2) facilitate the creation and functioning of a Regional UNICEF Adolescent Action Board, 3) Support adolescents’ and young people’s engagement across sectors and in key regional events.

Within delegated authority, the UN Volunteer will be responsible for the following tasks:

Support to the implementation of the Regional Adolescent Girls’ Strategy and Task Force coordination:

 Support the development and implementation of strategies to advance UNICEF’s adolescent girls' agenda across the region.  Organize and facilitate regular meetings for the Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) adolescent girls' task force and its working groups, ensuring active participation and collaboration among all members, producing documents and inputs as requested by task force Chairs.  Maintain, monitor and report on the progress of the task force’s workplans to its Chairs and Latin America and the Caribbean Regional Office (LACRO) leadership as required.  Maintain a regional tracker for adolescent girl funding in the region, supporting country offices (COs) to meet their donor reporting obligations timely and in line with expected requirements.  Facilitate communication with internal and external stakeholders and partners on issues related to adolescent girls to build partnership and drive collaborative efforts.  Support the organization of webinars, training sessions and workshops in areas related to adolescent girls' development and participation.  Provide technical support and guidance to country offices on integrating the adolescent girls' agenda into their programming.  Coordinate the meaningful participation of adolescent girls in the task force initiatives as well as towards the Regional Conference of Women (to be held in Mexico in November 2025).

Coordination of Regional UNICEF Adolescent Action Board:

 Coordinate the selection and orientation process of the Adolescent Action Board based on established criteria.  Together with board members, develop and support implementation of a joint workplan, ensuring their voices shape the Adolescent Action Board (AAB) conformation and plan.  Design and implement a methodology to build community and peer support among board members, fostering collaboration and mentorship.  Manage a real-time virtual community using Whatsapp, Teams, Zoom and any other virtual tools to support the Adolescent Action Board (AAB) advance their workplan and receive mutual support.  Apply all UNICEF safeguarding protocols to guarantee the meaningful and safe participation of the members.  Coordinate regular meetings with the members and lease with UNICEF teams to implement action plan.  Facilitate activities and participation of Adolescent Action Board members in the adolescent girl’s taskforce and other related initiatives.  Document the process of the creation of the board, as well as interest stories of its members and other communication content.

Adolescents’ and young people’s engagement in programming and advocacy:

 Support and facilitate the participation of adolescents and young people, including through capacity building, training sessions in key regional events (i.e, International Summit for the School to Work transition, Convention on the Rights of the Child, 35th Anniversary (CRC35), High Level summit on Innovation on Youth Policies, Regional Conference of Women, and others).  Coordinate logistics and administrative process for participation of adolescent and young people in presential events including travel, safeguarding measures, preparation of adolescent friendly materials, orientations sessions.  Support adolescent programming, including, where relevant, with a focus on adolescent girls, to foster strong collaboration on adolescent and young people engagement and participation aligned to key regional priorities and events.  Support co-creation with young people and innovations aligned to UNICEF programming and key events.  Support in the development of funding proposals linked to the key regional events, the UNICEF global adolescent girl priority and adolescents and young people’s priorities.

Annual reporting analysis and quality assurance:

 Support the regional quality assurance and technical review of ADAP and Gender CO annual reports, including narrative reports (COARs), results reports (in the RAM platform) and indicator reporting, extracting and collating relevant information for the regional team’s analysis.  Support the drafting of the ADAP and Gender sections of the regional office annual report (ROAR).

 Care, respect, integrity, trust and accountability  Builds and maintains partnerships  Demonstrates self-awareness and ethical awareness  Drive to achieve results for impact  Manages ambiguity and complexity  Works collaboratively with others

international development, with proven project management experience. At least 3 years of experience in working with adolescents and young people, especially in facilitating groups and training processes in virtual and physical environments.  Experience in gender programming is an asset, as is experience working in the UN or other international development organization.  Have affinity with and interest in gender equality, adolescent empowerment and participation of young people, volunteerism.  High degree of work and personal ethics and integrity, including understanding of child safeguarding and PSEA (protection from sexual abuse and exploitation) principles.  Excellent oral and written skills, excellent drafting, formulation and organization skills. Experience in writing guides and documents aimed at a young audiences.  Excellent interpersonal skills, culturally and socially sensitive, ability to work inclusively and collaboratively with a range of partners across the region, in a multicultural team.  Self-motivated, well organized and with the ability to work with minimum supervision, ability to work with tight deadlines.  Strong digital literacy, including proficiency in MS Office (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Teams) and the ability to quickly learn and adapt to new software, applications, and digital tools. Experience using social media platforms, virtual collaboration tools, and emerging technologies to engage adolescents and optimize work processes.

Panama is in Central America with a population of 4,300,000 million, the official language is Spanish, but most Panamanians are bilingual. Panama has a lower crime rate than many other countries in the region. Panama City is largely a safe city – but care does need to be taken in some areas and with personal property. It is your choice whether you opt for a house or an apartment. Beautiful spacious houses, with gardens are available. Those staff that have opted for an apartment have done so on the basis that they offer more security and more facilities. The US Dollar is used as a legal currency in Panama. There are also coins of the Balboa, which is the national currency, similar in shape and value to the US Dollar. Please make sure to leave Panama only with US Dollar currency, as there are some international difficulties changing the Balboa abroad. Panama has a tropical climate with practically the same average temperature of 27°C year-round with 78% humidity. The rainy season in Panama is from March until November each year, we recommend you bring an umbrella. The air conditioning may be cool at times in the office and in local shops, so we suggest you bring a jacket or sweater.

The voltage in Panama is 110v, 60 cycle with two and three prong plugs. Wall plugs are mostly for 110v. In some properties there may by 220v for air conditioning or similar. Current fluctuations are common and electricity cuts are still possible. There are many clinics and medical centers in Panama:

For your information, below the largest private hospitals in Panama City. Hospital Paitilla +507 265 8888 +507 265 8800 Hospital Pacífica Salud [former Punta Pacífica] +507 204 8184 +507 204 8000 Hospital San Fernando +507 305 6305 +507 305 6300 Hospital Nacional +507 306 3300 +507 207 8100 There is also an Emergency Ambulance service, government-owned 911.

If you open a local bank account, banks in Panama request the following documents. - Reference letter from your bank. - Present original and bring copy of your national Passport, - Employment letter.

In addition to duty station specific vaccine requirements, appointments are subject to confirmation of fully vaccinated status against SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) with a World Health Organization (WHO)-endorsed vaccine, which must be met prior to taking up the appointment. It does not apply to UN Volunteers who will work remotely and are not expected to work on or visit UNICEF premises, programme delivery locations or directly interact with communities UNICEF works with, nor to travel to perform functions for UNICEF for the duration of their contracts.

UNICEF offers reasonable accommodation for UN Volunteers with disabilities. This may include, for example, accessible software, travel assistance for missions or personal attendants. We encourage you to disclose your disability during your application in case you need reasonable accommodation during the recruitment process and afterwards in your assignment.

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Potential interview questions

Added 1 year ago - Updated 1 year ago - Source: unv.org