Senior Advisor Youth Employment and Markets

General Position Summary

The Interim Senior Advisor position plays a key role in the development of Mercy Corps’ youth employment strategy, and provides technical support and capacity strengthening to Mercy Corps’ youth employment program teams. While the current Senior Advisor is on STA, this 6-month cover will focus on two areas of responsibility:

  • drive Mercy Corps’ strategy to Thought Leadership & Influence and M&E of youth employment programs;
  • building on the existing foundations of the MSD4E (market systems development for employment) initiative to drive forward Mercy Corps’ work to embed market systems development (MSD) in its employment work. Alongside this work, the Senior Advisor will provide general technical support as needed to the portfolio.

Essential Job Responsibilities

Research, Learning and Thought Leadership

  • Build on draft Thought Leadership & Influence Strategy to create a stronger foundational theory of change, identifying which research questions need to be addressed, and what audiences and purposes the resulting evidence and insights would be targeted to.
  • Create Newsletter Strategy/Implementation Plan (including content plan, development plan)
  • Lead the launch of Mercy Corps’ Youth Employment Newsletter including:
  1. Expand on ‘influence list’ of relevant and interested youth employment stakeholders
  2. Set-up Newsletter template on Mailchimp including mailing lists
  3. Lead opt-in process and create the first Youth Employment Newsletter for launch
  • Complement external Thought Leadership activities with managing an internal Community of Practice, anchored in a monthly newsletter

Lead development of youth employment MEL guidance

  • Build on MEL component of Thought Leadership & Influence strategy, to create a clear framework for measuring youth employment at Mercy Corps
  • Develop guidance for country teams on MEL in youth employment programs
  • Work with other members of the youth employment TSU team to rollout guidance

Steer MSD4E Initiative

  • Provide technical support to portfolio programs, and support non MSD4E programs to onboard an MSD4E approach and join the portfolio
  • Provide mentoring and training to Mercy Corps staff across the agency on MSD4E
  • Develop guidelines and tools to support implementation
  • Guide programs and position Mercy Corps as the lead implementer of MSD4E. Carry out targeted advocacy with key donors, develop case studies and provide a lead role in business development

Provide general support to Mercy Corps youth employment portfolio

  • Provide technical assistance to country programs on areas including program design, assessments, and implementation challenging
  • Provide training and support to programs around other challenges they face, from designing to implementing to measuring programs
  • Liaise closely with other TSU teams and Mercy Corps functions

Knowledge and Experience

  • 5+ years of experience providing increasingly proficient management or technical support in employment and market systems development, including:
  • Guiding programs on assessment, design and implementation
  • Working with public or private actors to develop sustainable business models to support target groups
  • Producing and publishing influential assessments, articles and blogs related to market systems approaches.
  • Leading proposal development processes.
  • Clear experience in the practical realities and challenges of facilitation activities
  • Experience leading the development of thought leadership, influence, and/or MEL systems
  • Development of learning strategies
  • Development of MEL tools related to employment
  • Production of high quality research and learning outputs
  • Rollout, training and/or supervision of others using MEL tools
  • Thought leadership engagement with donors or other stakeholders in the youth employment space
  • Familiarity with major donors such as USAID, Sida, AFD and relevant foundations and corporations.
  • Experience working across different geographies, ideally with practical field experience;
  • Willingness and ability to travel frequently to Mercy Corps project sites and field locations, including traveling to insecure environments, is required.
  • A proven proactive approach to work – ideas for new initiatives or activities is a strong plus
  • Fluency in English is required; fluency in French, Spanish or Arabic a strong plus
  • Relevant experiences from other roles can be used to compensate for less than required skills in the above requirements

Living Conditions / Environmental Conditions

The position requires travel at least 30% time to the field where living conditions may be exceptionally rugged or be in volatile environments where security protocols will need to be followed.

The position can be based out of UK or Netherland, Kenya, Nigeria or Jordan

For more details and application: https://jobs.jobvite.com/mercycorps/job/oqKHffwQ

You may also like...