Civic Engagement Advisor

Job Purpose:

The primary responsibility for this position is to develop and support positive youth engagement with wider communities through civic engagement. This involves providing leadership and expertise to improve democratic engagement between citizens and government institutions as well as in establishing community service and volunteering packages based on the needs of the cities. The position holder will cultivate and sustain multilayered partnerships that give IYA opportunities to initiate and participate in a wide range of civic engagement activities. S/He will be expected to interact regularly with youth, communities, local authorities, civil society leaders, and media organizations. S/He will develop strategic plans that allows youth to learn about social and public issues as engaged citizens and through the lens of equality and diversity.

Main Duties and Responsibilities:

S/He will provide technical leadership on youth and partners engagement in the civic awareness, conflict management, peace building, democratic engagement between citizens and government institutions, community services, local decision-making processes and citizen monitoring and oversight mechanisms. S/He will:

• Lead the development of program strategies, guidelines, bylaws and SOPs, planning, and implementation of civic engagement activities across all IYA result areas.
• Work with the youth coalitions to ensure a rational and peaceful youth coalition movement.
• Lead context assessment, prioritization of implementation cities based on the ground context and lead context tailored civic engagement activities.
• Provide strategic guidance to kefeta youth coalitions to ensure meaningful youth engagement supported through roadmap to ensure the youth coalitions become sustaining youth-led entities
• Track participation of youth coalitions and other youth in kefeta implementation for the outlined youth engagement roadmap, and provide feedback as necessary
• Support Kefeta national, regional, and city level coalitions to conduct community kick of meetings, prioritize community challenges, identify community action projects; mobilize domestic resource to match with small grants from kefeta and follow up implementation of social grant projects
• Support Kefeta consortium teams design and implement intervention on peace building among youth focusing on strengthening social cohesion and conflict prevention; dispute resolution, mediation, and conflict management; preventing/countering violent extremism; governance; and youth empowerment.
• Provide strategic guidance to youth coalitions and consortium partners on cascading meaningful volunteerism activity to address priority community issues
• Collaborate with relevant stakeholders to build the capacity of the youth coalitions as youth-led CSOs and in the effort to mobilize resources for their organizational development
• Work on Improving Kefetas youth coalition membership base, document their profile in database and follow up their equal participation
• Link with relevant sectors to designing and supporting the implementation civic engagement activities and share kefetas experiences.
• Build the capacity of civil society organizations in technical areas related to civic rights and duties of citizens and government accountability
• Lead inclusive citizen and civil society organization engagement with local government through existing mechanisms for oversight and participation in decision-making;
• Contribute in documenting implementation successes, challenges, and lessons learned;
• Provide mentoring and professional development support to Cluster Hubs, City hubs and project staff, with emphasis on building capacity of national staff;

Academic Qualification:

• Masters degree in law, Peace and Security, Political science, and Social science, from a recognized university;
• Relevant professional qualification

Required Experience:

• 7 years of experience on civic engagement and youth advocacy related works
• Experience on coaching and mentoring youth groups
• Experience and strong networking and communication and presentation skills

Required Skills:

• Strong interpersonal and communication skills with the ability to establish and maintain solid relationships with a diverse actors.
• Ability to handle difficult communication through a variety of channels, performs well under pressure.
• Demonstrated understanding of diversity, equity and inclusionary practices, engagement best practices and cultural competence.
• Demonstrated competencies in community engagement and/or organizing, outreach methods, active listening, conflict resolution and compromise.
• Ability to operationalize strategy into action for the function
• Ability to sell the vision, Business/Financial Acumen, Business Savvy, Innovative.