Regional Technical Advisor II - Youth & Social Inclusion, Central Africa Regional Office

Job Title: Regional Technical Advisor II – Youth & Social Inclusion, Central Africa Regional Office

Job Location: Remote, Telecommuting

Reports to: CARO Deputy Regional Director for Program Quality (DRD PQ)

Salary Grade: 10

About CRS 

Catholic Relief Services is the official international humanitarian agency of the Catholic community in the United States. CRS works to save, protect, and transform lives in need in more than 100 countries, without regard to race, religion or nationality. CRS’ relief and development work is accomplished through programs of emergency response, HIV, health, agriculture, education, microfinance and peacebuilding. 

Job Summary

You will provide technical advice, guidance, and support to a wide range of program design and implementation issues with a focus on larger projects in the areas of youth and social inclusion programming in line with Catholic Relief Services (CRS) program quality principles and standards, donor guidelines, and industry best practices to regional and Country Program (CP) teams to advance the delivery of high-quality programming to the poor and vulnerable. Your technical knowledge, advice and guidance will contribute to determining how effective, adaptive and innovative CRS’ youth and social inclusion programming is across the globe.

Roles and Key Responsibilities

• Contribute to the development and implementation of agency-wide and regional strategies, standards, tools and best practices in youth and social inclusion that effectively engage partners, donors, and governments. Help to ensure a cross-sectoral approach integrating gender, protection mainstreaming, and disaster risk reduction.
• Provide technical solutions to regional and CP teams, remotely and on-site, for strategic planning and how to best apply program and implementation standards, best practices, partnership principles, tools and M&E, ensuring high-quality implementation.
• Contribute to, and in some cases lead, regional and CP efforts to pre-position CRS for growth opportunities in youth and social inclusion programming and integration in key sectors. Lead or contribute to the development of the technical design for large and/or complex proposals, including conducting relevant youth assessments or other social analyses, defining subsequent appropriate youth strategies, and defining appropriate monitoring systems and indicators, as relevant.  As needed, act as a technical writer on proposal development teams. Advise project teams on integrating donor strategies, priorities and technical requirements into CRS’ approach.
• Contribute to capacity strengthening initiatives in youth and social inclusion programming for staff and partner through helping develop learning and training strategies and agendas/curriculums, conducting trainings and workshops, and mentoring and coaching CP staff.
• Contribute to the Central Africa Regional Office (CARO) youth and social inclusion knowledge management and learning by collecting and analyzing program data, evaluating strategic projects’ youth and social inclusion strategies, assisting with measuring impact, capturing and sharing lessons learned and best practices for specific projects to facilitate improvements in decision-making and contributing to the youth and social inclusion learning agenda.
• Lead CARO’s staff working on youth programming through regular coaching of key staff, online and in-person training and learning initiatives, and effective remote communications.
• Establish and maintain relationships with donors, peer organizations, research and other institutions. Participate in forums in the area of youth and social inclusion to collect and share best practices and promote CRS’ work.

Basic Qualifications 

• Master's Degree in International Development, or related fields required.
• Minimum of five years relevant international working experience in an advisory or management role with progressive responsibilities, ideally with an international NGO, with minimum of three years working for programming interventions in youth and social inclusion.
• Previous experience providing technical assistance and developing successful proposals for external donor funding is required.
• Demonstrated application of technical principles and concepts of positive youth development, systems thinking and youth livelihoods, including youth workforce development and youth entrepreneurship. General knowledge of other related disciplines, especially peacebuilding and social cohesion, education, health and nutrition, emergency response, and disability and protection mainstreaming, to ensure proper cross-sectoral approaches.
• Experience in business developme