Advisor, Early Childhood Care and Development (P3)

Staff whose work requires or potentially could require any in-person interaction with Save the Children colleagues, partners, or beneficiaries must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 unless otherwise required by law. Save the Children complies with federal, state, and local laws with regard to accommodations related to this policy.

Summary

Save the Children seeks to scale-up throughout our global movement, two Early Childhood Care and Development (ECCD) Common Approaches:

• Building Brains: Early Stimulation for Children from Birth to Three
• Ready to Learn: a program that helps three to six-year-old children develop foundational literacy and math skills.

You will play a strategic role in ensuring this happens, while working closely with the ECCD Lead Advisor. You will be a member of the ECCD team with a central focus on partnerships, scaling-up, and positioning ECCD as a leading cross-sectoral intervention for equity and resilience with lifelong benefits.

You will work with a global team to build capacity on technical ECCD packages, implementation of the organizational strategy for climate change, education technology, gender, equity, disability inclusion, and growth of the ECCD portfolio.  You will play an integral role in promoting holistic school readiness skills and transitions in the early childhood years.

What You’ll Be Doing (Essential Duties)

Technical Support & Quality Programming (45%)

• Provide technical programming, design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation support to Country Offices with ECCD programming for children from birth to eight years
• Adapt, test, and refine Early Childhood Development (ECD) products and programs based on Country Office (CO) needs
• Identify and implement cross-sectoral programming to optimize young children’s developmental outcomes
• Encourage the adaptation and scale-up of parenting programs through health, education, child protection and livelihood sectors
• Provide technical assistance (TA) for USAID-funded
  • nutrition and health programs, including documentation of manuals promoting responsive care and early learning
  • school readiness program promoting foundational early literacy and numeracy skills for center-based and parenting programs
• Provide TA and support for the development and implementation of
  • programs in socially marginalized communities (e.g., Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), refugees)
  • psychosocial support/socio-emotional learning (PSS/SEL) training materials, in collaboration with regional and local partners
• Develop and promote inclusive pre-primary teaching and learning materials

Global Adaptation & Scaling of Common Approaches (20%)

• Develop an in-depth Ready to Learn Silver Course to build capacity of CO staff on the Ready to Learn program including pre-service and in-service training manuals, content for pre-reads, live webinar instruction, and course assessments
• Aid the overall management of the Ready to Learn Silver Course including coordination of participants, mentors and course instructors
• Coach Ready to Learn Silver Course cohorts; foster cross-country collaboration and fidelity of implementation
• Collaborate with course graduates, SCUS Research Team and Early Learning Working Group to support COs to implement Common Approaches with consistency, quality and a standardized Monitoring Evaluation Accountability and Learning (MEAL) strategy
• Monitor Common Approaches implementation by leading a biannual evidence-mapping exercise
• Champion the validation process of Save the Children’s International Development Early Learning Assessment (IDELA) and other research tools to promote quality in ECCD programs in low and middle income countries.
• Incorporate lessons learned into updates to Common Approaches toolkits
• Aid publication efforts

Early Childhood Care & Development (ECCD) Advancement (25%)

• Cultivate the integration of ECCD into health, nutrition, child protection and other sectors
• Represent ECCD and support the home-to-school connections strategic work stream
• Raise the visibility of ECCD Education Technology (Ed Tech) approaches by working with the Ed Tech associates from other sectors
• Facilitate cross-country learning to foster best practices and innovation across Save the Children COs, particularly around education technologies, equity, disability inclusion, climate change, and gender
• Finalize the strategy for strengthening and scaling ECCD systems. Support CO to implement tools to strengthening and scaling ECCD systems
• Share ECD knowledge, strategically, both internally and externally, in professional development and networking opportunities, within key sectors
• Regularly review the experience of Save the Children in implementing ECD programs and further the documentation of best practices and innovation
• Engage in the Children's Safe and Appropriate Care Technical Working group, Basic Education Coalition – Early Childhood Education (ECE) Group, and

Gender Technical Working Group

• Represent ECD on the Department of Education and Child Protection (DECP)’s Gender and Education Group
• Participate in the Gender Equality Toolkit course

New Business Development (10%)

• Design, write, and review technical proposals and ensure cost proposals reflect technical design appropriately
• Serve as focal point for gender and ECD in proposal reviews
• Identify new funding opportunities with in-country, US-based and international funders and through other members
• Support the maintenance of relationships with donors and partners in specific projects, as assigned

Required Qualifications

• Minimum of a Bachelor Degree or equivalent experience, plus at least 5 years of relevant experience
• Experience in early childhood development related program in low-income country context  
• Spanish Proficiency
• Proven training skills
• Ability to travel up-to 25%
• Professional proficiency in MS Office suite
• Professional proficiency in spoken and written English
• Demonstrated ability to communicate and collaborate effectively with individuals and teams at all levels, both internally and externally
• Demonstrated commitment to fostering and maintaining and environment of diversity, inclusion, and belonging.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in materials development to support early childhood development programming and scaling across sectors
• Proven proposal development skills, grant design, implementation and reporting for private and public donors, particularly USAID
• Experience facilitating workshops for adults. Ability to run high quality interactive trainings both in person and virtually
• Proficiency in French and/or Portuguese

Compensation

Save the Children is offering the following salary ranges for this position, dependent on candidate location:

• Geo 1 - NY Metro, DC, and other locations with labor costs significantly above national average: Target Salary for this position is $84,150 – $94,050 base salary
• Geo 2 - Locations around the US National Labor Cost Average: Target Salary for this position is $76,500 – $85,500 base salary
• Geo 3 - Locations significantly below the US National Labor Cost Average: Target Salary for this position is $68,850 – $76,950 base salary

Actual base salary may vary based upon, but not limited to, relevant experience, base salary of internal peers, business sector, and geographic location.  Employee may be eligible for an incentive program.  Save the Children also offers paid vacation, accrued at least 12 days a year, depending on paygrade and length of service, paid safety and wellness leave of at least 1 day per month worked for a full time employee which is pro rata reduced for employees working less than a full time schedule, and at least 10 paid holidays a year. Employees may be eligible for additional bonus compensation. Save the Children US also offers outstanding benefits that include health, dental, vision and life insurances, short-term and long-term disability coverage, an Employee Assistance Program, a retirement savings plan with employer contribution, family leave, paid parental/adoption leave of 60 days, commuter benefits, paid caregiver leave days, 1 paid volunteer day a year, paid critical child illness leave days, dress for your day, and much more.    

Why you should join the Save the Children Team…

Save the Children US offers outstanding benefits that include health, dental, vision and life insurances, short-term and long-term disability coverage, an Employee Assistance Program, 403(b), generous vacation, personal sick leave, family leave, parental/adoption leave, commuter benefits, dress for your day, and much more. 

Click here to learn more about how Save the Children US will invest in YOU!

About Save the Children

No matter your role when you join Save the Children, each and every day you will challenge yourself to devote your skills, talent and expertise to changing the world for kids. It’s an ambitious goal, and a meaningful one no matter how you see yourself professionally: an accountant, a writer, a data analyst, a teacher, a driver, a designer, or any one of the hundreds of dozens of roles we’re looking to fill every day.

You see, Save the Children believes every child deserves a future. In the United States and around the world, we give children a healthy start in life, the opportunity to learn and protection from harm. We do whatever it takes for children – every day and in times of crisis – transforming their lives and the future we share. 

Our work for children and their families requires that we commit—at every opportunity—to work together to identify and dismantle persistent systemic and structural racism, inequality, and any other forms of discrimination in this country and beyond.  As an anti-racist organization, Save the Children will not tolerate discrimination in any form—in our employment practices, amongst our staff, in our leadership or toward the people we serve. We stand in solidarity with all people to fight for equal rights, justice, inclusion, and belonging. 

We provide equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, ancestry, sexual orientation, national origin, age, handicap, disability, marital status, or status as a veteran. Save the Children complies with all applicable laws. 

Save the Children is committed to conducting its programs and operations in a manner that is safe for the children it serves and helping protect the children with whom we are in contact. All Save the Children representatives are explicitly prohibited from engaging in any activity that may result in any kind of child abuse. In addition, it is Save the Children’s policy to create and proactively maintain an environment that aims to prevent and deter any actions and omissions, whether deliberate or inadvertent, that place children at the risk of any kind of child abuse. All our representatives are expected to conduct themselves in a manner consistent with this commitment and obligation.

Save the Children is committed to minimizing safety and security risks for our valued employees, ensuring all are given training, support and information to reduce their risk exposure while maximizing the impact of our programs for children and families. Our shared duty, both agency and individual, is to seek and maintain safe working conditions for all.