1. About the Aga Khan Foundation
The Aga Khan Foundation (AKF) is an Agency of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), a group of private, non-denominational development agencies that share a mission to improve the living conditions and opportunities for marginalized communities across some target countries in Africa and Asia. AKF was established by His Highness the Aga Khan in Switzerland in 1967 and began working in East Africa in 1974. Globally, AKF seeks sustainable solutions to long-term problems of poverty, hunger, illiteracy, and ill-health, with special emphasis on the needs of rural communities in mountainous, coastal, and other resource-poor areas, to improve the quality of their life. In East Africa, the AKF responds to local and regional priorities by developing and implementing effective programming, measuring, and documenting results and sharing lessons with governments, donors, and development actors to influence policy and practice. In Tanzania, AKF operates a multi-sectoral portfolio that includes programming in Education, Economic Inclusion, Civil Society, Health, and Early Childhood Development (ECD) in Southern Tanzania, Morogoro, Mwanza, and Zanzibar.
2. Position Summary
This position will be based in Lindi. In Southern Tanzania, AKF, and more broadly AKDN, aims to ensure equal opportunities to quality education for girls and boys through stronger education systems, more capable female and male education professionals, reduced gender and social barriers to education, and increased evidence generation for better policy and practice. In addition, through the Civil Society portfolio, AKF aims to strengthen civil society through innovative approaches and develop the next generation of female leaders.
The Gender Coordinator will be responsible for leading the operationalisation of AKF’s Gender Equality Strategy (GES) and supporting other AKDN agencies to mainstream gender across the education programming. As part of the AKF Tanzania Southern Tanzania Team in Lindi, reporting to the Programme Manager, the Gender Coordinator will be responsible for implementing activities and interventions to advance gender equity, provide technical support to the broader AKF Southern Tanzania Team and AKDN sister agencies to ensure gender equity is mainstreamed across all education and civil society activities, review documents and materials to ensure these are gender sensitive, and ensure gender integration across all aspects of the project cycle.
Beyond the Southern Tanzania Team and the AKF Tanzania Country Team it is expected for the Gender Coordinator to work collaboratively with the Gender Coordinators in Kenya and Uganda, the AKF Regional Programme Team including, but not limited to, the Regional Gender, Education and ECD, and Civil Society Advisors, and the Foundations for Education and Empowerment Manager.
3. Roles and Responsibilities
The specific roles and responsibilities of the Gender Coordinator will include:
Lead the design and delivery of activities and interventions:
- Lead the design of AKF gender related activities in the Southern Tanzania as directed by project designs and the GES.
- Develop and integrate all activities into the broader Southern Tanzania Programme Workplan and ensure these are delivered efficiently, effectively, on time, and on budget.
- Assume an active role in supporting integration of gender into education and civil society programme activities and, where required, lead in aspects of these activities explicitly designed to advance gender equity.
- Comply with all AKF activity reporting requirements and be responsible for the management of finances, including requests and reconciliations.
Provide technical leadership and support to ensure gender equity is integrated across all AKF Southern Tanzania programme activities and processes:
- Ensure the effective implementation of the GES and associated action plans in the Southern Tanzania and ensure these are compliant and contributing to the national policy frameworks.
- Ensure the AKF gender policies are relevant and aligned to the country as well as the effective and timely implementation of AKF’s Gender Scorecard
- Provide technical support to the Southern Tanzania Team to enable the integration of the GES and actions into all aspects of AKF’s education and civil society programming and project cycles (design, budgeting, recruitment, etc.)
- Identify capacity gaps and support needs of the Southern Tanzania Team to inform the design and delivery of a strategic internal capacity development process. Ensure this is aligned and contributing to existing internal gender mainstreaming efforts.
- Review education and civil society programme documents to ensure all materials developed and used are gender sensitive and actively contributing to promoting gender equity**Provide technical support civil society, government, and AKDN sister agency partners to enable the effective integration of gender equity across their institutions and activities:**
- Develop positive and close working relationships with partner civil society organisations (CSO), government, and AKDN education sister agencies.
- Contribute to the CSO organisational and County Government capacity assessment processes to ensure these adequately and effectively assess and plan for the integration of gender equality across these institutions.
- Provide technical support on the implementation of gender equality capacity development plans with CSO and government as part of their broader institutional capacity development plans.
- Facilitate continuous review processes with CSO and government to track implementation of gender equality strategies and activities.
- Collaborate with AKDN education sister agencies to provide technical support to improve the gender responsiveness of their professional development courses and materials.
Lead on measuring gender equality impact and internal learning:
- Collaborate with M&E colleagues to ensure all data collection tools are gender sensitive, enable for gender disaggregation, are effectively used, and data analysed.
- Synthesis gender data analysis to incorporate learnings into the broader Southern Tanzania programme review meetings and processes. Develop recommendations and follow-up on agreed actions.
- Ensure gender learnings are effectively integrated and communicated in all relevant AKF learning events.
- Lead the delivery of gender assessments and developing follow-up actions.
- Prepare AKF colleagues to effectively communicate AKF’s GES, progress, impact, and learning. Represent AKF as requested and required.
- Lead on reviewing communication materials to ensure gender equality and AKF/AKDN’s learnings are effectively captured.
Any other responsibilities as determined by the Programme Manager.
Qualifications and experience:
- A bachelor’s degree in Gender Studies, Social Sciences, Sociology, Development, or related field. A master’s degree is an advantage.
- Minimum of five years of experience working to promote gender equality and inclusive social development.
- Clear understanding and commitment to delivering strengths-based approaches to advance gender equality.
- Clear evidence of delivering impactful, evidence-based, gender responsive interventions and projects. Evidence of demonstrated impact within education and/or civil society is an advantage.
- Evidence of developing and delivering high quality gender capacity development and learning opportunities, both internally and externally
- Demonstrated understanding of country level gender related issues related to education and civil society strengthening.
- Demonstrated understanding of the changing country context and the opportunities and challenges this offers to advancing gender equality.
- Evidence of deep understanding of and commitment to child protection and safeguarding as well as other vulnerable populations.
- Ability to develop strong, collaborative working relationships in diverse teams located across multiple offices, organisations, and geographies.
- Excellent analytical, interpersonal, and problem-solving skills in a cross-cultural context.
- Excellent written and oral communications skills in English; ability in Kiswahili is an asset.
- Excellent ICT skills.
How to Apply
Candidates interested
in this exciting career opportunity with AKF should submit a cover
letter and maximum three-page CV including the names and contact
information of three professional referees by 14th June 2021. Only
shortlisted candidates will be contacted.
AKF is an Equal Opportunity Employer and is Committed to Safeguarding and Promoting the Welfare of Children and Vulnerable Adults and Expects all Staff and Partners to Share this Commitment.
The Aga Khan Foundation is an agency of the Aga Khan Development Network
(www.akdn.org)
