Project Coordinator – Early Childhood Development (UK) - Fixed-term until January 2024

Providing educational support to children affected by conflict is at the heart of War Child’s mission. Along with child protection and livelihoods, education forms one of the principle pillars of our strategy and our theory of change. This role will coordinate the delivery of an ECD project in Iraq and Jordan. They will ensure clear and regular communications about the project’s progress with the donor and WCUK and WC Holland internal stakeholders, including facilitating and chairing regular programme quality meetings and coordinating reporting to the donor and internally. They will provide oversight of the project’s budget and work plan, coordinating with in country and HQ level technical and operational staff. The project has a strong focus on learning and thus the person will also provide leadership on the MEAL components across Iraq and Jordan country offices to ensure the project’s learning and evidence is appropriately captured and socialised.

The ideal candidate will have substantial experience and skill in coordinating multiple stakeholders, donor-facing engagement, MEAL and project management skills. The candidate should also have experience in education in emergencies programming, preferably Early Childhood Development.

This role is UK based and is expected to make at least one trip to Iraq and Jordan during the contract period (subject to security considerations).

Your role

The Project Coordinator is responsible for the overall coordination of a two country ECD project. The project represents a strategic investment and priority for both War Child Holland and War Child UK, with ECD being an area of thought leadership for War Child. The project has benefitted from significant financial and technical inputs at the design and initial implementation phase and would now benefit from clear coordination and oversight to ensure the project meets it’s intended objectives and all parties are kept updated with progress.

The selected candidate would be expected to lead the coordination and communications of the grant. They would work closely with the country office staff to provide support as needed and would work closely with HQ level staff to ensure clear communications, source technical and operational support as needed and lead on the reporting to the donor. The candidate is expected to be able to provide coordination around technical inputs, in close collaboration with the Education in Emergencies global advisor and provide leadership on the MEAL component, ensuring learning and evidence is clearly collected, collated, analysed and shared internally, with the donor and in relevant inter-agency fora.

Your responsibilities

• Ensure donor remains updated with project progress, challenges and opportunities on the project through regular formal and informal written and verbal communications
• Work directly with country programme teams to ensure the project is meeting key milestones and strategic objectives, including planned calls to receive updates and provide any troubleshooting support as well as travel to the region to provide hands on support.
• Coordinate and lead all donor communications, ensuring there is a singular line of communication and all communication is clear and reviewed by the appropriate staff.
• Coordinate and lead all internal communications, ensuring all key stakeholders are kept up to date with the project’s progress and are coordinated to share and receive updates.
• Facilitate and/or lead project focused meetings, including quality focused meetings and project implementation focused meetings, both remotely and in person.
• Be responsible for oversight of the whole budget, including directly manage budget lines for MEAL components.
• Compile inputs, write up and coordinate review for all project reporting
• Coordinate the input and analysis of data into all MEAL tools, to track progress against targets. Where feasible, create communications products to showcase results and learnings.
• Lead the planning and implementation of all learning and evaluation on the project, including ensuring key evidence and knowledge generated by the project is shared within relevant ECD and other technical; networks
• Coordinate with HQ level staff to ensure sufficient technical and operational support is provided.
• Travel to programme areas to provide support, trouble shoot project implementation issues as needed and enable clear and accurate updates to the relevant stakeholders

These duties provide a framework for the role and should not be regarded as a definitive list. Other reasonable duties may be required consistent with the grade of the role.

You are

• An experienced project coordinator who has extensive skills and experience in overseeing budgets, logframes and workplans.
• Experienced in education programming, specifically early childhood development
• Skilled in MEAL, including exposure to qualitative and quantitative research methods, experience in report-writing, documentation, and dissemination of learning.
• A skilled communicator and coordinator who has demonstrated experience in bringing together multiple stakeholders and ensuring clear lines of communication and inputs.
• Demonstrated experience in coordinating reporting schedules and drafting clear, quality reports.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with the ability to communicate complex information in an effective way. Arabic language ability would be an asset.
• Able to demonstrate excellent interpersonal skills, positive and professional attitude, ability to lead and work well in a culturally diverse team setting and with multiple partners. Strengths include listening, empathy, flexibility, and creativity.

How to apply

• Please download the application form here: https://www.warchild.org.uk/who-we-are/jobs
• Submit a completed application form and a recent copy of your CV to recruitment@warchild.org.uk by 11:59pm on 31/12/2022
• Due to limited resources, we will contact only the shortlisted candidates
• Interviews will be held at the beginning of Jan 2023
• If you have any questions about reasonable adjustments before or during your application, we welcome the opportunity to talk about what we can do to fairly adapt our process for you. Please share what you’re comfortable with to help us put the right support in place, by emailing recruitment@warchild.org.uk. Anything you tell us will be kept completely confidential by our HR team.

We are unable to provide sponsorship for this post. In order to apply, you must be able to demonstrate your eligibility to work in the country where this role is based