Ahlan Simsim Project Management Intern

In December 2017, Sesame Workshop and the IRC were awarded the MacArthur Foundation’s inaugural 100&Change grant to make real progress toward improving early childhood outcomes in humanitarian crises. With the extraordinary investment of $100 million, our partnership will transform the language, early reading, math, and social-emotional skills of a generation of children ages 0-8 affected by the Syrian war. The program, called Ahlan Simsim, focuses on young children in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria through 2023, combining the depth of critical in-person services (reaching over a million children) with the breadth of mass media through an all new Arabic-language version of Sesame Street. See https://www.rescue.org/sesame and www.AhlanSimsim.org for more information.

The IRC believes that high quality early childhood development (ECD) programs provide the foundation for children’s future academic success, health, prosperity, and well-being. A large body of scientific evidence emphasizes the need for increased investment in early childhood, particularly for children experiencing conflict, crisis, and displacement; these children are extremely vulnerable to the long-lasting effects that prolonged stress has on the developing brain.

Ahlan Simsim integrates innovative program models targeting children and caregivers into existing IRC programs including health centers, women’s protection and empowerment centers, home visiting programs and more. This exciting and ground-breaking initiative implemented across the Syrian region and with ambitious goals to scale for sustainable impact with national systems and local NGO partners, presents an opportunity to indelibly shape the status of ECD in the global humanitarian context.

Major Responsibilities: The Ahlan Simsim Project Management Intern is a remote position with expectation of working within Eastern Time hours and reporting to the Ahlan Simsim Senior Project Specialist in New York (at IRC Headquarters). The Intern will provide programmatic support to the Ahlan Simsim team, majority of whom are based in Middle East regional offices. The Intern’s activities may include the following:

•Support in the managing of internal and external communications and advocacy materials, including updates to internal program websites and development of stock presentation material on programmatic overview, objectives, and metrics

•Support on implementing and improving project management systems and mechanisms

•Support on development and maintenance of new knowledge management systems for sharing information across the IRC as well as with external stakeholders; includes internal newsletters and external updates

•Review and edit grant supporting documents and reports

•Conduct research, write literature reviews, and create presentations on various topics related to ECD and country contexts

•Support preparation for execution of meetings including scheduling and taking/distributing minutes

Learning Outcomes: An internship with the IRC’s Ahlan Simsim program provides practical experience working at a large humanitarian aid NGO and offers opportunities for learning organization, project management, writing and administrative skills required for a role in the international humanitarian aid sector. Learning outcomes from this internship include:

•Increased knowledge of program delivery in humanitarian contexts, country-specific (Syrian response region) programming, and early childhood development (including social-emotional learning, literacy, numeracy)

•Understanding of partnerships/awards management processes and systems

•Experience supporting project management processes

•Experience supporting knowledge management process development and maintenance

•Experience developing advocacy, fundraising and other communications materials for a variety of users and contexts

•Organizational, writing and presentation skills