Regional ECD Technical Senior Manager

The International Rescue Committee responds to the world’s worst humanitarian crises and helps people to survive and rebuild their lives. Founded in 1933 at the request of Albert Einstein, IRC offers life-saving care and life-changing assistance to refugees forced to flee from war or disaster. At work today in more than 40 countries and in 22 U.S. cities, IRC restores safety, dignity and hope to millions who are uprooted by conflict or disaster. IRC leads the way from harm to home.

CONTEXTUAL BACKGROUND

In December 2017, Sesame Workshop and the IRC were awarded the MacArthur Foundation’s inaugural 100&Change grant to make real progress toward solving a critical problem of our time. In December 2018 received another award from the LEGO Foundation to support refugee early education programs. With these extraordinary investments, our partnership is transforming the language, early reading, math, and social-emotional skills of a generation of children ages 0-8 affected by the Syrian war. Focusing on children in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria over the inclusive plan combines the depth of in-person services, reaching 1.5 million children, with the breadth of mass media, reaching 9.4 million children. For more information, please visit: http://refugee.sesameinternational.org/

The ultimate objective of Ahlan Simsim is sustained impact on children’s lives in a cost-effective, and replicable manner that is tailored to and integrated into existing early childhood development (ECD) systems across the region. To achieve these goals, enabling conditions that can contribute to large-scale systems change must be established to ensure sustainable national-level change that is locally owned and managed for the benefit of future generations. To that end, a critical component of Ahlan Simsim is partnership with governments and local ECD actors for adaptation and uptake of Ahlan Simsim offerings into national systems and structures thereby impacting a critical mass of young children across the region for years to come. This work is founded in a scaling approach that focuses on the needs of the communities we serve with the goal of reaching as much of those needs as possible for as many people as possible. Scaling and partnerships can only be successful when grounded in the context and aligned with national strategies and priorities, guaranteeing the integrated services will be maintained far beyond the lifetime of the project.

Ahlan Simsim delivers services to caregivers and children in different dosages and modalities, yet maintaining the core objectives of the program including increasing children’s social emotional and cognitive skills, and enable caregivers to support their children’s development. Large amount of content was created to achieve the main objectives.

Reporting to the Regional ECD Lead of Ahlan Simsim, the ECD Technical Senior Manager will contribute to the development of Ahlan Simsim content for IRC with a focus on partnerships and scaling needs. The Senior Manager will participate in ensuring quality assurance of delivered services are in line to Ahlan Simsim strategy including developing and delivering capacity building plans. The Senior Manager will work in close collaboration with the Ahlan Simsim Regional team and Technical Advisors.

Job Overview/Summary:

The Regional Technical Senior Manager is responsible for four key objectives:

Contribute to the development and improvement of Ahlan Simsim content (to be used by the IRC and partners) with a focus on adaptation, and contextualization.

Contribute to the development and adaptation of Ahlan Simsim content for scaling co-design and implementation (offerings)

Participate in ensuring quality of content delivery for the IRC and partner’s implementation, including developing and delivery of trainings.

Major Responsibilities:

Contribute to the development and improvement of Ahlan Simsim content (to be used by the IRC and partners) with a focus on adaptation, and contextualization.

Content Creation, Enhancement and Adaptation

Support the country offices to contextualize and adapt resources upon needs, including locally relevant examples, with guidance from the Regional Technical Team.

Contribute to the support provided to the country offices and partners in development and adaptation of Ahlan Simsim content for scaling purposes.

Support the development of educational video content and ensure its alignment with the curricula.

Support the transfer of educational content to digital and E-learning content.

Content Revision

Work closely with the ECD Regional Content Coordinator in reviewing and approving content materials.

Support in the improvement and modification of content upon the feedback received as well as the analysis of the research results related, with supervision and guidance form the Regional Technical Team

Contribute to the development and adaptation of Ahlan Simsim content for scaling co-design and implementation (offerings)

Develop and implement a roll out plan to ensure the offerings are shared and well understood by IRC staff and partners

Contribute to the support provided to the in-country ECD technical staff in working and co-designing scaling activities with partners

Work closely with scaling staff to ensure scalability of AS offerings and review content throughout the scaling process in collaboration with the Regional Technical Team.

Participate in ensuring high quality implementation of Ahlan Simsim content

Conduct quality assurance visits to ensure proper implementation of Ahlan Simsim models.

Participate in developing training materials.

Participate in conducting training workshops, mentoring visits and learning circles when needed.

Support in project management tasks including capacity building planning, and reporting.

Key Working Relationships:

Position Reports to: Regional ECD Lead

Position directly supervises: N/A

Indirect Reporting: Regional Content Coordinator

Internal: Digital Coordinator, Country Technical Leads, Regional Partnerships and Scaling Advisor

External: Partner NGOs, relevant local Ministry officials