Job title: Senior Specialist Women and Youth
Company: TechnoServe
Job description: Description :Job Title: Senior Specialist, Women and YouthLocation: Abuja, Nigeria, with travel to project states.Project: Skilling Adolescents and Young Women for Entrepreneurship and Employability (SAY WEE)Reports to: Program ManagerAbout TechnoServe:Everyone deserves the opportunity to build a better future. This simple idea has been at the heart of work around the world for over 50 years. TechnoServe is a pioneer in leveraging the power of business and markets to create sustainable pathways out of poverty.The low-income communities in which we work are full of enterprising people. Their small-scale farms and businesses are the keys to economic development. But they face many challenges: low literacy, lack of access to jobs and markets, unpredictable political dynamics and, increasingly, the effects of climate change. For many women and young people, the challenges are even more daunting. Working with TechnoServe staff, people around the world are lifting themselves out of poverty. The results are amazing…when incomes increase and living conditions for families get better, they are able to access health care and education previously out of reach. Communities and even whole countries are better off.Program/Practice/Department Overview:The SAY WEE project seeks to address unemployment in Nigeria through four pathways, namely self-employment, micro and small-growing business acceleration, job readiness, and ecosystem development. With a strong learning agenda, the project will pilot methodologies that drive behavior change and successfully link women and youth to relevant and lasting jobs. To achieve its objectives, the project will leverage existing infrastructure, institutions, and organizations where possible. It will also apply lessons learned from other initiatives in the entrepreneurial ecosystem support space by adopting multiple proven approaches. The design will follow a common set of principles, such as being market-driven to help entrepreneurs tap into high-growth sectors, build youth skills, and facilitate linkages to drive job placement for targeted youth. The project targets 37,000 women and girls and therefore needs a strong accountability and safeguarding mechanism to ensure seamless implementation.Job Summary:The Senior Specialist, Women and Youth will work closely with the project team, implementing partners, and key stakeholders to support the implementation of activities that create economic opportunities for adolescent girls and young women in Nigeria. This includes technical support and capacity development for program staff, implementing partners, and other key stakeholders. The Senior Specialist will also direct the management of activities to drive economic opportunities for the program’s target group, support monitoring, reporting, and knowledge management activities, and provide overall support to advance Technoserve’s Economic Opportunities for All Policy.Additionally, the Senior Specialist will be responsible for the protection of all individuals engaged with the program from all forms of harassment, abuse, and violence. This includes ensuring appropriate policies and procedures are in place, fostering a safeguarding culture, integrating safeguarding measures and activities into the SAY WEE program, and monitoring the effectiveness of safeguarding mechanisms.The Senior Specialist, Women and Youth will report directly to the Program Manager with a dotted line to the Nigeria Gender Manager and will work closely with the Global Practice for Women and Youth.Primary Functions & Responsibilities:Technical Support
- Identifies, develops, and supports the deployment of women and youth-responsive activities to meet the needs of clients, including activities that promote safe and inclusive economic opportunities and safeguard against risks of exploitation, harassment, and abuse.
- Ensures safeguarding measures are integrated into program activities, protecting beneficiaries, staff, and partners from harassment, exploitation, and abuse.
- Builds local capacity among project staff and partners for women and youth integration and facilitates women and youth economic empowerment-related training for staff, including training on safeguarding principles, complaint mechanisms, and survivor-centered response approaches.
- Supports the development of accountability systems that ensure staff and implementing partners adhere to safeguarding policies, including complaint and feedback mechanisms.
- Provides strategic advice to program leadership and staff on women and youth integration approaches, priorities, and compatibility with program aims and resource constraints, ensuring adherence to safeguarding policies and procedures to prevent harm to beneficiaries.
- Conducts assessments and facilitates meetings, as needed, with key stakeholders and clients to identify measures to improve inclusiveness, especially for women and youth within the project scope, and to ensure safe and ethical participation in project activities.
- Monitors and assesses implementing partners’ adherence to safeguarding policies through regular check-ins, reporting requirements, and compliance reviews.
- Supports monitoring of women integration and youth activities and inclusion in program reports, ensuring data collection includes safeguarding risk assessments and that reports reflect safeguarding compliance.
Training, Capacity Building, and Safeguarding Integration
- Delivers TTT to staff and partners on women and youth-focused training and workshop modules, including safeguarding training related to the Prevention of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (PSEA), safe recruitment practices, and survivor-centered approaches.
- Supports the dissemination of TechnoServe’s safeguarding policies and organizes annual refresher training for staff, implementing partners, and volunteers.
- Builds local capacity among project staff and partners for women and youth integration, including strategies to prevent and respond to safeguarding violations.
- Works with community-based protection mechanisms to strengthen safeguarding capacity and provide training on ethical reporting and response.
- Collaborates with Human Resources to integrate safeguarding into recruitment practices, ensuring safer hiring processes and policies are in place.
Reporting, Accountability and Compliance
- Supports monitoring of women integration and youth activities and inclusion in program reports, including tracking safeguarding risks, responses, and compliance with policies.
- Ensures safeguarding violations are reported through established complaint and response mechanisms and takes appropriate measures to ensure safety and protection of survivors, whistleblowers, and subjects of complaints.
- Supports planning, budgeting, implementation, and reporting on safeguarding activities.
Other Responsibilities
- Participates in regular meetings with the Global Practice for Women and Youth and program leadership.
- Participates in the Gender Champions Network and contributes to global learning on safeguarding best practices within gender and youth programming.
Basic Qualifications:
- Bachelor’s Degree in International Development, International Affairs, Sociology, or related areas from an accredited college or university with 5 years’ experience in accountability/safeguarding/child safeguarding/PSEA or experience in a similar field (e.g., child protection and/or gender-based violence protection in humanitarian National/international settings or Master’s Degree + 3 years’ experience.
- Candidates should have at least one years’ experience in planning and facilitating on accountability and safeguarding on a range of the organizational levels.
- Experience track record of supporting operational change and/or the rollout of new policies and strategies.
- Experience in delivering training programs and supporting organizational capacity building in women’s economic empowerment and safeguarding/protection.
- Background in leading/participating in corruption/PSEA/child safeguarding investigations.
Preferred Qualifications:Additional qualifications that would make a candidate more desirable.
- Experience in working in Nigeria with an INGO
Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:
- Strong belief in human rights, gender equality, and safeguarding.
- Good interpersonal skills including the ability to gain trust and build relationships.
- Good diplomatic and persuasion skills.
- Ability to work effectively with people at all organizational levels.
- Strong ability to work independently.
- High standard of spoken and written English required.
- Good computer skills, experience with Google Drive.
- Ability to adapt quickly to changing environments.
Supervisory Responsibilities – NoneClosing Statement:We encourage all qualified individuals who share TechnoServe’s vision of improving the lives of others through proven business solutions to apply.With our commitment to diversity, we are proud to be an equal opportunity employer and and do not discriminate on the basis of gender, race, color, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, HIV/AIDS status, protected veteran status, disability and all other protected classes.We are also proud of our commitment to protecting staff, partners, and beneficiaries from abuse and exploitation and thoroughly vet all final candidates through rigorous background and reference checks.If you have a disability that affects your ability to use our online system to apply for a position at TechnoServe please contact the Human Resources at or call +1 202 785 4515.
Expected salary:
Location: Nigeria
Job date: Sat, 29 Mar 2025 07:59:20 GMT