Gender Equality, Safeguarding and Inclusion (GESI) Advisor

GOAL is currently seeking to hire a Gender Equality, Safeguarding and Inclusion (GESI) Advisor to join our Uganda team to advise on Gender Equality, Safeguarding and Inclusion component of a Climate Smart Land Management and Services programme funded by the British High Commission (BHC) in Kampala and a subcomponent of the Climate Smart Jobs Programme. We are currently at proposal stage and inviting interested and qualified applicants to apply and final consideration will be subject to successful award. The programme will be for 4 years in duration and is expected to begin from April 2022.

The objective of the programme is to preserve, restore and maximise the value of landscape ecosystem in Northern Uganda sustainably and at scale. Focus is on incentivising private sector, individual and community groups to adopt innovative models to deliver this objective. The ultimate beneficiaries of this programme are the households of smallholder farmers in Northern Uganda, who will be able to achieve more sustainable incomes as a result of the intervention. Expected outcomes are 10,000ha of degraded landscape fully regenerated with a forest cover, 2,000ha of smallholder farmer-owned land planted with agroforestry/woodlots and to sequester 1.8 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (projection for 10 years)

The GESI Advisor is a key management position within the Program Management Unit (PMU) reporting directly to the Team Leader.

The post holder is expected to bring about both internal and external change, challenging GOAL and our partners to improve our programme to be more inclusive and responsive to the needs of women as well as providing a safe environment and a robust community feedback and response mechanism.

This post holder will lead on supporting the programme to include a gender-lens to understand where there are exclusions, providing advice on how to adjust activities to ensure inclusion of young women and monitoring disaggregated data to understand the effectiveness of efforts to enable women’s participation. They will support the private sector partner co-design process to incentives for the inclusion of women, again, monitoring progress and generating evidence to support behavior change within private sector and other market actors. They will lead on a series of learning questions to support an improved understanding of how women become engaged, which pathways are the most effective, what barriers they face, and how they can overcome them.

The post holder will also oversee the implementation of GOAL’s safeguarding policies and guidelines, including the Child Protection (CP) Policy, Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (PSEA) Policy, the Code of Conduct (CoC) and the Whistleblowing Policy, with the aim of creating a working environment free from sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) of children, youth or adults perpetrated by GOAL or its representatives.

The role aims to strengthen safeguarding by preventing risks of abuse and harm directly or indirectly created by GOAL’s presence and to coordnate the response to safeguarding cases, ensuring that the programme has appropriately adapted and implemented GOAL’s global policies and procedures related to safeguarding. Ensuring that activities and programmes are designed and adapted to consider groups vulnerable because of their age and gender.

The post holder will work closely with GOALs Global Gender Advisor and Safeguarding Advisor directly reporting to the Team Leader.

Essential Job Functions

Gender Equality and Inclusion

· Build the capacity of project staff on gender equality and considerations for gender sensitive and gender transformation programming

· Support the identification and roll-out of strategies to improve gender inclusion across all departments and processes under the programme

· Conduct annual partner gender assessments, providing training and suggest action plans that offer pathways to improve practice in relation to support and promoting women’s participation

· Establish a team of gender champions within the project and project partners

· Support in the inclusion of a gender-lens in planned market diagnostics, identifying exclusions within the identified project areas

· Provide technical advice on data capture and activity adjustments and adaptations to ensure the inclusion of women across all project areas

· Collaborate with the MERL team to review monitoring data and research to understand project effectiveness on efforts to enable young women’s participation in the identified project areas

· Support private sector partner co-design process to ensure appropriate consideration and incentives for the inclusion of young women

· Actively gather and document evidence in support of targeted project learning questions in relation to young women’s economic empowerment and participation

· Lead on cross-partner annual gender and inclusion workshops and learning events

Safeguarding Awareness, Prevention and Response

· Ensure local compliance with GOAL’s Safeguarding Policies and maintain and uphold the highest standards of safeguarding.

· Review and strengthen safeguarding systems including local reporting procedures; conduct mapping and risk assessments within the project offices and in partner offices.

· Adapt strategies, projects, tools and training to the context for countering SEA;

· Ensure that training on safeguarding policies and procedures to relevant stakeholders across the programme (staff, volunteers, private sector actors, partners, consultants, service providers and communities) are delivered and tracked.

· Improve the effectiveness of SEA prevention, detection, mitigation and response in the organisation.

· Support partners and service providers in introducing and maintaining safeguarding standards by supporting risk assessments, trainings and advisory

· Foster a working environment that is non-threatening, safe and actively addressing safeguarding in its processes.

· Research and develop context appropriate innovative approaches to countering SEA and to address barriers to reporting;

· Ensure that appropriate records are maintained of SEA cases, suitable for admission in legal proceedings, ensuring data protection and confidentiality.

· Support the HQ and local teams in investigations as required and identify locally trained appropriate resources.

· Ensure there is support and advice for those who are victims or survivors of abuse

· Make appropriate referral to organisations that are mandated to provide emergency and ongoing support to abuse cases.

Accountability

· Responsible for ensuring the programme Community Feedback and Response Mechanism (CFRM) is active across all project and partner offices with an emphasis on ensuring knowledge about GOAL Safeguarding policies and CFRM is accessible to vulnerable people.

· Establish Safeguarding and CFRM focal persons across the project offices with a clear TOR and provide training and regular oversight and support

· Update and maintain CFRM tools, guides, reports and brochures

· Promote accountability in the programme by ensuring mechanisms for disseminating information to and receiving information from participants are in place

· Review monthly CFRM reports and ensure that feedback is being collected and that all feedbacks are responded in line with GOAL policies

Essential Criteria

· Master’s degree (or equivalent) in economics, development studies, gender studies or a related field

· A minimum of 10 years of progressively responsible experience on gender and women’s economic empowerment, including 5 years of field experience

· Experience in a role with a focus on SEA, CFRM, child protection, youth or gender programming, preferably in an INGO context

· Relevant experience at the national level in development projects, providing advisory and technical services, hands-on experience in planning and design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of development programmes

· Demonstrable interest in working to prevent SEA.

· Empathy for the challenges survivors face in reporting and for the pressures an investigation places on stakeholders in general, including the alleged perpetrator and management.

· Experience in developing and maintaining strong partnerships and in mobilizing resources

· Ability to work with country and regional offices, companies, governments and international organisations in a supportive manner

· Confident at representing GOAL Uganda in a range of external fora and building strategic relationships and partnerships

· Good communicator to a range of audiences – written and verbal

· Highly proficient in MS Office suites, including Outlook and Office 360 suite

· A strong commitment to learning and development – for themselves and their team

· Self-motivated, highly organized, positive attitude, resilient, willing to learn new skills

General Information:

Safeguarding

Children and vulnerable adults who come into contact with GOAL as a result of our activities must be safeguarded to the maximum possible extent from deliberate or inadvertent actions and failings that place them at risk of abuse, sexual exploitation, injury and any other harm. One of the ways that GOAL shows this on-going commitment to safeguarding is to include rigorous background and reference checks in the selection process for all candidates.

Accountability within GOAL

Alongside our safeguarding policy, GOAL is an equal opportunities employer and has a set of integrity policies. Any candidate offered a job with GOAL will be expected to adhere to the following key areas of accountability:

• Comply with GOAL’s policies and procedures with respect to safeguarding, code of conduct, health and safety, confidentiality, do no harm principles and unacceptable behaviour protocols.
• Report any concerns about the welfare of a child or vulnerable adult or any wrongdoings within our programming area.
• Report any concerns about inappropriate behaviour of a GOAL staff or partner.

GOAL

Established in 1977, GOAL is an international humanitarian agency, with a global team of 2,400 personnel, dedicated to alleviating the needs of the most vulnerable communities. Currently operating in 14 of the world’s most vulnerable countries, GOAL delivers a wide range of humanitarian and development programmes, ranging from humanitarian relief in disaster situations, to focusing on nutrition, food security, and building greater resilience and sustainable livelihoods

General description of the country programme:

First operational in Uganda in 1979, the current GOAL Uganda country programme focuses on Health (including WASH, Health Accountability and Nutrition programming); and a market based systems approach to improving agricultural livelihoods and WASH. GOAL Uganda mainstreams gender, child protection, social behaviour change and resilience strategies across all programming. GOAL works on a district focused approach and uses a mixture of direct implementation and partnerships with national and international civil society organizations, local government, the private sector and communities to give effect to our mission.

This Job Description only serves as a guide for the position available. GOAL reserves the right to change this document, it not be viewed as an inflexible specification as it may be varied from time to time in the light of strategic developments and following discussion with the post holder.

Details of remuneration package and benefits

Our package includes a competitive salary, health insurance cover for up to 3 dependents, comprehensive 24 hour personal accident cover, terminal benefits equivalent to one month for each completed year of service and our working hours provide for a half day on Fridays. GOAL promotes a learning and development environment with training & study opportunities aligned to our staff development policy. Open to Uganda national applicants only.