Global Advocacy and Development Policy Manager

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Job title : Global Advocacy and Development Policy Manager
Duty station : Toronto, Brussels, or Amman (to be defined)
Starting Date : 1 February 2021
Initial Contract : 4 years
Position at : 100%
Reports to : Director of Programmes
Deadline for Application : 5 December 2020

 About ACT Alliance

ACT Alliance is a coalition of more than 135 churches and affiliated organizations working together to create positive and sustainable change in the lives of poor and marginalized people regardless of their religion, politics, gender, sexual orientation, race or nationality. ACT Alliance is supported by 30,000 staff from member organizations and mobilizes about USD 3 billion for its work each year in three targeted areas: humanitarian assistance, sustainable development and advocacy action. The global ACT Alliance Secretariat is based in Geneva Switzerland, Amman Jordan, Bangkok Thailand, Brussels Belgium, San Salvador El Salvador, Nairobi Kenya, New York US and Toronto Canada. The Secretariat supports the work of ACT forums and members by fulfilling key functions of connecting, facilitating, promoting and leveraging the work of members and ACT national and regional forums. For more details about the general work of ACT, please refer to https://actalliance.org/

Major functions

The Advocacy and Development Policy Manager coordinates and supports the ACT Alliance advocacy and policy work.

Duties and Responsibilities

  • Enables, supports, quality controls and develops capacity of ACT Forums’ and members’ collaboration in advocacy, based on the ACT global strategy.
  • Liaises with the General Secretary, Director of Programmes and the thematic programme managers (climate justice, migration and displacement, peace and human security, gender justice, emergency preparedness and humanitarian response) on the advocacy elements of their portfolios, and coordinates and quality controls advocacy elements of these portfolios.
  • Ensures appropriate global level relations for successful advocacy and development policy work.
  • Coordinates, supports, and quality controls advocacy statements of the ACT Alliance globally and of ACT Forums, and prepares them for approval by the relevant persons or bodies.
  • Liaises with the Director of Communications/communications staff to ensure global visibility to key advocacy messages.
  • Liaises with regional advocacy structures and supports Regional Representatives to advance ACT advocacy agenda regionally.
  • Supports and enables ACT humanitarian advocacy, as well as ACT advocacy and policy development in key transformative development policy issues, especially climate justice, and including 2030 Agenda for sustainable development, religion and development, development effectiveness, financing for development, in division of labour with the Director of Programmes, the Head of Humanitarian Affairs, the United Nations Representative, and the Regional Programme Officers.
  • Supports and enables ACT members’ collaboration in sustainable development, and Communicates with members, partners and relevant institutions on ACT Alliance engagement.
  • Supports the ACT Advocacy and Policy Reference Group as a Secretariat co-focal point.
  • Represents ACT Alliance in the ACT EU Policy and Advocacy Group (PAG) and serves as the alliance’s main contact for ACT EU advocacy work.
  • Supports the General Secretary and Director of Programmes in external representational roles.
  • Is a member of the ACT Secretariat Global Leadership Team, and advises the Core Management Team as requested.

 Competences and behaviours

  • Committed to the values of the ACT Alliance and takes pride in delivering on agreed priorities according to the highest standards individually and as part of a global team. 
  • Proactively finds innovative and creative solutions, is efficient and reliable, adapts to change and uncertainty, is decisive and acts with integrity.
  • Builds effective internal and external relationships, involves others when solving problems and treats others with consideration and respect in an alliance where faith is a key ingredient of people’s lives.
  • Passion for building and developing core skills for the role and contributes knowledge outside of immediate own role.
  • Effectively motivates, influences and develops others, drives high performance, inspires people to follow them and acts as a role model.

Working relationships

  • Liaises with ACT members engaged in global level advocacy.
  • Liaises with the external stakeholders (UN agencies, governmental representations, INGO networks and INGO peers).
  • Liaises with ecumenical bodies and networks relevant to advocacy work.
  • Advises and supports the General Secretary and the Director of Programmes.
  • Advises and supports the ACT Regional Representatives.
  • Liaises with and coordinates Global Programme Managers on advocacy elements.
  • Liaises with ACT communications team on advocacy work.
  • Reports to the Director of Programmes.

Skills and experiences

  • A minimum of seven years of relevant work experience, a minimum of five in international context.
  • Highly developed interpersonal and communications skills including influencing and negotiating.
  • In-depth knowledge of advocacy issues relevant to the ACT Alliance.
  • Ability to analyse rapidly changing operational contexts and policy developments and to see opportunities emerging.
  • Ability to work flexibly in a networked working environment.
  • Good understanding of ecumenical context and relevance of churches and faith-based actors in humanitarian relief, development cooperation and advocacy for justice.
  • Relevant academic degree; preferably specialized training in advocacy.
  • Excellent command of English language, working knowledge of French or Spanish an asset.

HOW TO APPLY

Interested and qualified candidates should send their CV and a cover letter, in English and by email only, to recruitment@actalliance.org by Friday 5 December 2020. Please put “Global Advocacy and Development Policy Manager” in the subject line and name you documents (attachments) “Firstname lastname CV” and “Firstname lastname Cover letter”. Female candidates are strongly encouraged to apply.

ACT adheres to the SCHR misconduct scheme https://www.schr.info/the-misconduct-disclosure-scheme. As such, ACT will contact the current and/or former employer of the preferred candidate as part of reference checking and ask for a misconduct statement. When applying for this position, please confirm in the body of the email that you give your consent to ACT asking your current/former employer for a misconduct statement should you be the preferred candidate and that you will provide the contact details of the relevant HR person/department that can provide such a statement.