Voices for Change (V4C) Vacancy for a State Coordinator

Voices for Change (V4C) is a recently designed, UK Aid funded, four year programme running from October 2013 to December 2017. The goal of V4C is to help transform social attitudes towards girls and women in Nigeria by working on specific individual, social and institutional changes.

V4C will do this by operating at Federal level and in four States (Kano, Kaduna, Lagos, Enugu). V4C’s Vision is to be known and recognised for creating new ways to change behaviour, contributing to a Nigeria where every girl, boy, woman and man achieves their full potential. V4C’s Mission is to inspire a generation of new voices to speak up and speak out to empower young women to achieve their real potential.

Job Title: State Coordinator

The Position
The purpose of the State Coordinator role is to inspire and motivate V4C partners at state level to drive the movement for change in gender equality. This will involve participating in key events, ensuring the quality and pace of delivery, monitoring the effectiveness of activities, bringing state partners together to share lessons, and creating linkages with other DFID funded programs and development partners. The role full time and will be state based with travel approximately once/month to Abuja.

Key Responsibilities

Create momentum at state level for implementation of V4C initiatives, including:
- Inviting government representatives, religious leaders and other key state influencers to events, keeping them up-dated on progress, and seeking to work with them to amplify messages that are in line with V4C initiatives.
- Coordinate technical input and guidance to partners
- Coordinating state programme meetings to plan, monitor, and review program success
- Linking up partners to share successes, lessons, and strategies to overcome barriers.
- Overseeing the delivery of work plans outlined in the V4C / partner sub agreement, including quality and pace of delivery.
- Overseeing implementation at state level to ensure alignment with V4C goals and objectives

Support the Output 1 – AGW Life Skills Lead in effectively leading on activities within post secondary institutions including;
- Strengthening partner relationships with relevant state institutions
- Coordinating capacity building and monitoring results, in particular for the physical Safe Space Programme
- Ensuring Brand Ambassadors are equipped with the necessary knowledge and skills to pilot creative activities in virtual and physical men and boys safe spaces.
Create state level saturation of consistent messages that aim to influence the attitudes of V4Cs target audiences (AGW, men and boys, key influencers, implementation partners), including:
- Collaborating with the V4C Communications Manager and Key Influencers Lead to ensure that physical and virtual messages ‘speak to’ V4C target audiences.
- Ensuring linkages are made between students and communication channels (eg, radio stations).
- Ensuring target audience interests at ground level are fed into Output level planning and quality delivery
- Supporting state level lobbying by students and men.
- Participating in campaign activities that promote the V4C brand.
Ensure that V4C has the information required to monitor and measure the success of initiatives, including
- Supporting implementing partners to document and report monthly / quarterly on progress, success, barriers and learning for submission to diaries for safe space work.
- Communicating regularly with the Output 1 – AGW Life Skills Lead for programme updates and general state security that affects programming, to develop weekly and monthly plans and progress reports.
- Following up with relevant programme staff to ensure MIS templates have been completed and data entered into the system.
Continuously improve coordination and implementation of state level initiatives by networking formally and informally with other State Coordinators, including:
- Participating in quarterly review meetings to formally review progress and share cross-state lessons and problems, and work together to generate potential solutions.
- Liaising on a day-to-day basis to create a strong team for on-going peer support.
Identify and build on synergies and overlaps with other DFID program by liaising with other program partners, including:
- Sharing V4C lessons and innovations with other development partners.
- Creating linkages with partners such as J4A and seeking to complement / amplify their work (eg, coordinating activities on violence against women).
- Liaising with other DFID program managers to identify overlaps / inconsistencies with V4C initiatives (eg, Girl hub’s work with girls).
Any other reasonable activities determined by the Output 1 - AGW Life Skills Lead.

Candidate Requirements

Minimum of a Masters degree in social sciences, humanities or any related discipline.
Minimum of 5 years experience working in the development sector especially on gender and research.
Knowledge of key influencers in affecting a change in attitudes towards AGW.
Knowledge of how to access relevant communication channels (eg, radio stations).
Understanding of physical and virtual safe spaces.
Knowledge of other DFID progams, donor funded safe space programs, civil societies in safe space work within the state and other program partners (eg Population Council, Girl hub).
Understanding of how to access government representatives, religious leaders and other key state influencers
Excellent working knowledge of Nigerian culture.
Subject matter expert on social change programming, particularly gender equality issues, relationships and violence towards AGW, men and boys work.
Knowledge of AGW life style.