Green Partnerships and Mentorship Lead
Young Southeast Asia Leaders Initiative- Mekong Program (YSEALI-Mekong)
Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam
EDUCATION DEVELOPMENT CENTER (EDC)
Education Development Center (EDC) is a global nonprofit that advances lasting solutions to improve education, promote health, and expand economic opportunity, with a focus on vulnerable and under-served populations. Since 1958, we have been a leader in designing, implementing, and evaluating powerful and innovative programs in more than 80 countries around the world.
EDC promotes equity and access to high quality education and health services and products that contribute to thriving communities where people from diverse backgrounds learn, live, and work together. We support an inclusive workplace culture that embraces many perspectives and broadens our understanding of the communities we serve, enhancing and enriching our work.
Project Description
USAID’s Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative–Mekong Program (YSEALI-Mekong) will strengthen the leadership capacities and networks of youth leaders in Southeast Asia, empowering them to lead with confidence and to claim their right to a sustainable and just future.
?The leadership development program will provide the knowledge, training, and exposure to empower Southeast Asian youth to act on environmental issues, help integrate them into the web of climate, biodiversity, and sustainability actors in the region in order to contribute to the sustainable development of the Mekong region.??
The program will
- Build the leadership capabilities of youth in Southeast Asia with focus themes of climate change, environment, and biodiversity within the Mekong sub-region countries of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam,
- Increased capacity of Vietnam’s higher education institute to lead, execute and sustain the youth leadership program, and
- Nurture the active community of youth leaders from Mekong Sub-region Countries, Other ASEAN, and the U.S. supporting each other to address common regional issues sustainably.
Focus themes of the program are:
- Climate change – advance equitable and ambitious actions to confront the climate crisis with dual climate change priorities of mitigation (reducing emissions) and adaptation (improving resilience to climate impacts)
- Environment - Ensure that the environment and the natural resources upon which human lives and livelihoods depend are managed in ways that sustain productivity growth, a healthy population, as well as the intrinsic spiritual and cultural value of the environment.
- Biodiversity - Conserve biodiversity and manage natural resources in ways that maintain their long-term viability and preserve their potential to meet the needs of present and future generations.
YSEALI-Mekong will be hosted by the Vietnam National University - Ho Chi Minh City (VNU-HCM), and will partner with local, regional, and international relevant stakeholders.
Position Description
Under the supervision of the Chief of Party, the Green Partnerships and Mentorship Leadwill work with staff and local partner organizations to leverage local industry and private sector resources for YSEALI-Mekong. S/he will shape YSEALI-Mekong’s approach to private sector engagement and partnerships with a diverse network of regional actors working in climate change, biodiversity, and the environment in the Lower Mekong sub-region.
The Green Partnerships and Mentorship Lead will support the program’s mentoring component, including recruiting mentors from the program’s broader network, training mentors on EDC’s approaches to youth mentoring and coaching, matching mentors and youth leaders, and monitor the quality and effectiveness of the program’s mentoring component.
S/he will develop and support the program’s workplace-based learning component, Leadership in Action, including adapting tools used for work exposure and work experience, orienting youth, supporting youth placements, and orienting employers as well as contributing to CLA and project learning. S/he will work directly with resource partners on the delivery of program activities and to harness their work in conservation and environmental sustainability. S/he will organize and oversee the Network of Champions which will engage as mentors, speakers and host youth for work-based learning projects.
Essential functions: Under the supervision of the Chief of Party, the Green Partnerships and Mentorship Lead is responsible for (but not limited to):
Partnerships
- Identify opportunities for leveraging local, regional and international industry and private sector resources to create public-private partnerships.
- Develop criteria for partners in the Network of Champions. Lead a mapping process.
- Develop and implement strategies for engagement with private sector partners, local/international development projects, public-private partnerships.
- Foster positive relationships (collaboration and networking) with private sector partners.
- Update the list of potential partners and grow the Network of Champions based on relationships developed on the ground by youth themselves.
- Build the capacity of the YSEALI-Mekong higher education institution partner to establish effective partnerships.
- Work closely with the training team to identify guest speakers and project supervisors from the Network of Champions for each cohort.
Leadership in Action
- Develop and support the program’s workplace-based learning component (Leadership in Action), including adapting tools used for work exposure and work experience, orienting youth, supporting youth placements, and orienting project supervisors on project expectations, as well as contributing to CLA and project learning.
- Gather problem statements from the Network of Champions, representing the 3 program pathways. Problem statements will be used for project grouping and project design purposes. Integrate problem statements into the application and convening processes.
- Collaborate with relevant departments/units of the VNU-HCM, technical partners and other USAID projects active in youth development activities, particularly for the Leadership in Action projects.
Mentorship and Peer Coaching
- Identify mentors from within the program’s Network of Champions who can mentor youth on employment and self-employment. Match mentors and youth leaders in coordination with the coaches.
- Provide training for mentors on EDC’s approaches to youth mentoring and coaching.
- Monitor the quality and effectiveness of the program’s mentoring component.
- Manage the development of materials or tools to support Mentors and youth.
- Ensure understanding of the project and ownership of project activities by mentors to support youth development.
- Ensure the establishment of an excellent working synergy between the mentors, the communities and the young learners in particular.
- Adapt the peer coaching strategy, lead the peer coach election and training process for each cohort and pathway, and assist in the execution of weekly peer coaching meetings, which will be used as a feedback loop to obtain regular input from participants.
Other programmatic activities
- Support successful organization of the in-person convening of youth leaders, including program planning, facilitation, site visit coordination, identification/invitation of speakers, and mentorship activities, among others.
- Collaborate with other project teams to organize project events, such as the pause & reflect meeting, speaker series, final convening, among others.
- Support social and gender inclusion in the activities.
- Collaborate with the M&E team to ensure timely collection of information.
- Contribute to ad hoc, monthly, quarterly, annual and other reports.
- Contribute to project’s activities planning.
- Perform other tasks as required by the Chief of Party.
The candidate for the position of Green Partnerships and Mentorship Lead shall have at a minimum the followingqualifications:
Education:
Master’s degree and 7 to 8 years of progressively responsible and directly relevant experience required.
Skills and Experience:
- Experience and expertise in facilitating multi-stakeholder collaboration; fostering privatesector partnerships and leveraging resources for development activities required.
- Demonstrated experience with youth leadership development required; experience withyouth leadership development in the context of technical or higher education preferred.
- Experience working in the private sector or a demonstrated understanding of private sectorengagement principles and ability to develop a vision for both private and public sectoralignment/convergence for increased development outcomes for youth.
- Eight years of relevant and progressively increasing responsibility developing andmaintaining strategic relationships between public and private sector partners and growingthose partnerships in Vietnam and the Lower Mekong sub-region.
- Experience with professional mentorship and/or coaching programs or a demonstratedfamiliarity of the principles for structured and effective mentoring and selection of high-quality mentors. Ability to orient and support peer coaching groups.
- Ability to establish strong working relationships with senior government officials, educationinstitutions and administrators; civil society and private sector leaders; international donors;other stakeholders working in climate change, biodiversity, and the environment inVietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand.
- Experience leading activities that reduce gender and social inclusion barriers in programsgreatly desired.
- Demonstrated track record of working in teams and fostering partnerships.
- Knowledge of and commitment to the focus themes of climate change, biodiversity, and theenvironment preferred.
- Adaptable and flexible; Be able to engage in self-learning, knowledge building through a participatory process.
- Good planning and organizational skills, ability to write ad hoc, monthly and quarterly reports on a regular basis.
- Excellent communication, interpersonal and cultural diversity skills.
- Experience in organizing youth leadership programs (e.g., YSEALI) is desired.
Language
Fluency in English and Vietnamese (reading, writing, listening, speaking) required.
Applications should be submitted no later than 20 June 2023.
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