We are seeking a Senior Specialist, Community Capacity Building to expand our reach and deepen our impact for children and families across rural America. Save the Children seeks to increase access to capacity-building opportunities at the community-level for a variety of audiences across early learning settings including in-home and center-based care providers, Head Start and preschool, educators within local school districts, families, and community partners.
As a member of the national Community Impact team, and reporting to the Director, Community Impact, this role’s primary responsibilities include designing and delivering capacity-building strategies and approaches, and ensuring this area of work is closely aligned to USPA strategy to advance population-level results for children, families, and communities. The Senior Specialist will work closely with the Rural Education Program Development team to design integrated capacity building practices for multiple audiences, collaborating with other cross-functional teams to ensure strong implementation, monitoring and evaluation, and developing opportunities for new partnerships and resource development.
Support for Program Design and Quality Assurance (50%)
Lead the development of capacity-building program strategies, and approaches at the community-level; provide technical guidance to US Programs staff to support implementation across the US.
- Contributing to Save the Children’s Rural Education approach to community capacity building;
- Providing technical expertise at the national level in community capacity building across the early childhood continuum;
- Develop and deliver resources and training for multiple audiences including center-based and in-home childcare providers, educators and school administrators, families, and community partners;
- Building new and strengthening existing partnerships with local childcare centers, in-home providers, Head Starts, preschools, and other community-based care settings to increase quality of care provided;
- Increasing number and quality of in-home child care providers, providing training, coaching, and resources to promote quality improvement;
- Increase professional development opportunities for local school staff and district leaders to strengthen support of children’s learning and development, effectively engage families, and strengthen school culture and climate
- Providing opportunities for leaders cross-sector community collaboratives and other external community based organizations to gain new tools and resources to support children’s positive outcomes
- Staying abreast of national trends to inform development of training and resources to align with best practice and meet local contexts/needs;
- Summarizing and analyzing program implementation data; informing continuous quality improvement efforts;
- Working with National Program Development and Implementation Teams and field colleagues to ensure cohesive integration across the early childhood continuum, and foster collaboration.
Organizational strategy, planning and reporting (25%)
Responsible for ensuring that community capacity building strategies are clearly understood, evaluated, and reported across USPA communities, including:
- Documenting Save the Children’s effort in this space, and ensuring the connection in advancing strategic division goals for community-wide impact and population-level results
- Ensure integration into USPA learning agenda and support development of a comprehensive monitoring and evaluation plan to track implementation; support state implementation teams with delivery and continuous improvement;
- Utilizing innovative approaches and practices to support community capacity building
New business & proposal development (15%)
Responsible for contributing to the pursuit of strategic funding opportunities, including:
- Cultivating partnerships and/or relationships with external organizations, donors and other key stakeholders;
- Preparing for grant opportunities by gathering information, conducting formative research, and leading or participating in the program design process;
- Contributing to the active proposal development process through proposal contributions, reviews, etc.
Thought leadership, embedding evidence and learning (10%)
Responsible for shaping Save the Children’s community capacity building approach, with a focus on rural communities, including:
- Innovating and adapting to ensure practices, strategies, and partnerships are driving positive outcomes for children, families, and communities;
- Generating evidence, research, collating and sharing learning, developing tools, approaches, training guides etc.;
- Keeping abreast of current research, training USPA staff in new evidence, participating in and presenting at external conferences;
- Promoting Save the Children’s expertise and services through external communications, presentations, and other related activities.
- Minimum of 5-7 years of experience working with children, families, and communities
- Knowledge of best practices in field of early childhood, community engagement, and education to strengthen individual and organizational skills;
- Experience in training development and delivery;
- Experience in program development, implementation, and data collection/analysis;
- Ability to synthesize research and identify key partners to advance Save the Children’s efforts within the space
- Proven ability to work in a dynamic environment with multiple priorities and deliverables;
- Experience with data management and web-based platforms (i.e., SharePoint, Microsoft-suite: Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Word);
- Pro-active, energetic, detail-oriented, and manages deadlines independently;
- Excellent communication and facilitation skills;
- Ability to travel regionally and nationally up to 30% of the time.
Preferred Qualifications
- Master’s Degree in a related field preferred
- Aetna Medical and Dental insurance with a concierge service
- Health Care and Dependent Care Flexible Spending Account
- Vision Insurance
- Life insurance
- Employee Assistance Program
- Commuter Benefit Program
- Vacation and Sick leave
- Paid holidays
What makes us special!
- Generous Retirement Savings with matching company contributions of up to 8%
- Family Leave – 10 additional days of paid time off for you to use to care for your family members
- Additional Maternity and Paternity Leave – 30 days where parents can take additional paid leave (beyond short-term disability and FMLA) at the birth or adoption of a child during that critical first year!
- Critical Child Illness Leave – We hope you never have to use it, but we will provide an additional 30 days of paid leave per year should your dependent child be faced with a critical illness.
- Pet Insurance, Critical Illness Insurance, Identity Protection, Home, Auto and additional Life insurances
- Summer Fun Fridays – During the summer months, early release at 1:30 pm every other Friday!
- Volunteer Day – One paid day a year to support the causes that matter to you!
- Leadership and Employee Development Training, including:
- Our remarkable in-house CORE, Senior Management Development, and Leadership Development Programs
- Language learning opportunities
- Continuous Improvement skill development programs
- Lunch and Learn information sharing sessions