Save the Children provides high-quality early learning interventions to children, from birth to age eight, in more than 150 low-income rural communities across the U.S. We are seeking a Senior Specialist, Community Resilience and Social and Emotional Learning professional to deepen our impact for children and families living in adverse community environments across rural America. Save the Children recognizes that trauma and toxic stress is widespread and pervasive for families and communities across the United States, and community environments with widespread poverty and other wide-ranging issues often need positive buffers that promote resilience. Recognizing the multitude of risk factors and adverse experiences affecting children and families, Save the Children aims to build a resilient community approach to strengthen protective factors and foster social and emotional skills for children and families to cope and adapt effectively.
In order to attain our goals of supporting all children to be socially, emotionally, and cognitively ready for kindergarten and achieve third grade proficiency we are seeking an expert to develop strategies and supports for “noncognitive” constructs for children and families, as well as community engagement strategies, and other components beyond direct child-focused activities or curriculum to shape children’s social and emotional development.
As a member of the national Community Impact team, this role’s primary responsibilities include designing high-quality program strategies and approaches, and ensuring this area of work is closely aligned to USPA strategy. Reporting to the Director, Community Impact, the Senior Specialist will work closely with the Rural Education Program Development team to design integrated programming across the program continuum, and collaborate with other cross-functional teams to ensure strong implementation, evaluation, and seek opportunities for new partnerships and resource development.
Support for Program Design and Quality Assurance (40%)
Lead the development of resilience and SEL programs, strategies, and approaches; provide technical guidance to US Programs staff to support children's social and emotional learning and build community resilience across the US.
- Specifically support Rural Education field staff to integrate social and emotional learning (SEL) programming in formal and informal educational activities.
- Supporting Rural Education field staff to integrate practices and strategies to promote community resilience and protective factors across the program continuum.
- Providing technical expertise at the national level in community resilience and SEL, with a focus on children from birth to age eight;
- Ensuring SEL programming aligns with an ecological approach to child-level, school-level, family-level, and community-level partnerships throughout planning and implementation;
- Staying abreast of national SEL trends and working with field team to revise, adapt and develop curriculum materials to align with best practice and meet local contexts/needs;
- Summarizing and analyzing program implementation data; informing continuous quality improvement efforts;
- Designing and developing training materials and resources to support field and state-based staff; implementing and supporting various training opportunities;
- 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 programmatic strategies are clearly understood, informed by data/our experience and in keeping with the leading edge of best practice for SEL and resilience, including:
- Developing thematic strategies and contributing to program design and improvement;
- Articulating and documenting the value of this work in advancing strategic division goals
- Collaborating with state teams to develop and refine staff development plans (including train-the-trainer models, in-person and remote methods);
- Ensure SEL and resilience integration into USPA learning agenda and develop comprehensive monitoring and evaluation plan, processes, and tools to analyze implementation; support state implementation teams with program delivery and continuous improvement;
New business & proposal development (20%)
Responsible for contributing to the pursuit of strategic funding opportunities, including:
- Cultivating partnerships and/or relationships with 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 design workshops, proposal writing, reviews, etc.
Thought leadership, embedding evidence and learning (15%)
Responsible for shaping the resilience and SEL agenda around our early learning programs and partnerships, with a focus on rural communities, including:
- Innovating and adapting to ensure programs 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 on top of resilience and SEL research, training USPA staff in new evidence, participating in and presenting at external conferences;
- Leading in standards-setting and other technical dialogue with key stakeholders (e.g. donors, partners), and supporting technical dialogue in states and nationally; -
- Promoting Save the Children’s expertise and services through external communications, presentations, and other related activities.
- Minimum of 5-7years of relevant experience working with children and families, with a focus on social and emotional learning;
- Knowledge of best practices in field of SEL and resiliency to meet children’s social and emotional needs;
- Experience leading resilience and SEL 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);
- Proactive, energetic, detail-oriented, and ability to manage deadlines independently;
- Excellent communication and facilitation skills.
- Ability to travel regionally and nationally up to 30% of the time
- 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