This position is open to international candidates.

ABOUT THE BERNARD VAN LEER FOUNDATION

The Bernard van Leer Foundation is an independent Dutch organisation working worldwide to ensure that all babies and toddlers have a good start in life. We inspire and inform large-scale action that improves the health and wellbeing of young children – especially the most vulnerable – and the people who care for them.

Our current strategy focuses on three key investment areas, which are as follows:

• Parents+: Combining coaching activities for parents and other caregivers about early child development with at least one other service designed to meet a child’s and/or her parents’ basic needs.

• Urban95: Partnering with cities around the world to look at their cities from an elevation of 95cm – the height of a three-year-old – and incorporate the resulting insights into city planning, design, and management.

• Early Years Thought Leadership: Building a motivated network of people, by providing leaders with relevant knowledge, practical tools, and thoughtful tactics to be real change-makers for the wellbeing of babies, toddlers, and caregivers.

Geographically, we currently focus on five portfolio countries chosen for their economic, geographic, and cultural diversity: Brazil, India, Israel, Jordan, the Netherlands. We have also launched initiatives to replicating our learnings and improve support those who are forcibly displaced across the Middle East, Europe, and Latin America.

THE POSITION

Core to our impact is capturing, evaluating, and sharing what we learn about effectively scaling early childhood development programmes and building a network of committed leaders that advocate for early years. To document our work and share our learnings, Bernard van Leer Foundation is looking for a sharp, organized and a curiosity driven expert to join our team as the Lead, Learning to Scale.

The Lead, Learning to Scale will work closely with the Knowledge for Policy Director and the Management Team to help create and strengthen a culture of data and MEL (Monitoring Evaluation and Learning). This role will provide technical support to our staff and partners on MEL practices. This position will also support tasks related to strategic analysis, developing quarterly board reports, and managing strategic partnerships and projects related to learning and thought leadership.

PRINCIPAL RESPONSIBILITIES AND TASKS

Learning and documentation

• Co-ordinate and manage projects with external partners to document, learn from and evaluate scaling and early years thought leadership partnerships.

• Work closely with our Communication Team to support the translation of key research learnings into communication products (i.e., storytelling videos, etc.) that can be shared with diverse audiences.

• Promote and organize opportunities to document and digest learnings across Programme and Knowledge for Policy teams.

 Monitoring and Evaluation Support

• Lead the adoption of internal monitoring, evaluation, and performance processes.

• Help build a culture of evidence-based programme design, management, and monitoring. 

• Support the organization to monitor the impact and learnings for current and future strategic goals on scalable programmes and policies, and early years thought leadership.

• Maintain, update, and guide the adoption of the Foundation's Performance Framework, by supporting data-gathering and monitoring processes for our grantmaking and knowledge partnerships.

• Co-ordinate the development and management of existing and new data dashboards to support management decisions and communications

• Support and build capacity amongst staff and external partners to monitor and report on the progress of our grants with relation to our performance framework.

• Provide MEL technical assistance to our  Programme team and occasionally, their partners.

• Organize internal learning opportunities  to strengthen capacity  on key MEL principles and other topics for Foundation staff.

Board Reporting

• Work closely with the Management team on strategic analysis and dialogues, and prepare end-to-end production of quarterly board reports.

• Programme Support  

• Coordinate the executive education programmes on scaling ECD initiatives, behaviour science and Urban95 with our strategic institutional partners.

• Support ongoing efforts to integrate Parents+, Urban95 and Early Years Thought Leadership goals into our grants.

• Engage in project management and provide strategic contributions to the ongoing work of the Foundation, e.g., contributing to internal and external knowledge exchange and the organization of team building activities.

• Help set up and review best practices for regular data management systems across programs and initiatives, and support team members to implement it.

• Potentially line manage one report to support with activities on MEL.

PROFFESIONAL CONTACTS

• Inside the Foundation: Knowledge for Policy Director, Impact and Finance Analyst, Knowledge for Policy Team, Programme Team, Operations Team, and Management Team.

• Outside the Foundation: Global partners, grantees, strategic institutions related to learning processes.

QUALIFICATIONS, SKILLS AND COMPETENCIES

Expertise and Experience:

• Master's degree in International Development, Statistics, International Relations, Economics, Business, Social Sciences, Humanities, Psychology, Science, or other field requiring significant research, analysis, and writing.

• 5-8 years of experience related to  MEL (Monitoring Evaluation and Learning) and reporting on cross-sectoral programmes, including demonstrated experience in developing and implementing monitoring, evaluation, and learning plans and/or researching protocol on cross-sectoral programs.

• Familiarity with innovative MEL  methods that can be effective with governments with little resources.

• Knowledge of research methods, including qualitative, quantitative, mixed-methods, and impact data collection and analysis.

• Experience or interest in cross-cutting topics and indicators related to our work  including Early Childhood Development, health, and urban and place-based metrics.

Communication and management skills:

• Effective communication skills: can extract/synthesize and structure information for different audiences and develop materials to deliver key messages, with strong writing skills in English.

• Excellent project management skills: able to manage multiple projects and meet deadlines.
  
  

Personal Competencies

• Intellectually curious and driven by a passion for data to understand how social change can happen at scale.

• Interested about the importance of investing in early childhood development.

• An aptitude for transferring knowledge and sharing learnings with partners and team members.

• Cross-cultural competency to engage with different stakeholders  in diverse cultural settings.

• Well-developed emotional intelligence, including self-awareness, self-management, and empathy.

Languages:

Fluency in English.

Proficiency in other languages used in the Foundation’s programmes is a plus. (Arabic, Dutch, French, Hebrew, Hindi, Portuguese, Spanish).

Organizational competencies: 

Teamwork

Learning Ability

Result Oriented 

Job specific competencies:

Planning and Organizing

Problem Analysis

Organizational Sensitivity

Written Communication

Adaptability