Project Officer (Gender & Safeguarding) -3 Required

VSO is the world’s leading international organisation working through volunteers to create a fair world for everyone. We focus on people who are marginalised or excluded, including those living in poverty, people with disabilities or illness, and those facing discrimination, violence, disasters, disease, and conflict.

VSO places these individuals at the centre of its work as primary actors and agents of change. We work with communities to identify their priorities, opportunities, and solutions, supporting locally led and sustainable change

Our Approach

VSO’s Volunteering for Development (VfD) approach supports vulnerable and marginalised people to claim their rights and drive lasting change. It addresses the root causes of vulnerability and marginalisation through three core approaches: social inclusion and gender, social accountability, and resilience. These approaches underpin our work in inclusive education, health, resilient livelihoods and peace building.

About the Job

VSO is a lead implementer of the Internship Opportunities for Young Women program (iWork), financed by the Mastercard Foundation. The program will be implemented in Ethiopia across Amhara, Oromia, and Harari regional states, as well as the Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa city administrations. iWork aims to create internship opportunities for 24,000 financially disadvantaged young people, with a primary focus on young women. The program also promotes inclusion by reaching persons with disabilities, refugees, internally displaced people, and returnees. Through internships, iWork aims to help young women build the skills and experience they need to access dignified and fulfilling work, contributing to poverty reduction and an improved quality of life.

VSO Ethiopia is recruiting an experienced Project officer: (Gender and Safeguarding) for iWork program.

Role Purpose:

To provide technical and operational support on gender equality, social inclusion and safeguarding across i-Work program implementation in the assigned cluster. ensures effective integration of gender equality, social inclusion, youth empowerment, disability inclusion, and safeguarding principles across all i-Work program interventions at cluster level ensuring safe, inclusive, gender-responsive implementation and aligned with VSO safeguarding policies, procedures, do no harm local legal requirements.

Role description

Tasks Responsibilities

• Support of cluster-level implementation, review and monitoring of gender safeguarding plans, risk mitigation measures, reporting mechanisms and minimum standards in line with VSO, consortium and legal requirements including Mastercard Foundation Partner Code of Conduct and Child and Youth Safeguarding Guidelines
• Coordinate with cluster teams, project coordinators, government offices and implementing partners to integrate gender equality, safeguarding and inclusive facilitation approaches across project planning, implementation and review. Integrate social inclusion and gender analysis principles across project planning, implementation, monitoring and reporting, identifying barriers to equitable participation and recommending practical interventions.
• Promote inclusive, gender-responsive approaches that address the needs and priorities of women, men, girls, boys, persons with disabilities and vulnerable youth, and strengthen their meaningful participation and leadership.
• Engage community leaders, local authorities, OSS centres, education institutes, TVET, host enterprises and relevant stakeholders to promote gender transformation, disability inclusion, safeguarding, positive social norms, reduce harmful practices affecting youth and women, and support establishment and monitoring of safe, confidential, accessible and inclusive community feedback and reporting/complaints mechanisms.
• Induct, train, and raise awareness on gender, disability inclusion, inclusive practices, safeguarding, PSEA, child protection, GBV prevention, codes of conduct and safe communication practices for staff, partners, local service providers, government, host enterprises, youth participants and communities.
• Promote a positive safeguarding culture, accountability and speak-up mechanisms.
• Conduct field visits and partner safeguarding assessments, support implementation and monitoring of partner safeguarding improvement plans and corrective actions, support project safeguarding action plans, and incident management, and share learning with cluster teams and safeguarding leads.
• Conduct periodic safeguarding risk assessments across project activities, partner operations, internship placements and enterprise engagement; monitor mitigation actions and escalate risks.
• Support safeguarding due diligence and compliance monitoring of host enterprises, training providers, consultants, contractors and other external stakeholders engaged by the project.
• Support safe identification, referral, and follow-up of safeguarding concerns and incidents while maintaining confidentiality and survivor-centred approaches, working in partnership with global safeguarding team and consortium Gender & Safeguarding lead.
• Collect, analyse and report disaggregated data, track gender and safeguarding indicators, and use evidence to inform project monitoring, learning and decision-making.
• Document learning, good practice, success stories and implementation challenges, and contribute to timely project, donor and organisational reporting and knowledge sharing.