Youth Empowerment Portfolio Management and Research Coordinator International Post at UNDP

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UNDP on the ground in more than 170 countries provides a global perspective and local insight to help empower lives and build resilient nations. Across Asia and the Pacific, UNDP helps countries build and share their own solutions to urgent development challenges, supporting coalitions for change and connecting individuals and institutions so they can share knowledge, experience, and resources.

UNDP’s Youth Empowerment Portfolio in Asia and the Pacific (YEP-AP) aims to invest in and empower young people across the region, to accelerate the implementation of SDGs. YEP-AP believes that youth can be leaders, who create inclusive and equitable societies free of discrimination. They can make a positive difference by taking on the challenges through social innovation, mobilizing their peers and communities, and creating adaptive and innovative solutions.

YEP-AP strengthens youth empowerment at all levels for maximum, collective impact across the region:

Promoting youth-friendly policy and regulatory environments at the upstream level,
Strengthening the capacities and connections between key stakeholders at the midstream level, and
Directly supporting young people at the downstream level.

Covering all these bases through interventions reinforcing each other will collectively create a greater and more sustainable impact.

The portfolio will directly target across the Asia-Pacific region, with many more benefitting indirectly from YEP-APs activities. These 250,000 young people benefits will also extend to the broader community, including underserved and marginalized communities supported by young social entrepreneurs, climate advocates and activists.

YEP-AP consists of 4 programming pillars: of Youth Entrepreneurship, Youth and climate Action, Youth & Digital Skills, and Youth Political Participation and Peacebuilding with cross-cutting programmatic interventions around Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. The portfolio also expect to support Asia-Pacific UNDP country offices in identifying opportunities to replicate national youth portfolios and with the scale of the interventions and complexity, needs capacities to operationalize the programming activities.

Currently, regional Youth Portfolio’s research component seeks to generate knowledge regarding means to strengthen the ecosystem for youth social entrepreneurship, innovation and leadership in Asia-Pacific, and to disseminate knowledge in order to influence ecosystem change. With the overall focus of Inclusive Entrepreneurship for Youth Co:Lab initiative, UNDP and partners would like to convene a flagship research on Inclusive Entrepreneurship for 2023-2024 programming period.

With this context, the Regional Youth Empowerment Portfolio intends to engage a coordinator to strengthen the operationalization of the portfolio, including supporting UNDP Asia-Pacific country offices to develop their youth portfolios and also to support in coordination of the flagship research project.

Duties and Responsibilities

The YEP-AP Management and Research Coordinator will report to the Regional Youth and Civil Society Specialist with the close supervision of the Regional Youth Project Manager and work in close collaboration with the UNDP country offices and other key parties.

Develop the CO Coordination architecture for YEP-AP Implementation

Coordinate and keep information flow up-to-date between CO youth team and BRH youth team
Support CO requests for YEP-AP and youth-related programs
Ensure clarity on M&E, Communications, operations processes and adherence by CO youth teams
Support work plans of COs, and consolidate workplans at the regional level, including a mechanism for tracking based on UNDP corporate and donor requirements

Coordinate activities of the RBAP Community of Practice for Youth Portfolio Development

Coordinate between Youth team and innovation team and other relevant stakeholders
Organize the COP Workshop / in-person meeting
Support CO Portfolio Development where required

Lead coordination of the Youth Co: Lab flagship research: YCL study on Inclusive Youth Entrepreneurship.

Refine the scope, design, and methodology of individual research and thought leadership products in order to deliver on the Regional Youth Project’s research and thought leadership objectives.
Support the coordination of the development of research products, including reviewing intermediary outputs and providing regular feedback to research partners.
Support engagement and management of partners for research, including supporting the development of Terms of Reference where required.
Manage Regional Youth Project’s partnerships with third-party research and thought leadership collaborators.
Support UNDP country offices under the Youth Co: Lab programme in the development, delivery and review of knowledge products at the national level.
Support the UNDP review and approval process for knowledge products.
Support the development of communications materials and other outputs synthesizing and disseminating the findings of research.

Support operationalization of YEP-AP Portfolio

Support the Youth Portfolio Operations team on annual work plans, procurement planning, budgeting, and tracking
Support the Portfolio manager on portfolio governance and YEP-AP board-related activities
Support Partnerships Team for Partnerships and Resource Mobilization for YEP-AP
Support the Portfolio manager in assessing the current project Risk register, Quality Assurance checklist, and Social and Environmental screening checklist
Support the Portfolio Manager in updating of above checklists in accordance with the project document requirements
Support the Portfolio Manager in ensuring the application of project safeguards and regular assessment
Support on due diligence of private sector donors

Support Portfolio Financial Management

Support the Portfolio manager in establishing the project financial framework of the portfolio in terms of budgeting and reporting in alignment with the UNDP and donor requirements
Support portfolio operations team on quarterly updates of the project budget based on performance (more regularly at the year-end)
Support the development of multi-year and annual workplans of the project

Competencies

Core competencies:

Achieve Results: LEVEL 1: Plans and monitors own work, pays attention to details, delivers quality work by deadline
Think Innovatively: LEVEL 1: Open to creative ideas/known risks, is pragmatic problem solver, makes improvements
Learn Continuously: LEVEL 1: Open minded and curious, shares knowledge, learns from mistakes, asks for feedback
Adapt with Agility: LEVEL 1: Adapts to change, constructively handles ambiguity/uncertainty, is flexible
Act with Determination: LEVEL 1: Shows drive and motivation, able to deliver calmly in face of adversity, confident
Engage and Partner: LEVEL 1: Demonstrates compassion/understanding towards others, forms positive relationships
Enable Diversity and Inclusion: LEVEL 1: Appreciate/respect differences, aware of unconscious bias, confront discrimination

Cross-Functional & Technical competencies:

Business Management

Monitoring: Ability to provide managers and key stakeholders with regular feedback on the consistency or discrepancy between planned and actual activities and programme performance and results

Business Development

Knowledge Generation: Ability to research and turn information into useful knowledge, relevant for context or responsive to a stated need
Knowledge Facilitation : Ability to animate individuals and communities of contributors to participate and share, particularly externally

Business Direction and Strategy

Effective Decision Making: Ability to take decisions in a timely and efficient manner in line with one’s authority area of expertise and resources

Programme and Policy – 2030 Agenda:

Engagement and Effectiveness : Effectiveness- RBM Standards and Practices for Programming; Performance and data analysis and sharing lessons

2030 Agenda:

Peace: Governance – Youth Socio Economic Empowerment

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

Advanced university degree (Master´s degree or equivalent) in sustainable development, business/public administration, social/political sciences, international relations, language, literature and communications or other related expertise is required, OR
A first-level university degree (Bachelor’s degree) in sustainable development, business/public administration, social/political sciences, international relations, language, literature and communications or other related expertise in combination with additional 2 years of qualifying experience will be given due consideration in lieu of Master´s degree.

Experience:

Up to 2 years (with Master´s degree) or minimum 2 years (with Bachelor’s degree) of experience in project management
Demonstrated ability to coordinate project initiatives, data collection and reporting processes, preferably at the regional level
Demonstrated experience and understanding of youth socio-economic empowerment and Leaving No One Behind principles, including in the Asia-Pacific context
Demonstrated ability to work with diverse teams across different countries and offices
Working knowledge of financial reporting, annual reporting and donor reporting
Prior experience in development agencies is an asset
Experience in Asia-Pacific region

Required Language: