Summary
Date Posted: Wednesday, August 02 2023, Base Salary: Not Disclosed

JOB DETAILS:
PLAN INTERNATIONAL

Founded in 1937, Plan International, Inc. (“PII”) is a development and humanitarian organisation that advances children’s rights and equality for girls. We strive for a just world, working together with children, young people, our supporters, and partners in both humanitarian and development settings.

Plan International is an independent development and humanitarian (dual mandate) non-profit organisation that believes in the power and potential of every child, but knows this is often supressed by poverty, violence, exclusion, disasters, and discrimination.

Working together with children, girls, young people, supporters, and partners, Plan International strives for a just world, tackling the root causes of the challenge’s girls and vulnerable children face. Plan International has been building powerful partnerships for children for over 85 years and now active in more than 80 countries, delivering humanitarian assistance and driving changes in practice and policy at local, national, and global levels using our reach, experience, and knowledge.

Our global strategy “All girls standing strong creating global change” has a specific focus on girls, as they are often the most marginalised and most often left behind. We have committed ourselves to the ambitious target of reaching 200 million girls over 5 years, to ensure they can learn, lead, decide and thrive. This is our contribution to reaching the sustainable development goals, and in particular the goals on gender equality in both humanitarian and development settings. Our organisation is transforming itself to meet the enormous challenge everywhere we work. We need bold, forward-thinking, and innovative individuals to lead our country operations, driving change and delivering results that will allow us to reach our target of 200 million girls.

PLAN INTERNATIONAL IN EAST AND CENTRAL EUROPE
Plan International responded to the Ukraine Crisis since March 2022, starting in countries hosting Ukrainian refugees (Moldova, Romania, Poland) and thereafter expanding humanitarian operations inside Ukraine since August 2022. Since July-August 2022, Plan International has been duly registered in Poland and Romania as national Foundations and in Moldova as a branch office of Plan International Inc. Since October 2022, Plan International has also been duly registered in Ukraine as a representative office of Plan International Inc.

The Ukraine Crisis Response portfolio across the 4 countries has seen a rapid expansion and has the ambition to grow to EUR 100M between 2022 and 2025. Growth is expected to come through acquisition of grants from both bilateral and multilateral donors, EU funding streams (DG ECHO, DG NEAR, DG HOME) as well as through ongoing public appeals, exploring corporate sector funding opportunities and local fundraising.

Plan International is profiling itself as one of the ‘go to’ organizations in promoting and protecting the rights of children, girls and young people in conflict and crisis; in particular through adding value in child protection, education, gender and inclusion, social cohesion, GBV, MHPSS and CVA. As the crisis permits, Plan International will expand its humanitarian interventions into longer term development goals driving youth-led action and equality for girls in Moldova, Poland, Romania and Ukraine.

Plan International works exclusively through strategic civil society partners to support vulnerable children, young people, and their families to cope with the impact of the current humanitarian crisis and to increase their resilience.

Plan International currently employs approximately 65 staff across the response. It is expected that the ratio of international to national staff will rapidly decrease. A Ukraine Crisis Response Leadership Team comprising of the Response Director, four Heads of Mission/CD, the Head of Programme Operations, the Head of P&C and the Head of Finance and Operations is driving our strategic ambition and promotes inclusive decision making and mutual accountability. The response is supported by the Ukraine Crisis Response strategic and operational shared service hub which strongly connects Plan International’s response and presence in Moldova, Romania, Poland and Ukraine: a multi-country Ukraine Crisis Response Strategy (January 2023-December 2024) guides the strategic ambition of Plan International throughout the multi-country response.

Plan International is committed to meeting safeguarding expectations across all its operations and will expect the Leadership Team to ensure all incidents regarding child abuse and sexual harassment are reported and effectively managed.

ROLE PURPOSE
The post of the Head of Communications is an integral part of the Ukraine response hub, leading all strategic communications for the response and supporting Plan International to communicate effectively with key stakeholders including the media, supporters, and donors. The post holder will develop public messaging, build a strong regional communications network within the response (Poland, Ukraine, Romania, Moldova), and create high-quality comms materials for use across our network of National Organisations and in Plan International’s global channels to facilitate fundraising initiatives as well as profiling the impact of our programming and influencing.

You will be a values-based and feminist leader, deeply comfortable with purpose driven communications, and with a demonstrable commitment to gender equality, equity, diversity, and inclusion. You will understand and drive efforts to deliver positive change for girls in crisis through advocating, campaigning, and communicating at a national and international level. You will lead by example in ensuring gender equality is evident in everything we do throughout all aspects of internal and external communications and through adequate ways of working. You will work with your team to bring about the right culture that ensures we are champions for girls and gender equality.

As a member of the East and Central Europe Ukraine Crisis Response Leadership Team, you will have shared accountability, with the Heads of Mission of Poland, Romania, Moldova and the Country Director of Ukraine, the Ukraine Crisis Response Director and Ukraine Crisis Response Hub’s Head of Programme Operations, Head of Finance and Operations, and Head of People & Culture, to contribute to the overall learning and strategic direction of Plan International in the East and Central Europe region with a total budget to grow to approximately €100 million and a staff complement of about 100 people.

DIMENSIONS OF THE ROLE
• Further develop the East and Central Europe communications plan ensuring our response messaging is regularly updated and ensure timely, high-quality content is delivered to better communicate the need and impact of the response.
• Reports to the Director of the Ukraine response mission while providing advisory support to communications specialists based in Poland, Romania, Moldova, and Ukraine.
• Close collaboration with programme, Humanitarian, Advocacy and National Organisation communications colleagues.
• Proactive and reactive media work including monitoring and responding to developments and the news agenda to ensure Plan International is positioned as the ‘go to’ organisation for girls and children’s rights, particularly in relation to the Ukraine response.
• Regular interaction with GH media and digital teams and leads the Ukraine response communication coordination group calls.

KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES AND MAIN RESPONSIBILITIES
Plan International’s internal and external communications throughout East and Central Europe is contributing to promoting lasting change for girls and increasing Plan International’s brand recognition as go-to organisation for girls rights and gender equality:
• Proactively position Plan International as a key player in the emergency response to help us raise funds
• Through strong strategic and tactical content highlight the impact of our programmatic response, the humanitarian situation on the ground and reinforce Plan International’s advocacy and policy messages
• Be clear that we are responding by supporting local organisations that are responding directly to the needs of IDPs and refugees, particularly girls, boys, children and young women.
• Produce a range of compelling human interest child-focused content such as: case studies, eyewitness accounts, blogs, first person account, images, audio, video, which is co-created with young people when possible and relevant.
• Ensure all content is available for everyone in the Plan International communications network to use by uploading all content in high resolution onto the global Media Bank or working closely with the GH Media Librarian to ensure that everything is available on the Media Bank
• Use social media to highlight the humanitarian situation while in country
• Monitor the situation for challenges, risks, threats and opportunities related to the emergency context that may impact communications and public engagement approaches, messaging and operations
• Ensure brand visibility of Plan International where appropriate.
• Update the Ukraine crisis communications plan on a regular basis so our external communications are aligned with our programme response and reflect the evolving situation.
• Ensure that child safeguarding guidelines for content are strictly adhered to including consent, and ensure content upholds our principles of illustrating agency, dignity and respect of young people at all times.
• Look for opportunities to use developments and the international news agenda in a timely was to drive positive and consistent messaging about Plan International which represents the organisation effectively and raises its profile and reputation as a principled humanitarian agency.
• Liaise with journalists/correspondents, manage media requests and provide spokespersons with briefing and talking points. Proactively develop relationships with journalists to increase media coverage over time.
• Ensures that Plan International’s global policies for Safeguarding Children and Young People and Gender Equality and Inclusion are fully embedded in accordance with the principles and requirements of the policy including relevant Implementation Standards and Guidelines as applicable to their area of responsibility.
• This includes, but is not limited to, ensuring staff and associates are aware of and understand their responsibilities under these policies and Plan International’s Code of Conduct (CoC), their relevance to their area of work, and that concerns are reported and managed in accordance with the appropriate procedures

Safeguarding Children and Young People and Gender Equality and Inclusion are fully embedded:
• Ensure that Plan International’s global policies for Safeguarding Children and Young People and Gender Equality and Inclusion are fully embedded in accordance with the principles and requirements of the policy including relevant Implementation Standards and Guidelines as applicable to their area of responsibility. This includes, but is not limited to, ensuring staff and associates are aware of and understand their responsibilities under these policies and Plan International’s Code of Conduct (CoC), their relevance to their area of work, and that concerns are reported and managed in accordance with the appropriate procedures.

KEY RELATIONSHIPS
• Work closely with communications specialists in each response country, Humanitarian, regional and country-based colleagues in the assigned regions; build relations and offer guidance, support and coaching as required.
• Work collaboratively and supportively with other teams, National Organisations, Liaison Offices, partner organisations and external contacts.
• Proactively develop and strengthen productive relationships with key global media contacts and outlets in assigned regions and specialist areas.
• To work positively with other Communication Department colleagues – including the video unit, multimedia archivist, digital and internal communications teams as well as with freelance photographers and filmmakers in creating effective press packages and content.

COMMUNICATIONS AND WORKING RELATIONSHIPS
Internal
• Director of Ukraine Crisis Response – Line manager
• Ukraine Crisis Response Leadership Team
• Ukraine Crisis Response Hub (Strategic & Operational Shared Service centre)
• PII Leadership Team, Global Hub’s Departments and Global Policies / Process Owners
• National Organisations (NO)

External:
• Civil society actors and platforms
• National and local authorities and media at national and international level
• Institutional and private sector donors (directly and through National Organisations) and National Institutions
• UN and donor representatives and partners including humanitarian country teams, clusters, national and international NGOs, civil society and community-based organizations.

KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, AND COMPETENCIES
Essential:
• Degree Level or equivalent substantial experience working in journalism, media relations or PR at an international level.
• Strong and effective communicator.
• Excellent verbal and writing skills in English with ability to quickly turn around complex information into strong messages and compelling content.
• Track record of writing/editing news articles, features, picture stories, op-eds and press releases and developing vlogs and visual content.
• Strong understanding of international humanitarian and development issues and rights-based work.
• Practical experience of working in complex emergency settings.
• Proven success at pitching stories to the media and working with journalists.
• Ability to organise media visits, set up interviews and brief spokespeople.
• Track record of handling complex, sensitive and fast-moving situations and work in high pressure environments with tight deadlines.
• Good understanding of social media and digital channels.
• Uses strong interpersonal and communication skills, both written and verbal, to build relationships, negotiate and persuade a wide range of audiences.
• Keeps up to date with key humanitarian and international development issues and trends, and to be able to spot new opportunities as they arise.
• Strong organisational skills to deal with a complex work environment.
• Work enthusiastically as part of a team and form effective and constructive working relationships across the whole organisation and wider network within sector.
• Participate in training and other activities as requested by the organization.
• Good understanding of humanitarian values, principles, the Humanitarian Charter and Code of Conduct for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and NGOs in Disaster Relief.

Desirable
• Familiarity with international development context and a passion for children’s rights.
• Experience of working with people at all levels in a multi- cultural / global environment.
• Multimedia skills including photography, filming and video editing.
• Languages: Ukrainian, Russian, Romanian, Polish

TERMS AND CONDITIONS
The salary is commensurate with the seniority of the appointment. Plan International will be happy to disclose the salary range and applicable benefits to applicants as part of this process.

PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT AND DEMANDS
Ideally based in one of the response offices located in Warsaw, Poland; Bucharest, Romania; Chisinau, Moldova; or Kyiv, Ukraine with extensive local and some international travel. That said, any other base location where Plan International has a presence may be considered. Willingness and ability to travel frequently to insecure conflict affected response areas.

LEVEL OF CONTACT WITH CHILDREN
Mid contact: Occasional interaction with children

PLAN INTERNATIONAL’S VALUES IN PRACTICE
Our values are at the heart of everything we do. Only by defining a common set of values that are important to us – and that we also want to see in our partners – can we deliver on our shared aspirations. If we are to work towards fulfilling our new purpose, it is critical that we understand the behaviours we have to demonstrate to get us there.

We strive for lasting impact
We strive to achieve significant and lasting impact on the lives of children and young people, and to secure equality for girls. We challenge ourselves to be bold, courageous, responsive, focused and innovative.
We are open and accountable
We create an environment of trust inside and outside the organisation by being open, honest and transparent. We hold ourselves and others to account for the decisions we make and for our impact on others, while doing what we say we will do.
We work well together
We succeed by working effectively with others, inside and outside the organisation, including our sponsors and donors. We actively support our colleagues, helping them to achieve their goals. We come together to create and implement solutions in our teams across Plan International, with children, girls, young people, communities and our partners.
We are inclusive and empowering
We respect all people, appreciate differences and challenge inequality in our programmes and workplace. We support children, girls and young people to increase their confidence and change their own lives. We empower our staff to give their best and realise their potential.

PLAN INTERNATIONAL’S FEMINIST PRINCIPLES
1. Self-awareness and courage: Making conscious effort to recognise our vulnerabilities and value our strengths while challenging ourselves and others to improve through self-reflection and empathetic mutual feedback.
2. Self and collective-care: Taking care of our individual health and work/life balance, and encouraging team members and cooperating partners to prioritise caring for self and each other. This extends also to institutional care i.e. managers balancing the workload of their staff, empowering staff to prioritise self -care and promoting infrastructural improvements to create a harmonious working environment.
3. Collective accountability: Promote collaborative goal setting and create institutional spaces for team members and young people to participate and lead in decision-making processes on equal terms, both inside and outside the organisation.
4. Diversity: Recognise, celebrate ,and promote diversity across the organisation by expanding our worldview beyond binaries and nurturing leadership of younger people, particularly from the global south.
5. Zero tolerance to discrimination and sexual harassment: Calling out all forms of discrimination, abuse of power and sexual harassment and implementing appropriate disciplinary measures.
6. Tackling bias: Recognising conscious and unconscious bias and checking our own individual and institutional privilege based on gender, class, race, ability and other factors.
7. Share power: Using power responsibly to transform systems and provide equal opportunities. Leveraging individual and collective power to create space for young people. Crediting the work of others and engaging in ethical, non-extractive ways with team members and communities.
8. Purpose-driven: Advancing gender justice and transforming harmful gender-norms. Reflecting this purpose in both our personal and professional lives. Bringing passion and energy to our work.
9. Joyful in co-creating: Make things fun, the workplace should be a space of collaboration and mutual respect something you enjoy. People want to work for us.
10. Honouring the movement: recognising, honouring and standing in solidarity with feminist organisations as strong allies who partner in actions crucial to creating lasting, impactful change towards gender justice.



Work Hours: 8

Experience in Months: 48

Level of Education: Bachelor Degree

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