Senior Specialist Livelihoods and Climate Programming

Senior Specialist Livelihoods and Climate Programming

Country/Region: Uganda

Location: Kampala

Organization: Save the Children International

Join us to lead sustainable change for children:

• Be part of a GLOBAL and DIVERSE technical community
• Get EXPOSURE in many different contexts
• Test and scale up INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS
• Influence policies that affect MILLIONS OF CHILDREN

OVERVIEW

Are you passionate about being an advocate for children? Do you want to use your expertise to bring about lasting change for children and be a part of an inspiring, dynamic global movement?

THE ROLE:

The Livelihoods and Climate Adaptive Programming Specialist will use their in-depth contextual understanding, technical expertise, and relationship building skills to define and deliver our strategic ambition for child poverty in Uganda. The role will lead strategy development and the technical design and implementation of high-quality programmes that deliver change for children in both emergency and development programming. The role supports national advocacy and influencing, while driving strategic partnerships for new business development. It supports the design and implementation of monitoring and evaluation systems to demonstrate impact, while sharing learning across our programmes, teams and partners. The role will work closely operations colleagues and with partners in Uganda building their capacity and building ownership and agency of local organisations. This role includes a focus on external representation on priority issues as defined by the Uganda Country Strategic Plan.

In the event of a major humanitarian emergency, the role holder will be expected to work outside the normal role profile and be able to vary working hours accordingly.

Sounds interesting? Read more below

KEY AREAS OF ACCOUNTABILITY:

Technical Leadership

• Provide technical leadership for the child poverty portfolio, including livelihoods, climate adaptive programming and social protection, and set the strategic approach in relation to the wider country strategy
• Build capacity of national staff and partners in key technical approaches related to livelihoods and climate adaptive programming, including social protection, through training, mentorship and coaching

Ensuring Programme Quality (Design and Implementation)

• Lead high quality technical livelihoods and climate adaptive programming programme design; work with cross-functional colleagues across the movement and with partners to deliver technical programme designs that are evidence based and in line with our programme quality principles, international standards, and donor requirements, and national strategies and policies
• Work with Child Rights Governance colleagues to ensure that a rights-based approach is reflected in our programme design and implementation (in line with our child rights programming approach), with a strong focus on child participation
• Promote a systems strengthening approach as the overarching framework, that supports working in collaboration and partnership with governments and regional bodies, local partners, working towards impact, scale and sustainability.
• Provide oversight and guidance to the programme implementation teams to ensure that thematic programme components are technically sound, implementation methods are consistent with national and global strategies, acknowledged good practice (e.g. Save the Children Common Approaches); and are likely to achieve scale, as well as equitable and sustainable results.
• Promote and monitor integrated programming in a way that increases overall impact of livelihoods and climate adaptive programming at the community level.
• Undertake field visits to project sites; work with implementation teams to understand impacts, operational challenges, and continuously identify opportunities for learning and improvement.
• Contribute to strengthening the use of equality-focused programme principles and good practice across themes and sectors.
• Support (as needed) the development of emergency preparedness plans, and conduct sectoral assessments, with consideration for gender and disability inclusion, and design and deliver emergency response and recovery programmes.
• Identify and analyse the impact of policy changes and new or amended and implications for Save the Children’s programming
• Monitor trends in the refugee response, and in other emergency contexts in order to ensure early action; and lead technical design and implementation and technical coordination of humanitarian responses
• Identify opportunities to pilot, test and scale innovative approaches and solutions to identified needs and challenges, and document learning from these processes.

Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning

• Support the development of MEAL frameworks and plans which monitor and support quality delivery of programming, measurement of impact and ensure accountability to children and communities.
• Work with Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability & Learning (MEAL) teams to carry out gender and power analysis, and conduct quality monitoring against international standards through participatory methodologies that promote gender equality and social justice (including child-friendly and gender sensitive/transformative methodologies
• Contribute towards the creation of an organisational learning culture that promotes the use of disaggregated data, evidence and analysis (including gender and power analysis) and understands its link to quality and accountable programming
• Generate, document and disseminate, and support others to generate, document and disseminate, evidence and learning on what works for children to inform program design, implementation, and advocacy, and impact at scale.
• Contribute to organisational learning, ensuring that learning from our programmes is shared across the Country Office and our partners, as well as with colleagues in the wider regional and global child poverty community in Save the Children including relevant technical working groups.
• Provide technical oversight to assignments conducted by external consultants
• Ensure robust integration of safeguarding in all programme design and delivery. Support programme implementation teams, in collaboration with the Safeguarding Manager, to prevent and response to safeguarding risks.

Resource Mobilization/Business Development

• Support New Business Development colleagues through technical inputs on funding strategies, donor engagement, capture planning, partnering and forming consortia, and opportunity preparation
• Analyse and inform donor priorities and positions on issues related to child poverty with reference to evidence, data and learning.
• Lead the development of technical inputs for proposal design and writing, including relevant annexes based on a logical and needs based design.
• Represent Save the Children in donor engagements, maintain relationships with technical counterparts from donor agencies and engage in strategic positioning, ensuring that Save the Children is a partner of choice

Networking and External Engagement

• Ensure that Save the Children is influencing and learning from others through national technical coordination and networking bodies including relevant working groups
• In collaboration with advocacy colleagues, deliver the livelihoods and climate adaptative programming advocacy strategy, identifying key opportunities for engagement with relevant stakeholders. Participate in and provide technical inputs to policy level discussions and dialogue
• Strengthen civil society engagement in national dialogues and policy processes through working closely with advocacy and child rights governance colleagues. Ensure that the diverse voices of children, girls and boys are equitably heard and represented in our work.
• Represent Save the Children to National and Local government representatives, share information on the livelihoods and climate adaptive programming strategy and priorities and provide regular updates to ensure key stakeholders are informed of Save the Children’s programming, ensuring that Save the Children is a partner of choice
• Ensure the quality, clarity and consistency of technical components of internal and external reports (e.g. programme reports, sit-reps, internal updates), working closely with awards, programme implementation and communications colleagues as needed
• Leverage and liaise with technical colleagues from across Save the Children, including technical working groups and centres of excellence, ensuring that learning from the Country Office is shared with others and global lessons brought back

QUALIFICATIONS AND EXPERIENCE

To be a strong supporter and advocate for children in this role you will need to have;

EXPERIENCE AND SKILLS

• Master’s degree in relevant discipline
• At least 5 years’ experience of leading the design and implementation of humanitarian and development programmes focused on livelihoods, climate change/climate adaptive programming and social protection, including in refugee response contexts
• Understanding of the livelihoods, climate and social protection sector in Uganda
• Familiar with national, regional and global standards for livelihoods, climate and social protection
• Experience in climate smart agriculture, natural resource management, social protection and climate change. Experience with cash programming is desirable.
• Track record in successful business development/fundraising with institutional, philanthropic and corporate donors
• Demonstrated program design, monitoring and evaluation skills, including designing pathways to sustainable impact at scale.
• Experience of strategy development and planning
• Experience of context, capacity and policy analysis, and influencing and advocacy at regional/international level in order to hold duty bearers to account to realise children’s rights.
• Skilled at networking, representation and partnership development in order promote learning, strengthen civil society and mobilise resources.
• Able to generate and use data and evidence to innovate, deliver, learn and share what works and what doesn’t work for children
• Experience of promoting quality and impact through at least one cross-cutting area: gender equality and inclusion, adaptive and safer programming; child rights; disability; migration and displacement; climate change
• Experience of supporting humanitarian preparedness, response and recovery
• Significant experience in training, capacity building, and mentoring
• Fluent in English and high level of English writing skills

Application Information:

Please apply using a cover letter and up-to-date CV as a single document not exceeding 5mbs to https://hcri.fa.em2.oraclecloud.com. Please also include details of your current remuneration and salary expectations.

We need to keep children safe so our selection process, which includes rigorous background checks, reflects our commitment to the protection of children from abuse.

Application closes on June 02, 2026, at midnight Uganda time.

Save the Children is an equal opportunity employer and seeks to employ and assign the best qualified talent, persons with disabilities and female candidates are encouraged to apply.

Disclaimer: Save the Children International does not charge any kind of fee at whichever stage of the recruitment process and does not act through recruitment agents.

OUR DIVERSITY BELIEF

Save the Children International is committed to create a truly inclusive, effective and representative organisational culture, encouraging equity and diversity among its employees and eliminating unlawful discrimination. We want our people to be truly representative of all sections of society. Having a diverse profile of employees, different age groups, backgrounds, cultures, disabilities, gender identities and expressions, sexual orientation etc., including a range of different experiences and capabilities helps us understand, represent and serve our beneficiaries better. We are guided by our values in everything we do, and recognise that being a diverse and inclusive employer helps us fulfil our responsibility to make a difference for children around the world.