Terms of Reference for Consultancy – GCE’s Education Finance Campaign Manager (Based anywhere globally) 127 views0 applications

Background

The Global Campaign for Education (GCE) is a civil society movement working to end the global education crisis. Our mission is to make sure that States act now to deliver the right of everyone to a free, quality public education. GCE promotes and defends education as a basic human right and mobilises public pressure on governments and the international community to fulfil their commitments to provide free, compulsory public basic education for all people, in particular for children, women and those from excluded communities. The GCE movement was founded in 1999, in the build-up to the World Education Forum in Dakar, to provide a platform to unify and coordinate civil society voices in relation to the global education agenda.

GCE will be coordinating an Education Finance Campaign in 2017, which will advocate for a significant shift in education financing to achieve the SDG4/Education 2030 goals. The 2017-2018 period presents civil society with some major opportunities to secure financial commitments from governments and international bodies, not least of all, the forthcoming third replenishment of the Global Partnership for Education. Building on the momentum created by our 2016 Fund the Future campaign, and increased interest across a broad range of civil society actors, GCE will be coordinating a global financing campaign.

The campaign plan and a “Global Call to Action” has now been agreed and signed off by the GCE board. The campaign seeks to bring together the GCE movement with other civil society actors on and around this campaign. The campaign has three major components, with linked objectives targets and some activities to secure:

1. increased domestic resources;
2. increased bilateral and multilateral contributions;
3. global action on tax reform and justice.

The GCE Secretariat is now seeking short-term consultancy capacity to boost the team’s ability to support coordination of the Education Finance campaign, helping to harness collective efforts behind the campaign. GCE is seeking a consultant(s) over a 6-month period initially, with possible extension (dependent on securing financing).

The role would be responsible for the effective delivery of the objectives contained in the campaign overview, helping to articulate more concrete campaign plans in each of the three above major components (i.e. domestic resources, aid, global actions). The position will work closely with the newly established campaign coordination mechanisms across the movement. The role will help to support and connect GCE Secretariat’s own capacity behind the campaign: coordinating contributions and skills from GCE membership, and working across the GCE movement. It also has an explicit mandate to deliver on Africa-specific campaigning components (supported by GiZ/BACK-UP fund), while forging stronger links from this work to the broader work of (Southern CSOs – CSO2), and (northern CSOs – CSO1) advocacy.

Key deliverables

• Build on the strategic direction already set-out in the global campaign concept note and call to action to plan; developing more detailed campaigns and advocacy activity plans for the three global campaign strands.
• Work closely with the Chair of the campaign coordination committee, drawn from representatives of the campaign ‘sub-committees’, to ensure overall coordination of the campaign. This would also include setting-up calls, minute taking, following-up on actions etc.
• Manage the global planning group call, and support the Chairs of the CSO 1, CSO 2, sub-committees (as and when required).
• Work with regions and key countries to facilitate the alignment of country level campaigning and advocacy to the global plan; ensuring aligned work in at least 15 countries in the global south (as per campaign plan) on replenishment, and 5 countries in global north.
• Develop, in collaboration with members of the GCE Secretariat, campaign materials and tools for use by coalitions, members and others.
• Develop and deliver one high profile global and one high profile regional event on financing education.
• Support the Head of Communications in developing and delivering social media and communications work.
• Work with the Global Coordinator, to develop and manage the outreach elements of the campaigns, including to new CSO partners, i.e. tax justice campaigners, or youth groups, ensuring this work adheres to GCE’s internal positions.
• Work with policy colleagues within the GCE, to develop a global campaign framing paper.
• Engage with GPE Secretariat to ensure effective coordination.
• Contribute to extra resource mobilisation (in-kind or funding) for the entire campaign.

Africa specific work (funded by BACK-UP). To be delivered between May and July

It is vital that this work be “front loaded” in this project, between May and July, of dedicated capacity for delivery of the following:

• Further development of the CSEF advocacy plan, with specific targets and plans for Africa.
• Management of ‘seed grants’ to 10 African coalitions, including agreeing contracts and deliverables, monitoring and reporting back on activities, in collaboration with GCE’s Secretariat team.
• Coordinating the efficient implementation of the campaign across the CSEF Africa coalitions, in close collaboration with ANCEFA, including developing regional components of the campaign.
• Develop an African pledge baseline pledge mapping, and maintain a mapping power analysis.
• Build strong links from Africa work to other regions/global plans, ensuring alignment of Africa plans with global-cross regional work, and vice versa.
• Collect, share and disseminate information on African collations’ activities, including materials targeted at public communications channels (i.e. blogs).
• Oversee the development of the following campaign materials and tools for use by coalitions, members and others.
• Managing Service Providers/consultants for their delivery:

o two-pager briefs tailored for each of the 31 African countries around their own pledges and what makes a credible pledge, managing translations into French, Portuguese and Arabic, for Lusophone, Francophone and Arabic (Sudan and Mauritania) countries.

o Report outlining the analysis of what constitutes a credible pledge published in all ANCEFA languages (the development of this report will make use to some extent of already available analysis provided by Action Aid)

o Campaign pack, which includes lobby letters, campaign framing, policy asks, and social media pack etc. in 4 languages.

• Engagement with GPE Secretariat Southern Advocacy team to ensure effective alignment of CSO plans to GPE DCP to outreach plans in Africa.
• Ensure African representation at any key global events; working with northern colleagues to make effective linkages from African campaigning to northern campaigning.

How to apply:

Person specification

The ideal consultant(s) must have:

• A strong background in education finance; ideally in both aid and domestic finance, including an understanding of tax justice.
• Excellent written and oral communicator.
• Good project management experience
• Be familiar with key players in the GCE movement and education more broadly.
• Have strong campaign/advocacy project management skills.
• Be a self-starter, able to build relationships and have proven negotiation skills.
• Able to manage complex workloads and deliverables to task, and on time.
• Must be available to start work immediately.

Application process

CVs with a covering letter outlining how skills match the position and their expected remunerations (daily rates) to be submitted to [email protected] by May 5^th.