Ahlan Simsim, or “Welcome Sesame” in Arabic, is a groundbreaking initiative by Sesame Workshop and the IRC. It is the largest early childhood intervention in the history of humanitarian response, designed to provide transformational early childhood development and playful learning to children affected by conflict and crisis in the Middle East. Since its inception, Ahlan Simsim has reached over 3.5 million children and caregivers through direct services and engaged 27 million more through its awa... more details
Requisition ID: req52579
Job Title: Regional Project Manager – Pre-Award and Communications (This is open to current IRC employees only)
Sector: Youth Services
Employment Category: Regular
Employment Type: Full-Time
Open to Expatriates: No
Location: New York, NY HQ USA
Work Arrangement: In-person
Job Description
Ahlan Simsim, or “Welcome Sesame” in Arabic, is a groundbreaking initiative by Sesame Workshop and the IRC. It is the largest early childhood intervention in the history of humanitarian response, designed to provide transformational early childhood development and playful learning to children affected by conflict and crisis in the Middle East. Since its inception, Ahlan Simsim has reached over 3.5 million children and caregivers through direct services and engaged 27 million more through its award-winning, locally produced Arabic-language version of Sesame Street. This initiative integrates educational media with direct support programs, ensuring that children and their families receive holistic, evidence-based support to thrive despite the challenges posed by their environments.
Job Overview: The Project Manager – Pre-Award and Communications provides process support on workstreams of growth and business development, communications (internal and external) products and processes, and team coordination and routines. In some cases this will require designing tools and templates to improve process management.
Key Objectives:
- Project management and support of growth and high-quality business development, analysis and BD-focused coordination, internally and with partners
- Project management of internal and external communications workstream, ensuring accurate, updated and accessible information flow across the IRC, and tracking/monitoring external communications products and coverage; Responsible for high-quality design, reporting and visibility products that are easily accessible
- Support and participate in key Project Management workflows, particularly those centralized in HQ
Main Responsibilities:
Growth and Pre-Award
- Project manage the growth and pre-award workstreams across all elements including coordination of meetings, internal updates for staff and leadership, fundraising trackers, KPIs and analysis
- Work closely with IPP to ensure BD assets are up to date and of high quality
- Support the creation and review of new pitch products and hold responsibility for management of all BD products for the IRC and in collaboration with country programs, relevant fundraising departments and partners
Communications, Reporting and Design
- Lead on development and finalization of design products across teams – learning, advocacy, growth as well as donor reports in coordination with relevant team members
- Develop process workflows and protocols for design decisions, audiences and material development
- Develop and maintain core project materials for external audiences including donors – these include country specific summary materials, business development assets and other visibility projects that involve direct coordination with country offices.
- Development and editing of case studies and success stories, management of communications materials bank; includes liaising directly with country teams and communications colleagues in HQ, as well as external consultants.
- Critical support to management of internal and external communications and advocacy materials, including updates to internal program websites and updates to stock presentation material on programmatic overview, objectives, metrics, and trackers; plays a critical role in shaping the internal processes around communications.
Project Management, Coordination and Administration
- Support with technology-for-meetings strategies, capacity sharing and set up
- Visibility materials and asset management including PM tools, photos, video databases and presentation materials; ensures materials are up to date and easy to find/use for PM and other purposes
- Additional operational support includes ad-hoc HQ-based responsibilities (travel to HQ, printing, etc.); P-card management; etc.
Key Working Relationships:
Position Reports to: Deputy Project Director (Amman) and Senior Project Specialist, Ahlan Simsim (New York)
Position supervises: N/A
Other Internal and/or external contacts:
Internal: Regional Ahlan Simsim team members based in Amman, with close working relationship with Ahlan Simsim Project Coordinator (Amman based) and ECD Policy Advisor (HQ, Education TU); Engagement with MENA Country team staff members; Engages with HQ-based functions in operations and finance divisions among others.
External: Sesame Workshop; design consultants
Qualifications
Demonstrated Skills, Competencies and Experience:
- Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience.
- Demonstrated interest in humanitarian and development contexts and refugees and Middle East region
- Cultural competency, ability and enthusiasm to work with people from different linguist or cultural backgrounds, demonstrates strong collaborative people skills
- Excellent oral and written communication skills; skilled copy editor with demonstrated skills
- Demonstrated ability to distill large amounts of data and convey complex concepts concisely and clearly to a variety of audiences
- Experience working on business development
- Experience with graphic design; experience setting up and using Mural, Canva, etc.
- Computer skills: proficient in MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint; experience with Microsoft Teams or similar team coordination/communication technology (such as Zoom)
- Competency reviewing and understanding budgets and financial records
- Strong organizational and time management skills; strong communication and people skills
- Independent worker, able to collaborate with others but also be self-driven
- Must be able to take initiative.
- Fluent in English. Arabic is a plus.
- Minimum 4 years of project management, writing and design work experience required, including working with a team across offices and time zones.
- Experience working or collaborating across diverse cultural contexts; demonstrated experience managing projects (or project components) or processes
Working Environment:
- The position is based in New York, and may include some travel to Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Libya and Yemen.
