Internship - Policy, Advocacy and Campaigns

Working in 50 developing countries across Africa, Asia and the Americas, Plan’s stated Global Strategic Goal (2011-15) is to reach as many children as possible, particularly those who are excluded or marginalised, with high-quality programmes that deliver long-lasting benefits. Plan aims to achieve this goal by working in partnership with others and through high performing teams whose behaviours reflect the corporate values. It has a global income of around $800m.

Plan’s Policy, Advocacy and Campaigns team works with offices across the Plan International Federation to influence governments and multi-multilateral institutions to develop, adopt and fund policies that will ensure the rights of children are respected, protected and upheld. Drawing on our programming experience and on what children, their families and our staff are reporting back to us, we develop policy positions that will help the organisation become an authoritative voice in the areas of international development and humanitarian work. Our policy work supports our advocacy and campaigning work at national, regional and global levels.

We are recruiting for a volunteer intern to join the team and assist Plan International Headquarters in researching and developing policy positions that support the organisation’s external engagement work. This is a fantastic opportunity to learn research and policy analysis skills in the context of an international development organisation, increasing knowledge and understanding of key international development debates and learning professional standards of publication whilst taking responsibility for the delivery of specific policy products that will contribute to the intern’s portfolio of achievements.

Specific objectives will include;

• Contributing to the development of a policy compendium that gathers all our existing policy positions in one place for use by all offices across the Federation; in particular, mapping and collating existing policies and reviewing these for consistency and identifying gaps and updates needed
• Conducting research on specific policy issues that will contribute to the creation of Plan’s policy positions.
• Monitoring ongoing policy processes in order to identify any emerging opportunities for policy work.
• Supporting the Policy team in its engagement with IH departments, Plan’s National Organisations, Regional Offices and and Country Offices in order to develop policy work.
• Reviewing existing research at the NO and CO level and asses its relevance to ongoing policy work.
• Synthesising external reports as and when required.
• Liasing with Country Offices (CO’s) to gather information on programmes that will strengthen policy positions.
• Supporting the work of the Policy Advisory Committee, a cross-organisational strategic advisory group.
• Developing and updating the policy pages on Plan’s intranet, PlaNet.

You will have knowledge of the main political and policy debates in the field of international development, an understanding of the main policy making processes in the field of international development and awareness of child poverty, marginalisation, exclusion and child rights. A dregree in the social sciences, international development, political sciences, economics, or equivalent is required. Fluent written and spoken English language skills is required and the any other language would also be advantageous.

This opportunity will require the ability to analyse and synthesise complex political and policy issues, communicate policy message to a range of audiences through a variety of channels, engaging external and internal stakeholders in a professional and collaborative manner and in line with Plan International policy positions. You will have experience of research and writing in an academic or professional context and an understanding of the basic principles of qualitative and quantitative research methods and referencing. Experience of using web content-management systems, social media in a work capacity and managing and uploading content to websites and/or blogs would be preferable. Experience of advocacy and campaigning or influencing in an international development context would be advantageous.

Location and Travel: Based in Woking, Surrey. Reasonable travel expenses will be paid.

Duration: 12 week voluntary internship

Expenses: £6 daily lunch allowance and reasonable travel expenses paid (up to £20 per day).

Closing date: Thursday 14th May. Internship will commence mid June 2015.

HOW TO APPLY:

Please visit our website at http://plan-international.org/about-plan/jobs for further information and to apply for this opportunity.

Volunteer interns must be eligible to reside and volunteer in the UK to apply.

Please note that only applications and CVs written in English will be accepted.

A range of pre-employment checks will be undertaken in conformity with Plans Child Protection Policy.

As an international child centred community development organisation, Plan is fully committed to promoting the realization of children's rights including their right to protection from violence and abuse. That means we have particular responsibilities to children that we come into contact with.

Plan believes that in a world where children face so many threats of harm, it is our duty to ensure that we, as an organisation, do everything we can to keep children safe. We must not contribute in any way to harming or placing children at risk.