United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland: Policy & Advocacy Adviser

We’re looking for someone with a passion for promoting the rights of children in conflict, who can bring creativity and impact to our policy and advocacy work. You will have experience of working on both policy research and analysis, as well as advocating for the implementation of these policies by decision-makers, and working with campaigns, media and communications colleagues to influence change.
You are highly motivated and proactive, confident at building relationships with key decision-makers and influencers who have the capacity to affect change, as well as developing a strong network of contacts across the humanitarian and development sector.
You are a critical thinker, mining down into the complexities of an issue to develop robust and well-considered policy recommendations. You are a great communicator, confident in speaking to a range of audiences – including the media - unintimidated by advocating towards those in positions of power, and capable of tailoring your style accordingly.

This role will deliver policy and advocacy work to influence decision-makers and global leaders to ensure that policies better protect children from conflict, provide essential services and support them to recover.
This role is critical in ensuring that War Child is successful in delivering against one of its major strategic priorities – advocating for change on behalf of children whose lives have been torn apart by war. It will involve significant external engagement, developing extensive relationships with decision-makers. The post holder will seek out high-level influencers, and individuals across the sector and build relationships with them.
The role will work with the rest of the policy and advocacy team to identify key issues impacting children in conflict where War Child has the expertise and insights to change policy for the better.
The role will play an important external function for the organisation, helping to develop War Child’s reputation as a bold organisation with the expertise and clout to influence political and policy change to benefit children caught up in conflict worldwide.

Your responsibilities
• Developing a robust understanding of relevant policy issues, developing credible policy positions and representing these to key policy targets
• Commissioning and conducting high quality research and policy analysis to support and evidence War Child’s advocacy priorities and enhance our credibility and impact
• Developing advocacy strategies that identify those with the power to implement our policy recommendations - and those who can influence decision-makers – and deploy tactics that have the best chance of influencing them to support our advocacy objectives
• Work with our in-country teams and Programmes Department, develop policy recommendations that build on War Child’s understanding of particular conflicts and draw on our field expertise
• Collaborate media and digital communications focused colleagues to ensure that media / digital strategies are developed that best further our policy and advocacy objectives.
• Building relationships at multiple levels with decision-makers and influencers in government, parliament, the UN and the media to convey our priority advocacy messages and establish War Child’s reputation as a major player – both as an expert on policy, and as an impactful advocate for change on behalf of children in conflict. Responsible for leading on relationship development.
• Representing War Child at a high level as required, at meetings, events, roundtables etc – with Ministers, parliamentarians, senior UN leaders and high-profile journalists – and building our reputation in the sector through developing an extensive network of contacts.
• Ensuring that our policy and advocacy is informed by and profiles the voices of the children and young people that we work with
• Providing specialist advice on key themes and providing technical support to others within War Child to incorporate advocacy into fundraising and programmes work.
• The role holder will be expected to work occasional evenings and weekends to attend events and conferences, and to travel to country programmes

For a full JD and an application form, please go to our website: https://www.warchild.org.uk/who-we-are/jobs/policy-advocacy-adviser-2020