Summary
Date Posted: Friday, April 05 2024, Base Salary: Not Disclosed

JOB DETAILS:
Job purpose
ADD is looking for a Head of Learning and Impact to shape and lead an innovative new organisational approach to learning and impact that is fit for our new identity as a participatory grant-maker for disability justice.

This is a new position that will lead our work in reimagining how we think about learning and impact as we implement our new ten-year strategic framework (2024 – 2034). This marks a radical shift in our approach to MEL and the postholder will need to collaborate with others across ADD to influence, engage and support staff across the organisation to think differently about this area of our work. There will also be an external element to the role ensuring we share learning with external audiences such as activists and funders. The role will sit in the Funding, Communications and Transformative Partnerships Team which is responsible for public and institutional fundraising as well as overall communications and influencing the sector.

This is an exciting time to join ADD as we begin to implement our new strategy in all the countries where we work. You will work alongside our whole One ADD team to make our new vision a reality; ensuring that we learn from both our past work and our pilots to inform a new global learning and impact framework.

We are looking for someone who is knowledgeable about approaches to learning in participatory grant-making and movement support work, with an understanding of the transformational changes that we are making at ADD and a willingness to develop new systems that are fit for the organisation that we are becoming.

About ADD International
ADD is a participatory grant-maker for disability justice. Our vision is for a world in which ableism no longer exists, and disabled people can fully participate in society. Our mission is to strengthen disability rights activists and organisations through resourcing, and leadership skills.

Our work is rooted in supporting disability rights activists and organisations in Africa and Asia to realise the changes they want to see. We are transforming our organisation and getting back to our roots by sharing more power and resources directly with them. Over the next ten years, we have committed to providing £25 million funding directly to disability justice activists and movements. Crucially, we will also give disability justice activists greater decision-making power on who should receive funding and how funding should be spent.
Find out more about this process at https://add.org.uk/transformation/. Our ten-year strategic framework can be found on our website here: https://add.org.uk/mtiririko/

Why are we recruiting this role?
As we transition away from a traditional INGO to become a participatory grantmaker for disability justice, we need to reimagine how we learn from our work and who this learning is for. Our aim is that learning is flexible, activist-centred and generated in collaboration with the organisations that we fund so that they are benefiting from insight as well as ADD.
We are moving away from implementing projects ourselves to a model in which we fund and support disability justice movements around the world. Importantly, we have committed to providing unrestricted funding to activists and organisations, so that they have the freedom to decide how best to use the resources available. This requires a creative and nuanced approach to learning and impact that disrupts traditional approaches to monitoring and evaluation that is solely focussed on accountability to funders. Instead, we aim to ensure that the learning we generate is also useful for the disability justice activists and movements that we work in solidarity with, and impact is defined by them.

The role will require close collaboration with other departmental Leads to ensure that learning is being used and applied to inform and communicate our work. Learning will be shared internally and externally to; i) improve, adapt and iterate our new model across Asia and Africa ii) to facilitate learning amongst disability justice movements in Africa and Asia iii) to influence the sector and provide thought leadership on participatory grant-making, disability justice and INGO transformation and iv) to support fundraising efforts and communicate our successes, failures and learning to supporters and funders.

We are looking for someone who understands feminist and decolonial approaches to learning and knows how to develop flexible learning frameworks for participatory grant-making together with activists and movements.
We want someone motivated by the transformation that we are leading and keen to be a part of making it successful by helping us meet our commitment to continue to learn as we change.

Key Responsibilities
1. Design and deliver a new global learning framework
● Design and develop a new Global Learning Framework for ADD that is appropriate for our new strategic framework
● Lead the implementation of the new learning approach, engaging staff across the organisation, especially Regional Teams in Africa and Asia
● Collaborate with disability justice activists, organisations and movements to ensure that they are playing a key role in driving our learning agenda
● Working closely with our Co-CETOs and Senior Leadership Team, lead on documenting and sharing learning about our transformation journey to inform how we work internally and influence others externally

2. Sharing learning
● In close collaboration with Regional Teams and the Head of Participatory Grant-making and Movement Support, take lead responsibility for ensuring that learning and impact informs the ongoing improvement and adaptation of our participatory grant-making model
● Work closely with the Head of Communications to ensure that learning and evidence of the impact of our work is communicated to our supporters, funders and partners
● Work closely with Head of Partnerships to make sure that our learning and impact is informing our influencing strategy and supporting fundraising efforts
● Explore the use of technology to facilitate widespread sharing of learning across countries and regions
● Organise learning workshops and convenings for staff, activists and partners as appropriate

3. Technical support to staff
● Train and support staff to understand and implement our new approach to learning and impact
● Provide MEL skills-building training for disability justice activists, organisations and movements as requested by them
● Ensure that ADD learns from and responds to trends, debates and sector wide learning on MEL for participatory grantmaking
● Connect staff to others in the sector who are leading innovative approaches to learning
● Support staff who are implementing traditional programmes to generate insights and learning from these to inform our new learning framework
● Engage the Senior Leadership Team in the process of designing and implementing a new approach to learning across the organisation, ensuring their buy-in and understanding

Safeguarding Level
We are committed to ensure we are a safe organisation, delivering safe programmes that ensure we do no harm to people we work with. Our processes ensure all posts are graded, based on interaction with children and vulnerable adults. This post is a Level 1 post, see outline of all levels below:
● Level 1 - office based, no real direct access to children/vulnerable adults.
● Level 2 - a travelling role, possible access to children/vulnerable adults but unlikely to be alone.
● Level 3 - regular access to children/vulnerable adults including on their own, or lead responsibility for safeguarding within office/location.

In addition to the responsibilities listed above, this role like all at ADD, will also have specific responsibilities relating to safeguarding:
● Ensure familiarity, and compliance with, ADD’s child and vulnerable adult safeguarding policy and undertake training as required. In particular:
o Contribute to creating and maintaining an environment (including within ADD) that prevents safeguarding violations and promotes the implementation of ADD’s policy;
o Report any concerns or suspicions regarding safeguarding violations by an ADD staff member or associated personnel to the appropriate staff member.
● Take responsibility for ensuring our transition to a participatory grant maker is done in a way that does no harm and is respectful to the people and organisations with whom we work.

Person specification
This is an exciting opportunity for someone passionate about disability justice and shifting power and resources to activists. It would be a great opportunity for someone interested in change in the International Development sector with a commitment to disrupting conventional approaches to monitoring, evaluation and learning. Some knowledge of participatory grantmaking and feminist and decolonial approach to learning and impact would be an asset.

You must also demonstrate a passion for ADD’s mission and have a deeply nuanced understanding of the lives of disabled people in the countries we work and a demonstrable commitment to the Social and Human Rights Models of Disability.

Specific things we would like you to have are:
• Extensive leadership experience in developing and implementing innovative learning and impact frameworks
• Experience of participatory grant-making monitoring mechanisms
• Strong understanding / experience of feminist and decolonial MEL approaches
• Strong leadership and collaboration skills
• Strong strategic and analytic skills
• A strong sense of initiative and self-motivation
• Ability to adapt quickly to changing organisational needs
• Ability to build relationships with people from a range of cultural and linguistic backgrounds
• Ability to train and support others to adopt the approach that you develop
• Willingness to work remotely and travel as required

We are keen to promote strong principles of equity and diversity and encourage applications from all backgrounds. Priority for the role will be given to disabled people.

Work Hours: 8

Experience in Months: 36

Level of Education: Bachelor Degree

Job application procedure
Please send your application to: recruitment@add.org.uk by the closing date specified below.
If you need an accessible format, please contact recruitment@add.org.uk and specify which format you require.
• Application deadline: 29 April 2024 9am UK time
• Interviews will be held 15 May 2024

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