With 75 years of experience, our focus is on helping the most vulnerable children overcome poverty and experience fullness of life. We help children of all backgrounds, even in the most dangerous places, inspired by our Christian faith.

Come join our 33,000+ staff working in nearly 100 countries and share the joy of transforming vulnerable children’s life stories!

Employee Contract Type:

Local – Fixed Term Employee (Fixed Term)

Job Description:

JOB PURPOSE:

The Regional Director of Communications and Advocacy is responsible for the strategic direction and successful implementation of communications, advocacy and external engagement work across the East African Region (EAR) ensuring agile, high quality, high impact, solutions-driven and brand-aligned outcomes.

The Director will lead World Vision East Asia Region efforts to influence, raise awareness and understanding among key stakeholders of the needs of vulnerable children, families and communities across the region, leveraging the societal, political and environmental challenges which impact the wellbeing of children, and of World Vision’s development and humanitarian interventions, demonstrating evidence of impact of work implemented across the region.

The Director will contribute to enhancing World Vision’s organisational capacity to effectively position the organisation as a leading relief, development and advocacy agency in the region, and will work closely with senior leadership to coordinate and lead World Vision’s external engagement on regional issues.  The role will lead efforts to strengthen World Vision’s brand, reputation, and influence, building trust with audiences for greater organisational impact and income. The role holder will also lead rapid, real-time Communications & Advocacy response for emergency/crisis situations in the region.

The role holder will further support Field Offices in successful delivery of their respective advocacy and policy goals. This involves providing strategic input, support and direction to National Offices to fulfil their strategies, including communicating their evidence base, ensuring effective local and national level advocacy, hearing and communicating the voices of children and that the campaign is integrated across all sectors and functional areas at the national level.

MAJOR RESPONSIBILITIES:

Strategic Leadership (30%)

• The director leads and executes an integrated communications, advocacy and public engagement strategy and business plan to build World Vision’s reputation and brand with key audiences, tell our story and support key advocacy priorities in EAR.
• Advises and supports the Regional Leader and the regional team on effective public positioning of World Vision
• Oversees the development of communications and advocacy plans in National Offices (NO) to ensure they are appropriate to context and in alignment with Our Promise
• Directs humanitarian response communications and advocacy, guiding NOs in humanitarian emergencies and political, social, economic, and environmental crises to ensure Partnership media, fundraising and advocacy needs are met through provision of targeted content, messaging, and media spokespersons.
• Advises leadership and National Directors in field programmes across the region on strategic reputation, internal and external positioning, advocacy issues, technical branding, global branding, and communications opportunities to elevate understanding, performance and accountability across the region.
• Lead WV’s engagement with the regional bodies and regional civil society networks to influence national policy agenda related to child wellbeing objectives and child rights agenda.
• Lead process of review and strengthening the application of advocacy models in disaster response.
• Lead assessment of advocacy plan implementation through the process of Advocacy Strategic Measure, Advocacy Maturity Matrix etc, and lead mitigation of capacity and other issues identified.

Advocacy and External Engagement (25%)

• Mobilises stakeholders to drive the region’s advocacy agenda and influences other units to ensure that advocacy priorities and understood and embedded where possible.
• Represent EAR in regional and global fora as necessary to achieve EAR advocacy goals.
• Provides platforms to hear the voices of children to influence change and communicate impact.
• Influences national leadership to pursue a child-focused humanitarian advocacy agenda that is aligned with global advocacy strategies and positioning.
• Champion the policy work of country-level advocacy and policy staff and program staff providing training when necessary and ensuring that country-focused information and materials are widely disseminated within the organization, as well as with relevant external stakeholders.
• Champions the global campaign ENOUGH, plus agreed Global Moments and WV contribution towards Sustainable Development Goals and Social Accountability ensuring effective take up across national offices.
• Develops and executes a strategic research and analysis agenda on emerging issues and the region’s metanarrative that will enhance child wellbeing.
• Builds a strong network of bilateral strategic relationships within the humanitarian community and civil society to influence external actors, such as donors, UN agencies, and government ministries.

Reputation Risk Management (20%)

• As the regional focal point on reputation risk management in the region, the role identifies, assesses, and coordinates World Vision responses to current or risk potential issues at the NO and regional level.
• Escalates major issues and coordinates with the Global Centre risk unit as part of the Integrated Risk Management approach.
• Socialises a proactive risk management approach with leaders across the region, identifying opportunities to build reputation and decrease impact of specific risk issues.
• Ensures new and existing NO communications staff have completed mandatory reputation risk training.

Team Management and Coordination (10%)

• Line-manage a core team of both communications and advocacy functions.
• Region-wide coordination and management of national teams, through a matrix relationship will include coordination with national leadership to ensure that teams are high performing, equipped to deliver on Partnership priorities and advising on capacity gaps.
• Contribute to development of global policies, guidelines and standards relating to communications and advocacy and provide leadership in contextualizing and mainstreaming them within the region through L2G mechanisms and similar coordination vehicles.
• Build Advocacy and External Engagement team with regular interaction with FO and establishing peer to peer leaning platform to enhance performance.
• Engage with global matrix manager and regional peers in development and implementation of World Vision field communications learning, best practise and standards.

Media/Social Media (5%)

• Engages media across the region, together with national media focal points in coordination with Partnership media managers, to maximise positioning opportunities with targeted outlets, developing regional spokespersons and messaging as needed.
• Directs an aligned and engaging digital presence at regional and national level that leverages World Vision’s global brand, regional value proposition and field ministry impact.
• Oversees an effective and globally aligned insights and metrics framework for media and social media efforts.

Content Management (4%)

• Provides oversight of region-wide production of high-quality, child-focused content/multi-media packages to meet World Vision’s priority audience needs, including advocacy and external engagement, grant acquisition and other fundraising and resource development activities.
• Promotes wise stewardship of resources through content sharing and trip and assignment planning and coordination.

Internal Engagement (4%)

• Leads the development and implementation of an internal engagement approach and plan that connects, informs, and inspires leaders and staff across the region around World Vision’s local to global ministry.

General (2%)

• Lead and support Christian activities that enrich and develop mutual growth in Christ.
• Perform any other tasks assigned by Line Manager, Functional Manager, Regional Leader.

KNOWLEDGE/QUALIFICATIONS FOR THE ROLE:

Required Professional Experience

Strategic Communications

• Expertise in developing and executing integrated communication strategies across media platforms (digital, print, broadcast).
• Strong understanding of brand positioning and narrative framing in fragile and complex environments.

Advocacy and External Engagement

• Deep knowledge of policy advocacy, particularly in humanitarian, development, and child rights contexts.
• Understanding of global, regional, and national advocacy trends and institutions relevant to East Africa (e.g., AU, IGAD, UN bodies, SDG frameworks).

Humanitarian and Development Sector

• Familiarity with humanitarian principles and the development-humanitarian-peace (HDP) nexus.
• Understanding of donor and partner ecosystems including UN agencies, international NGOs, bilateral and multilateral donors.

Political and Social Landscape of East Africa

• In-depth knowledge of the regional context including conflict dynamics, displacement, climate impacts, and governance challenges.
• Strong grasp of civil society space, media freedom, and regional policy trends.

Crisis Communications and Risk Mitigation

• Knowledge of media risk management, safeguarding communications, and communicating in emergencies or politically sensitive contexts.

Christian Identity and Missional Alignment

• Understanding of and commitment to World Vision’s Christian ethos and ability to communicate faith-based advocacy appropriately

Required Education, training, license, registration, and certification

• Master’s degree in Communications, Journalism, Public Affairs, International Relations, Political Science, or a related field.
• Training in humanitarian standards (e.g., SPHERE, Core Humanitarian Standard) or advocacy (e.g., policy influencing, campaigning) is an asset.
• Minimum 10 years of progressive experience in communications, advocacy, or external engagement at regional or international levels.
• Proven experience working in East Africa or similar fragile/conflict-affected contexts.
• Demonstrated experience managing regional or multi-country communication campaigns and high-level external engagement strategies.
• Experience liaising with senior government officials, regional bodies (e.g., AU, IGAD), and international donors.
• Excellent oral and written (English) communications as well as (presentation, written, verbal) and numerical skills.
• Training, coaching and editing skills.
• High level of awareness of global and regional socio-economic, political, and environmental issues.
• Competent in the use of Microsoft Office computer programs including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
• Experience managing regional or global reputation risk incidents

Technical and Leadership Skills

• Excellent writing, public speaking, and media liaison skills (including crisis response and reputational risk management).
• Strong leadership and people management skills, including experience managing cross-cultural, multi-disciplinary teams.
• Digital communication proficiency, including social media strategy, content creation, and use of analytics tools.

Preferred Knowledge and Qualifications

• Experience leading a team in the international humanitarian & development sectors.
• Background/familiarity in humanitarian disasters and crises, especially in fragile contexts.
• Able to enable an efficient, effective, and transparent flow of information, across entities and with key stakeholders (requiring high levels of written communication and reporting as well as clear and persuasive verbal presentation style).
• Experience negotiating with multiple business units in a large (37k+ employees) federated structure, preferably in a matrix management environment.
• Ability to manage high level internal and external stakeholders in complex emergency situations.
• Solid/advanced work experience at a similar level, leading communications, advocacy and public engagement strategies in the NGO or private sector.

Language Requirements

• Fluency in English (spoken and written) is essential.
• Knowledge of French, Swahili, or Arabic is a strong asset in the East Africa context.

Travel and/or Work Environment Requirement

• The position requires ability and willingness to travel domestically and internationally up to 30% of the time.
• May need to work with other virtual teams of different time zones

Applicant Types Accepted:

Local Applicants Only

How to Apply:

Job type Full-time Job, To submit your application, please follow the link provided below.

CLICK HERE TO APPLY