You will be asked to work with WRI India as Early Childhood Development expert to work on phase 2 program of Nurturing Neighbourhoods Challenge and Urban95 lighthouse cities which aims to allow Indian cities to grow their vision towards access to public spaces, mobility and early childhood services to ensure wellbeing of young children and caregivers. Reporting to the Program Head and working with Program Coordinator and Program Managers, you will support cities to implement early childhood development and caregiver wellbeing-related activities. You are required to develop specific programs tailored to the city’s needs and create a set of activities, materials and conduct trainings for government and non-government partner to mainstream the approach in cities. This would be achieved through regular engagement with city agencies and communities, support for implementation and policy and institutional changes towards achieving the goal.

You will research the intersection of early childhood development and wellbeing in public and implement overall program strategy around the same. You need to be energetic and agile, willing to learn and respond quickly, outcome oriented, team player and available to travel at short notice.

You will handle a range of program responsibilities. Some of the important responsibilities will include:

Program development and research

· Develop program strategy on early childhood development-related activities in the cities, with attention to vulnerable groups, gender and poverty. Identify relevant partners and create support in government agencies for implementation.

· Undertake own research at an intersection of Early Childhood Development and urban development towards formulating strategies for Municipal corporations to improve public spaces and neighbourhoods.

· Developing training materials, conducting sessions around responsive caregiving and caregiver wellbeing for government officials, community and mainstreaming the training program with potential partners.

· Support development of knowledge products for the program such as training modules, toolkits, guidebooks, capacity building modules.

· Monitor progress of the relevant activities across multiple cities, conduct surveys, develop indicators and support finding inference and help in reporting.

· Work with internal Research team to validate methodologies and produce strategies on program goals towards early childhood development.

· Support WRI India in any other research or projects as needed by the team.

Co-ordination of project work

· Lead conversations alongside team members with the Government agencies and other stakeholders to achieve project objectives.

· Coordinate technical documents for the projects including data collection, coordinate surveys, compilation and analysis, reports and presentations.

· Lead conducting focused group discussions with Government agencies, local community groups, frontline staff working around early childhood services, NGOs, private agencies record their inputs towards the goals.

Communications and partnership

· Schedule meetings regarding projects, make presentations, help conduct stakeholder consultations, focused group discussions and workshops.

· Communicate with WRI India internal team members towards meeting objectives of the project and constant progress reporting.

· Help prepare internal and external communications and media such as brochures and web content.

· Minimum 7+ years’ full-time experience with demonstrate involvement in Early childhood development/ Gender equity/ Policy and governance/ Community resilience/ Government training programs. Experience working on State or National government programmes will be considered beneficial.

· PhD or Master’s degree in subjects around Early childhood care and education, Public health, Political Science, Gender studies, Sociology, Public Policy or related field.

· Proficiency in Microsoft Excel, Word, and PowerPoint is a requirement. Knowledge of Adobe software or any analytical tools will be helpful.

· Willingness to travel to cities across India for partner meeting and workshops.

· Strong management skills to work with wide set of partners ranging from government officials to local representatives to industry experts. Good coordination and communications skills with wider project team is required. Ability to work individually and with the team and enthusiastically work under pressure situations.

· Willing to travel extensively.

· Fluency in English and Hindi required, additionally knowledge of any among Marathi, Kannada, Malyalam or Oriya may be beneficial. (written and spoken).