Save the Children UK has an exciting opportunity for an influential and collaborative individual with extensive child participation and campaigns experience to join us as our Child & Youth Participation Advisor where you will work with children and young people from diverse backgrounds to support change. 

This is a 12 month Fixed Term Contract. 

This role will require occasional travel with some weekend/evening work (every 6 weeks or so) where TOIL will be given back for this time. 

About Us 

Save the Children UK believes every child deserves a future. In the UK and around the world, we work every day to give children a healthy start in life, the opportunity to learn and protection from harm.  When crisis strikes, and children are most vulnerable, we are always among the first to respond and the last to leave.  We ensure children's unique needs are met and their voices are heard. We deliver lasting results for millions of children, including those hardest to reach. 

Please note: Save the Children UK is currently going through a large change programme to ensure we have the greatest possible impact for children. As we evolve this brings opportunities for innovation and growth but also means that our ways of working will develop too. 

About the role 

As the Child and Youth Participation Advisor, you will be part of the Child and Youth Participation team, which supports children and young people—particularly those from refugee and diaspora communities—in driving change across our campaigning, fundraising, communications, and governance efforts. 

In this role, the Advisor will work on a variety of projects involving children and young people, including managing the Young Peacemakers' Assembly, leading key external partnerships, and developing new participation opportunities for schools and young campaigner networks. A key focus will be ensuring that engagement is sensitive and appropriate, particularly when working with children and young people who may have direct experience of conflict or displacement. 

The Advisor will deliver projects both within the Child and Youth Participation team and in collaboration with colleagues across the organisation. This includes contributing expertise in child and youth participation within our cross-functional, multi-disciplinary teams (known as squads), ensuring best practices are followed and that participation is safe, ethical, and meaningful. 

In this role, you will:   

• Lead engagement with the Young Peacemakers' Assembly, a group of young people from refugee and diaspora communities who work together to create campaigns. You may also work with other groups of children and young people, such as the Youth Advisory Board, Scouts, schools, young campaigner networks, and external partners, working closely with colleagues across teams. 

• Plan and run projects that enable children and young people to actively participate in Save the Children's work. 

• Design and deliver engaging activities, workshops, training, and events tailored for children and young people. 

• Support and advise colleagues on best practices in child participation, including developing and delivering internal training and resources. 

• Ensure all projects follow safeguarding policies and risk assessment processes to keep children safe. 

• Manage communication with children involved in projects, including handling inboxes, obtaining consent, and gathering feedback to improve participation. 

About you 

To be successful, it is important that you have: 

• Experience working with diverse groups of young people in a professional or voluntary role, engaging them in campaigning, fundraising, programs, governance, or education to drive change. Ideally you will have direct experience of working with young people from refugee and diaspora communities. 

• Proven ability to develop and design projects, campaigns, and activities specifically for children and young people. 

• Strong facilitation skills, with knowledge of inclusive techniques to ensure meaningful participation, particularly when discussing difficult or emotionally sensitive subjects. 

• Understanding of youth participation best practices and safeguarding requirements. 

• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, and an ability to tailor written and verbal communications to a wide range of different audiences, particularly young people  

• Commitment to Save the Children's vision, mission and values. 

What we offer you: 

Working for a charity provides one of the best benefits there is – a sense of purpose and reward for helping others. However, we understand the importance of giving back to our employees to ensure a happy and healthy working environment and work/life balance. 

• We focus on flexibility, inclusion, collaboration, health and wellbeing both in and outside of work. 

• We provide a wide range of benefits which will reward your hard work, motivate you, and inspire you to work to improve the lives of children every day. You can read more about our benefits here. 

To learn more about the position, please review the Job Description in the attached Documents. 

Closing date: Sunday 23rd March (midnight) 

Please note: To avoid disappointment, you are advised to submit your application as soon as possible as we reserve the right to close the vacancy early if a high volume of applications are received. This is to ensure that we can manage application levels whilst maintaining a positive candidate experience. Unfortunately once a vacancy has closed, we are unable to consider further applications.

Ways of Working:

The majority of our roles can be performed remotely in the UK, but there are likely to be times when you will be required to come to your contracted office (up to 2-4 days per month or 6-8 days per quarter).  This will be agreed with your Line Manager and team and is intended to be time spent on collaborating with colleagues and relationship building. 

Please note: travel costs to your contracted office will be at your own expense. 

Flexible Working - We are happy to discuss flexible working options at interview.

Commitment to Diversity & Inclusion: 

Save the Children UK believes in a world that is fair, inclusive and equitable where all children have the opportunity to change their world. We apply this to our workforce and we are committed to developing and supporting a diverse, equitable, and inclusive organisation where all employees have a sense of belonging and feel that they can be "Free to Be Me". We are not looking for just one type of person - we want to recruit people who can add fresh perspectives, innovative ideas or challenge that disrupts the risk of group think. 

We are especially interested in people whose childhood experiences - of life on a low income, of migration, of being in a racialised community, of the care system, of being LGBT+ or in an LGBT+ family or living with (or with someone with) a disability - help us to see things we might otherwise miss. Whatever your story is we want to hear it because we know that different voices, ideas, perspectives and knowledge, working together will enable us to better the lives of children around the world. This is the reason why we are all here. 

To see our full statement please visit this link: https://jobs.savethechildren.org.uk/our-policies/diversity/

Salary Structure: 

Save the Children is committed to paying staff in a fair and equitable way and will benchmark all salary offers in line with the pay of existing staff. To see our full offer please visit this link: https://jobs.savethechildren.org.uk/what-we-offer-benefits/

If you have any questions, we have an FAQ section here. For anything else you can email us on: careers@savethechildren.org.uk