Expertise France is seeking to recruit a key expert to coordinate the Project’s stakeholder engagement, visibility, advocacy and campaign across all the implementation period, from May 2022 to December 2024. The Senior Stakeholder Engagement and Partnerships Advisor will undertake the steps needed to quickly implement activities to increase awareness on the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) and key transformative actions, to increment stakeholder convergence and agreements on key issues and commitments, and to expand strategic coalitions to stakeholders in sectors beyond the current biodiversity community and to other levels of governance.

The Senior Stakeholder Engagement and Partnerships Advisor will be expected to lead and coordinate the revision and regular update of communications and awareness-raising strategies on the GBF and key transformative actions, the support to the visibility and communications of key partners and strategic events, a mobilization campaign for convergence, synergies and the strengthening of a coalition of high ambition stakeholders, and provide strategic guidance for the Project’s communication outputs delivery.

Across the Project’s implementation period, the objective of the assignment is to ensure lasting conditions for the outreach of the European Union (including EUDs), key partners and the Project’s initiatives to contribute to further spreading awareness on transformative biodiversity action, to improve knowledge levels within the biodiversity community and reach new stakeholders across sectoral silos.

Overview of responsibilities

The Advisor will be responsible for the strategic steering, management and implementation of two Project components:

• Advocacy and communication: oversight of the Project stakeholder engagement and communication activities;
• Campaigns: steering and implemention a cross-sector mobilization campaign.

Under the supervision of the Project Team Leader and in cooperation with the Deputy Team Leader and the Knowledge and Capacity-building Coordinator, he/she will ensure that the above activities are consistent with the Project’s objectives, lead their framing and oversee their implementation, control the quality of their outputs and liaise with the Administrative and Financial Project Officer and Communications Officer to ensure they are efficiently implemented.

The Senior Stakeholder Engagement and Partnerships Advisor will be expected to undertake the following tasks: 

Project’s visibility and stakeholder engagement

Under the supervision of the Team Leader, the Advisor will supervise the technical implementation of all project activities related to his/her priority components:

• Design, update as necessary and ensure the efficient implementation of the Project’s general visibility plan and advocacy/communication strategy;
• Ensure Project visibility in line with its communication and visibility plan, the communication and visibility manuals for European Union external actions and for Expertise France projects, and in coordination with relevant short- or long-term experts;
• Perform a technical quality review of activity-specific visibility strategies and plans, knowledge products (4-pagers, studies, toolboxes) and other outputs delivered by short-term experts in coordination with the Communication Officer and the Knowledge and Capacity-building Coordinator;
• Provide inputs to increment the visibility, outreach and awareness-raising strategies of key partners and strategic events on the GBF, contributing to scale-up their communications capacity and establish cross-platforms visibility actions;
• Participate actively in the “biodiversity communication flotilla” and other stakeholder platforms, providing strategic guidance and inputs for GBF-related communications and awareness-raising strategies;
• Supervise the work of the Communication Officer in the performance of his/her duties and perform a quality review of his visibility and advocacy outputs (e.g. communication plans for events, social media content plans, website news, visuals, MEAL, etc.).

Campaign steering and implementation

The Advisor will steer and implement a cross-sector campaign mobilizing key stakeholders around key messages based on the identified priority topics for the Project:

• Provide dynamic, strategic leadership, vision and direction to increment the campaigns partners synergistic potential and leveraging impact improving their strategic positioning and alignment, expanding their stakeholder support base and trickling messages across constituencies and sectors;
• Prepare and coordinate the campaign monitoring and technical steering including through regular steering committees and operational meetings;
• Coordinate partners involved in the activities implementation: framing, follow-up, quality control;
• Perform a quality review of the campaign-related deliverables;
• Ensure the lean management of the campaigns-related contracts and financial reporting established by the Project, in coordination with the Administrative and Financial Project Officer as needed;
• Ensure that the campaign implementation is completed in line with the Project’s objectives, priority topics and political positions (including the EU and Member State position on the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework);
• Report on campaigns to the Project Team including successes, lessons learnt and way forward.

Partner coordination

The Advisor will be the focal point for external partner relations in the campaigns and visibility components:

• Ensure coordination with the Project’s partners (including EU, country partners, cities and subnational governments, youth, the private sector, civil society organizations, experts) whenever implementing activities related to the campaigns and visibility components;
• Establish regular and efficient communication with the Project’s priority partners, and among project partners, relating to the components he/she will manage;
• Represent the Project in partner activities and events whenever required by the Team Leader.

Project team coordination

• Take part in and contribute to regular team meetings and provide progress updates regarding the Advisor’s priority components
• Contribute to reviewing internal team management and planning tools (technical steering, RACI, etc.);
• Contribute to the preparation of reports according to the Project’s reporting cycles, and in particular as it relates to narrative and MEAL reporting, in coordination with the Team Leader and Deputy Team Leader;
• Represent the Project Team Leader when required and regarding the Advisor’s priority components;
• Supervise the work of the Administrative and Financial Project Officer and Communication Officer, in the performance of the activities related to the Advisor’s priority components
• Back the Knowledge and Capacity-Building Coordinator whenever needed to support the achievement of related components.

The assignment is expected to be structured in three interconnected phases:

• Phase 1: until the end of year 1 of implementation (December 2022);
• Phase 2: year 2 of implementation (January-December 2023);
• Phase 3: year 3 of implementation and closing (January-December 2024).

For all of them, the Senior Stakeholder Engagement and Partnerships Advisor will be expected to perform the duties described above and any other task as required.