Objective of the Role 

The Partnership and Advocacy Specialist will lead the implementation and monitoring of War Child’s partnership framework, ensuring that localisation commitments are operationalised and measured across all Syria programmes.

The role focuses on building equitable, transparent, and accountable relationships with local partners, promoting partner-led design and decision-making, and facilitating joint advocacy, funding, and visibility initiatives. In addition, the role will strengthen joint media presence and narrative coherence.

The Specialist will serve as the focal point for partnership management and advocacy coordination in Syria, ensuring that War Child’s localisation matrix is applied, measured, and reported at the country level.

The role works closely with the Regional Advisors to align Syria’s advocacy, communication and partnerships priorities with War Child’s regional and global agendas.

Position within the Organisation

The Partnership and Advocacy Specialist is part of the Programme Quality & Development Department and reports to the Head of Program Quality & Development. 

The role will have the following key relations:

• Internal: HPQD, Grant team, Area and Programme Managers, MEAL Team, Regional Advocacy Advisor, Regional Comms Coordinator, Technical Coordinators in the three hubs (Jordan and North Syria)
• External: Implementing Partners, local NGOs & INGO’s, community networks, coordination mechanisms, and relevant ministries.

Result Areas

• Facilitate the development, renewal, and tracking of MoUs with local/national organisations, ensuring that each includes mutual accountability and transparency clauses.
• Ensure regular partnership review meetings, joint monitoring visits, and collaborative evaluations with local partners.
• Track capacity-strengthening initiatives, ensuring partner-prioritised needs are addressed through technical support, training, and learning exchanges.
• Organise and document partners learning and consultation sessions with implementing partners and report effectively the findings of it.
• Produce partners facts sheets and provide input in the organisation annual reports and stories of change.
• Coordinate and participate in the localization working group at Head office level and help in ensuring the standards/process/indicators to be reflected at Country office level.

• Facilitate and document partner participation in institutional mechanisms, such as partners’ forums, advisory groups, steering committees, and annual planning processes.
• Coordinate joint recruitments and shared selection panels where relevant to enhance local representation in War Child’s governance and staffing.
• Track and report on local partner representation in War Child’s decision-making bodies, ensuring progress toward the 50% target of local participation.
• Facilitate coordination mechanisms that enhance local actor leadership in working groups, networks, and sector coordination platforms.
• Track and report on local partner influence in agenda-setting, working group creation, and joint advocacy outcomes.

• Support and document co-design of project proposals, annual plans, and budgets with local partners from inception.
• Facilitate joint project exit/handover plans co-signed with partners, embedding sustainability and ownership from the start.
• Collect partner feedback and satisfaction data on their participation in War Child’s strategic and operational planning. 
• Track and report the proportion of total annual funding and grants directly awarded to local partners, including core/flexible funding allocations.
• Monitor and document the inclusion of institutional development components and budget lines for partner strengthening in project proposals and budgets.

4. Advocacy, Visibility, and Credit Sharing

• Lead on joint advocacy initiatives and coordinate joint visibility with partners and donors, ensuring local actors are co-credited in external communications and public outputs.
• Track and report on the quality and proportion of advocacy initiatives and communication outputs that are co-authored, co-branded, or co-owned with local partners
• Support documentation of joint policy briefs, research papers, or evidence-based advocacy initiatives where local/national partners are authors or contributors.
• Maintain a joint advocacy log in coordination with the Communications and Advocacy Leads.
• Support the development and execution of advocacy initiatives, ensuring that policy-level perspectives and contextual insights are regularly communicated to the Regional Advocacy Advisor.
• Support implementing partners to co-develop press content, and advocacy briefs that reflect local leadership and War Child’s localisation agenda.
• Contribute to the design of joint influencing strategies that connect local and national priorities to regional and global policy opportunities.

5. Communications & Media

• Support the coordination of communications and media engagement from partners to ensure coherent messaging, joint visibility, and alignment with War Child’s advocacy priorities and communication guidelines.
• Support partners in developing and implementing joint communication plans and media materials, ensuring that local voices and achievements are effectively represented across national and international platforms.
• Facilitate partner capacity-building on media visibility, storytelling, and ethical communication, promoting shared ownership and equitable credit in all public outputs.
• Oversee the collection and quality  of communication materials (stories, visuals, press releases) from partners and ensure timely contribution to War Child’s regional and global channels through the Regional Comms Coordinator.
• In coordination with the Grants Coordinator, track and report on the visibility and credit-sharing indicators across partner-produced communication outputs, including meeting grants’ comms/visibility requirements and guidelines, ensuring proper attribution and compliance.
• Encourage and guide partners, in coordination with Advocacy and Comms leads, to target the most prominent contextual issues their communities are facing through their communication materials, with consideration of any relevant sensitivities.