The Organisation

MSI Asia Pacific (MSIAP) is part of the MSI Reproductive Choices global partnership.

As our name suggests, we are unapologetically pro-choice. We believe that everyone should have the freedom to determine their own future, on their terms.

Our teams work across 36 countries and six continents, supporting over 93,000 women and girls to access reproductive healthcare — including abortion and contraception — every day.

With the help of our partners and donors around the world, we open doors, advocate for change, and strengthen public and private sector provision. We go further than anyone to make reproductive choice possible, and ensure quality reproductive healthcare is available for the long-term.

By supporting women and girls to make the choices that are right for them, we can make a generation impact — increasing gender equality, breaking cycles of poverty and contributing to several sustainable development goals.

MSIAP is committed to creating an inclusive environment. We are proud to be an equal opportunities employer and give equal consideration to all qualified applicants without regard to race, ethnicity, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, or age. We are committed to promoting equality and to safeguarding the welfare of all team members and clients, with a focus on vulnerable groups.

MSIAP welcomes applications from people with relevant lived experience, including people originating from the countries in which MSI works.

The Role

MSIAP is based in Naarm-Melbourne. We are one of three support offices housing shared services for MSI’s country programs. MSIAP leads advocacy, income generation and grant management for the Asia and Pacific region. These shared services include technical assistance on gender, equality, disability, safeguarding and inclusion (GEDSI). The GEDSI technical assistance supports country programmes from Afghanistan to Papua New Guinea to apply a gender transformative and intersectional approach.

MSIAP’s outgoing Gender, Equality, Safeguarding and Inclusion (GESI) Advisor has supported MSI’s country programs in the Asia and Pacific region to conduct GEDSI assessments, develop strategies, implement interventions and build strong safeguarding systems. MSIAP is recruiting a new GESI Advisor to carry this work forward.

The GESI Advisor will support MSI’s country programs in the Asia and Pacific region to maximise opportunities to reach women, adolescents, people with disabilities, people who are of diverse sexual orientation and gender identity and respond to their sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) needs.

This will involve working closely with MSIAP’s Senior Advisor, Program Design & Development, Senior MEL Advisor and Project Grant Officers and MSI’s country programs to integration gender transformative and socially inclusive approaches into our work and evaluate their impact.

The GESI Advisor will serve as MSIAP’s safeguarding lead.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead GEDSI capacity strengthening: Support CPs to periodically assess their GEDSI capacity; design and deliver capacity strengthening initiatives for CPs; and facilitate a GEDSI community of practice among GEDSI leads across the Asia and Pacific region.
• Provide GEDSI technical assistance: Support MSI’s country programs to develop and implement GEDSI strategies at a project and organisational level; and develop tools, frameworks and other resources to support the implementation of GEDSI strategies.
• Build networks and partnerships: Build strategic networks and partnerships that support the GEDSI-related advocacy and programming goals of MSIAP and MSI’s country programs.
• Support institutional fundraising: Support efforts to catalyse funding opportunities; contribute to the design of proposals, including the intervention design, results framework and budget; lead gender marker assessments for proposals; review proposals; and field GEDSI-related questions from prospective donors.
• Support evidence generation and knowledge translation: Contribute to the design, planning and implementation of research, monitoring and evaluation of projects; support MSI country programs develop case studies which showcase our approaches and learning; identify learning and results which can be showcased in publications, communication materials and conferences; and ensure MSIAP is kept up to date on relevant developments in the SRH and adjacent sector.
• Position MSIAP as a leader on GEDSI in the Asia and Pacific region; represent MSIA in relevant internal and external forums and working groups.
• Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI): Provide support in the development and implementation of the MSIAP Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI) Action Plan.
• Advise MSIAP’s leadership: Support MSIAP’s leadership team to strengthen their capacity and the organisation’s approach to GEDSI, DEI and safeguarding; contribute to board reports, risk committees and other internal forums.
• Safeguarding compliance and support: Keep up to date on the safeguarding compliance requirements of MSI, MSIAP’s donors and ACFID; advise the leadership of MSIAP and MSI country programs on the implications of any changes; lead safeguarding assessments and periodic reviews of the safeguarding policies, systems and practices of MSIAP, MSI country programs and partner organisations; lead the development of safeguarding action plans; monitor progress against safeguarding action plans; and maintain the MSIAP safeguarding risk register and regularly review MSI country program safeguarding risks.
• Safeguarding reporting: Ensure MSI country programs understand MSI and donor reporting requirements for suspected safeguarding incidents; sit on the decision committee for safeguarding incident reporting; lead safeguarding reporting to MSIAP’s donors; and support MSIAP’s Senior Management Team with any external communications.
• Foster collaboration: Proactively collaborate with internal stakeholders across the MSI global partnership including the GEDSI and safeguarding leads at the Global Support Office.

Desirable Skills, Knowledge and Experience

If you think you could excel in this position, but you don’t tick all the boxes below, please get in touch.

Skills

• Cultural competence
• Providing technical assistance
• Influencing others
• Developing strategies, policies and workplans
• Working collaboratively with diverse stakeholders, including clients, colleagues, partners and governments
• Communicating effectively
• Analysing qualitative and quantitative data
• Synthesising information
• Writing with brevity
• Leading workshops
• Using Office 365

Knowledge

• GEDSI and intersectionality
• Gender marker assessments
• Child and adult safeguarding
• DFAT GEDSI and safeguarding compliance requirements
• Knowledge translation
• Sexual and reproductive health
• Health systems strengthening, in low resource settings
• The Asia and Pacific region

Experience

• Relevant lived experience
• 5+ years providing GEDSI technical assistance
• 3+ years working with local partners
• 3+ years developing and implementing safeguarding policies and practices
• 3+ years working on international development programmes, ideally in the Asia and Pacific region
• 3+ years providing capacity strengthening
• 3+ years working on projects funded by Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT)

Qualifications

• Relevant degree or equivalent relevant professional experience
• Safeguarding training

Personal Attributes

• Unequivocally pro-choice
• Team player; energetic, enthusiastic and positive.
• Quality-focused and results-oriented
• Calm under pressure
• Strong attention to detail and follow-up
• Ability to take initiative and achieve results with limited supervision
• Highly organised
• Responsive, resourceful and committed
• Sound judgement
• Emotional intelligence
• Integrity

MSI's Core Values

• Mission driven: We go to work every day to enable more women to have children by choice, not chance.
• Customer focused: We meet the needs and exceed the expectations of all our customers: service users, donors, host governments and fellow team members.
• Results orientated: We achieve high quality, measurable outcomes, rather than focusing on inputs or processes.
• Pioneering: Through learning, innovation, and risk taking, we remain at the forefront of family planning, safe abortion and reproductive healthcare globally.
• Sustainable: We build effective programmes and change behaviours which will have lasting impact for individuals, their communities and their countries.
• People-centred: Our continued success depends on the creativity, commitment and courage of MSI team members worldwide.

MSIAP is a child-safe organisation and has zero tolerance for sexual exploitation abuse and harassment. All successful applicants will be required to abide by our Child Safeguarding Code of Conduct and our Global Code of Conduct in addition to undergoing a police check prior to commencement.

Applicants interested in discussing the salary banding for this position is invited to contact Matthew Wilson, Projects Director at [email protected] or HR at [email protected] using the subject line: Gender Equality, Safeguarding and Inclusion Advisor - MSI Asia Pacific enquiry via EthicalJobs.