Job Title : Programme Director – Public Health

Reporting to: Director of Finance and Operations, Human Dignity Foundation

Contract Type : Part time or full time, 5-year fixed term

Location : Leopardstown, Dublin 18, Ireland with ad-hoc travel required, typically 4 days per quarter on average

Date : Jan/Feb 2025 start (preferred)

Background

Human Dignity Foundation (HDF) is a private, philanthropic fund setup to enable children to live with dignity. In recent years, we have focussed on funding organisations who help protect and safeguard children from sexual exploitation and abuse. Founded in 2004 by a leading philanthropist and entrepreneur, HDF is a spend down foundation which expects to complete the funding of its international partner projects by the end of 2033.

In 2023, HDF updated its strategy to drive the expansion of our portfolio of projects and maximise the foundation’s future impact – to support more children affected by or at risk of child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA). This has resulted in the definition of 4 strategic pillars, under which partner organisations are/ will be supported:

• Expose – to better understand CSEA drivers, nature and prevalence in order to foster data-driven action;
  • Prevent – to seek to decrease the number of children who become victim of sexual exploitation & abuse;
  • Respond – to support capacity to respond to current abuse, with child- and victim-centric approaches
  • Protect – to seek to decrease the risk that CSEA survivors are exploited or abused again.

This new strategy is guiding the development of HDF’s partnerships with like-minded organisations who share our values and sense of urgency to safeguard and protect children from CSEA globally: children can’t wait.

HDF has supported organisations to respond to CSEA for over a decade. In this time, the volume of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) available on the internet and online facilitated child sexual abuse has grown exponentially. HDF believes it is therefore time to change the global approach to tackling this type of abuse: to consider it as a global pandemic. HDF believes online and offline CSEA requires a globally coordinated response, supported by robust data to drive action. HDF is therefore seeking a senior leader with a public health or global health background to work with HDF grantees.

Job Purpose

The Programme Director – Public Health will develop and oversee a programme consisting of several projects, implemented by grantees. Their primary role will be to support them to shift their approach to responding to and exposing the scale and nature of CSEA with systematic and scientific methods from the public health field using a data-driven approach. More specifically, the post holder will:

• grow the programme by identifying suitable partner organisations and projects;
• work closely with the Programme Director – Law Enforcement to design operational and strategic plans, and to influence and assist grantees to use public health methodologies and approaches in their work (where relevant)
• support grant and portfolio management activities and monitor grantee performance to ensure the best use and impact of HDF resources.

This will be achieved by building relationships with HDF’s portfolio of grantees, and providing a rigorous system of accountability to the HDF Executive Chair and Board.

Key Tasks and Responsibilities

The Programme Director’s role will be dynamic and diverse, but core responsibilities will include:

• Developing/ refining their programme’s strategy in line with opportunities and gaps in current CSEA response;
• Grow their programme through new grants and partnerships, performing partner due diligence as needed;
• Overseeing the development of new project proposals by grantees;
• Using sector awareness to spot opportunities for grantee growth, improvements and create connections across their programme and HDF’s portfolio;
• Reviewing and assessing grantee performance against key targets, providing advice and recommendations on improvements, including adoption of data and evidence-based approaches and undertaking monitoring visits;
• Developing terms of reference and oversee external evaluations of projects
• Ensuring grantees adhere to agreed reporting timelines and reviewing reports to ensure their quality;
• Monitoring budgets to ensure that spending occurs as planned and that variances are anticipated, noted, and acted on; ensuring that key grantee program personnel are aware of budgetary resources/restraints and are able to monitor their budgets respectively;
• Travelling to projects (up to 4 days/ quarter) to monitor effective project delivery is taking place.

Person Specification

Qualifications & Experience

• Medical degree with specialism in Public Health or Post Doc Fellow in Public health or Global health
• Strategy development
• Confidence in representing for, organisations in professional environments
• Project management
• Experience in writing for and publishing in peer reviewed publications desirable
• Experience in global public health/ international development/ philanthropy desirable
• Competence in technical or data analysis desirable
• Interest in working with vulnerable children, on child protection or online safety issues desirable

Skills & Qualities

• Strategic thinker
• Leadership and influencing skills
• Interpersonal and team working skills
• Written and verbal communication skills
• Computer literate – strong Excel and Word, PowerPoint skills
• Self-starter who can work independently with external and internal stakeholders
• Ability to work under pressure to daily/weekly/monthly deadlines, on own initiative and in a small organisation
• Enjoys working in small team environments

Common Values

• Passion for our work and mission
• Accountability to our founder and partners
• Innovative, entrepreneurial, and dynamic in our approach
• Openness to admitting our mistakes and learning from them
• Excellence in all that we do

Terms & Conditions

• Salary is commensurate with experience
• Pension, Healthcare
• Part-time with possibility to increase hours depending on need
• Office based role initially, with option for hybrid working once established.

How to Apply:

Please send a cover letter, CV + a list / link to all published articles written / co-written to info@humandignity.foundation.

Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis and the role may therefore offered prior to a successful applicant prior to the deadline.