Federation Planning and Learning Officer

Friends of the Earth International is looking for a:

Federation Planning and Learning Officer

0.6 – 0.8 fte / 22.5 – 30 hours / 3 – 4 days a week

Friends of the Earth International (FoEI) is the world’s largest grassroots environmental federation with more than 70 autonomous member groups around the world. FoEI aims to ensure that the struggles and experiences of local communities – especially those most affected by unsustainable development – are brought to bear on policies and practices at national and international levels. We focus on four program areas: climate justice and energy, forests and biodiversity, food sovereignty, and economic justice, and two cross-cutting thematic areas: gender justice and environmental and human rights defenders. Our vision is of a peaceful and sustainable world based on societies living in harmony with nature and free of all forms of exploitation.

FoEI’s decentralized and democratic structure allows all member groups to participate in decision-making. We are governed by our member groups, which are organized in regional structures and come together every two years to vote on issues facing the federation's development. Between meetings governance is provided by an elected Executive Committee made up of representatives from our groups. A small International Secretariat (IS) in Amsterdam and a team of global staff supports the member groups, regions, campaigns, programs, and other activities of the federation through fundraising, campaign coordination, trainings, communications, and information management.

This position may be based at the International Secretariat in Amsterdam or in a country with a FoEI member group (with some restrictions – see below for details).

Job Description
The goal of this position is to help the federation improve its planning and learning processes. The Federation Planning and Learning (FPL) Officer will help us learn from our past and current five-year work plans and from annual planning and work cycles. The Officer will help us develop our next multiyear workplan and will set up the processes and spaces needed to learn from the work we do and the strategies we use to achieve our objectives. The Officer will take forward capacity development activities to build knowledge across the federation on planning and learning processes.

Joining other staff working on planning and learning, and facilitating a methodology working group made up of representatives from FoEI's different structures (teams working on international programs, membership, gender justice, internationalist solidarity, as well as FoEI's executive committee, international secretariat, and regions), the Officer will add much-needed capacity to help us to learn from our efforts to achieve our objectives as a federation. With this added capacity, we aim to look deeper into our assumptions of how change happens in the world and how we can best have an impact and develop in our long term history in the global environmental justice movement.

The Officer will also be responsible for the planning and learning processes for a recently awarded EU grant that aligns with our long-term objectives: over the next four years, FoEI will implement the European Union-funded project “People’s power to drive transformative and sustainable solutions”. The project aims to “strengthen FoEI member groups and structures to work both independently and collectively to contribute to social and environmental justice in policy-making processes related to climate change, energy, forests, biodiversity, food systems and economy with an approach that addresses gender justice and its intersectionality with other forms of discrimination”. The project covers 67 countries in four regions (Africa, Asia-Pacific, Latin America and Europe).

The implementing team of the EU grant includes a project manager, financial staff, and membership development staff, among others. The FPL Officer will work closely with the project manager and financial manager to ensure that the grant is on track to deliver agreed objectives and activities and to assure timely warning if FoEI is not making progress toward the objectives of the project. The planning and learning processes for this project must align with the processes developed for FoEI’s next long-term planning cycle.

Responsibilities 

Working together with the different structures of FoEI and with the methodology working group (as mentioned above), the Officer will:

• Work on FoEI's next planning process: led and overseen by the FoEI Executive Committee, in 2024-2025 the federation is developing a new six-year work plan to go into effect in 2026. The Executive Committee developed the terms of reference for the plan, which will guide the work of the FPL officer and other structures and federation spaces working on the plan development, learning and implementation. The FPL Officer will support federation processes to help us evaluate and learn from the past and current five-year work plans as well as supporting development of new multi-year planning, including with writing, facilitating, training and methodological support;
• Support the learning processes of the new six-year plan, including facilitating spaces within FoEI designed for collective learning, including on how to monitor, evaluate and register the memories and successful strategies from the work being done, but also learn from difficulties or failures;
• Develop processes and methodologies to more effectively assess progress towards our annual and multi-year objectives;
• Develop, along with a planning process methodology working group of federation representatives, the processes and methodologies to help FoEI more effectively use its meeting spaces (regional meetings, biennial general meetings, and others) for information sharing, evaluation, and learning.

Specific responsibilities related to the EU project:

• Working closely with the team implementing the EU project, FoEI's grant managers, finance and fundraising staff, the Officer will set up and implement a planning and learning system that ensures EU project activities are assessed, monitored, and evaluated, and that there is transparent reporting of achievements, challenges, and learnings to both FoEI and to the donor.
• Contribute to capacity strengthening of different FoEI actors that are implementing the project through support and trainings.

Requirements

• At least three years practical experience in developing and implementing planning and learning systems in international positions, ideally in the fields of environmental and social justice. Experience with planning and learning processes in social movements and outside of traditional NGO structures would be an advantage;
• Affinity with Friends of the Earth International’s vision and mission; experience working within a FoEI structure or member group would be an advantage;
• Experience in collecting and analyzing quantitative and qualitative data for movement building, lobby and advocacy, capacity building;
• Knowledge of EU monitoring and evaluation methodologies;
• Knowledge and familiarity with strategies including movement building, lobby and advocacy, and capacity building/development;
• Strong interpersonal, intercultural, and organisational skills: work experience in the Global South would be an advantage;
• Excellent command, both spoken and written, of the English language; fluency in other languages, in particular Spanish and/or French, would also be an advantage;
• Experience with collaborative decision-making processes in a global, decentralized environment.

What FoEI offers

Friends of the Earth International is an equal opportunities employer. Diversity and inclusion are important values for FoEI. We aim to have a FoEI team that reflects the diverse composition of our federation. We also encourage applications from people currently under-represented in the environmental justice movement.

While the position may be based outside of the Netherlands, due to the need to work with the Netherlands-based team, it would be an advantage to be based in a similar time zone.

When based in The Netherlands, full-time salary lies between € 4,081.- and € 4,897.- gross monthly depending on experience and qualifications.

Candidates based in The Netherlands must hold a working permit for the EU.

Participation in collective pension arrangement is compulsory.

Contract duration: one year, to be renewed upon positive performance evaluation.

If not based in The Netherlands, the position can be based in a country where FoEI has a member group, with some eligibility restrictions due to EU funding requirements: EU permission, which is not guaranteed, would be needed for the position to be hosted in the following countries: Australia, Canada, Chile, Japan, Russia, South Korea, Switzerland, UK (EWNI-Scotland), USA, Uruguay.

When based in an eligible country, the salary level is aligned with the compensation scale and policies of the host FoE group in which the position will be based.

One must be eligible to work in their proposed country of choice.

Please note that the member group in that country must agree to function as the host employer.

Applications

To apply for this role, please prepare your CV and a motivation letter that summarizes how your profile aligns with the key requirements, skills and abilities of this role.

Both motivation letter and CV should be submitted by e-mail no later than 21 November 2024 with the subject “Federation Planning and Learning Officer” to: Dave Hirsch, International Coordinator, at vacancies(at)foei.org.

The first round of interviews will take place 28 / 29 November. The second round of interviews will take place 05 / 06 December.

Checking references is part of the selection procedure.

FoEI will handle your personal data with care. We will only use your personal data to process this application. Please note that, in compliance with GDPR, we will keep your application in our protected files for a maximum of four weeks after the successful closure of this vacancy.