Position Open at Water 2017 - Deputy Director, Washington DC

Dear Friends of Global Water, 

Please consider sharing / applying for this one year position with Water 2017. It's going to be an exciting twelve months...  Water 2017 starts this week, and carries on through the first 100 days of the next U.S. Administration (May 2017).

Note application deadline of May 31, 2016. As indicated below, applicants should please send résumé and cover letter to John Oldfield at oldfieldj@gmail.com.

Many thanks.

John

Position open at Water 2017, an initiative of Advocates for Development Assistance

Position:  Deputy Director

Location: Washington, D.C.

Status: Full-time, Exempt

Reports to: CEO of Water 2017

Application Deadline: May 31, 2016

Water 2017, as part of the Advocates for Development Assistance project, is a one-year effort to elevate and mainstream global water challenges and opportunities within U.S. foreign policy. Water 2017 will strengthen actions by the U.S. government and private American citizens to improve global water security, and encourage the U.S. government and the next President to prioritize to an unprecedented level the role of water in international development and diplomacy. 

The coming twelve months - May 2016 to May 2017 – are pivotal to positioning global water security within the U.S. government for the next four to eight years. Water 2017 is intended to lead to a higher and more effective response to global water challenges by the next President, the U.S. Congress, as well as by key U.S. government agencies such as USAID, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, the State Department, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Water 2017 will also involve private American citizens in its efforts: corporate leaders, philanthropists, civic (e.g. Rotary) and faith leaders, thinktanks and nonprofits.

Responsibilities

The Deputy Director reports to the CEO and will:

-          Ensure the effective and efficient operation of Water 2017, including managing the human resources, finance, and grants management functions of Water 2017 via a contract with a fiscal sponsor;

-          Work with CEO to develop overall one year strategic operating plan, metrics, and deliverables;

-          Lead, coordinate, and/or support Water 2017’s education and advocacy programs. These could include learning events; high profile advocacy events; outreach to the U.S. government, businesses, foundations, civic/faith groups, advocacy partners; and/or standalone communications initiatives;

-          Work with CEO to develop and implement a communications strategy for Water 2017 to raise the profile of global water;

-          Serve as a key spokesperson for Water 2017 across all outreach constituencies (U.S. government and private sector) and articulate the mission, vision and strategic direction to external stakeholders; represent Water 2017 and the CEO at appropriate conferences, meetings, and other occasions;

-          Build and maintain an appropriate public presence of Water 2017 online and offline;

-          Support the CEO when required;

-          Manage intern program;

-          Perform other duties as assigned.  

Necessary Competencies

To be successful, the Deputy Director will:

-          Have experience in managing the human resources, finances, and operations of a small organization;

-          Be highly disciplined and detail-oriented;

-          Work well in a small and highly productive team and foster collaboration among a diverse set of stakeholders;

-          Engage partners inside and beyond Water 2017 to actively participate and contribute time and resources;

-          Exercise creativity and opportunism in finding ways of raising the profile of global water;

-          Have strong and persuasive oral and written communication, facilitation, advocacy, and stakeholder engagement skills.

Minimum Education and Skills

The successful candidate will have:

-          Commitment to values, mission and vision of Water 2017;

-          8-10 years of experience in operations and international development work, with a focus on water and its linkages to other development and diplomatic challenges and opportunities;

-          Masters degree or commensurate experience in operations, project management, international development, communications or a related field;

-          Excellent advocacy and communications skills – oral, written, online/offline – and ability to use modern communications tools;

-          Excellent organizational skills, including ability to organize advocacy resources and establish priorities;

-          Strong events management skills;

-          Sophisticated political judgment, understanding of legislative and advocacy issues and sufficient experience to quickly gain in-depth knowledge of Water 2017’s substantive issues and to represent these issues publicly;

-          Strong ability to develop and foster alliances; ability and desire to support and motivate colleagues, and to work in a consensus-oriented environment with different work styles and to facilitate staff communication;

-          High-energy, love of challenge, and ability to be effective in a constantly changing environment;

-          Able to travel occasionally and to work independently and creatively.

Successful completion of a writing test will be required.

This is a full‐time exempt position located in downtown Washington, DC. Salary up to $75k with competitive benefits. Water 2017 is committed to diversity in the workplace. Please send résumé and cover letter to John Oldfield at oldfieldj@gmail.com. No phone calls please.

New Venture Fund Careers

Advocates for Development Assistance is a project of the New Venture Fund, a 501(c)(3) public charity that incubates new and innovative public-interest projects and grant-making programs. The New Venture Fund is committed to attracting, developing and retaining exceptional people, and to creating a work environment that is dynamic, rewarding and enables each of us to realize our potential. The New Venture Fund's work environment is safe and open to all employees and partners, respecting the full spectrum of races, ethnicities, national origins, ages, sexual orientations, gender identities, beliefs, religions, faiths and ideologies, cultures, socio-economic backgrounds and levels of physical ability.

Clinton Global Initiative / Water Commitments

Greetings from the Clinton Global Initiative in New York City. Those of you who are familiar with the CGI model know that it revolves around commitments - people and organizations making commitments, financial and otherwise, to be part of the solution to global development challenges. A number of commitments related to safe water and sanitation were featured this year. Here are a couple:

From friends at P&G:

Today at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York City, former US President Bill Clinton and P&G CEO and Chairman Bob McDonald, announced P&G’s new commitment to scale-up the Children’s Safe Drinking Water Program to provide 2 billion liters of clean drinking water every year in order to save one life every hour in the developing world. P&G is issuing the attached media release today to announce this new commitment. Importantly, later this week we will recognize several of our partners in providing safe drinking water. Last year, P&G recognized CARE. PSI, and World Vision at the Clinton Global Initiative. This year we are recognizing:


• U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC): partnered with the P&G Children’s Safe Drinking Water Program in a collaboration that led to the development of the PUR packets, in addition to ongoing research to improve program implementation including a recent study showing that safe drinking water in schools reduced absenteeism.

• Save the Children: partnered with the P&G Children’s Safe Drinking Water Program to provide clean drinking water to school children and those in need in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Kenya, Pakistan, Somalia, south Sudan, and Uganda.
 
And from Coca Cola:
 

A $3.75-million grant from the Coca-Cola Company to start eight water projects in Morocco, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and other African countries that have large Muslim populations. The grant is part of a $7.5-milion project that is also being supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.N. Development Program.

Turning Coffee into Water

Thanks to a wee bit of lobbying (it was actually a very easy sell), the Clinton Global Initiative organized a breakfast/coffee table discussion on Safe Drinking Water which I had the pleasure of moderating today.

As I was tasked with reporting back to the appropriate authorities at CGI, my careful note-taking has revealed some compelling ideas from the table:

1) First of all, the suggestion was made to encourage the Clinton Global Initiative to better prioritize the global safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene issue throughout all of the tracks (Global Health, Poverty Alleviation, Education and Energy/Climate Change for 2007 - tbd for 2008). Water is everywhere, but is rarely addressed directly and specifically (with an increasing number of exceptions like P&G’s PUR commitment, WaterHealth International’s commitment with Dow). The availability of water and sanitation will make all other sustainable development efforts, regardless of who funds them, more successful initially and more sustainable over the long run.

2) There needs to an increased advocacy effort to raise awareness of safe drinking water and sanitation as a major public health challenge, both in the developed and developing world. In particular, this awareness-raising needs to focus on the solutions to water and sanitation challenges, not just attest to the gravity of the problem. One participant focused specifically on ways to broadcast the water, sanitation and health message throughout the developing world, and getting those governments to better prioritize the issue in their own budgets. One useful precedent is the International Network to Promote Household Water Treatment and Safe Storage. Use such a tool to raise public awareness of the safe water issue throughout the world, use it to educate policymakers, use it to urge corporations, civic organizations, faith communities and private givers to focus on the opportunity to address the cause of development challenges, not just on the symptoms.

3) There is a bottleneck in delivering health-related products and services across the board. Think bednets, vaccines, pharmaceuticals. Also think safe drinking water, latrines, hygiene promotion programs. Although a debate emerged around the issue, the table’s thinking was that there is a reasonable amount of new, innovative and sustainable ideas in the water and health sector, and what is now needed are innovative ways of scaling those doable solutions up, out and over. One example was raised of using village health shops on a grand scale around the world to promote not just bars of soap but hygiene promotion messages. And the option of bolting on microfranchised water purification systems to such village health shops was discussed, as well as using these shops as a foundation from which to deliver social marketing techniques aimed at increasing the number of people with access to improved sanitation systems (e.g. pit latrines). And how about Trainers Without Borders to deal with some of the lack of institutional capacity to grow the sector?

4) Behind every commitment at CGI this year, and there have already been a LOT, there is an exceptional narrative story that if told eloquently and broadly will result not only in progress in the water sector, but additional such commitments at next year’s CGI.

More soon. However, a quick news flash: Bill Clinton announced in a press conference this morning that CGI intends to expand to Asia this year (they are shooting for a meeting in Hong Kong). One might consider lobbying CGI Hong Kong to make sure that the 700 million Indians without improved sanitation are represented, and that the 23% of Chinese (300 million!) without safe drinking water are well-represented in Hong Kong.

Clinton Global Initiative Part 1: Water, water, nowhere

Sorry for the gap in posts – have been on the road a lot lately, including a couple of very interesting visits to water development groups in Guatemala – check out Agua del Pueblo here or google them to find out more about their work for those of you interested in Guatemala. They are primarily funded by a bilateral relationship with the Spanish government now, but looking to diversify and expand their work with water, sanitation and hygiene promotion.

I’m blogging today from right in the middle of the 2007 Clinton Global Initiative, waiting patiently for a direct mention of water, sanitation, hygiene, diarrhea, cholera, or anything… Throw me a bone people! There has been a great deal of optimistic, inspiring discussion in the plenary and breakouts so far from 52+ current and former heads of state and probably 1000 other people, representing 600+ commitments, tens of millions of lives impacted or saved, in over 100 countries.

Five significant commitments have been made public so far, the most interesting of which is the “Global Campaign to Reduce Maternal and Child Deaths in Poor Countries” launched by Norway’s Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg with others.

Finally, a discussion early this afternoon in the Global Health session about Prime Minister Stoltenberg’s commitment elicited an interesting remark from CARE’s President and CEO Helene Gayle. She suggested that in order to meet the goals laid out by the Prime Minister, it is necessary to take a broader approach to child and maternal health, and focus on the causes of that mortality and morbidity – and she mentioned safe water and sanitation specifically.

More to come.

PS Off to question Jane Goodall about the nexus of biodiversity conservation (viz. great apes) and homo sapiens need for safe drinking water. See earlier related post here.

PPS Best quote ever: Development is about much more than safe water, but never about less.

Tony Blair and Safe Water

What the global safe drinking water issue lacks is sex appeal. To remedy this I give you:

Tony Blair

Matthew Yglesias: "What Blair needs to do is find himself a nice, fairly uncontroversial issue to work on. HIV/AIDS is always a solid choice, but I think Bill Clinton's cornered that market. Access to safe drinking water would probably be a good idea."

Good idea indeed.