Room to Read Ongoing Job Recruitment – Apply Now!

Room to Read is a global organization transforming the lives of millions of children in low-income communities by focusing on literacy and gender equality in education. Founded in 2000 on the belief that World Change Starts with Educated Children®, our innovative model focuses on deep, systemic transformation within schools during two time periods that are most critical in a child’s schooling: early primary school for literacy acquisition and secondary school for girls’ education.

We work in collaboration with local communities, partner organizations, and governments to develop literacy skills and a habit of reading among primary school children.Room to Read has benefited 16.6 million children across over 30,000 communities in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Grenada, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Laos, Myanmar, Nepal, Rwanda, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Vietnam, and Zambia.

 

 

Job Title: Communications Officer
Location: South Africa

This is an opportunity to work with a world-class marketing global communications team to build exposure for an innovative NGO that has benefitted more than 16.8 million children worldwide. The Communications Officer is focused on raising brand awareness of Room to Read South Africa, through and range of PR and marketing activities. This individual also supports fundraising and country-specific communications, from donor outreach and reporting to event management. The Communications Officer reports directly to the Country Director while working closely with the Global Marketing and Communications team based in San Francisco, California, USA.

Responsibilities:

• Create content for global office marketing materials. This includes collecting and writing stories about our impact, including photography and video-based stories; providing content for global office website; and supporting global awareness campaign content.
• Create content for unique stewardship materials for donor management.
• Using guidelines provided by global office, create or helpcreate country office annual reports, newsletters, brochures/fact sheets, PowerPoint decks and other materials for local stakeholder meetings.
• Plan, coordinate and host support for donor visits and corporate employee engagement visits and volunteering.
• Support relationship management for existing corporate donors, including support to special corporate programmatic initiatives in-country and implement any specific public relations needs in country related to the partnership.
• Train country office staff on site visits and messaging (orientation and ongoing capacity building).
• Responsible for overseeing creative materials produced by the country office. This includes accountability of photo/video collection and quality control for global marketing and donor materials produced within the country office, working in close collaboration with the country director and program operations staff to complete tasks.
• Using guidelines provided by the global office to identify, hire, supervise and train outside vendors (photographers, videographers, printing/design, etc.) to support both global office material development and donor reporting materials (e.g. project-specific  photos).
• Review donor reporting photos to ensure high quality and guidelines followed.
• Provide translation or language support for donor reports, as needed.
• Develop, implement and evaluate local public relations strategy based on local needs and target audience(s).
• Establish and maintain relationships with local journalists and news/media agencies.
• Support local PR/awareness raising opportunities, as needed, at celebrations and events.
• Act as brand custodian and ambassador to country office using global branding guidelines; train staff on message and brand training (new hires).
• Contribute local content on global and local social media feeds per global office guidelines.
• Supervise other communication staff, if applicable in South Africa country office.

Requirements:

• Degree in a related field (e.g. communications, marketing, etc.).
• 7 – 10 years of relevant work experience.
• Prior experience in: creating communications materials; project management; and experience in travel, tourism or hospitality preferred.
• Excellent English oral and written communication skills, knowledge of African languages a plus.
• Familiarity with design and photography principles, ideally with experience using software such as Adobe InDesign, Photoshop.
• Comfort working both independently and closely with diverse teams and collaborators.
• Highly organized: ability to multitask, manage multiple deliverables/timelines and ensure all deadlines are met.
• Strong computer skills including Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) and Outlook.
• Experience using social marketing and outreach tools including Facebook and Twitter.
• Attention to detail

Compensation
Room to Read offers a competitive salary with excellent benefits. Benefits including 13th month bonus, pension fund, medical aid and staff professional development. The non-monetary compensation includes a unique opportunity to be part of an innovative, meaningful, fun, and rapidly growing organization that is changing transforming the lives of millions of children in developing countries by focusing on literacy and gender equality in education.

Applications must be submitted via www.roomtoread.org or emailed to [email protected] Closing date for applications is close of business.

Application Deadline: Saturday, 30 January, 2021

Room to Read reserves the right at any time to withdraw or alter this advertised position.

Note that correspondence will be conducted with the short-listed candidates only
If you have not been contacted within one (1) month of the closing date, please consider your application as unsuccessful.

Room to Read reserves the right at any time to withdraw or alter this advertised position. Room to Read is a child-safe organization; all personnel are expected to adhere to Room to Read’s Child Protection Policy and Child Protection Code of Conduct.

For more about Room to Read, refer to www.roomtoread.org